Haile, Eugen

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Haile, Eugen

Haile, Eugen, German-American composer; b. Ulm, Feb. 21, 1873; d. Woodstock, N.Y., Aug. 14, 1933. He studied at the Stuttgart Cons. He emigrated to America in 1903. He wrote about 200 songs to German texts, some of them of excellent quality (Herbst, Der Todesengel singt, Teufelslied, Soldaten kommen, etc.). His musical setting to a spoken drama (“gesprochene Oper”), The Happy Ending, produced in N.Y. on Aug. 21, 1916, is an interesting attempt to combine spoken words in the play with pitch inflections in the vocal parts, in the manner of Sprechtstimme. His other opera, Harold’s Dream, was produced in Woodstock on June 30, 1933.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire