ABSTRACT
On September 24th, 1947, a composer with "an international reputation" became the first Hollywood artist to be called before the Committee on Un-American Activities [HUAC]. The composer's name was Hanns Eisler. Involved in avant-garde groups as well as political music organizations, he composed revolutionary music—songs, theater pieces, and choral works—in addition to what on the surface looks like a more traditional repertoire of chamber works. The placing of art-music within the transcendent world has been fully supported by the complex institution of the concert hall and by the ascendancy and valorization of purely instrumental music—the most purely musical music of all musics. The fact, however, that musicians have so consistently been able to get away with the extreme separability response still tells us something important about music, namely, that the description of music's relation to the extra-musical always falls short of being convincing.
