Hearing is Believing: ‘Inner Necessity’ and the Songs in the Blaue Reiter Almanac

Abstract

The Blaue Reiter almanac (Munich, 1912) ranks as one of the twentieth century's seminal artistic treatises. Edited by the painters Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, the almanac explored the art and ideas of those thought by the editors to be sympathetic to Kandinsky's idea of ‘inner necessity’. Taking as its point of departure the inclusion in the almanac of Arnold Schoenberg's Herzgewächse, op. 20 (after Maurice Maeterlinck), Anton Webern's ‘Ihr tratet zu dem Herde’, op. 4, no. 5 (Stefan George), and Alban Berg's ‘Warm die Lüfte’, op. 2, no. 4 (Alfred Mombert), the current study draws upon the theoretical writings of Kandinsky in order to establish what was meant by the term ‘inner necessity’. The study employs interdisciplinary perspectives in order to establish how the painter was able to form the view that the three songs were capable of articulating the idea of ‘inner necessity’.