The Hanns Eisler Complete Edition is setting sail for new shores. Two volumes, or three scores, have inaugurated the extensive Group VI Film Music. With The Grapes of Wrath and Hangmen Also Die, the editors have brought together in one volume two works which both stem from Eislers Hollywood years, but were created as a result of very different impulses. The brief score to John Steinbecks film The Grapes of Wrath takes its place in the experiments launched by the Rockefeller Film Music Project (1940-42), during the course of which Eisler composed alternative music to selected scenes from already existing films. For Fritz Langs full-length Anti-Nazi film Hangmen Also Die, Eisler reprised certain parts of the Grapes music in order to ultimately create a lengthy film score that even won him an Oscar nomination in 1944.

“A clear and precise English translation of the introduction extends the accessibility of Gall’s work. With scores in hand, musicologists need not undertake hours of aural transcription. As this resourceful and beautifully presented edition makes clear, there is an established foundation ready for further construction.”
(Andrea F. Bohlman, Notes)