Julius Korngold: Atonale Götzendämmerung: Kritische Beiträge zur Geschichte der Neumusik-Ismen (Wien 1937). Erstveröffentlichung. Faksimile, mit Vorwort, Kommentar und Anmerkungen Arne Stollberg and Oswald Panagl with Lukas Michaelis

Abstract

The opulent Romanticism of Erich Wolfgang Korngold seemed destined for oblivion after his death in 1957 at a time when the austere aesthetic of the postwar avant-garde reigned supreme. In recent decades, however, his music has enjoyed a spectacular revival as tonality, emotional expression, and ‘accessibility’ have come back into fashion. Korngold’s father, the formidable anti-modernist music critic Julius Korngold (1860–1945), would have approved of this posthumous trajectory. In fact, the elder Korngold, who viewed his son as the last, best hope of the Austro–German musical tradition, confidently predicted in 1937 that the ‘twilight of the atonal idols’ would herald the dawn of a new era of ‘creative individuality’ in a tonal idiom (p. 375). Although overshadowed by his famous son, Julius Korngold was a prominent and ferocious combatant in the ideological battles fought in the early twentieth century between defenders of the Austro-German Classical and Romantic musical legacy and exponents of musical ‘progress’ (themselves often fiercely divided among each other). Korngold succeeded Eduard Hanslick as the lead music critic at the influential Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse, and from 1902 to 1934 he took full advantage of his bully pulpit to engage in vituperative attacks on contemporary music. Regarded by Edward Dent as ‘the most dangerous enemy of modern trends’ (Andreas Giger, ‘A Matter of Principle: The Consequences for Korngold’s Career’, Journal of Musicology, 16 (1998), 545–64 at 561), the pugnacious critic considered his ‘long fight against the excesses’ of new music to be the ‘culmination’ of his career (Julius Korngold, Die Korngolds in Wien (Zurich, 1991), 274).