Steven Paul Scher: Essays on Literature and Music, 1967-2004 (Word and Music Studies, 5)

Word and Music Studies Essays on Literature and Music (1967 – 2004) by Steven Paul Scher

WORD AND MUSIC STUDIES 5 Series Editors

Walter Bernhart Lawrence Kramer Suzanne M. Lodato Steven Paul Scher Werner Wolf

The book series WORD AND MUSIC STUDIES (WMS) is the central organ of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA), an association founded in 1997 to promote transdisciplinary scholarly inquiry devoted to the relations between literature/verbal texts/language and music. WMA aims to provide an international forum for musicologists and literary scholars with an interest in interart/intermedial studies and in crossing cultural as well as disciplinary boundaries. WORD AND MUSIC STUDIES will publish, generally on an annual basis, theme-oriented volumes, documenting and critically assessing the scope, theory, methodology, and the disciplinary and institutional dimensions and prospects of the field on an international scale: conference proceedings, collections of scholarly essays, and, occasionally, monographs on pertinent individual topics as well as research reports and bibliographical and lexicographical work.

Word and Music Studies Essays on Literature and Music (1967 – 2004) by Steven Paul Scher

Edited by

Walter Bernhart and Werner Wolf

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2004

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 90-420-1752-X ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2004 Printed in The Netherlands

Contents Preface ............................................................................................... ix Walter Bernhart Masterminding Word and Music Studies: A Tribute to Steven Paul Scher ......................................................... xi

Essays on Literature and Music by Steven Paul Scher Thomas Mann’s ‘Verbal Score’: Adrian Leverkühn’s Symbolic Confession (1967) ............................. 1 Notes Toward a Theory of Verbal Music (1970) ............................. 23 How Meaningful is ‘Musical’ in Literary Criticism? (1972) ........... 37 Brecht’s Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger: Emblematic Structure as Epic Spectacle (1974) ............................... 47 “O Wort, du Wort, das mir fehlt!”: Der Realismusbegriff in der Musik (1975) ....................................... 73 Kreativität als Selbstüberwindung: Thomas Manns permanente ‘Wagner-Krise’ (1976) ........................ 95 Temporality and Mediation: W. H. Wackenroder and E. T. A. Hoffmann as Literary Historicists of Music (1976) ............................................. 113 Carl Maria von Weber’s Tonkünstlers Leben: The Composer as Novelist? (1978) ................................................ 127

Beethoven and the Word: Literary Affinity or Artistic Necessity? (1980/81) ......................... 143 Comparing Literature and Music: Current Trends and Prospects in Critical Theory and Methodology (1981) ................................................................ 159 Literature and Music (1982) ........................................................... 173 Theory in Literature, Analysis in Music: What Next? (1983) ......................................................................... 203 Comparing Poetry and Music: Beethoven’s Goethe Lieder as Composed Reading (1986) ............ 223 The Strauss-Hofmannsthal Operatic Experiment: Tradition, Modernity, or Avant-Garde? (1987) .............................. 239 E. T. A. Hoffmann: Der Dichter als Komponist (1987) ................................................. 249 Mignon in Music (1988) ................................................................. 265 The German Lied: A Genre and Its European Reception (1990) .................................. 281 “Tutto nel mondo è burla”: Humor in Music? (1991) ................................................................ 301 Liszt and Literature (1991) ............................................................. 337 Musicopoetics or Melomania: Is There a Theory behind Music in German Literature? (1992) ..... 353 Hoffmann, Weber, Wagner: The Birth of Romantic Opera from the Spirit of Literature? (1992) ....................................................................... 367 Der Opernkomponist Hoffmann und das europäische Musiktheater seiner Zeit (1993) ...................................................... 387

Da Ponte und Mozart: Wort und Ton in Don Giovanni (1994) .......................................... 411 Acoustic Experiment as Ephemeral Spectacle?: Musical Futurism, Dada, Cage, and the Talking Heads (1994) ...... 433 Mozart – an Epistolary Aesthetician? (1997) ................................. 451 E. T. A. Hoffmanns “Der Dichter und der Komponist”: Manifest romantischer Librettologie oder melopoetische Erzählfiktion? (1998) ...................................................................... 461 Melopoetics Revisited: Reflections on Theorizing Word and Music Studies (1999) .......... 471 Judith Weir’s Heaven Ablaze in His Breast: A Postmodern Dance Opera Based on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman” (2000/2004) .......................................................... 489 Eine Berlinische Geschichte: Hoffmanns Brautwahl in Busonis Opernbuch? (2004) .................. 503 Sources ............................................................................................ 521 Acknowledgements ......................................................................... 524

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Preface Two literary scholars may be credited for founding and nurturing contemporary Word and Music Studies: the late Calvin S. Brown and Steven Paul Scher. Volume no. 2 of the series Word and Music Studies (WMS) was dedicated to Brown (Musico-Poetics in Perspective, eds. Jean-Louis Cupers and Ulrich Weisstein, Rodopi 2000). The present volume, no. 5 of the series WMS, assembles Scher's most important contributions to the field that have not appeared in monographs published under his name (it thus does not contain, for example, the introduction to Literatur und Musik nor the “Preface” to Music and Text: Critical Inquiries, edited by Scher in 1984 and 1992, respectively). For obvious reasons, Scher’s wide-ranging work in fields other than the musico-literary, like German Studies and Comparative Literature, is not included either. Also, the editors felt it necessary for a one-volume collection of essays to exclude writings that have, at least to a large extent, found entry in his later publications. The order of the essays in the present volume is chronological rather than thematic. All texts have been reset with occasional emendations, and in some instances new notes by the author have been added. The bibliographical entries have, however, not been unified but follow the conventions of the original book or journal publications. The essays appear here in the original language they had been written, i. e. English or German. The sources of the essays and the acknowledgements of permissions to reprint are to be found at the end of the volume. The editors would like to thank Margaret P. Robinson/Hanover, NH, as well as Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger and Martin Löschnigg (both Graz) for painstaking and circumspect proof-reading, moreover Ingrid

x Hable/Graz for expertly dealing with the technical aspects of the publication. Last but not least, our thanks are due to the author of the essays himself for his tireless cooperation in the production of the present volume. This collection of essays can be no more than a provisional sum of his reflections on literary-musical intermediality and is open to further contributions by the doyen in the field, Steven Paul Scher. But even so we hope that it will greatly facilitate reading and appreciating texts spanning some four decades and providing a plurality of original sources that otherwise would not be easily accessible. Graz, December 2003

Werner Wolf

Masterminding Word and Music Studies A Tribute to Steven Paul Scher∗ Walter Bernhart

The section “Defining the Field” has become a regular feature of WMA conferences, and it usually contains no further qualification or limitation as to scope of observation. This year, however, there is a qualification as the section is designed to be “In Honour of Steven Paul Scher”. This qualification surely implies no limitation in scope: there is little doubt that Professor Scher has been the mastermind behind establishing and ‘defining the field’ of Word and Music Studies as a recognized interdisciplinary area of scholarly enquiry. The fact that he has recently turned sixty-five seems reason enough to draw public attention to these achievements. But when I intimated to him the idea of doing so, he characteristically brushed it aside. Yet he seemed not to downright condemn the idea: I certainly did not feel encouraged, but also not completely discouraged – and so I went ahead. His reluctance to accept a special event in his honour is typical of his complete lack of vanity and self-centredness. It also fits in very well with some other characteristics I admire in him: his sober common sense, his natural keenness of mind and direct approach to things ∗

This tribute is based on a speech delivered at the Third International Conference of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA), held at the University of Sydney, Australia, in 2001, and was first published in Word and Music Studies: Essays in Honor of Steven Paul Scher and on Cultural Identity and the Musical Stage. Suzanne M. Lodato, Suzanne Aspden and Walter Bernhart, eds. Word and Music Studies 4. Amsterdam/New York, NY: Rodopi, 2002. 3-11. References added for this volume are in brackets.

xii and, perhaps most captivatingly, his genuine curiosity and constant humane concern, not to speak of his wit and subtle humour. What, then, is the more precise link between Steven Scher and ‘defining the field’? Our overall conceptions of the field have largely been shaped – in many cases quite unconsciously so, I believe – by his views and ideas about the relationship of ‘word and music’. It is true, he was not the ‘founder’ of the discipline: that was Calvin S. Brown (to whom the second volume of the Rodopi book series Word and Music Studies is devoted; cf. Cupers/Weisstein, eds.). It was Brown who first drew attention to the methodological issues involved in studying the relationships of word and music, and in this respect he took positions which merit serious consideration still today. Yet Brown had no systematic concerns and had no interest in surveying the field as a whole. This is where Professor Scher broke new ground, and in doing so he put Word and Music Studies on the map of scholarship as a distinct field of study, defined by its systematically assessed inner structure. Many of us have become aware of Word and Music Studies as a separate and independent scholarly field only through him; this is certainly true for me. I first met Steven Scher in 1984 when he came to Graz as a guest professor. He was the first to open our eyes to the possibilities of transcending disciplinary boundaries by talking about ‘Literature and Music’, interdisciplinarity then still being considered – if not downright unacceptable – yet rather unorthodox and a little dubious. New Critical structuralism with its ‘separatist’ rigour concerning the study of various art forms was still very much in the air. At about the same time Ulrich Weisstein came to Graz as well (he now lives there), introducing ‘Literature and the Visual Arts’ to us. It was thus in the mid1980s that we came into contact with recent American developments in the area of what was then called ‘Literature and the Other Arts’ or ‘Comparative Arts’ (its main centre being the Comparative Arts Program at Indiana University in Bloomington). Comparative Arts was considered part of Comparative Literature then – a view that is still

xiii with us in some quarters. Yet the concept of Comparative Arts Studies has now been widely replaced by that of Interart Studies (a term which Swedish scholars prefer) or Intermedia Studies (preferred by Germanspeaking colleagues). Scher and Weisstein, both originally from Europe, had a genuine interest in ‘exporting’ the new approach back to Europe and had jointly published in 1981 the Proceedings of the Innsbruck ICLA (International Comparative Literature Association) Congress on “Literature and the Other Arts”. Steven Scher was the spearhead of this new scholarly activity in at least two ways: for one, as Chair of the Bibliography Committee of the MLA Division on Literature and Other Arts, he was the editor of the yearly Bibliography on the Relations of Literature and the Other Arts (founded in 1954) from 1972 to 1986. Needless to say, bibliographical work is one of the central pillars of a discipline, an indispensable prerequisite for establishing a scholarly field. His work for the Bibliography made Scher aware of the richness of worldwide activity in the field and of the need to organize these efforts in some way. Secondly, he edited the volume Literatur und Musik. Ein Handbuch zur Theorie und Praxis eines komparatistischen Grenzgebietes, published in 1984 by Erich Schmidt Verlag in Berlin. (The companion piece on Literatur und die bildende Kunst, edited by Weisstein, appeared in 1992.) Scher’s introduction to his Handbuch was partly based on his 1982 contribution on “Literature and Music” to the Barricelli/Gibaldi volume, Interrelations of Literature [v. i. 173 ff.], and partly on his summary in the Innsbruck Proceedings of 1981. This Innsbruck text had a characteristic title, “Comparing Literature and Music: Current Trends and Prospects in Critical Theory and Methodology” [v. i. 159 ff.] – characteristic, that is, insofar as it chose the then dominant comparatist standpoint, made theory and methodology its main concern, and took a typical ‘Scherian’ interest in future developments (‘prospects’). The central points of this essay are his attacks on what he calls the “age-old terminological confusion” and on the “rampant metaphorical impressionism” (219 [v. i. 167]). The titles

xiv alone of some of the papers read at the 2001 Sydney WMA conference – collected in this volume [i. e., WMS 4] – confirm that these concerns have lost none of their topicality. In his Innsbruck text of twenty years ago Scher also complained about the scarcity of theoretical studies in the field and, along with others, called for serious semiotic studies, then fairly new on the market. Yet he had already shown a certain scepticism about semiotic approaches – a scepticism which has since increased, if I judge him correctly. Generally, theoretical interests have certainly increased over the last twenty years. For Steven Scher himself it had all begun in 1968 with Verbal Music in German Literature, based on his Yale dissertation, a brilliantly written study on one form of musicalization of literature, the thematic form (in contrast to the acoustic and structural forms). It led to his 1970 article, “Notes Toward a Theory of Verbal Music” [v. i. 23 ff.], which – it appears to me – formed the germ for his well-known tripartite systematic model of word and music relationships. This first study, with a focus on theoretical issues, was followed by his first methodological study that I have been able to trace: it was published in 1975 in the Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature and had the title “Literature and Music: Comparative or Interdisciplinary Study?” It was as early as this that Scher asked a question and raised an issue which became a dominant methodological concern only later, in the 1990s. Still another ‘first’ was his 1972 article entitled “How Meaningful is ‘Musical’ in Literary Criticism?” [v. i. 37 ff.] (yet another question mark: he is a very inquisitive person!). It is here that he addressed for the first time the terminological issue which later became a dominant concern of his, also reflected in some of the papers read at the Sydney conference. Another area Scher moved into in the 1980s was the lied: he introduced the notion of what he called “composed reading” in his 1986 essay on Beethoven’s Goethe lieder (cf. 156 [v. i. 223]). It is this area where his interests come closest to my own: ‘Literature and Music’, in

xv his familiar terminology, or as he later called it, the area of “compenetration”1 [v. i. 284] (or “plurimediality”, according to Werner Wolf2). Scher’s interest in strategies of ‘composed reading’ is reflected in – among others – his illuminating though perhaps not so well known study, “The German Lied: A Genre and Its European Reception” [v. i. 281 ff.]. It was published in 1990, typically in a collection called European Romanticism: Literary Cross-Currents, Modes, and Models – typically, because it brings together Scher’s two main areas of scholarly work: Word and Music Studies and German Romanticism, with special emphasis on writer/composer E. T. A. Hoffmann. No doubt, the two areas share much common ground, and Professor Scher has trod on it with a firm stride. We are here not immediately concerned with his contributions to Romantic Studies, but rather with their successful overlap with Word and Music Studies. To mention a few relevant items: “Carl Maria von Weber’s Tonkünstlers Leben: The Composer as Novelist?” (again a question mark!) (1978) [v. i. 127 ff.]; “Der Opernkomponist Hoffmann und das europäische Musiktheater seiner Zeit” (1993) [v. i. 387 ff.]; or, very recently, “Judith Weirs Heaven Ablaze in His Breast: E. T. A. Hoffmanns Der Sandmann als postmoderne Tanzoper” (2000) [v. i. 489 ff., for the English version]. I have already referred to Scher’s genuine curiosity for what is new – a typical title is that of his essay “Theory in Literature, Analysis in Music: What Next?” (question mark!) (1983) [v. i. 203 ff.]. Thus there is also his characteristic interest in the contemporary British composer, Judith Weir, just mentioned, or in the legendary rock group, Talking Heads, about whom he read a paper in Graz (cf. “Acoustic Experiment”, 1994 [v. i. 433 ff.]). The title “Theory in Literature, Analysis in Music: What Next?” is also revealing for Scher in another way: one can regularly observe in 1

In Scher, “The German Lied” 129, he refers to Louise Rosenblatt’s term, taken from Tompkins, ed. 259.

2

See his essay in this volume [i. e., WMS 4], 21.

xvi him a certain distance from – or scepticism against – theory and analysis for their own sake; he is sceptical of ‘pure theory’. It is his common-sense attitude and his pragmatic approach which always draw him to texts and their interpretation. His genuine concern for methodology and theory has never led him astray: he has always avoided the pitfalls of theory-obsessed sterility – of curling locks on a bald head, as the sarcastic Karl Kraus once put it. He has instinctively found a happy balance of critical theory and interpretive practice and never become lost in mere abstractions. So, ‘what next’ after the 1980s, a decade in which Professor Scher had given the state of the art summary of Word and Music Studies? Next was, in 1992, his edition of Music and Text: Critical Inquiries. His preface to this collection of essays stresses the interdisciplinary character of Word and Music Studies, thus providing an answer to his 1975 question – comparative or interdisciplinary study? – while also describing the progress the discipline has made in the preceding ten years before3. Scher’s preface to Music and Text sees progress of the discipline above all in the fact that the scope of Word and Music Studies had dramatically widened by 1992: he names “[p]oststructuralism, hermeneutics, semiotics, reception aesthetics, and deconstruction, as well as Marxist, feminist, psychoanalytic, and reader-response criticism, and more recently [then!] New Historicism” (“Preface” xiii). It was again Scher who led Word and Music Studies into this ‘brave new world’. He was fortunate enough to enlist Hayden White to write a magisterial “Commentary” to Music and Text: a perceptive methodological reflexion on the introduction of what we are now likely to call the ‘Culturalist Turn’ in the Humanities, as it applies to Word and Music Studies. It is with great satisfaction that Scher there registers the efforts in the field of musicology to participate in this paradigm 3

By then he preferred to call the discipline ‘melopoetics’, adopting a term from Lawrence Kramer (cf. “Dangerous Liaisons”); he also uses ‘musicopoetics’ in an article of 1992. I personally find the term ‘melopoetics’ unsuitable and in fact misleading.

xvii shift, in a field which, as he puts it, “until recently, of all humanistic disciplines […] has been perhaps least receptive to novel critical approaches” (xiv). How enthusiastic Professor Scher was about this new trend in musicology became evident – and it is again very characteristic of him – when, as an example, he sent me, in 1994, a review article from the journal Lingua Franca, called “A Female Deer?” (cf. Ross), which reviewed the latest gender-oriented studies in musicology. The topicality of Music and Text was reason enough for me to ask Scher to read the opening paper at the Graz conference on “Word and Music Studies: Defining the Field” in 1997, when the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA) was founded. In his paper entitled “Melopoetics Revisited: Reflections on Theorizing Word and Music Studies” [v. i. 471 ff.] he substantiated his observation that musicology had recently undergone a “momentous transformation in critical orientation” (11 [v. i. 473]); what had emerged as the New Musicology was a powerful, vibrant field, fully integrated into “our Age of Cultural Studies” (12 [v. i. 475]). In this 1997 essay, Scher reflects searchingly on the impact of the ‘new musicology’ on Word and Music Studies and arrives at a circumspect statement, so very typical of his sober and deliberate judgement: Situated at the interface of musical and literary study, melopoetics might benefit most by yielding to the allure of the ‘new musicology’, albeit without distancing itself from its more traditional base in literary criticism and theory. (13 [v. i. 476])

Scher welcomes the increased interest of musicologists in Word and Music Studies – “a change for the better, of course” (ibid.) – but he also notes that literary critics have increasingly moved into the former domain of musicology by seriously studying opera and the lied (an observation to be confirmed by the two subsequent WMA conferences in Ann Arbor and Sydney). Again, as so often before, Steven Scher was most perceptive of the ‘trends and prospects’ and clearly defined where Word and Music Studies stood, where it was going, or where it ought to be going. On

xviii this evidence, the title of this modest tribute to Professor Scher is undoubtedly justified: he has been masterminding the discipline for these last twenty years or so. Saying this implies at least two things: for one, he has always been a keen observer of the field, and by persuasively writing about it has decisively increased our general awareness of the state of the art; and he has always done so in an educative spirit, showing us new directions and encouraging us to try out new avenues. The other side of his ‘masterminding’ presence is that he is not only a keen observer and eloquent teacher but an eminently original contributor to the field as well – not only an ardent disseminator but an independent Forscher. He has increased our historical knowledge, particularly of the Romantic Age; he has developed new concepts (such as “verbal music” or “composed reading”); his systematic model has structured our view of the whole field (this typology of word and music relations is still strongly with us; it has stimulated others to amend, refine, and complicate it, but no-one has lost sight of it); his terminological criticism has lost none of its relevance; his concern with the interpretive relationship between music and text is alive and thriving. The papers read at the Sydney conference attest to the fact: they show how his ideas have become starting points for further reflexion and have stimulated other minds to find their own solutions to central issues of the field. If we want to honour Professor Scher on his sixty-fifth birthday, we cannot do better than show how he has shaped our thinking and has taught us how to talk no-nonsense in a field which has notoriously been prone to vagueness, limited argumentative rigour and much speculation. He has taught – me at least – to attempt that fine balance between concreteness and abstraction to which I have already referred; his concern for critical theory and methodology is always informed and mitigated by his love for individual texts, for the singular work. Above all, however, we can learn from his inquisitiveness and his optimism which, it seems to me, are the ultimate sources of his success. These springs, I am positive, will keep him going for another

xix twenty years or more, and we will have to be prepared to hear from him about the ‘trends and prospects of Word and Music Studies’ in 2020 or later. We will be enlightened by his words and thoughts as much as we have been enlightened by them for the last twenty years or so. And for this we are grateful to him.

References Barricelli, Jean-Pierre, Joseph Gibaldi, eds. Interrelations of Literature. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1982. Cupers, Jean-Louis, Ulrich Weisstein, eds. Musico-Poetics in Perspective: Calvin S. Brown In Memoriam. Word and Music Studies 2. Amsterdam/Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2000. Kramer, Lawrence. “Dangerous Liaisons: The Literary Text in Musical Criticism”. Nineteenth-Century Music 13 (1989): 159-167. Ross, Alex. “A Female Deer? Looking for Sex in the Sound of Music”. Lingua Franca 8/9 (1994): 53-60. Scher, Steven Paul. Verbal Music in German Literature. New Haven/ London: Yale Univ. Press, 1968. —. “Notes Toward a Theory of Verbal Music”. Comparative Literature 22 (1970): 147-156. —. “How Meaningful is ‘Musical’ in Literary Criticism?”. Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 21 (1972): 52-56. —. “Literature and Music: Comparative or Interdisciplinary Study?” Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 24 (1975): 3740. —. “Carl Maria von Weber’s Tonkünstlers Leben: The Composer as Novelist?”. Comparative Literature Studies 15 (1978): 30-42. —. “Comparing Literature and Music: Current Trends and Prospects in Critical Theory and Methodology”. Scher/Weisstein, eds. 1981. 215-221. —. “Literature and Music”. Barricelli/Gibaldi, eds. 1982. 225-250. —. “Theory in Literature, Analysis in Music: What Next?”. Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 32 (1983): 50-60. —. “Einleitung: Literatur und Musik – Entwicklung und Stand der Forschung”. Scher, ed. 1984. 9-25.

xx —. “Comparing Poetry and Music: Beethoven’s Goethe Lieder”. János Riesz, Peter Boerner, Bernhard Scholz, eds. Sensus Communis: Contemporary Trends in Comparative Literature. Festschrift für Henry Remak. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1986. 155-165. —. “The German Lied: A Genre and Its European Reception”. Gerhart Hoffmeister, ed. European Romanticism: Literary Cross-Currents, Modes, and Models. Detroit, IL: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1990. 127-141. —. “Preface”. Scher, ed. 1992. xiii-xvi. —. “Musicopoetics or Melomania: Is There a Theory behind Music in German Literature?”. James M. McGlathery, ed. Music in German Literature: Their Relationship since the Middle Ages. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1992. 328-337. —. “Der Opernkomponist Hoffmann und das europäische Musiktheater seiner Zeit”. Hartmut Steinecke, ed. E. T. A. Hoffmann: Deutsche Romantik im europäischen Kontext. E. T. A. HoffmannJahrbuch 1, 1992/93. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1993. 106-118. —. “Acoustic Experiment as Ephemeral Spectacle?: Musical Futurism, Dada, Cage, and the Talking Heads”. Walter Bernhart, ed. Die Semantik der musiko-literarischen Gattungen: Methodik und Analyse. Eine Festgabe für Ulrich Weisstein zum 65. Geburtstag / The Semantics of the Musico-Literary Genres: Method and Analysis. In Honor of Ulrich Weisstein on his 65th Birthday. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1994. 201-213. —. “Melopoetics Revisited: Reflections on Theorizing Word and Music Studies”. Walter Bernhart, Steven Paul Scher, Werner Wolf, eds. Word and Music Studies: Defining the Field. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Word and Music Studies at Graz, 1997. Word and Music Studies 1. Amsterdam/Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1999. 9-24. —. “Judith Weirs Heaven Ablaze in His Breast: E. T. A. Hoffmanns Der Sandmann als postmoderne Tanzoper”. Alo Allkemper, Norbert Otto Eke, eds. Literatur und Demokratie. Festschrift für Hartmut Steinecke zum 60. Geburtstag. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2000. 49-60. —, ed. Bibliography on the Relations of Literature and the Other Arts. MLA Division on Literature and the Other Arts, 1972-1986. —, ed. Literatur und Musik. Ein Handbuch zur Theorie und Praxis eines komparatistischen Grenzgebietes. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1984.

xxi —, ed. Music and Text: Critical Inquiries. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992. —, Ulrich Weisstein, eds. Literature and the Other Arts. Proceedings of the IXth Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, Innsbruck. Vol. 3. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, Sonderheft 51. Innsbruck: Verlag des Instituts für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 1981. Tompkins, Jane P., ed. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1980. Weisstein, Ulrich, ed. Literatur und die bildende Kunst. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1992. White, Hayden. “Commentary: Form, Reference, and Ideology in Musical Discourse”. Scher, ed. 1992. 288-319. Wolf, Werner. “Intermediality Revisited: Reflections on Word and Music Relations in the Context of a General Typology of Intermediality”. Suzanne M. Lodato, Suzanne Aspden, Walter Bernhart, eds. Word and Music Studies: Essays in Honor of Steven Paul Scher and on Cultural Identity and the Musical Stage. Word and Music Studies 4. Amsterdam/New York, NY: Rodopi, 2002. 1334.

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Essays on Literature and Music by Steven Paul Scher

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Thomas Mann’s ‘Verbal Score’ Adrian Leverkühn’s Symbolic Confession (1967) Poetic description of music may be termed a Romantic phenomenon; it has been an essential part of German literary tradition ever since it became a center of interest among writers such as Wackenroder, Tieck, Brentano, and Hoffmann. Two fundamental modes of rendering music in words emerge from this tradition: either the author represents music which he identifies or which is otherwise identifiable as an existing opus, or he constructs a ‘verbal piece of music’ to which no composition corresponds. In the first case the poet is usually prompted and assisted by his own direct experience of the music to be represented, while in the second it is his imagination alone that evokes the literary ‘semblance’ of a score. Thomas Mann’s novel, Doktor Faustus (1947), offers examples for both types of literary presentation of music. The text I have chosen to examine constitutes one of the three major evocations in the novel modelled after an existing opus:1

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Wie albern und anspruchsvoll wäre es, zu fragen: ‘Verstehen Sie das?’ Denn wie sollten Sie nicht! So geht es zu, wenn es schön ist: Die Celli intonieren allein, ein schwermütig sinnendes Thema, das nach dem Unsinn der Welt, dem Wozu all des Hetzens und Treibens und Jagens und einander Plagens bieder-philosophisch und höchst ausdrucksvoll fragt. Die Celli verbreiten sich eine Weile weise kopfschüttelnd und bedauernd über dieses Rätsel, und an einem bestimm-

The other two evocations are based on Beethoven’s piano sonata opus 111 and his Fidelio-overture. See Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus, first edition (Stockholm, 1947), pp. 83-86 and 126-128, respectively. Subsequent references to this edition of the novel (DrF) will be given in parentheses in the text itself, indicating chapter and page numbers.

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ten Punkt ihrer Rede, einem wohl erwogenen, setzt ausholend, mit einem tiefen Eratmen, das die Schultern emporzieht und sinken lässt, der Bläserchor ein zu einer Choral-Hymne, ergreifend feierlich, prächtig harmonisiert und vorgetragen mit aller gestopften Würde und mild gebändigten Kraft des Blechs. So dringt die sonore Melodie bis in die Nähe eines Höhepunktes vor, den sie aber, dem Gesetz der Ökonomie gemäss, fürs erste noch vermeidet; sie weicht aus vor ihm, spart ihn aus, spart ihn auf, sinkt ab, bleibt sehr schön auch so, tritt aber zurück und macht einem anderen Gegenstande Platz, einem liedhaft-simplen, scherzhaft-gravitätischvolkstümlichen, scheinbar derb von Natur, der’s aber hinter den Ohren hat und sich, bei einiger Ausgepichtheit in den Künsten der orchestralen Analyse und Umfärbung, als erstaunlich deutungs- und sublimierungsfähig erweist. Mit dem Liedchen wird nun eine Weile klug und lieblich gewirtschaftet, es wird zerlegt, im Einzelnen betrachtet und abgewandelt, eine reizende Figur daraus wird aus mittleren Klanglagen in die zauberischsten Höhen der Geigen- und Flötensphäre hinaufgeführt, wiegt sich dort oben ein wenig noch, und wie es am schmeichelhaftesten darum steht, nun, da nimmt wieder das milde Blech, die Choralhymne von vorhin das Wort an sich, tritt in den Vordergrund, fängt nicht gerade, ausholend wie das erste Mal, von vorne an, sondern tut, als sei ihre Melodie schon eine Weile wieder dabei gewesen und setzt sich weihesam fort gegen jenen Höhepunkt hin, dessen sie sich das erste Mal weislich enthielt, damit die ‘ Ah! ‘-Wirkung, die Gefühlsschwellung desto grösser sei, jetzt, wo sie in rückhaltlosem, von harmonischen Durchgangstönen der Basstuba wuchtig gestutztem Aufsteigen ihn glorreich beschreitet, um sich dann, gleichsam mit würdiger Genugtuung auf das Vollbrachte zurückblickend, ehrsam zu Ende zu singen. (DrF, 207-208)

In chapter 15 the narrator, Serenus Zeitblom, expounds parts of the Leverkühn-Kretzschmar correspondence revelant to Adrian’s identitycrisis. In one of his letters to Wendell Kretzschmar, his musical mentor, young Adrian summarizes his formative interests, gives a bitterly objective account of himself, and sets out to justify his inclination to become a musician after all. In the course of this self-analysis it seems quite appropriate that Leverkühn presents such a music description as an illustration for one aspect of his argument. Although in the novel the musical model remains unidentified, in Die Entstehung des Doktor

3

Faustus (1949) Mann belatedly discloses his source of inspiration: Wagner’s Prelude to Act III of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.2 I believe that in the novel this massive yet evanescent paragraph possibly carries a contextual as well as structural significance not yet recognized by interpreters of Doktor Faustus. In this description of an orchestral composition at least two levels of meaning may be discerned: the text offers an ingenious ‘word picture’ of Wagner’s Prelude, but simultaneously the emerging musical outline and its various details symbolically correspond to specific major events and decisions in Leverkühn’s life.

I Wagner’s orchestral score begins with a unison cello-passage. A slowpaced, melancholy theme which characterizes the contemplative nature of Hans Sachs and his suppressed affection for Pogner’s daughter, Eva. A majestic brass-chorale, reminiscent of the chorale in the church scene of Act I and anticipating the thematically identical chorus in Act III, interrupts the cello-passage. The ensuing songlike melody on the strings represents Eva’s hesitation between her long-time tender admiration for Sachs and her spontaneously awakening love for the young Walther von Stolzing, the noble stranger. The brass-chorale, markedly altered in character, triumphantly returns, signifying Eva’s ultimate choice and the exuberant love of the young couple. The reappearance of the Sachs-theme, which may reflect this time the cobbler-poet’s reconciliation with his fate, brings the Prelude to a close. The score thus contains five major sections. In his ‘verbal score,’ Thomas Mann faithfully projects the musical outlines of the Prelude, though not without intentional alterations. 2

See Thomas Mann, Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus (Amsterdam, 1949), p. 71 and pp. 92-93.

4

Only the first four parts of Wagner’s score are distinctly recognizable; the fifth section is merely added to the characterization of the recurring chorale. There are four sentences in the text roughly corresponding to the four main sections of the music; the entries of the successive musical themes, however, never coincide with the beginnings of the respective sentences. The first entry of the brass-chorale is indicated toward the middle of the fourth sentence (lines 8-11), the songlike melody toward the middle of the fifth (18-19), and the recapitulated chorale toward the middle of the sixth sentence (29-31). Such a distribution of the musical sections ensures a flowing quality in the verbal representation. To integrate the four elaborate sentences of music description (340) into the texture of Adrian’s letter, Mann introduces the paragraph with two short sentences in the detached, matter-of-fact tone of the rest of the letter. The word “schön” (3) at once establishes the ironic tone of the ensuing evocation of music; throughout Doktor Faustus, the concept of “das Schöne” proves consistently synonymous with empty aestheticism, superficial artistic ingenuity, and contrived pathos.3 The actual description begins with a verb, “intonieren” (3), which as a terminus technicus immediately evokes musical associations. The adverb “allein” (3) ascertains the genre of this piece of music: it is an orchestral composition which commences with the cellos in unison. The rest of the sentence (3-6) is devoted to an imaginative delineation of the nature of this musical motif. After the concise definition, “ein schwermütig sinnendes Thema” (3-4), an explanatory clause (4-6) unfolds the core of the motif, a rhetorical question, ambitious but pedestrian. The subsequent “Wozu”-phrase clarifies the expression “Unsinn der Welt”: the word “Unsinn” is quasi-synonymous with “Wozu”; similarly the four nouns “Hetzen”, “Treiben”, “Jagen”, and “Plagen” circumscribe “Welt”. 3

See DrF, 127-128, 163, 252, 280, 365, 556, 630, etc.

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Personification, subtly implied by the use of the verb “fragt,” fully emerges in the next sentence (7-14). The cello-section of the orchestra assumes the traits of a modest, experienced man who is sincerely concerned about the fate of mankind (7-8). Behind this humane image Mann must have envisioned the amiable stature of Hans Sachs, who soliloquizes: “Wahn! Wahn!/ Überall Wahn!/ Wohin ich forschend blick’/ in Stadt- und Welt-Chronik,/ den Grund mir aufzufinden,/ warum gar bis auf’s Blut/ die Leut sich quälen und schinden/ in unnütz toller Wuth!/ Hat keiner Lohn/ noch Dank davon:/ in Flucht geschlagen/ meint er zu jagen.”4 There can be little doubt that Wagner’s text was the model for Mann’s “word picture” of the first musical theme (3-6) . The general tone of the monologue is certainly “schwermütig sinnend” and “bieder-philosophisch”; the interrogative nature of Sachs’ contemplation is implied by the word “warum” (cf. “Wozu,” 5); Wagner’s “unnütz” corresponds to Mann’s “Unsinn”, and the verbs “sich quälen und schinden” as well as the lines “in Flucht geschlagen/ meint er zu jagen” are echoed by the accumulation of “Hetzen”, “Treiben”, “Jagen”, and “Plagen” (5-6). Such treatment of the Wagnerian text is strongly reminiscent of Mann’s earlier paraphrasing technique in his novella Tristan (1903). The two personifications suggested in the second descriptive sentence are distinctly antithetical. The first presents the cellos in contemplation. The image is essentially meditative and expresses compassion and nostalgia, a readiness for acquiescence and resignation rather than for enthusiastic intervention concerning the affairs of the world. The second personification, on the other hand, ascribes a robust, importunate yet convincingly majestic attitude to the entering wind instruments. A restrained, static effect (7-8) is contrasted with the emancipating gesture of taking a deep breath (9-11). Thus Mann success4

Richard Wagner, “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”, in Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen (Leipzig, o. J.), VII, p. 260.

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fully imitates the pronounced polarity between the string and wind instruments in the Wagnerian score. While in the first two sentences the description concentrates on the successive entries of representative instrument groups and presents them in the form of static tableaus, the third sentence (14-23) introduces approximation of musical motion. “Die sonore Melodie” (14) emerges out of the chorale texture, and the reader’s attention shifts toward the unfolding of this melody in space. A forward and upward direction is indicated by the verb “dringt [...] vor” (14-15) and by the mention of a “Höhepunkt” (15) which, however, is not reached at first. Instead, we witness calculated deviations of this peculiarly forwardstriving movement in a spatial framework.5 An asyndetic series of separable verbs characterizes the progress of this movement: “sie weicht aus vor ihm, spart ihn aus, spart ihn auf, sinkt ab, [...]” (16-17). Thereafter, the focus of attention is drawn away from the hesitant and stagnating melodic line. The brass-chorale temporarily disappears from sight only to usher in the new, song-like “Gegenstand” (18-19) – the word here denotes musical subject or theme – that corresponds to the lyrical middle section of the score. A comparison of the first three descriptive sentences (3-23) with the long concluding one (23-40) reveals a significant difference. While each one of the first three contains an elaborate definition of a musical motif, there are no such definitions in the last sentence. Since the major themes have been characterized previously, the last sentence may now concentrate on the gradual unfolding and ultimate fate of these themes. Lines 23-29 up to “nun” belong to the definition of the “Liedchen” and show its further orchestral development, while lines 29-39 up to “um” relate the altered circumstances and the destination of the recurring chorale. The last two lines render the concluding bars of the Prelude. 5

Cf. Mann’s allusion to the same motif in “Leiden und Grösse Richard Wagners”, in Thomas Mann, Gesammelte Werke (Frankfurt/Main, 1960), vol. IX, p. 382.

7

Agglomeration of a great number of strategically situated adverbs and adverbial expressions denoting an aspect of time maintains syntactical coherence in this oversaturated sentence. Some of these words and expressions recur two or three times and the majority of them appear grouped together in clusters of two, three or more: “nun eine Weile” (24), “ein wenig noch [...] wie” (28), “da [...] wieder [...] von vorhin” (29-30), “das erste Mal” (32), “schon eine Weile wieder” (33), “das erste Mal” (35), “jetzt, wo” (36), “dann” (39). Several of the words assume a temporal connotation only in context, e.g., “da” (dann), 29; and “wo” (wenn), 36. The important function of these time-words is to secure continuity of the description and to supply the reader with at least a vague conception of the approximate time-span of the characterized musical sections. The time-words may bring an effect of retardation as well, perhaps best demonstrable in lines 28-31 where – due to the accumulation of time-words – the depicted “action” slows down to almost a standstill. In the last sentence we also witness creation of space by verbal means. Mann communicates the spatial framework of the representation through various words and technical expressions denoting position and direction, e.g., “aus” (26), “in die Höhen” (26-27), “hinaufgeführt” (27-28), “dort oben “ (28), “Vordergrund” (31), “von vorne” (32), “dabei” (33), “jenen” (34), “Höhepunkt” (34), “hin” (34), “Aufsteigen” (38), “auf” (39), and “zurückblickend” (40). The texture of this sentence which results from a combination of the time-words and space-words successfully evokes a semblance of a musical sphere constituted by space and time. Within this spatial framework for the projection of musical motion, the rise and fall of tonal events may easily be pursued. Mann alternates spatial regions as a composer would alternate between various musical registers (cf. “[...] aus mittleren Klanglagen in die zauberischsten Höhen der Geigen- und Flötensphäre hinaufgeführt”, 26-28): the initial ascent reaches a plateau where it temporarily subsides (28-29) only to con-

8

tinue in full force to attain the summit (33-39), from which it slowly descends again to the plain (39-40). Throughout the paragraph Mann makes extensive use of musical terms, with which he constructs a plausible framework for a verbal projection of music. Exact references approximate the instrumentation in Wagner’s score: “Celli” (3, 7); “Bläserchor” (11); “Blech” (14, 30); “Geigen- und Flötensphäre” (27); “Basstuba” (37-38). Also, a number of descriptive words and phrases are derived from musical terminology: “intonieren” (3), “Thema” (4); “Choral-Hymne” (11, 30); “harmonisiert” (12); “Melodie” (14); “Höhepunkt” (15, 34); “orchestrale Analyse und Umfärbung” (22); “Liedchen” (24); “Figur” (26); “mittlere Klanglagen” (26); and “harmonische Durchgangstöne” (37). Yet, to what extent is a thorough knowledge of music indispensible for the understanding of the description? Upon closer examination of this specific technical vocabulary, it becomes clear that Mann’s select terms and expressions carry more than just musical connotations and thus would be understandable to any layman with some literary imagination. Such terminology is justified in the larger context of the novel as well: as an excerpt from Leverkühn’s letter, the passage reflects the language of a promising young man who at this point in his life is not yet a professional musician, but is about to become one.6 Repetition, a stylistic device apparent in the entire passage, serves as a guiding light in the labyrinth of complicated syntax. Mann imitates the recapitulation of the brass-chorale in Wagner’s score by verbal repetition and variation, with special attention to the significant changes in the character of this motif. The return of the brass-chorale is anticipated by the phrase “fürs erste noch vermeidet” (16), echoed first in “wie das erste Mal” (32) and then once more in “sich das erste Mal [...] enthielt” (35). The initial avoidance and ultimate attainment of the long-awaited “Höhepunkt” (15 and 34, respectively) constitute the core of the whole description. Accordingly, repetition becomes a 6

Cf. Kretzschmar’s characterization of Adrian’s musical aptitude, DrF, 199.

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means of contrast: the recurring “Choralhymne” is “nicht [...] ausholend” (31) as opposed to “ausholend” (9-10); it is “weihesam” (34) instead of “ergreifend feierlich” (12); it is intoned on “das milde Blech” (30) as opposed to the “ mild gebändigte Kraft des Blechs” (13-14); and finally the climax is reached (“beschreitet”, 38-39) and not shunned (“vermeidet”, 16). Throughout the description of the Prelude Mann strictly adheres to the present tense. Exclusive use of this tense serves as a cohesive force; it intensifies the immediacy of the piece of music described.7 Leverkühn’s experience of the music is presently transmitted to the reader, who, while receiving this experience, involuntarily re-lives the verbalized tonal events. The present tense also promotes an over-all impression of timelessness. The verbal image of the music is created to perform a role similar to that of the musical score. Just as the actual performance of the music may be reproduced on the basis of the available score, the experience of re-living the actual music may be repeated on the basis of the verbal representation. Thus the consistent use of the present suggests a gnomic, permanent quality of the musical work of art as well as its literary image.

II I have restricted my discussion so far to the text in isolation and have examined what I consider the most important stylistic devices and descriptive techniques by means of which Mann ‘composes’ his ‘verbal score’. Viewed within the context of the novel, however, Adrian Leverkühn’s evocation of Wagner’s Prelude extends well beyond the limits of a description for description’s sake. Our text may be read as a disguised account of certain major influences and events in Adrian’s 7

Cf. Wilhelm Havers, Handbuch der erklärenden Syntax (Heidelberg, 1931), p. 153.

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life presented in the first half of the novel up to the climactic Teufelsgespräch in chapter 25. In chapter 1, conspicuously early in Serenus Zeitblom’s punctilious account of Leverkühn’s life, the ominous phrase “grässlicher Kaufvertrag” (DrF, 11) casts a daemonic shadow over events yet to be told. Although Zeitblom hastily “confesses” it to be a blunder on his part due to the strong emotional ties with his subject, such a deliberately planted slip exemplifies one of Mann’s favorite novelistic devices: the anticipatory allusion.8 Similarly, Zeitblom’s ensuing statement concerning Leverkühn’s composing technique may also be interpreted, I think, as an indirect reference to passages of symbolic content such as the Prelude description: “Adrian selbst hätte wohl kaum, nehmen wir an: in einer Symphonie, ein solches Thema so vorzeitig auftreten – hätte es höchstens auf eine fein versteckte und kaum schon greifbare Art von ferne sich anmelden lassen.” (DrF I, 11-12; italics added).9 Even Zeitblom, who has been around his friend almost constantly, expresses genuine astonishment from time to time when all of a sudden he comprehends the hidden meaning behind some of Adrian’s utterances or written statements previously inexplicable to him: “Bei ihm musste alles sich erst ‘herausstellen’, bei allem musste man ihn betreffen, überraschen, ertappen, ihm hinter die Briefe kommen, – und dann errötete er, während man selbst sich hätte vor den Kopf schlagen mögen, weil man das nicht längst gesehen.” (DrF VII, 72; italics added). Zeitblom confesses that Adrian’s revealing self-analysis is not available to him at the time of writing chapter 15; he only ‘quotes’ the decisive letter from his remarkable memory. He even informs the rea8

Cf. Zeitblom’s statement in chapter 4: “Wenn das ein Fehler ist, [...] dass ich, der Neigung zum Vorgreifen erliegend, schon hier auf Pfeiffering und die Schweigestills zu sprechen kam, so bitte ich den Leser, solche Unregelmässigkeiten der Aufregung zugute zu halten.” DrF, 45.

9

Cf. also Zeitblom’s characterization of Adrian’s first letter from Leipzig in chapter 17: “Es gab kein besseres Beispiel für das Zitat als Deckung, die Parodie als Vorwand.” DrF, 226.

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der that it was “sehr gedrängt und chiffernmässig geschrieben, voll winziger Interpolationen und Korrekturen” (DrF XV, 201).10 Such statements, I feel, are meant as an encouragement to search for meaning between the lines; Leverkühn’s letter certainly deserves careful scrutiny. The Prelude description begins with a characterization of a passage featuring the cellos in unison. Among the many musical instruments appearing in Doktor Faustus11 the cello seems to be most conspicuously used for symbolic representation. Two major themes may be associated with this instrument. First, the verbal cello-passage conjures up reminiscences of Jonathan Leverkühn, Adrian’s father, whose favorite pastime was “die Elementa spekulieren” (DrF III, 24): a melancholy man of native intelligence passionately interested in the origins of life, who in his home laboratory indefatigably scrutinized inexplicable organic and inorganic phenomena. One of Father Leverkühn’s experiments, in fact, called for an old “Cellobogen” (DrF III, 31). In both Zeitblom’s characterization of the old man in chapter three (not at all unlike Wagner’s Hans Sachs!) and the indirect personification in the evoked cello-passage (lines 3-8) I detect an analogous, fundamentally humane attitude with a certain degree of inherent mysticism as well as a definite similarity in diction (italics added): Ja, Vater Leverkühn war ein Spekulierer und Sinnierer, und ich sagte schon, dass sein Forscherhang – wenn man von Forschung sprechen kann, wo es sich eigentlich nur um träumerische Kontemplation handelte – sich immer in eine bestimmte Richtung neigte, nämlich die mystische oder eine ahnungsvoll halb-mystische, in die, wie mir scheint, der dem Natür10 11

Die Celli intonieren allein, ein schwermütig sinnendes Thema, das nach dem Unsinn der Welt, dem Wozu all des Hetzens und Treibens und Jagens und einander Plagens biederphilosophisch und höchst ausdrucksvoll fragt. Die Celli verbreiten sich eine

See also DrF, 240 and 128.

For statistics concerning the various instruments represented see Gunilla Bergsten, “Musical Symbolism in Thomas Mann’s ‘Doktor Faustus’”, in Orbis Litterarum 14 (1959), 206-214.

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lichen nachgehende menschliche Gedanke fast mit Notwendigkeit gelenkt wird. (DrF III, 30-31)

Weile kopfschüttelnd und bedauernd über dieses Rätsel [...] (3-8)

The expressions “schwermütig sinnendes Thema”, “bieder-philosophisch”, and “verbreiten sich ... über” may characterize the amateur “Spekulierer und Sinnierer” engaged in “träumerischer Kontemplation”. Moreover, Father Leverkühn’s semi-mystical speculations concerning the inexplicable (cf. “Rätsel”) in nature and human nature (cf. “der [...] menschliche Gedanke”) may well have included the moot question “Wozu [...] etc.” Secondly, on an abstract plane, the tone of the cello seems to represent for Adrian a kind of vox humana throughout the novel. This notion of Leverkühn’s, as so many others, originates from Kretzschmar, who describes the nature of the “Cellostimme” in a characterization of Bach’s E-flat major cello-suite as “nichts anderes, als geradezu das Einfachste, Fundamentalste, die schlichte Wahrheit [...]” (DrF VIII, 102). It is this humane “Cellostimme”, “das hohe g eines Cello” (DrF XLVI, 745), which dies away at the end of Leverkühn’s last work, Dr. Fausti Weheklag, and whose irreconcilable hopelessness Adrian instinctively foresees in the Prelude description (cf. “Unsinn der Welt” and “Wozu [...],” lines 4-5). In the framework of Leverkühn’s Berufskrise, the definition of the “schwermütig sinnendes Thema” (3-8) corresponds to the propaedeutic studies in theology which he undertook as a result of his decision to become a professional theologian. In a religious context the phrase “Wozu all des Hetzens und Treibens und Jagens und einander Plagens” (5-6) anticipates, I think, the final movement of Dr. Fausti Weheklag which “wie die Klage Gottes über das Verlorengehen seiner Welt, wie ein kummervolles ‘Ich habe es nicht gewollt’ des Schöpfers lautet.” (DrF XLVI, 744). In his inner struggle of trying to ignore the enticing thought of a career in music, Adrian’s early excursions into the field of theology appear by no means to be unmotivated; in his letter in chapter 15 he

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apologetically confides to Kretzschmar: “Mein Luthertum [...] sieht in Theologie und Musik benachbarte, nahe verwandte Sphären [...]” (DrF, 204). In spite of his aversion to the prospect of becoming either an orchestral conductor or a piano-virtuoso, Leverkühn cannot withstand his fundamental attraction to music. The description of the brass-chorale (8-14) points to the time of hesitation in his life when, still involved with theology, he became more and more aware of the overpowering importance of music in his existence.12 The transitional phrase “an einem bestimmten Punkt ihrer Rede, einem wohl erwogenen [...]” (8-9) calls to mind Zeitblom’s memorable portrayal of Adrian’s first though primitive experience in systematic music-making, the canon-singing with the “Stall-Hanne” in Hof Buchel: “Hier war eine zeitliche Verschränkung, ein nachahmendes Eintreten, zu dem man im gegebenen Augenblick durch einen Rippenstoss der Stall-Hanne aufgefordert wurde, wenn der Gesang schon im Gange war, die Melodie sich bis zu einem gewissen Punkte schon abgespielt hatte, aber bevor sie zu Ende war.” (DrF IV, 47; italics added). Similar to the critical points of entry in the above description of canon-singing, the first decisive turning point in Adrian’s adolescent years is the intervention of his Onkel Niko who recognizes the boy’s extraordinary musical talent at the right time and persuades him to take up systematic piano instruction with Wendell Kretzschmar (cf. DrF VII, 75). The verbal evocation of the brass-chorale13 conveys Adrian’s gradually awakening interest in music, though not without reservation, such as demonstrated by the irony in phrases like “gestopfte Würde” (13) and “mild gebändigte Kraft des Blechs” (13-14). Even though in this phase of his life Leverkühn abandons the thought of becoming a

12 13

See Hans Mayer, Thomas Mann (Berlin, 1950), pp. 345-346.

