The Lost Movements of Ernst Toch’s Gesprochene Musik

Abstract

Gesprochene Musik, by Ernst Toch (1887-1964), is a forgotten milestone in the history of electronic music. (1) A three-movement suite consisting of spoken music for choir, it is one of the few paradigmatic representatives of the genre of Gramophonmusik, which made use of prerecorded gramophone discs in a concert setting. The work was premiered in 1930 at a Berlin festival devoted to new music, in a concert featuring original works for gramophone playback by two rising stars of the German contemporary music scene, Toch and Paul Hindemith. The pieces were performed only once, yet through the intervention of a young John Cage, the score of the third movement of Gesprochene Musik, the "Geographical Fugue," appeared in Henry Cowell's journal, New Music, five years later. Although Cage published the piece in the context of a collection of music written expressly for gramophone, his version led the "Geographical Fugue" to receive a new lease of life as a purely acoustic choral showpiece performed live, which would, ironically, become Toch's most famous work. (2) Given that there was no further trace of the gramophone discs from the original concert, the first two movements of Toch's suite were long considered lost. However, Toch's original sketches were in fact fortunately preserved at the Toch Archive at UCLA. Guided by the composer's grandson, Lawrence Weschler, Christopher Caines rediscovered the sketches for "O-a" and "Ta-tam" in 2006, and created the first full edition of Gesprochene Musik as part of a project he choreographed entitled "Worklight." This was the first complete performance of Gesprochene Musik since the work's premiere in 1930. The current essay presents an introduction, contextualization, and analysis of the first two movements of Gesprochene Musik ahead of the publication of Caines's (2014) preface and edition in the current volume of this journal. In recent years, the origins of the "Geographical Fugue" have begun to receive scholarly attention. Weschler (2003) has written extensively about his grandfather's life and career, and has produced a humorous report on Toch's encounter with John Cage in California in 1935. In Capturing Sound: How Technology has Changed Music, Mark Katz (2010, 109-23) has written about the relationship between Grammophonmusik in the context of early mechanical music and recovered various contemporaneous theories about the potential of the phonograph and gramophone to transform music composition. In a previous article (Raz 2012), I built on Katz's work in a historical and analytical discussion of Toch's "Geographical Fugue." My research contextualized Toch's compositional choices within various artistic, political, and scientific discourses of his age, focusing in particular on the relationship between experimental art and technology, postwar constructions of the body, and the influence of contemporary research on phonetics and sound reproduction. Cainess recent discovery and restoration of the lost movements of Gesprochene Musik open up exciting new avenues for research on Grammophonmusik. The relationship between the musical materials of the new movements and those of the "Geographical Fugue" can now be explored for the first time. Toch's handwritten notes within the original manuscript further reveal tantalizing hints about the compositional process of the pieces. Finally, locating Toch's work within the context of the early days of the Donaueschingen festival series, and the contemporary music scene in Weimar Berlin can enrich our understanding of the interaction between the music, technology, and society of the time. Toch, Experimental Radio, and the Contemporary Music Festival Scene Born in Vienna to a Jewish family, Toch studied medicine, philosophy, and music in Vienna, Heidelberg, and Frankfurt respectively. As a young composer he achieved significant success, receiving the Frankfurt-based Mozart prize in 1909 and the Mendelssohn Stipendium from the city of Leipzig in 1910 and 1913. …