Of Exile and Music

Eva Mayer Schay was born to Jewish parents in Cologne, Germany, on August 24, 1931. During Hitler's rise to power, her parents emigrated to the island of Mallorca. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the family was repatriated to Germany, where Eva's father was arrested. Next came Italy, then South Africa, where Eva underwent her schooling, musical training, and university. Her father died on her fourteenth birthday, after the end of World War II. In 1953, she won a scholarship for further violin studies in England with the great pedagogue Max Rostal. Returning to South Africa, she played with the SABC Symphony Orchestra and subsequently with the Durban Civic Orchestra. Deploring the apartheid regime, Mayer Schay and her mother emigrated to England in 1961. She taught violin and worked as freelance musician until after her marriage, when she joined the orchestra of English National Opera, where she remained for almost thirty years.

Eva Mayer Schay s memoir movingly tells the story of a consummate professional violinist whose faith in humanity triumphed over events that made her both a victim and vanquisher of oppression. Schay s family escaped Nazi Germany after her father was barred from his job as a tax consultant because he was Jewish. At age five, she and her parents settled in the Jewish immigrant community of Johannesburg, South Africa. There she began violin lessons with virtuoso Herman Abramowitz, also a refugee from Hitler s Germany.The most fascinating chapters and they are compelling recount the author s growth as a musician and emerging opponent of apartheid, concluding with her receiving a bachelor s degree in music from the University of Witswatersand.Wits was the South African University that was opposed to apartheid.After several years studying music on scholarship in England, Schay returned home and joined the SABC Symphony Orchestra, but soon lost her position because of her humanitarian views. She and her mother, the most important influence in Schay s life, moved to a more tolerant Durban, South Africa.Following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, when South African police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters, killing sixty-nine people, Schay and her mother moved back to England. Schay joined the English National Opera in 1968, where she remained a violinist for almost thirty years, until her retirement.This finely honed remembrance of music and protest will find an audience among young adults and adult general readers. Foreword Reviews Of Exile and Music: A Twentieth Century Life Eva Mayer Schay Purdue University Press, Indiana, 2010 How little we really know of our colleagues! A colleague of mine often mentioned her friend Eva but didn't know much about her. Yet Eva has lead a most fascinating life. "Exile is about loss; Loss of Homeland, loss of family, parting from friends." This happened several times in her life, yet the tone is mostly joyous. The chronological, easy-to-read account of a Jewish refugee reveals hidden depths of loneliness and isolation, and the salvation that a life of music provided for her. In her first eight years she had lived in four different countries and two different hemispheres until her family eventually settled in South Africa, years of hardship and deprivation followed due to her parents/ fluctuating financial fortunes .Nevertheless the passion to be a musician and the world of music sustained her through her studies in England and her professional life in South Africa and Britain.the anecdotal history of the music profession in Johannesburg and Durban has parallels with what was happening in Australia at the same time. From her perspective we also see the injustice of the apartheid laws and rejoice with her personal stand against it; finally necessitating her permanent relocation to London. Her story is replete with famous string players such as Max Rostal, William Pleeth, Yfrah Neaman and Robert Masters: personalities such as Alec Guinness and the cartoonist Gerard Hofnung; and figures known to many Australians such as Sir Charles Mackerras, Igor Ozim, Edith Peinemann and Jack Lanchbery. The one drawback is the very small print size. But for those who like reading biographies or modern history, put it on your "to buy " list. StringendoJournal of the Australian Strings Association Volume 33 Number 2, October 2011