Cf. also the striking similarity in the description of brass instruments in Onkel Niko’s music shop. DrF VII, 65.

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theologian and turns to music, 14 he still maintains an interest in theology on the side. The leading voice of the brass-chorale proceeds toward a climax only to avoid it at first. A plausible though seemingly far-fetched implication concerning Adrian’s fate suggests itself: I construe that the “sonore Melodie” (14) represents the young and shy Leverkühn and the unattained “Höhepunkt” (15) symbolizes his first encounter with the Hetaera Esmeralda in the Leipzig brothel. The parallel has deeper roots than it would appear at first glance. The indirect presence of the devil is hinted at in both cases. In Leipzig Adrian’s “Fremdenführer” uncannily resembles Eberhard Schleppfuss, the daemonic professor of the psychology of religion from Halle, while with the word “Gegenstand” (18-19) the characterization of the advancing “sonore Melodie” includes an allusion to a statement in Schleppfuss’ lectures concerning his distinction between temptation and sin: “Von wem aber ging die Versuchung aus? [...] Man hatte leicht sagen, sie komme vom Teufel. Der war ihre Quelle, die Verwünschung jedoch galt dem Gegenstand. Der Gegenstand, das Instrumentum des Versuchers, war das Weib.” (DrF XIII, 166). The description of the sonorous melody in a spatial “landscape (lines 16-18) may be regarded as a symbolic representation of an unconsummated encounter of the sexes: “sie [die sonore Melodie] weicht aus vor ihm [dem Höhepunkt], spart ihn aus, spart ihn auf,15 sinkt ab [...] etc.” I detect a possible connection between Mann’s “inversion” 14

Cf. Zeitblom’s remark at the time: “Die Rechtmässigkeit, Notwendigkeit, der richtigstellende Charakter des Schrittes, und dass die Theologie nur ein Ausweichen vor ihm, eine Dissimulation gewesen war, das alles war mir klar. [...]” DrF XV, 214; italics added. 15

This asyndetic series of verbs expresses hesitation and avoidance of an important issue. Also, it conveys Adrian’s tendency for renunciation and for self-imposed abstinence. In this connection cf. Mann’s use of the verb “aufsparen” in a similar, specifically sexual sense: “Ich weiss nicht, wie diese jungen Theologen es in der Tat, jeder für sich, damit hielten, ob sie sich alle in Züchten für die christliche Ehe aufsparten!” DrF XVI, 228.

15

of the genders (i. e., “die Melodie” for Adrian, “der Höhepunkt” for Esmeralda)16 and the enigmatic Angelus Silesius quote concluding Kretzschmar’s reply at the end of chapter 15: “Genug des theologischen Jungfernstandes! ‘Die Jungfrauschaft ist wert, doch muss sie Mutter werden, Sonst ist sie wie ein Plan von unbefruchter Erden!’” (DrF XV, 211)

On Kretzschmar’s part this hint extends, as it were, an “invitation to the dance”: Adrian’s extraordinary musical talent should not be left uncultivated. Such talent, as the quote implies, represents the kind of fertile soil which proves worthwhile only when made fruitful. Applied to Leverkühn’s circumstances and ultimate fate, Kretzschmar’s allusion is meaningful. “Jungfrauschaft” characterizes Adrian’s state before his encounter with Esmeralda; his self-imposed escape from music as a student of theology explains why Adrian has not yet attempted to compose on his own (cf. DrF XV, 199). It is only later, in Pressburg, that Adrian – in this sense indeed an embodiment of “Jungfrauschaft,” i. e. dormant creativity – is prepared to receive through Esmeralda the diabolical token of inspiration. Zeitblom’s rhetorical question further emphasizes the feminine character of Adrian’s role in the encounter: “[...] was war es, welches tief geheimste Verlangen nach dämonischer Empfängnis, nach einer tödlich entfesselnden chymischen Veränderung seiner Natur wirkte dahin, dass der Gewarnte die Warnung verschmähte und auf dem Besitz dieses Fleisches bestand?” (DrF XIX, 239; italics added). In the Leipzig brothel, however, – at the time of their first meeting, corresponding in our music description to the “inversion of genders” – Esmeralda simultaneously performs the male role of the seducer and the daemonic role of the tempter; she takes the initiative and establishes contact with Adrian:

16

Notice the similar inversion of roles in Zeitblom’s comment: “Dass er bis dato kein Weib ‘berührt’ hatte, war und ist mir eine unumstössliche Gewissheit. Nun hatte das Weib ihn berührt – und er war geflogen.” DrF XVII, 230; italics added.

16

“Neben mich [recalls Adrian] stellt sich dabei eine Bräunliche, [...] mit grossem Mund und Mandelaugen, Esmeralda, die streichelt mir mit dem Arm die Wange.” (DrF XVI, 221).17 After this traumatic experience Leverkühn flees Esmeralda temporarily (cf. lines 16-18), but her portentous touch remains on his cheek as an indelible stamp for the rest of his life.18 The evocation of the songlike melody and its development (19-29) may be considered analogous to Leverkühn’s period of musical experimentation; it characterizes his distrust towards the oversentimentalized post-Romanticism of preceding generations. The word “Gegenstand” (18-19), in addition to its double connotation discussed above, possibly carries yet another meaning with regard to Adrian’s early work: an opera buffa based on Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. The contextual resemblance between the following descriptive passage from chapter 20 and lines 18-23 in our text is, I believe, surely not accidental (italics added): [...] macht einem anderen Gegenstande Platz, einem liedhaft-simplen, scherzhaft-gravitätisch-volkstümlichen, scheinbar derb von Natur, der’s aber hinter den Ohren hat und sich, bei einiger Ausgepichtheit in den Künsten der orchestralen Analyse und Umfärbung, als erstaunlich deutungs- und sublimierungsfähig erweist. (18-23)

Er [Leverkühn] sprach mir mit Begeisterung von dem Gegenstand [Love’s Labour’s Lost], der Gelegenheit bot, das Naturwüchsig-Tölpelhafte neben das Komisch-Sublime zu stellen und eines im anderen lächerlich zu machen. (DrF XX, 254).

The phrases “liedhaft-simpel”, “scherzhaft-gravitätisch-volkstümlich” and “scheinbar derb von Natur” on the one hand, and “das Naturwüchsig-Tölpelhafte neben das Komisch-Sublime” on the other, con17 18

Cf. also “ befruchtende Berührung”, DrF II, 18.

“Komisch allenfalls war dieses Entweichen in dem bittertragischen Sinn der Vergeblichkeit. In meinen Augen war Adrian nicht entkommen, und sehr vorübergehend, gewiss, hat er sich als ein Entkommener gefühlt. [...] Adrian sollte zurückkehren an den Ort, wohin der Betrüger ihn geführt.” DrF XVII, 230-231.

17

vey an ironic-parodistic attitude characteristic of Adrian’s beginnings as an “angry young composer”. The analogy to Shakespeare is not misplaced either; probably the very first Shakespearian play, Love’s Labour’s Lost reflects a kind of verbal acrobatics and dramatic experimentation quite comparable to Leverkühn’s early adventures with musical texture and form.19 The clause “der’s aber hinter den Ohren hat” (20-21) constitutes another reference to Father Leverkühn’s experimenter-spirit, echoed by the devil himself in the Teufelsgespräch (see DrF XXV, 363) – a touch of the diabolical in the father inherited by the son. The rest of the sentence, on the other hand, alludes to Leverkühn’s musical apprenticeship under Kretzschmar (see DrF XVI, 217-218). Disregarding value judgments and personal preferences, Adrian engages in intensive analyses of the scores of classical and Romantic masters with special emphasis on style and compositional technique (cf. DrF XVIII, 234). The phrase “bei einiger Ausgepichtheit in den Künsten der orchestralen Analyse und Umfärbung” (21-22) conveys the wouldbe innovator’s attitude of contempt towards Wagnerian music, though not without the historical perspective of due admiration. Wagner’s calculated trickery and effect-hunting bravura represent to Adrian the odious aspects of musical tradition to be done away with. The word “Ausgepichtheit” (21) directly echoes Kretzschmar, who in his trenchant lectures in Kaisersaschern referred to Wagner as “ein ausgepichter Instrumentalzauberer”, “Orchesterheros und gelernter Massenerschütterer.” (DrF VIII, 100). To test his powers, during his period of musical experimentation Leverkühn composes a song cycle based on thirteen Brentano poems. The phrase “Mit dem Liedchen wird nun eine Weile klug und lieblich gewirtschaftet. [...]” (23-25) may refer to the creation of these songs. 19

As a further proof of the parallel between the Prelude description and Leverkühn’s opera Love’s Labour’s Lost, Leverkühn’s instrumentation faithfully corresponds to Wagner’s: Adrian adds “ein zweites Paar Hörner, drei Posaunen und eine Basstuba” to “das klassische Beethoven’sche Orchester” (cf. DrF, 337).

18

After the ominous encounter with Esmeralda in Leipzig, Adrian renounces her physically; intellectually, however, he is so thoroughly preoccupied with her that he incorporates the “Klang-Chiffre h e a e es: Hetaera Esmeralda” (DrF XIX, 241) into the central song of the cycle, “das herzzerwühlende Lied ‘O lieb Mädel, wie schlecht bist du’” (DrF XIX, 240). The anticipated return of the brass-chorale (29-34), which in discussing lines 8-14 I have linked with Adrian’s awakening interest in music, manifests this time the projected triumph of music in Leverkühn’s career. As we learn from Zeitblom, at the end of chapter 15, Adrian – encouraged by his correspondence with Kretzschmar – decides to move to Leipzig and devote the major part of his time and energy to the study of music: “Er [Adrian] wolle, so würde er ihnen [den Eltern] sagen, die Beschäftigung mit der Musik ‘mehr in den Vordergrund treten lassen’ und daher die Stadt aufsuchen, in der der musikalische Mentor seiner Schülerzeit wirke.” (DrF, 212). The selfquotation contained in this statement corresponds, of course, to “tritt in den Vordergrund” (31) in our text. That the phrase “‘mehr in den Vordergrund treten lassen’” is enclosed in quotation marks furnishes proof for my hypothesis that Adrian was conscious of employing the same turn of speech, used metaphorically in the Prelude description, to characterize his turning to music. The description of the recurring brass-chorale suggests a major biographical event: Leverkühn’s second encounter with the Hetaera Esmeralda in Pressburg. Once again, “Melodie” (33) stands for Adrian and “Höhepunkt” (34) for Esmeralda, except that this time the climax is attained instead of evaded. After a passing reference to Adrian’s previous abstinence (“dessen sie sich das erste Mal weislich enthielt,” 34-35)20 a metaphorical description presents the ultimate consummation of the earlier encounter of Leipzig (35-39). Esmeralda offers “alle Süssigkeit ihres Weibtums” (DrF XIX, 240), and Adrian takes her in 20

Cf. “die Enthaltung vom Weibe”, DrF, 342.

19

spite of the obvious danger of contracting venereal disease. Even though in Pressburg Adrian takes the initiative, he remains the passive partner in the affair. Consequently, my above interpretation of the ‘inversion of genders’ seems valid for their second encounter as well. The erotic connotations of the expressions “‘Ah!’-Wirkung” (35) and “Gefühlsschwellung” (36) can hardly be overlooked. The remarkable descriptive intensity of the ensuing evocation of a musical climax (35-39) – strongly reminiscent of the improvising Hanno Buddenbrook’s erotic ecstasy – also demonstrates Mann’s mastery of the technique of symbolical-metaphorical representation of music. Lines 35-39 of the Prelude description may be taken as a veiled anticipation of the Teufelsgespräch. As we know, Esmeralda’s powerful employer happens to be the devil himself.21 The evocation of the musical climax hints at the latter’s participation in the act of consummation through the employment of the instrument “Basstuba” (37-38) and the adverb “wuchtig” (38), both associated one way or another in the novel with the diabolical. First referred to by Zeitblom in the description of Onkel Niko’s music-shop as “die gründende Schwere der grossen Basstuba” (DrF VII, 65), this instrument assumes in Doktor Faustus a negative connotation, especially in contrast to instruments with high pitch, as for example the flute. Out of the fundamental contrast between high and low instruments evolves the important leitmotif of “Himmel und Hölle” (DrF XV, 206), “das weite Auseinander von Bass und Diskant” (DrF VIII, 85), “der kristallene Engelschor” and “das Höllengejohle” (DrF XLVI, 739), etc. It may also be of interest in this context that students in Halle label Professor Ehrenfried Kumpf, one of the many impersonators of the devil in Doktor Faustus, as a “wuchtige Persönlichkeit” (DrF XII, 151); he also has the reputation, of course, “mit dem Teufel auf sehr vertrautem, wenn auch natürlich gespanntem, Fusse zu stehen” (DrF XII, 153). 21

Cf. the devil’s statement in the Teufelsgespräch: “[...] ich, Esmeraldas Freund und Zuhalt, [...]” DrF, 361.

