Biography:

Walter Arlen (né Aptowitzer; July 31, 1920 – September 2, 2023) was an Austrian-born American composer, specializing mainly in voice and piano scores, having published around 65 works. He was also a music critic for the Los Angeles Times and an emeritus professor at Loyola Marymount University.[1]

Walter Aptowitzer was born in Vienna on July 31, 1920,[2][3] to a middle-class Jewish family.[1][4][5] His parents ran a department store until it was expropriated by the Nazis after Kristallnacht in 1938.[2] His father was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp[5][2] and his mother committed suicide after a breakdown.[2] Arlen, himself, relocated to Chicago, and had a chance encounter with the musicologist Otto Erich Deutsch. After Arlen showed his promising talent, he was encouraged to compose. He recorded for Decca Records, with many of his works only discovered recently. Arlen trained at the University of California, Los Angeles, under Leo Sowerby and Roy Harris. He has been fundamental in tracking down other artists from the period whose works were lost or forgotten due to the Nazi regime[6][7] Whilst working as a journalist, he founded the music department at Loyola University Chicago. Arlen established friendships with numerous other German and Austrian emigrées, including Stravinsky, Milhaud, Villa-Lobos and Chavez.[3][2]

On 2 July 2013, he married his partner Howard Myers in West Hollywood.[5] In 2020 he received the honorary citizenship of Bad Sauerbrunn.

Arlen was interviewed at length for the 2023 Netflix documentary Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate, where he talks about his first love as a teenager, Fülöp “Lumpi” Loránt, a Hungarian Jew and family friend, who was murdered by the Nazis in The Holocaust.[4][5]

Walter Arlen died on September 2, 2023, at the age of 103.[8]

Credits: