German Composer Research Articles

Herder and Opera

WI HILE THE GREAT CHANGES in musical style that took place in the 18th century may be viewed in many different ways, of fundamental importance was the decline of the Italian vocal art, chiefly represented by the opera seria, and the rise of a new art of instrumental music under the aegis of German composers. A subordinate but nonetheless important element in the new prominence of German music was the attempt to establish a proper national form for German opera. In this the r61le played by literary figures was a significant one: Lessing, Klopstock, Wieland, Herder, and Goethe, to name only the most prominent, all participated. Their activity took several forms: aesthetic writings on the relations between music and poetry (and drama), which included essays on the inherent susceptibility of the various languages for musical composition; critical discussions of contemporary operas; and the writing of operatic libretti.

Experiments in Hearing.

I am sure that each reader of this review who has done any serious writing or speaking has had the experience of coming across a passage, a phrase, or a word in the writings of others which was so pat and appropriate in its use that it has caused him to say to himself, "Now I wish that<i>I</i>had said that!" As I completed the work and joy of reading this book I thought of Robert Schumann, the German composer, writer, and music critic. Speaking through the mouth of Eusebius, one of his pen names, Schumann described his first meeting with the music of Chopin. His description of this thrilling moment follows. "Eusebius came in softly the other day. You know that ironic smile with which he tries to intrigue you. I was at the piano... Eusebius put a piece of music before us with these words, 'Hats off,

A Revaluation of Axel

A REVALUATION OF AXEL Vn.LIERS DE L1SLE-ADAM was said to have lived on terms of dangerous intimacy with the dream. His almost pathological fear of too-close association with his contemporaries made for an unhealthy state in his personal life. He lived apart from his fellow men in the manner of a recluse. The symptoms of this are everywhere evident in his last work, published posthumously in 1890, Axel. It is perhaps time for a reappraisal of that complicated drama which Edmund Wilson introduced to the American reader in his Axel's Castle (1931). Wilson's comments about the play were limited to certain belle-Iettristic remarks to give his thorough study of Symbolism a convenient fulcrum. In his final chapter he proceeded to contrast the Axel of Villiers de l1sle-Adam's play with the poet Rimbaud. Each was intended to represent an approach of the "Symbolist" man: Axel, the renunciation of life through suicide; Rimbaud, the rejection of art and the search for a new medium. Before Wilson's book, Axel had received little attention. The play was published by the Maison Quantin in Paris one year after its author's death. It was received ungratefully by a generation which was doubtless unprepared for it. Even the "abuses" multiplied by the Symbolist poets of the 1880's rarely went to the lengths suggested by Villiers' play. There were those who turned to Axel as a kind of liturgy of Symbolism, an almost sacred work, like W. B. Yeats and Mallarme. They found the possibility of performing it heretical; they forced it into the category of the closet drama. When it was finally put on at the Theatre de la Gaite lyrique, in Paris, it survived two performances (February 26 and 27, 1894). The reviews were consistently unfavorable. Both Lemaitre of Debats and Sarcey of the Temps, the most distinguished drama critics of the period, took violent exception to this "art nouveau" which Axel seemed to represent. It was agreed that the mere presence of dialogue did not make a literary work acceptable theater. The almost total absence of dramatic action, the over-sustained lyrical outpourings horrified drama critics who still believed that the "unities" carried conviction. (The problem will recur some years later when the first attempts were made to produce Paul Claudel. Only recently has the Comedie fran~aise admitted him to its repertoire by performing such plays as Le Soulier de satin, L'Annonce faite aMarie, and L'Otage.) It is difficult to know how Villiers himseH felt about his play. The presence of detailed, often excessively involved, stage directions would seem to indicate that he intended it eventually for the stage. One French critic (E. Drougard) writing about Axel remarked: "One can 236 1959 A REVALUATION OF Axel 237 state with conviction that it consumed the entire life of the author; he never stopped thinking about it, working on it; and finally only decided to publish it, so it seems, under the pressure of necessity. . . ." Axel then becomes Villiers' Faust. Thematically the two works beg comparison . Neither the second part of Goethe's work nor Axel is especially stageworthy, though each aspires to be dramatic. It is clear that Villiers had at least the Faust legend in mind when he wrote his own play. He probably knew Goethe's Faust in Nerval's translation which appeared in 1828; he perhaps also was familiar with Berlioz' Damnation of Faust which was popular with the Symbolists at the end of the 19th century. Axel, in an important sense, is the literary application of the formula for the synthesis of the arts set down in Wagner's treatise Opera and Drama. Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was another in the long succession of Symbolist writers who turned to the German composer for inspiration. He shared the opinion of his contemporaries who fashioned an ideal Wagner-making him over into a literary figure who had inadvertently wandered into music. Turning to Axel, one is struck by a series of "fin de siecle" effects which have been forced into a form casually resembling a play. It is divided into four sections each of which is referred to as...

