Bread and Wine (novel) - in Music

In Music

German communist composer Hanns Eisler used Bread and Wine for seven cantatas, written in 1937, while he was staying with Bertolt Brecht in his Danish exile in Svendborg, despite Silone being excommunicated from the official communist movement, and the Second Moscow Trial just taking place. Eisler did not use Silone's text verbally, but extracted his poetry from Silone's prose. When the scores of these cantatas were published in the 1950s in East Germany, Eisler dated their creation to the year 1935, although the novel had been published only in 1936.