Tunes for Tyrants with Suzy Klein...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... ferney - your #127 insofar as it treats of child-rearing and education is caricatural and anecdotal - and I think based on a Prussian stereotype. What do we know of further south, and Catholic Germany? If you look at Austria, you could adduce a very different approach from the writings of Adalbert Stifter -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalbert_Stifter

Half-remembered ideas mixed with simplistic caricature and anecdote? The BBC are commissioning a documentary series from me as we speak!

I accept the gentle rebuke - it is over forty years since I last did any "study" ("O"-Level!) of 19th Century German history; and the childhood of Mendelssohn should have suggested that such a method of child-rearing wasn't universal (as should Fröbel) - and the childhood of Samuel Butler that it wasn't confined to Germany. Nonetheless - the caricature is still recognizable, isn't it? The upbringing of Frederic the Great, and several English Kings, and of Bulow, and Hitler followed such a programme?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Ah, if only Germany were all that simple to understand..

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Had Germany and Austria in the 1920s been choc-a-bloc with not only impressive but internationally renowned composers, that would have provided a substantial power base for opposition whatever the extreme nature of any attempted clampdown. And if together the composers had established on overriding sense of modernity it might have made any harking back to traditionalism seem cranky even to the ordinary public. As things were, popular sentiment was in line with hyped up nationalistic music nostalgia.

But it had - Schönberg, Zemlinsky, Schreker, Schmidt, Berg, Webern, Hindemith, Weill, Hauer, Hartmann, Spinner, Goldschmidt, Wellesz, Krenek were all active and vocal in 1920s Berlin (as were Strauss, Korngold, Lehar, Stolz) - Klemperer was Music chief at the Kroll Opera; Furtwangler, Walter, Kleiber all programmed the newest Music in "traditional" concerts.

But history doesn't "travel" in straight lines - and whilst these new Musics created enthusiasm, they also provoked hostile opposition: they were seen as symptomatic of a degeneration that for some (not a majority, but a substantial minority) needed the Nazis to root out. There wasn't a "substantial power base" amongst the wider public, most of whom had carried on listening to Mozart and Brahms, just as there wasn't in France - no matter how enthusiastic a minority audience is for a particular Art, that Art cannot survive without state support. Faced with violent state oppression, most of these "not only impressive but internationally renowned composers" not only couldn't go against the rise of the Nazis, they couldn't even be allowed to live in the Third Reich.

And Ives illustrates the need for Art to have patronage - far from "blasting everything from the past out of the water", he is creatively crippled by the near-total neglect of his work during his lifetime. It's a corpus of work (which depends on quotation of Music from the past kept firmly in the water - and requires its audience to be sufficiently well-educated in that past to be able to recognize the quotations as they occur) which only attracted a large audience in the 1960s, by which time his innovations had been overtaken. (You're right about his relationship with his father - the "poor cousin" in a wealthy family.) Varese (another guy who had a violent relationship with his father) is also comparable: a genuine original, gaining a foothold when state sponsorship encourages New Art, lost in silence when that sponsorship is withdrawn - and unsupported in his search for new instrumental developments until the state starts to promote "avant-garde" Art as a weapon in the Cold War.

[Petrushka]

What about the music of those composers (Orff and Strauss aside) who remained, voluntarily or otherwise, in Nazi Germany? Has their music been completely erased from history, tinted by association, whether any good or not? Two such who come to mind are Ernst Pepping and Wolfgang Fortner.

I'm sure there would have been the cantatas in praise of the Führer but there were the equivalent of these in Soviet Russia and some are still heard today but, granted that we haven't heard them, are there likely to be any hidden gems written between 1933 and 1945 in Germany that might be worth discovering?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Its an intriguing idea, (as is the theory that Wittgenstein may have been a fellow-pupil) but was there any suggestion of time and place?

No mere "suggestion", Alain - at the very start of the second programme Ms Klein stated as categorical fact that "On the 8th May, 1906, a young Music fan treated himself to a night at the Viennese opera. He was in luck: wielding the conductor's baton was one of Europe's greatest Musicians, Gustav Mahler. ... That evening stayed with the young fan for life. His name was Adolf Hitler." Then photos of Hitler posing as if giving speeches were shown alongside the caricatures of Mahler conducting.

It is possible that Hitler attended a Mahler performance - but there is no evidence (as far as I'm aware - and no one has offered any here) that he actually did so. The facts were moulded to fit an attractive idea - a feature of the series.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What about the music of those composers (Orff and Strauss aside) who remained, voluntarily or otherwise, in Nazi Germany? Has their music been completely erased from history, tinted by association, whether any good or not? Two such who come to mind are Ernst Pepping and Wolfgang Fortner.

I'm sure there would have been the cantatas in praise of the Führer but there were the equivalent of these in Soviet Russia and some are still heard today but, granted that we haven't heard them, are there likely to be any hidden gems written between 1933 and 1945 in Germany that might be worth discovering?

