Composer and Holocaust Survivor Walter Arlen has Died, Aged 103

As well as composing 65 works, Arlen was also a prolific critic for the Los Angeles Times and founded the music department at Loyola University

The composer, critic, and pedagogue Walter Arlen, who survived the Holocaust and made a new life for himself in America, has passed away at the age of 103.

Born Walter Aptowitzer in Vienna in 1920, Arlen began to learn the piano at the age of five after his grandfather took him to meet the renowned musicologist Otto Erich Deutsch. Arlen's Jewish family owned Dichter's Department Store, which was one of the properties seized and Aryanized during Kristallnacht in 1938.

Following this, Arlen's father was taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp. After repeated attempts, Arlen was able to negotiate with the Gestapo for his release, provided that the family signed papers pledging that they would immigrate to New Zealand.

Arlen, however, fled to New York and then to Chicago, where he was able to meet with relatives. He learned to speak English and developed an American version of his surname. Unbeknownst to him, his parents and sisters were also able to flee Austria and ended up in London for the duration of the war.

In 1951, Arlen entered formal composition study at the University of California Los Angeles. One of his professors there, Albert Goldberg, was a music critic for the Los Angeles Times and taught Arlen to write reviews, eventually offering him a job. Arlen took to the work and wrote concert reviews for the next three decades.

In addition, he founded the music department at Chicago's Loyola University in 1969 and taught there until 1990.

Arlen's catalogue contains 65 works, many of which were for voice-piano duo. He set texts by poets including Shakespeare, Rilke, and Robert Frost, as well as sacred texts from Song of Songs and by Saint John of the Cross.

Our condolences to Arlen's family, friends, and colleagues.