“To Realize in America What Has Become Impossible in Europe”: Excavating Erich Simon’s Life for Music (1907–1994)

Abstract

Erich Simon (1907–1994) was a Viennese-born performer, conductor, editor, concert manager, teacher, and composer. Being Jewish and socialist, he escaped from Austria in 1938 and emigrated to New York, where he rebuilt his career. He contributed to the musical cultures in Europe and the United States in many ways. His network contained prominent names from intellectual, cultural, and musical life on both sides of the Atlantic, such as Benny Goodman, Darius Milhaud, Fritz Stiedry, Erika Wagner, and Hans Weigel. However, as Simon himself was no famous composer, conductor, or virtuoso on which musicological research on exile and migration in the 1930s/1940s has focused in the past, he has been largely overlooked by historians and musicologists. This article presents, for the first time, major source findings related to Simon in the form of personal documents, letters, and musical manuscripts from archives in the United States. Each group of documents provides a different perspective on Simon’s life and career. Through a close reading of these sources, this article reconstructs his social background and life in Vienna, his involvement with left-wing intellectual circles, his family’s dramatic escape, his personal and professional network, which helped him settle in the United States, as well as his musical engagement with American history and culture. Bringing Simon’s story out of the margins contributes to broadening our understanding of the diversity of refugee and migration experiences in the 1930s/1940s and the various ways in which individuals confronted a new social, cultural, and political environment.