20

As a final confirmation of the ironic distance with which young Leverkühn views Wagner’s artistic achievement, the expressions “mit würdiger Genugtuung” and “sich [...] ehrsam zu Ende zu singen” (3940) echo and illustrate Adrian’s introductory statement: “So geht es zu, wenn es schön ist” (2-3). Within Wagner’s system of composition, still firmly rooted in cadence-conscious musical traditionalism, completion of the Prelude in such a routine, predictable manner is a matter of course. To be sure, in his critical remarks immediately following the evocation Leverkühn does give credit to Wagner’s mastery of sophisticated finesse: “Kann man mit mehr Genie das Hergebrachte benutzen, die Kniffe weihen? Kann man mit gewiegterem Gefühl das Schöne erzielen?” (DrF XV, 208). Nevertheless, at this point Adrian considers Wagnerian music to be anachronistic: a target of his ridicule prompting him to define the concept which will permeate his life work, the concept of parody: “Warum müssen fast alle Dinge mir als ihre eigene Parodie erscheinen? Warum muss es mir vorkommen, als ob fast alle, nein, alle Mittel und Konvenienzen der Kunst heute nur noch zur Parodie taugten?” (DrF XV, 209). In such a context the Prelude description prefigures Leverkühn’s “Durchbruch” as a composer. After the fecundating encounter with the devil through Esmeralda, Adrian is prepared to surpass the art of Richard Wagner: a triumph of the future over “das Hergebrachte.” Rejecting the traditional concept of the beautiful as it culminates in Wagner, Leverkühn will now be able to proceed toward fulfilling his ultimate goal of composing within the framework of his own musical system (cf. DrF XLVI, 736). In conclusion, I find that Thomas Mann’s ‘verbal score’ accomplishes more than a successful evocation of the musical and poetic content of Wagner’s Prelude; the correspondences between the described musical sections and formative events in Leverkühn’s life seem to indicate that in a biographical context Adrian’s exegesis of the Prelude symbolically represents his own Berufskrise. The verbalized introductory cello passage suggests some sources of Adrian’s early intellectual and musical orientation together with his awakening

21

interest in theology and philosophy (3-8). The first appearance of the brass-chorale signifies that Adrian’s hitherto suppressed interest in music begins to assume professional dimensions (8-14). The musical climax, temporarily avoided, possibly stands for Leverkühn’s traumatic experience in the Leipzig brothel: his first encounter with, and instinctive withdrawal from, the Hetaera Esmeralda (14-19). The presentation of the songlike melody and its development would then correspond to that period in Leverkühn’s life in which, though ostensibly still a student of theology and philosophy, he experiments with traditional musical styles and orchestration techniques in preparation for a career as a composer (19-29). The recurring brass-chorale represents the ultimate triumph of music in Adrian’s life; this time the climax is carried to its fulfillment: a symbolic representation of Adrian’s second and last encounter with the Hetaera Esmeralda in Pressburg (29-39). It is disease (a chiffre of his irrevocable contact with the devil) which enables Leverkühn to accomplish his “breakthrough” as a composer and to develop a unique musical style and system of his own. His rejection of cadence-conscious musical traditionalism (39-40) constitutes a turning point in the history of music: it opens up new possibilities for the development of modern music.

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Notes Toward a Theory of Verbal Music (1970) Aesthetic speculation about the interrelationship between literature and music has been regarded as a fascinating and elusive, if somewhat suspect, border area of literary criticism. In their influential Theory of Literature1 Rene Wellek and Austin Warren voiced particularly strong scepticism concerning the possibility of successfully combining the “sister arts”. Yet the numerous examples of “great artists in the field of literature [who] also feel a need for going beyond the limits of their art and striving after a symbiosis with the other art”2 cannot be ignored; and today more and more scholars agree that musico-literary relations promise a rewarding territory for critical exploration within the larger framework of the study of literature and the other arts3. It is another matter that the legitimacy of such study as an integral branch of comparative literature continues to be contested. Many comparatists still only recognize investigations which deal with comparison of lit-

1

New York, 1942. See chapter XI entitled “Literature and the Other Arts,” pp. 124-

35. 2

H. P. H. Teesing, “Literature and the Other Arts: Some Remarks,” YCGL, XII (1963), 30.

3

For some more recent summarizing views see Northrop Frye, “Introduction: Lexis and Melos,” in Frye, ed., Sound and Poetry (New York, 1957), ix-xxvii; Mary Gaither, “Literature and the Arts,” in Newton P. Stallknecht and Horst Frenz, eds., Comparative Literature: Method and Perspective (Carbondale, Ill. 1961), 153-170; Horst Petri, Literatur und Musik: Form- und Strukturparallelen (Göttingen, 1964); Bertrand H. Bronson, “Literature and Music,” in James Thorpe, ed., The Relations of Literary Study: Essays on Interdisciplinary Contributions (New York, 1967), 127150; and Ulrich Weisstein, Einführung in die Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1968), chapter 8, 184-197.

24

erary works “beyond national boundaries”4. Controversy concerning the legitimacy of critical treatments of literature and the arts will hopefully subside as more comparatists endorse Henry H. H. Remak’s broader definition, according to which comparative literature is the study of literature beyond the confines of one particular country, and the study of the relationships between literature on the one hand and other areas of knowledge and belief, such as the arts ... philosophy, history, the social sciences, the sciences, religion, etc., on the other. In brief, it is the comparison of one literature with another or others, and the comparison of literature with other spheres of human expression.5

With the publication of Calvin S. Brown’s Music and Literature: A Comparison of the Arts (Athens, Ga., 1948), the comparative investigation of the sister arts was given a thorough theoretical foundation. In view of the variety of recent contributions no doubt largely inspired by Brown’s comprehensive study, there is every reason to assume that critical attention to the relations of literature and music will continue to grow. In spite of such promising prospects, however, relevant contributions still appear which are disappointingly limited in scope. For instance, in a recent publication by the Modern Language Association aimed at informing a wide audience, The Relations of Literary Study: Essays on Interdisciplinary Contributions (New York, 1967), Bertrand H. Bronson reveals an astonishingly narrow conception of the future tasks of musico-literary criticism. He concludes his article, “Literature and Music”: We need studies of forms poetico-musical, with equal attention to both sides wherever possible, and of individual examples of such forms: masques, operas and oratorios, odes, songs. We need readable studies of musical theory and musical history. We need musical criticism written responsibly but with a sense of style, for the non-professional reader. [...] And finally, we could do with more,

4

Henry H. H. Remak, “Comparative Literature, Its Definition and Function,” in Stallknecht and Frenz, op. cit., 4. 147.

5

Ibid., 3.

25

and more scholarly, biographies both of musicians and literary men with a strong musical concern.6

However general in formulation, most of Bronson’s desiderata strike me as belonging to the domain of musicologists rather than of literary scholars. In addition to the topics suggested by Bronson involving music and literature (vocal music), literature in music (program music), and musical biography, there are indeed many other areas which would benefit more from further exploration by literary critics. I am referring particularly to manifestations of musical influence in literature such as word music, structural and formal parallels between the two arts, musical influences on literary periods and on individual authors, and literary synaesthesia7. In the following I shall focus on a hitherto largely neglected aspect of the problem of music in literature, the phenomenon of verbal music. Using the definition developed in my Verbal Music in German Literature (New Haven, 1968) as a point of departure, I shall attempt to locate verbal music in a systematic typology accommodating related musico-literary phenomena which employ language as their primary medium of expression and to suggest the most important distinctions between literary and nonliterary approaches to verbal evocation of music. Finally, I shall discuss some unique aesthetic features characteristic of verbal music in prose.

I By verbal music I mean any literary presentation (whether in poetry or prose) of existing or fictitious musical compositions: any poetic texture which has a piece of music as its ‘theme.’ In addition to approximating in words an actual or fictitious score, such poems or passages often suggest characterization of a musical 6 7

Bronson, in The Relations of Literary Study, 148.

For a typological survey and characterization of these areas see my Verbal Music in German Literature (New Haven, 1968), Introduction and Appendix.

26

performance or of subjective response to music. Although verbal music may, on occasion, contain onomatopoeic effects, it distinctly differs from word music, which is exclusively an attempt at literary imitation of sound.8

The above definition indicates that verbal music is a literary phenomenon. Its texture consists of artistically organized words which relate to music only inasmuch as they strive to suggest the experience or effects of music, while necessarily remaining within the boundaries of the medium of literature. Realizing the ultimate impossibility of a transformation in basic artistic material, poets and writers who nevertheless attempt verbalizations of music must be content if they succeed in achieving a relatively true verbal semblance of the musical medium9. As an illustration of the type of literary texture I have in mind, I shall quote the following passage of verbal music from Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point: Meanwhile the music played on – Bach's Suite in B minor, for flute and strings. Young Tolley conducted with his usual inimitable grace, bending in swan-like undulations from the loins and tracing luscious arabesques on the air with his waving arms, as though he were dancing to the music. A dozen anonymous fiddlers and cellists scraped at his bidding. And the great Pongileoni glueily kissed his flute. He blew across the mouth hole and a cylindrical air column vibrated; Bach’s meditations filled the Roman quadrangle. In the opening largo John Sebastian had, with the help of Pongileoni’s snout and the air column, made a statement: There are grand things in the world, noble things; there are men born kingly; there are real conquerors, intrinsic lords of the earth. But of an earth that is, oh! complex and multitudinous, he had gone on to reflect in the fugal allegro. You seem to have found the truth; clear, definite, unmistakable, it is announced by the violins; you have it, you triumphantly hold it. But it slips out of your grasp 8 9

Ibid., 8.

“From the standpoint of the literary artist, the grammar and syntax of the language he is using, as well as its accepted pronunciation, spelling, and punctuation, are all technological properties of his medium. He must accept them as partly determining and limiting, as well as inspiring, the verbal forms which he is to produce. He must not depart too far from established usage if he is to be widely understood. Yet this usage is flexible, and can be moulded to some extent into the new patterns of word-sounds and meanings which he wishes to create.” Thomas Munro, The Arts and Their Interrelations ( NewYork, 1949), 259.

27

to present itself in a new aspect among the cellos and yet again in terms of Pongileoni’s vibrating air column. The parts live their separate lives; they touch, their paths cross, they combine for a moment to create a seemingly final and perfected harmony, only to break apart again. Each is always alone and separate and individual. “I am I,” asserts the violin; “the world revolves round me.” “Round me,” calls the cello. “Round me” the flute insists. And all are equally right and equally wrong; and none of them will listen to the others. In the human fugue there are eighteen hundred million parts. The resultant noise means something perhaps to the statistician, nothing to the artist. It is only by considering one or two parts at a time that the artist can understand anything. Here, for example, is one particular part; and John Sebastian puts the case. The Rondeau begins, exquisitely and simply melodious, almost a folk song. It is a young girl singing to herself of love, in solitude, tenderly mournful. A young girl singing among the hills, with the clouds drifting overhead. But solitary as one of the floating clouds, a poet had been listening to her song. The thoughts that it provoked in him are the Sarabande that follows the Rondeau. His is a slow and lovely meditation on the beauty (in spite of squalor and stupidity), the profound goodness (in spite of all the evil), the oneness (in spite of such bewildering diversity) of the world. It is a beauty, a goodness, a unity that no intellectual research can discover, that analysis dispels, but of whose reality the spirit is from time to time suddenly and overwhelmingly convinced. A girl singing to herself under the clouds suffices to create the certitude. Even a fine morning is enough. Is it illusion or the revelation of profoundest truth? Who knows? Pongileoni blew, the fiddlers drew their rosined horsehair across the stretched intestines of lambs; through the long Sarabande the poet slowly meditated his lovely and consoling certitude.10

In this excerpt, which constitutes an early high point of his novel, Huxley focuses on a performance of Bach’s Suite in B minor, the central event of a musical soirée given by Lady Edward Tantamount. Through its metaphorical content this interpretive description of orchestral music also provides a symbolic moment of reference for the developing plot structure. Just as Proust renders in words the recurrent “petite phrase” from the Andante movement of Vinteuil’s (?) sonata for violin and piano in A la recherche du temps perdu, Huxley describes a musical experience as a significant instant in the narrative sequence of Point Counter Point. He creates a multidimensional spatial-temporal impression of the music which – after this initial detailed description – he takes up later in the novel and develops further in its spiritual and emotional impact. 10

Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point (New York, 1928), 27-28.

