Symphonic Aspirations: German Music and Politics, 1900–1945 (review)

Abstract

TWENTIETH-CENTURY MUSIC Symphonic Aspirations: German Music and Politics, 1900-1945. Karen Painter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. [vi, 354 p. ISBN-13: 9780674026612. $49.95.] Index, bibliographical references. The title of Karen Painter's most recent book can be read imply lot of things, but few readers would be likely divine from it the book's stated purpose: namely, to recover the listening habits and aesthetic values these writers [music critics] aspired instill in the public, along with the political and cultural values they passionately believed were at stake and at (p. 2). The in the title alludes Painter's intention study critical reactions in the German cultural sphere the German symphonic tradition. None of this is strictly maintained for long. Soon one reads that [a]s study of the symphony-not the reception history of the symphony-in Austria and Germany in the twentieth century, this book goes against the grain (p. 4), and in fact, her book does on occasion shift perspective from that of the critic that of the composer. This is some degree unavoidable and even necessary, as symphonies continued be written throughout the time period in question, and composer's words about his music are just as much part of its reception history as anyone else's. In order explain the decline in symphonic production in that time and place, some consideration of the composer's perspective is certainly in order. Much more troubling are Painter's notions, sometimes stated outright and sometimes implied, concerning the nature of the and the limits of the German symphonic tradition. To some degree this can be attributed her frequently and astonishingly clumsy prose, which throughout the book serves, however unintentionally, either obscure the dubiousness or compromise the validity of an assertion. In three successive sentences, the progresses from inanimate locus (an open arena be invested with meaning) animate victim (prey the broadest cultural and political claims) human agent (the promised transcendence of its own sonority, p. 4). There are contexts in which any one of these metaphors can be useful, but in work on critical reception and listening habits, the latter two serve only obfuscate. One sees this with regard specific works as well as with the genre as whole. Taking cue from its earliest critics and, be fair, from the composer himself, Painter describes the last movement of Mahler's Seventh Symphony as a rejoicing (p. 1) and effervescent (p. 25), and refers the strict form of its jubilation (p. 105). She mentions Adorno's characterization of the movement (a poor yea-sayer, p. 1) only dismiss it without comment; she takes Julius Korngold's initial praise of its 'ecstatic jubilation' (p. 1) and its 'singular inebriation of joy' (p. 112) in 1909 review at face value while locating his more skeptical reaction of 1930 (it 'forcibly throttles the listener' ) in what Painter calls the bleak winter of 1930. Korngold's later critique could also be seen as deconstruction of his earlier one, which noted that the finale 'roars [rauscht] too much and runs the risk of dissipating [verrauschen]' (p. 2). Attributing an unambiguity of expression or even essence complex (and, many observers, problematic) movement, say nothing of dismissing dissenting interpretations, is incautious enough but fairly trivial compared identifying the meaning and essence of an entire genre. By its very nature, the thematized and affirmed the relationship between individual and society, one reads (p. 5), and no doubt because [n]o art form, indeed no genre of music, better captured the idea of striving than the symphony (p. 6). So much for the Bildungsroman, one supposes; in any case it should be apparent by now that Painter is not referring the history of the symphony, or even the sum of the symphonic canon as manifested in actual performance from the fin de siecle until the defeat of the Third Reich, but specific symphonic tradition. …