Karl Amadeus Hartmann remained in "voluntary exile" inside Germany, forbidding performances of his work there, but allowing it to be heard abroad. His most important works appear after the Second World War, however - and he was one of the very few German composers from the time that Henze would acknowledge. Pepping and Fortner - they're a bit ... bland and featureless, aren't they? (I'm basing this on a very limited exposure to about three or four works by each - innocuous, but unmoving - a bit like being stuck at a party in the kitchen with an amiable bore when you can't think of an excuse to leave and chat to that person you fancy who's the only reason you accepted the invitation in the first place.)

It's not impossible that there are pro-Nazi works, just as there are pro-Stalin works from Soviet composers. But those composers were Prokofiev and Shostakovich - AFAIK, there wasn't an equivalent Musical thinker in Nazi Germany. (Strauss' Olympic Hymn is the closest I can think of.)

[HighlandDougie]

It is possible that Hitler attended a Mahler performance - but there is no evidence (as far as I'm aware - and no one has offered any here) that he actually did so.

There appears to be a belief that AH attended a performance of Tristan on 8 May 1906 - much quoted but, and it's a big but, is this an example of where an original speculation becomes transmogrified into hard fact? Hence SK's blithe assertion. Need to do a bit more investigating ....

[Petrushka]

There appears to be a belief that AH attended a performance of Tristan on 8 May 1906 - much quoted but, and it's a big but, is this an example of where an original speculation becomes transmogrified into hard fact? Hence SK's blithe assertion. Need to do a bit more investigating ....

The principal source for this is a postcard dated May 7 1906 written by Hitler from Vienna to his friend, August Kubizek. In this communication, AH informs Kubizek that he has arrived safely and is 'tomorrow seeing Tristan at the Opera and the day after, The Flying Dutchman'. Biographers (of AH) differ as to whether these performances were conducted by Mahler or someone else, possibly Felix Weingartner. One problem appears to be that posters for Opera performances did not give the conductors name, strangely, while another speculation is that records were destroyed when the Vienna State Opera was bombed during the Second World War.

Mahler biographers share the scepticism that Mahler conducted, if they mention the incident at all, and Henry Louis de la Grange in his mammoth biography acknowledges the possibility, I think, (I can't find the reference just now) without leaning one way or the other.

In short we can't be 100% sure.

[makropulos]

Regarding works that were strongly supportive of the Nazi regime, Franz Schmidt's "Deutsche Auferstehung" (the orchestration finished posthumously) was originally going to be called "Dank der Ostmark an den Führer". On the whole, it's as well for his reputation that Schmidt died when he did (11 Feb 1939). There were a few other blatantly political choral works by lesser figures published by the expropriated and forcibly Aryanized Universal Edition in Vienna during the war years - notably Josef Reiter's bombastic "Festgesang an den Führer des deutschen Volkes".

Italy is a rather richer seam of music composed for or under the patronage of Mussolini.

[Lat-Literal]

But it had - Schönberg, Zemlinsky, Schreker, Schmidt, Berg, Webern, Hindemith, Weill, Hauer, Hartmann, Spinner, Goldschmidt, Wellesz, Krenek were all active and vocal in 1920s Berlin (as were Strauss, Korngold, Lehar, Stolz) - Klemperer was Music chief at the Kroll Opera; Furtwangler, Walter, Kleiber all programmed the newest Music in "traditional" concerts.

But history doesn't "travel" in straight lines - and whilst these new Musics created enthusiasm, they also provoked hostile opposition: they were seen as symptomatic of a degeneration that for some (not a majority, but a substantial minority) needed the Nazis to root out. There wasn't a "substantial power base" amongst the wider public, most of whom had carried on listening to Mozart and Brahms, just as there wasn't in France - no matter how enthusiastic a minority audience is for a particular Art, that Art cannot survive without state support. Faced with violent state oppression, most of these "not only impressive but internationally renowned composers" not only couldn't go against the rise of the Nazis, they couldn't even be allowed to live in the Third Reich.

And Ives illustrates the need for Art to have patronage - far from "blasting everything from the past out of the water", he is creatively crippled by the near-total neglect of his work during his lifetime. It's a corpus of work (which depends on quotation of Music from the past kept firmly in the water - and requires its audience to be sufficiently well-educated in that past to be able to recognize the quotations as they occur) which only attracted a large audience in the 1960s, by which time his innovations had been overtaken. (You're right about his relationship with his father - the "poor cousin" in a wealthy family.) Varese (another guy who had a violent relationship with his father) is also comparable: a genuine original, gaining a foothold when state sponsorship encourages New Art, lost in silence when that sponsorship is withdrawn - and unsupported in his search for new instrumental developments until the state starts to promote "avant-garde" Art as a weapon in the Cold War.