28

In a discussion of the characteristic aesthetic features of verbal music it is necessary, I believe, to emphasize its primarily literary nature. There is all the more reason to do so, since nonliterary verbalization of music is not only possible, but constitutes a substantial portion of the writings of music critics, musicologists, and historians of music. It might be illuminating, therefore, to focus briefly on the various literary as well as nonliterary approaches to evocation of music and try to define the position of verbal music among these approaches.

As shown in the above sketch, evocations of music necessarily occupy a place between the two poles, music and literature. We may safely regard absolute music on the one hand and poetry and prose on the other as pure manifestations of music and literature, respectively. The remaining types, though each is related primarily to only one of the two arts, exhibit features which link them to a greater or lesser extent to the other art as well. Both program music and vocal music employ music as their primary medium, and thus are connected with literature only in a limited sense: a piece of program music might be inspired by a certain literary work (e. g., Dukas’ L’Apprenti sorcier by Goethe’s “Der Zauberlehrling” or Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune by the Mallarmé poem), while vocal music represents a more balanced combination of the two arts within a single work (e. g., opera, lied,

29

oratorio, etc.). Evocations of music, on the other hand, can be either literary or nonliterary in nature. Although both types resort to language as their medium of expression, program notes employ nonliterary language and should therefore be distinguished from word music, musical structures and devices in literary works, and verbal music. Thus only literary evocations of music can be said to belong to literature and to merit recognition as artistic achievements. A comparative consideration of source, primary technique of realization, and aim may also cast some light on the distinction between the various types of verbalization of music. For the music critic, who writes program notes (‘professional’ musical analysis) to be included in a concert guide or in the printed program accompanying a live musical performance, the score and/or a particular interpretation (performance) of a piece of music serve as his immediate source. He generally offers an analytical transcription of his source in the conventional jargon of musicology, often having recourse to a vague brand of metaphorical prose as well. In primary aim the music critic’s approach to his source distinctly differs from the composer’s (transcription of musical imagination into a score in musical notation) and the performing musician’s (transformation of a score into actual music through physical creation of sound). While the composer aims at creation of a musical work of art and the musician at direct communication of the music to an audience, the music critic merely provides indirect communication of the music through verbal approximation. Both the composer and the musician employ musical sound material, while the music critic uses nonliterary language. To create literary works of art, the poet (in this designation I include the writer of poetry as well as of prose) projects his imagination to his readers by means of conventional or innovative literary structures and techniques. In all literary evocations of music the poet supplements his ordinary source (i. e., poetic imagination) with direct musical experience and/or a score, or allows his imagination to be

30

inspired by music; he thus assumes the role of transmitter, rendering (suggesting, describing, or creating) music in words. In word music, which aims at poetic imitation of musical sound, onomatopoeia – broadly defined – serves as the poet’s primary technique of verbalization11. The poet who chooses to imitate musical structures and devices achieves his goal through attempting the superimposition of musical structures on a literary work or through experimenting with musical devices in a literary medium12. Rather than capturing a poetic semblance of musical sound or imitating musical form, verbal music aims primarily at poetic rendering of the intellectual and emotional implications and suggested symbolic content of music. Two basic types of verbal music can be distinguished. When the poet draws on direct musical experience and/or a knowledge of the score as his source we may speak of re-presentation of music in words: he proceeds to describe either a piece of music which he himself identifies or which is identifiable through inference (e.g., the Huxley passage cited above). Poetic imagination alone, inspired by music in general, serves as the source of the second type of verhal music; and it involves direct presentation of fictitious music in words: the poet creates “a ‘verbal piece of music,’ to which no composition corresponds”13.

11 12 13

For a characterization of word music, see Scher, op. cit., 3-5. For a thorough and up-to-date consideration, see Horst Petri, op. cit.

Scher, op. cit., 8. Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus may be cited as the most notable example for a ‘compendium’ of the fictitious type of verbal music.

31

II In his Sound and Symbol, Victor Zuckerkandl observes: “The encounter with the tonal world includes the three fundamental experiences of motion, time, and space.”14 His statement holds true, I believe, not only for the listener’s encounter with the world of music, but also for the poet’s attempt to capture this encounter and communicate it to his readers in passages of verbal music, especially in prose15. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s pioneering efforts to compare literature and the plastic arts are well known; and the distinctions in his Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie (1766) are considered fundamental to modern aesthetics and art criticism. Less common knowledge, however, is that he also planned to complete a similar treatise on the relations between literature and music16. It is not inconceivable that he might have included considerations of musicoliterary phenomena such as verbal music. In his persuasive article, “Spatial Form in Modern Literature”, Joseph Frank describes Lessing’s conclusions about the limitations of the respective artistic media (Laokoon, chapter 26) as follows: Form in the plastic arts, according to Lessing, is necessarily spatial because the visible aspect of objects can best be presented juxtaposed in an instant of time. Literature, on the other hand, makes use of language, composed of a succession of words proceeding through time; and it follows that literary form, to harmonize 14

New York, 1956, 365

15

Instances of verbal music in poetry are much more limited in potential suggestiveness. For a comprehensive treatment of related problems in poetry, see Calvin S. Brown, Tones into Words (Athens, Ga., 1953). 16

“Lessing’s notes for the unfinished parts of this comprehensive study [Laokoon] indicate that he believed in the practical as well as theoretical possibility of a synthesis of arts. Two of these were music and poetry, and he analysed them in a way familiar to us from the published Laokoon.” M. G. Flaherty, “Lessing and Opera: A ReEvaluation,” Germanic Review 44 (1969), 103. Cf. Lessing’s “Materialien zum ‘Laokoon,’” especially sections 25, 26, and 27, in Lessings Werke, ed. Georg Witkowski (Leipzig, 1911), IV, 305-313.

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with the essential quality of its medium, must be based primarily on some form of narrative sequence.17

And comparing the media of music and the plastic arts, Susanne K. Langer summarizes: Music unfolds in virtual time created by sound, a dynamic flow given directly and, as a rule, purely to the ear. This virtual time, which is an image not of clocktime, but of lived time, is the primary illusion of music. In it melodies move and harmonies grow and rhythms prevail, with the logic of an organic living structure. Virtual time is to music what virtual space is to plastic art: its very stuff, organized by the tonal forms that create it.18

I suggest that, as a result of a unique set of aesthetic conditions, instances of verbal music, especially in prose, are capable of transcending the limitations of the literary medium and are able to create a semblance of several artistic media combined while actually confined to only one, the literary. Painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and literature, generally considered the major fine arts, may be classified into two types: visual and auditory19. The visual arts (painting, sculpture, and architecture) are static and primarily exist in space. Though essentially spatial in nature, they also strive to be comprehended in time, i.e., they try to create the illusion of time20. The auditory arts (music and literature) are dynamic and primarily exist in time. Though essentially temporal in nature, they also strive to be comprehended in space, i. e., they try

17

Joseph Frank, “Spatial Form in Modern Literature,” in Frank, The Widening Gyre (Bloomington, 1968), 6. Cf. also the concise and illuminating discussion on Lessing’s relevant distinctions in Herman Meyer, “Raumgestaltung und Raumsymbolik in der Erzählkunst,” Studium Generale, X ( 1957), 621.

18

Susanne K. Langer, Problems of Art (New York, 1957), 41.

19

Aware of the potential dangers, I indulge here in such simplifying classification for the sake of brevity. 20

See Etienne Souriau’s important study, “Time in the Plastic Arts,” JAAC, VII (1949), 294-307.

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to create the illusion of space21. Thus each of the two types of art attempts to overcome the ontological restrictions of its own mode and tends toward the aesthetic conditions of the other type. However unrealizable the reciprocal tendencies of the various arts may be, their realization can at least be attempted or approximated by one type of art in the medium of the other. In this sense we may speak of an essential affinity between the visual and the auditory arts as reflected in the numerous mixed categories and interrelations possible between the arts such as painting in literature, music as painting, painting in music, literature in painting, etc22. Both literature and music are temporal art forms and thus share an intrinsic aesthetic impulse to be comprehended in space. Approximation of the one art in the medium of the other might well enhance the degree of successful ‘spatialization’ under primarily temporal conditions and relationships. With these assumptions in mind, tentative conclusions may be drawn, I think, concerning the phenomenon of reciprocal evocability in the sister arts. Effective attempts to express literature in the medium of music generally accomplish a quasi-visual representation of ‘literary’ space23 within the temporal confines of music (cf. the phenomenon of program music). Effective attempts to express music in the medium of literature, on the other hand, generally accomplish a representation of the illusion of ‘musical’ space (i. e., the impression of space invoked by a musical composition) through visual 21

For exhaustive studies of “literary” space, see Gaston Bachelard, L’Eau et les rêves; essai sur l’imagination de la matière (Paris, 1942), L’Air et les songes; essai sur l’imagination du mouvement (Paris, 1943), and especially La Poétique de l’espace (Paris, 1957), and Herman Meyer, op. cit., 620-630, Susanne K. Langer concedes the notion of “musical” space in Problems of Art, 81. See also Zuckerkandl, op. cit., 255. 22

For examples of these and other hybrid forms of artistic expression, see Horst Frenz and Ulrich Weisstein, “Teaching the Comparative Arts. A Challenge,” College English, XVIII (1956), 67-71.

23

For a definition and discussion of “literary” space as a type of “aesthetic” space, see Herman Meyer, op. cit., pp. 620-621, and G. Giovannini, "Method in the Study of Literature in its Relation to the Other Fine Arts," JAAC, VIII (1950), 190-191.

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and spatial imagery within the temporal confines of literature (cf. the phenomenon of verbal music, creating “the illusion of ‘musical’ motion within a ‘musical landscape’”24). What concrete aesthetic implications for verbal music can be inferred from the preceding speculations? As demonstrable in the Huxley passage quoted above, instances of verbal music are most effective if they are able to conjure up unique combinations of spatial and temporal relations while firmly anchored in the narrative context. Successful authors of verbal music achieve an ingenious intermingling of the basic principles of spatial and temporal perception to a degree of simultaneity which ultimately creates a verbal semblance of a pictorial (three-dimensional) artistic medium beyond the limitations of aesthetic perception characteristic of any one art form. A definite retarding effect on the narrative movement in a given work emerges as a characteristic feature of prose passages of verbal music. In context the result of such retardation consists in the creation of a literally static moment which tends to arrest and suspend the narrative flow for the duration of the verbal evocation. This moment effects a temporary rest in the progressing, horizontal sequence of the narrated events. In fact, within the confines of the particular instance, the horizontal narrative sequence tends to slow down to a vertical standstill and assume spatial dimensions, suggesting a semblance of ‘literary’ and ‘musical’ space combined. A passage from Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, the presentation of Hanno Buddenbrook’s final ecstatic improvisation on the piano concluding his interminably long day at school, may serve as an example for such a retarding effect of verbal music25. This music description toward the end of the novel is strategically situated to convey symbolic significance in structure as well as in theme. Structurally, it con24 25

Scher, op. cit., 154.

Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks, in Gesammelte Werke (Frankfurt/Main, 1960), I, 747-750.

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stitutes the culmination of the long process of artistic refinement in the Buddenbrook family; the intrusion of musical influence gradually destroys the vitality of the competitive commercial spirit of the family and signifies irreversible decline. In the form of a musical allegory, full of erotic overtones and reminiscent of the “Liebestod” music of Wagner’s Tristan, Hanno’s improvisation directly anticipates the agony of the chilling penultimate chapter describing the symptoms of typhus, the boy’s fatal illness. And thematically, for the last time before the final catastrophic events – Hanno’s death and the subsequent collapse of the Buddenbrook household – the passage reiterates the major motifs of the novel which bring about the disintegration of the family. Are retardation, spatiality, verticality, and a generally static quality characteristic only of passages of verbal music? Nature descriptions, evocations of specific paintings, detailed portrayals of objects, essayistic digressions, philosophical speculations and the like also seem to accomplish a similar illusion within the narrative sequence of fiction. In successful verbal evocations of music, however, the chief distinguishing trait might be that the created feeling of spatiality mingles simultaneously with a definite impression of progressive movement. Simultaneity, i.e., the momentary fusion of movement in ‘musical’ space (horizontality) and standstill in narrative time (verticality), may be said to provide a linguistic framework which lends itself more readily to symbolic representation than the other constituents of narration capable of retardation. By force of a virtually unlimited potentiality for symbolic reference, instances of verbal music possess a greater synthesizing power. Authors can utilize this potentiality in order to integrate retrospective as well as anticipatory allusions and other correspondences present in narrative structures.

