The Tragedy of German Music

[Tarantella]

I always thought Hindemith was Jewish. I love his work, btw. Imagine somebody like Brecht and Weill existing in a country that, only a few years thereafter, took a 360 degree turn to the right? I was on Kurfurstendam last year and Weill's "Surabaya Johnny" was running through my head! What beautiful decadence. Germany's loss/America's gain.

The repression of art, culture and scientific discovery litters the pages of history, doesn't it! Not to mention the arrival of one man in Judea over 2,000 years ago who 'fell to earth' in a pantheist culture and said, effectively, 'forget all those gods you've been worshipping; there's just me and my dad!!"

[ReinerTorheit]

Yeah, Hindemith was the goy among the bunch Sadly his career in the USA worked out rather poorly, and nothing much of significance was performed there of his.

Certainly the USA was a post-war haven for composers of many different kinds.

[Tarantella]

Just listen to this marvellous version (unfortunately, partly in Englisch) of Weill's "Surabaya Johnny". This is the most wonderful song and Weill is a hero of mine. Brecht/Weill was performed in Kurfurstendam, the 'bohemian/cabaret' section of Berlin, in the 1920's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxz81...eature=related

It is the equal of that other song about grief and loss by George and Ira Gershwin from "Porgy and Bess", called "My Man's Gone Now". Extraordinary and wunderbah!

[ReinerTorheit]

Originally Posted by Tarantella

It is the equal of that other song about grief and loss by George and Ira Gershwin from "Porgy and Bess", called "My Man's Gone Now". Extraordinary and wunderbah!

Sort of... but in P&B Robbins has been murdered by Crown - whereas in Surabaya Johnny, Jonny is a lying louse who's cynically used a woman with no intention of any future relationship.

Both songs have a bitter element, but they're somewhat different emotions, and need a different approach. One is about love. The other's about hate.

[Tarantella]

I think it depends a little on who is singing the Weill/Brecht. Ute Lemper's performance suggests ambivalence. When she sings "Swine" - yes, you can hear the hate and hurt - but she also says Love and there is real pain in this. And I felt this love in the voice and song palpably! The embitterment of love, briefly held, but lost.

Also, I don't think there are too many songs in the repertoire about hate and a broken relationship. Love and hate - two powerful sides of the very same coin. The kind of 'wail' both songs have in common at the end - a real token of grief. Shocking and wonderful in equal measure. Look, this is great art.

[ReinerTorheit]

Originally Posted by Tarantella

Also, I don't think there are too many songs in the repertoire about hate and a broken relationship.

Dichterliebe?

[Felix]

RT I have just listened to the Schnittke Viola Concerto from beginning to end. Very. very impressive. It certainly contains some terrifying death blows. I was hoping he wouldn't follow the death and transfiguration pattern and he doesn't. The music becomes more and more lonely until it fades out with its last forlorn sighs. Thanks for the indication.

I don't think the the Nazis needed Schenker to justify their prejudices, which they had about the other arts too. Their views about decadent, ugly music are still generally fairly wide spread and other academics have followed Schenker's example writing whole books to prove that classical tonality is the only viable form of music. It is an ideological position from which these people won't budge, even if their arguments won't stand up to scrutiny. I feel too weary jsut at the moment to take up this whole debate; I'm getting older and more tired.

What you say about some Wagner operas being banned by the Nazis is quite new to me. Can you remember which ones? Yes, ofcourse, I know that Wagner didn't have any thing directly to do with Nazism, but you may have forgotten that I referred also to other otherwise good poets of the German Romantic era who prepared the ground for this hallucinatory Reich and anti-semitism. Wagner wrote vicious anti-semitic tracts, even though he relied for some time on a Jewish champion conductor of his works, Hermann Levi. He even classified the very North German Brahms as a Jew.

Two major German poets, one of them Jewish (Borhardt), went along - inexplicably - with the reactionary conservatism the until their own work was banned. Borchard found a hiding place in the Tirol for him and hsi wife. The first of the two, Gottfried Benn, managed to live an internal exile being a doctor in Barracks where the officers were not keen on Hitler either. Here he expressed all his detestation of the stupid Nazi mentality. He was partly condemned for his association with the Jewish Else Lasker-Schüler who was his lover for a while. She, who with her poetry bestowed a great gift on the German language, managed to jump onto a train to Switzerland in the nick of time and, as she had nothing on her except her clothes lived as a vagrant in the Parks, where she was arrested and jailed until the family of Thomas Mann realised where she was. This is the real tragedy of German culture. . I haven't mentioned the composers as we all know what happened to them.

I like the anecdote which you probably know already, but the Nazis visiting Pablo Picasso's studio and seeing the canvas of Guernica , he was asked, who was responsible for this? and he replied, "You are."

Best wishes

[Felix]

Bloody hell! I have done it again. I try to be careful . and then I don't know quite why, I press on a few keys and the letter disappears. The thing is i may start with the intention of writing a short letter, and then it becomes longer - and that is when I should transfer to word. In future I will write all letters on Word first. I need a night's sleep and then I may have the energy to reconceive my letter tomorrow.Towards the end of it I thought I got to some essential points, which underiline the tragedy of German culture Poetry and music). I have tomorow Sunday all to myself as the usual friend is not coming for lunch, so I can cook easily and have plenty of time.
I haven't done it with this letter which would be no loss to BC.

In sack cloth and ashes, RT and Tarantella.

Yours

[ReinerTorheit]

Glad you liked the Schnittke - and certainly keen to read more of your views on German music as they come out, Felix

[Tarantella]

Originally Posted by ReinerTorheit

Dichterliebe?

Well, I've read the Heine text to Dichterliebe and found no evidence of hate in any of it. On the contrary, it seems to follow the familiar tropes of courtly love right down to the inevitable "I saw, my love, how wretched you are". This is sensual poetry which reflects the idealization of love and it's inevitable decline into the real world of rejection and suffering.

Felix is the Schumann expert and he may have more to add to this.