Well, perhaps, but if you look at Wikipedia on the arts in the Weimar Republic, cinema gets 30 lines, the visual arts get 19, philosophy gets 19, design gets 15, theatre gets 10, literature gets 7 and music gets 2. I'm not saying that this is the ideal source but it is reinforcing in a way. This period, brief, involves a flourishing of Jewish artists so they are especially identified with the new movements. The subject matter is often bold - controversial to many - and being largely visual and of the spoken word I would suggest, unlike the capacity of music, it leant towards the narrow in terms of potential accessibility and, given the mediums, it was in essence overt. While out with the old and in with the new will generally have the implication of rebellion or even revolution which can easily be described by conservative forces as degenerate, I am not sure that it is right to consider all art as either reactionary or in opposition to the past. Rather history has shown that there is considerable scope for any substantial body of work to capture the public imagination by establishing its own footprint. While that is a usurping of what went before at least in the medium term it is not necessarily reacting to or against anything much in its intentions.

So it just "is" until decades later arts historians analyse what was taking place. It might well be then that they are able to pick out earlier influences or the nature of any contrasts with what had gone before, even if those at the time were absorbed with minimal consciousness. You might not necessarily like this example but let's call up Brian Wilson. What influenced him is fairly obvious but what he produced was innovative, it sat at the heart of a broad new sixties popular movement and it wasn't really in any way degenerate. It was characterised by its uniqueness, its positivity, its ability to part reach out to and part define the zeitgeist and what can be done with imagination and determination in spite of having had a lousy father. I would say that music is better placed than the other arts to exert in an immensely powerful way while being less get-at-able for it is in form often more nebulous and even oblique. But when it came to chromaticism etc, any new constructs were hampered by their associations with deconstruction. And where were the majority of serious non Jewish German composers who with greater involvement and, again, imagination might have made the new music less of an ethnicized target? Caught up in the defeatism of WW1 maybe at a time when surely personal sentiment towards country was expected more than state sponsorship with the latter being an idea whose time anywhere was yet to come.

[Serial_Apologist]

What about the music of those composers (Orff and Strauss aside) who remained, voluntarily or otherwise, in Nazi Germany? Has their music been completely erased from history, tinted by association, whether any good or not? Two such who come to mind are Ernst Pepping and Wolfgang Fortner.

I'm sure there would have been the cantatas in praise of the Führer but there were the equivalent of these in Soviet Russia and some are still heard today but, granted that we haven't heard them, are there likely to be any hidden gems written between 1933 and 1945 in Germany that might be worth discovering?

Later music by Hans Pfitzner has been described as apologetic for Nazism, and like views have been expressed about music by the Swiss-German composer Othmar Schoeck of the 1930s - though finding ways through conflicting opinions on these matters without hearing or knowing about the alleged works leaves inevitable question marks.

The one work by Wolfgang Fortner I have heard was a broadcast around 1960 of his Sieben Elegien for piano of 1951 - an impressive 12-tone work helpful, like the early 12-tone works of Dallapiccola, for those such as myself then finding difficulty with such music, and which I would describe as Hindemithian in a neo-Baroque aesthetic. I understood Fortner actually taught the up and coming generation The Method, too.

[Alain Maréchal]

No mere "suggestion", Alain - at the very start of the second programme Ms Klein stated as categorical fact that "On the 8th May, 1906, a young Music fan treated himself to a night at the Viennese opera. He was in luck: wielding the conductor's baton was one of Europe's greatest Musicians, Gustav Mahler. ... That evening stayed with the young fan for life. His name was Adolf Hitler." Then photos of Hitler posing as if giving speeches were shown alongside the caricatures of Mahler conducting.

It is possible that Hitler attended a Mahler performance - but there is no evidence (as far as I'm aware - and no one has offered any here) that he actually did so. The facts were moulded to fit an attractive idea - a feature of the series.

Thank You. Kershaw would know, he knows everything about AH, but I have mislaid my copy of his biography. AH certainly attended the Opera at that period.

[Petrushka]

Thank You. Kershaw would know, he knows everything about AH, but I have mislaid my copy of his biography. AH certainly attended the Opera at that period.

Kershaw merely says that AH attended 'Gustav Mahler's productions' of Tristan and The Flying Dutchman in that 1906 visit, a statement that is only sort of correct and the Kubizek postcard is clearly the source. Another thing we have to beware of is that Hitler's communications to Kubizek were not dated and the postmark is all there is to go on.

I'll have to find out whether Mahler's complete schedule at the Vienna Opera is available but I don't think it is.

[Alain Maréchal]

Thanks to all for the research. The possibility is certainly there, indeed a likelihood, but I am not sure what conclusion, if any, can be drawn from it. Did SK draw one?

[visualnickmos]

No mere "suggestion", Alain - at the very start of the second programme Ms Klein stated as categorical fact that "On the 8th May, 1906, a young Music fan treated himself to a night at the Viennese opera. He was in luck: wielding the conductor's baton was one of Europe's greatest Musicians, Gustav Mahler. ... That evening stayed with the young fan for life. His name was Adolf Hitler." Then photos of Hitler posing as if giving speeches were shown alongside the caricatures of Mahler conducting.

It is possible that Hitler attended a Mahler performance - but there is no evidence (as far as I'm aware - and no one has offered any here) that he actually did so. The facts were moulded to fit an attractive idea - a feature of the series.

That indeed, seemed to be the main thrust of the programmes/series. If not exactly misleading - then certainly slanted.