TOPICALITY AND THE UNIVERSAL: THE STRANGE CASE OF WEILL'S ‘DIE BÜRGSCHAFT’

KuRT WEILL's 3-act opera 'Die Burgschaft' was composed in 1931, first performed in I932 , banned by the Nazis in I933', and not heard again until the autumn of I957, when it was revived, in a so-called new version, by the Stadtische Oper, Berlin. These are the bare facts of a story which warrants a place in the cultural history of our time. The story has a prologue. By I927 W eill had produced three one-act operas and miscellaneous instrumental and orchestral works, all in a fairly advanced style. These had established him, with Hindemith and K renek, as one of the leaders of the younger generation of German composers. A first-rate technique, evolved during his four years of study with Busoni, and an alert and enquiring mind helped him along a path that might well have led to his adoption of some form of the twelve-note method. But in fact he achieved full maturity and independence with a single, radical change of direction-a tangential movement which, on a lower level, was as daring and as rewarding as Stravinsky's renunciation of the style of his early ballets. Weill's first thoroughly mature score is 'Die Dreigroschenoper' (I 928). Most musicians know something of the work, and a detailed description of its stylistic features would doubtless b e superfluous. But the implications of the style are still not fully a ppreciated. However ·simple, or even primitive, Weill's language became in I 928, the musical effect is definably revolutionary : that is to say, it is vigorously opposed to academic conventions and to the stock response. The precariousness of this situation is one of its most remarkable features; for the genre of contemporary popular music is defined by the most rigid conventions (or formulae), and if these are ignored, the music misses its aim. Yet, as an artist in revolt, Weill was bound to challenge every one of these conventions, and as a musician he had to escape their malignantly anti-musical implications. In the circumstances, an inability to sustain the challenge at any point would have resulted not in bad art, but in non-art.

SYNTHESIS AND NEW EXPERIMENTS: FOUR CONTEMPORARY GERMAN COMPOSERS

SYNTHESIS AND NEW EXPERIMENTS: FOUR CONTEMPORARY GERMAN COMPOSERS

Evaluating the Methods of the Business Administrator

Imagine for a moment that the present war should prove to be the Armageddon of our civilization. What would the Utopian Historical Society, meeting a thousand years hence, consider the chief contributions of our era, which has lasted now for nearly three milleniums? The Greeks, it would probably be decided, arrived at a perfection in sculpturing never before equaled, nor since surpassed. The Italians were consummate painters, German composers were greater than those of any other nation. The English were able to boast two, perhaps three or four, of the greatest poets the world had ever known. Americans developed the art of business administration to such a degree that it was viewed with wonder by the rest of the world.

Current Topics and Events

The hundreth anniversary of the birth of Mendel was celebrated in Brunn on September 23 last. The Government of Czecho-Slovakia placed generous funds at the disposal of a local committee, which arranged the centenary celebrations with the liberality and efficiency that we have learnt to expect from the new Czecho-Slovakian state. Credit is especially due to the committee for having made the centenary an occasion for bringing together, for the first time since the war, geneticists of all lands, the visitors comprising representatives of America, Austria, Denmark, England, Finland, Germany, Holland, India, Japan, Jugoslavia, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland. The official proceedings opened with a visit to the monastery in which Mendel had lived, and to the adjoining garden in which he made his experiments. Wreaths were laid before the monument of Mendel which was erected in 1910, and speeches were made by the chairman of the local Naturwissen-schaftlicher Verein, by the official representative of the Government, by the Burgomeister, by Prof. Erwin Baur (Berlin), Prof. Chodat (Geneva), Prof. NSmec (Prague), Mr. S. Pease (Cambridge), and Prof, litis (Brunn). At the luncheon which followed, the principal speaker was Prof. Wettstein (Vienna), who emphasised particularly the international significance of the event. Prof. C. B. Davenport (Washington) replied, and the official proceedings terminated with a speech by Prof. Richard Hertwig (Munich). In the evening, a special performance was given at the opera, to which the guests were invited: it was the first occasion in Brunn on which the works of Czech and German composers had appeared on the same programme, a matter locally of much comment and great importance. The next day an expedition to recently discovered and very remarkable caves in the Moravian Karst was arranged. It is to be hoped that the success of this gathering will encourage others to organise congresses that are international and not merely inter-allied, in order that the friendships and intercourse which the war destroyed may be once more built up.

Gallery of German Composers

Gallery of German Composers

Truth about Music &amp; Musicians. On Modern German Composers in General

Truth about Music &amp; Musicians. On Modern German Composers in General