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How Meaningful Is ‘Musical’ in Literary Criticism? (1972) The task of art historians in the widest sense, including historians of literature and of music, is to evolve a descriptive set of terms in each art, based on the specific characteristics of each art. Thus poetry today needs a new poetics, a technique of analysis which cannot be arrived at by simple transfer or adaptation of terms from the fine arts.”

This statement was made by René Wellek as part of the conclusions to a lecture on “The Parallelism between Literature and the Arts” delivered at the 1941 meeting of the English Institute (English Institute Annual 1941, 1942, p. 62). In this lecture Professor Wellek offered a penetrating critical evaluation of the uses and abuses – particularly the abuses – of the so-called “reciprocal illumination of the arts”, a method of comparative criticism which became fashionable in the early decades of the twentieth century and included Heinrich Wölfflin, Oskar Walzel, and Oswald Spengler among its avid practitioners. In a carefully documented historical survey, Wellek corroborated the scepticism voiced by Karl Vossler and Kurt Wais a few years earlier (Karl Vossler, “Über wechselseitige Erhellung der Künste”, in Festschrift Heinrich Wölfflin zum 70. Geburtstag, 1935, pp. 160-7, and Kurt Wais, “Symbiose der Künste. Forschungsgrundlagen zur Wechselberührung zwischen Dichtung, Bild- und Tonkunst”, in Schriften und Vorträge der Württembergischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 1936) and called attention to the specific dangers inherent in vague analogies and all too loose parallels formulated in the deceptive guise of imprecise metaphors. Although Wellek later included the cited plea for a proper descriptive set of terms in his chapter on “Literature and the Other Arts” of the influential Theory of Literature (1949, pp. 12435), this important proposal has not found as much critical echo as it

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deserves, perhaps because of the implied sentiment of distrust concerning the usefulness of analogizing in general. I believe that systematic comparisons between the arts can indeed be fruitful and can contribute toward a better understanding of the basic aesthetic principles applicable to more than just one art form. But it must be conceded that a sceptical attitude toward interart parallels is to some extent justifiable. I see the major reason for such scepticism in the lack of a clearly defined critical terminology and in the predilection of some critics for a set of terms based on little more than metaphorical impressionism. Particularly in discussions of possible correspondences between literature and music, critics often seem to abandon all restraint in matters of appropriate linguistic usage and succumb to the Dionysian, demonic power of music. The result is terminological chaos, usually in the form of inexact, undiscriminating and often highly idiosyncratic borrowings from a vocabulary which properly belongs to musical analysis; and appellations such as melody, harmony, counterpoint, cadence, orchestration, syncopation, and modulation abound. Representative of the confusion, and perhaps most frustrating, are those all too frequent instances when the terms ‘musical’, ‘musicality’, and ‘the music of poetry’ find their way into literary criticism. I should like to illustrate the inconsistent use of these terms, sketch the critical response to the problem and suggest some corrective measures which might lead to a more practicable terminology. Valéry’s statement that a poem on paper is merely an inadequate “musical score”, Luigi Ronga’s characterization of a poem by simple reference to its “musical plasticity” (The Meeting of Poetry and Music, 1956, p. 25), or Jacques Barzun’s formulation that “literature as an art is a ‘music of meanings’” (Pleasures of Music, 1951, p. 9) are by no means isolated monuments of vague critical insight. Here is a confusing passage from Gretchen L. Finney’s recent work of musico-literary criticism: “None of Milton’s poems is more ‘musical’ than ‘Lycidas’. It is dominated by the Orpheus image; it is ‘sung’ in liquid verse. Yet

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in few other poems of Milton is there less obvious musical imagery” (Musical Background for English Literature 1500-l650, 1962, pp. 169-70). In his book entitled Das Musikalische in der Literatur, Johannes Mittenzwei devotes a full chapter to Clemens Brentano whom he labels “der musikalische Sprachkünstler der Romantik” (1962, p. 163). Yet, Mittenzwei nowhere explains what in fact makes Brentano a musical poet; he simply adopts the cliché in spite of Emil Staiger’s perceptive warning of 1953: “Und freilich werden wir die Sprache Brentanos erst ganz verstehen, wenn uns der Sinn der Musik in seiner dichterischen Welt durchsichtig ist” (Emil Staiger, Die Zeit als Einbildungskraft des Dichters, 1953, p. 44). The following statement by K. M. Wilson exemplifies the unqualified over-emphasis on the allegedly musical quality of poetry: “We may enjoy poetry as absolute music. And so we may enjoy poetry, not as meaning anything, but as a succession of beautiful sounds or impressions” (Sound and Meaning in English Poetry, 1930, p. 190). We know that Ezra Pound, both as poet and critic, has devoted serious attention to the complex relationship of poetry and music. His critical essays contain formulations such as “Poetry is a composition of words set to music” or “in melopoeia [...] the words are charged, over and above their plain meaning, with some musical property, which directs the bearing or trend of that meaning” (T. S. Eliot, ed., Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, 1954, pp. 437 and 25, resp.). Yet, Pound does not define more precisely what he means by “some musical property”. An excerpt from F. W. H. Myers’ essay on Virgil may serve as an example of the purely metaphorical allusion to music in an effort to illuminate stylistic features: “What is meant by the vague praise bestowed on Virgil’s unequalled style is practically this, that he has been, perhaps, more successful than any other poet in fusing together the expressed and the suggested emotion; that he has discovered the hidden music which can give to every shade of feeling its distinction,

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its permanence, and its charm; that his thoughts seem to come to us on wings of melodies prepared for them from the foundation of the world” (Essays: Classical and Modern, 1921, pp. 115-6). Clearly, all this effusiveness in the spirit of Walter Pater has little to do with the art of music or with profitable literary criticism. Luigi Ronga, professor of the history of music in Rome, must surely be aware of terminological difficulties. Yet, when he writes about musicality in poetry, he, too, cannot avoid adding to the confusion: The basic factor of all great poetry, by common agreement, is a typical and individual musicalness, and it is scarcely possible to point to a genuine poet devoid of individual melodic gift. [...] It may be alluring, but it would at the same time be beclouding our judgment [...] would we define certain aspects, otherwise elusive, as musical aspects of types and nuances of poetry, because, in a strict sense, poetry is not ‘un-musical’. Harsh, awkward, contorted verse disappears from memory by its sheer weight; it lacks that mysterious rhythmic and melic pulsation which even the closest analysis cannot capture. All great poets, therefore, are musical. (The Meeting of Poetry and Music, pp. 37-8)

The following passage by Heinrich Meyer is symptomatic of the most opaque type of critical writing: Everybody who can sense the difference between ‘Ruh ist über allen Gipfeln’ and ‘Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh’ is aware of what is involved. The ‘meaning’ is the same, but the meaning is different, because in the true form there is contrapuntal correspondence between ‘meaning’ and melody and sound quality and rhythm, since here the words are used musically, not analogous to music. (In Books Abroad, XLIII [1969], p. 602)

The semantic imprecision surrounding the notion of things ‘musical’ is as old as literary criticism itself. But the use of the word ‘musical’ in its vague, subjective sense is surely one of the many remnants of the romantic sensibility still surviving today, a practice which can be traced back through the symbolists to the romanticists’ cultivation of the amalgamation and confusion of the arts. Examples for such usage in German romantic literature and criticism are familiar enough; and the English romantics are no exception. Analyzing the “specific

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symptoms of poetic power” in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, Coleridge remarks in the Biographia Literaria: The delight in richness and sweetness of sound, even to a faulty excess [...] I regard as a highly favourable promise in the compositions of a young man. The man that has not music in his soul can indeed never be a genuine poet [...] The sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is a gift of the imagination. (1906, rpt. 1947, ch. XV, p. 153)

Though he, too, does not specify, by ‘musical’ here Coleridge means a lyrical quality in a blurred, general sense, an acoustic and rhythmic quality based on the overall effect of the poetic composition. To turn finally to a ‘classic’ case, critics have yet to explain what exactly Schiller meant when, in a lengthy footnote to his “über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung”, he called Klopstock a ‘musical’ poet: Ich sage musikalischen, um hier an die doppelte Verwandtschaft der Poesie mit der Tonkunst und mit der bildenden Kunst zu erinnern. Je nachdem nämlich die Poesie entweder einen bestimmten Gegenstand nachahmt, wie die bildenden Künste tun, oder je nachdem sie, wie die Tonkunst, bloss einen bestimmten Zustand des Gemüts hervorbringt, ohne dazu eines bestimmten Gegenstandes nötig zu haben, kann sie bildend (plastisch) oder musikalisch genannt werden. Der letztere Ausdruck bezieht sich also nicht bloss auf dasjenige, was in der Poesie, wirklich und der Materie nach, Musik ist, sondern überhaupt auf alle diejenigen Effekte derselben, die sie hervorzubringen vermag, ohne die Einbildungskraft durch ein bestimmtes Objekt zu beherrschen; und in diesem Sinne nenne ich Klopstock vorzugsweise einen musikalischen Dichter. (Sämtliche Werke, eds. Gerhard Fricke and Herbert Göpfert, V [1959], pp. 734-5)

One thing is certain, I believe: rather than specific acoustic or rhythmic qualities or matters of prosody, by ‘musikalisch’ Schiller meant the intangible, obscure, and formless ‘Stimmung’ conjured up by the poet. Being unsure at one point about whether a particular poem was musical or not, Schiller even sought the expert opinion of Zelter, Goethe’s composer friend. Zelter’s reply in a letter to Schiller on Feb. 20, 1798, found in Carl Kunzels ‘Schilleriana’ (Eduard Castle, ed., 1955, p. 72), is revealing enough to be quoted here: Sie könnten mich wohl fragen, was ich unter musikalisch verstehe, und so will ich Ihnen nun gleich sagen, dass ich es selbst nicht recht weiss; dass ich aber von an-

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dern Musikern weiss, dass sie es auch nicht wissen; und dass die meisten unter ihnen so unwissend sind nicht zu wissen, dass sie es nicht wissen [...] Wir Musiker [haben] gar keinen bestimmten Begriff für das was wir musikalisch nennen.

In view of such an array of examples, there are many questions that should be raised. Is it possible to define ‘musical’ in such a way that the term could be employed intelligibly and convincingly in literary criticism? If it is, do we need a separate definition for ‘musicality’ in prose and in poetry? Or should the term be discarded altogether? What other term or set of terms might be proposed to clear up the confusion? One would expect that such questions requiring rigorous semantic discrimination would generate much clarifying effort on the part of scholars interested in literary theory and methodology. Yet only a few critics – and only in recent decades – have contributed significantly to the discussion. (In addition to Wellek, Eliot, Frye, and Hollander, see Ronald Peacock, “Probleme des Musikalischen in der Sprache” in Weltliteratur. Festgabe für Fritz Strich zum 70. Geburtstag, eds. Muschg and Staiger, 1952, pp. 85-100; Donald Davie, Articulate Energy: An Inquiry into the Syntax of English Poetry, 1955; and Georg Reichert, “Literatur und Musik” in Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, eds. Merker and Stammler, II [1958], pp. 143-63.) There seems to be general agreement that the terminological inexactitude as reflected in traditional usages should not be tolerated. But so far only the ground has been broken and most of the work has been descriptive rather than innovative. Also, most of the critics address themselves to the meaning of music in poetry, with only occasional remarks on musicality in prose. John Hollander, for example, defines “the music of poetry” as “all of the non-semantic properties of the language of a poem including not only its rationalized prosody, but its actual sound on being read, and certain characteristics of its syntax and imagery as well” (in JAAC, XV [1956], p. 232). T. S. Eliot, on the other hand, insists that “a ‘musical’ poem [...] has a musical pattern of sound and a musical pattern of the secondary meanings of the words

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which compose it, and that these two patterns are indissoluble and one. And if you object that it is only the pure sound, apart from the sense, to which the adjective ‘musical’ can be rightly applied, I can only [...] [say] that the sound of a poem is as much an abstraction from the poem as is the sense” (The Music of Poetry, 1942, p. 19). While in agreement with Eliot that “there is no ‘musical’ verse without some general conception of its meaning or at least its emotional tone”, Wellek maintains that “‘musicality’ in verse, closely analyzed, turns out to be something entirely different from ‘melody’ in music: it means an arrangement of phonetic patterns, an avoidance of accumulations of consonants, or simply the presence of certain rhythmical effects” (Theory of Literature, pp. 159 and 126, resp.). Consequently, Wellek advocates that the term ‘musicality’ be dropped from literary criticism as misleading. Northrop Frye’s distinctions are perhaps most useful in assessing past usages and in mapping out possible future strategies. By ‘musical’ he means “a quality in literature denoting a substantial analogy to, and in many cases an actual influence from, the art of music” (Sound and Poetry, 1957, pp. x-xi). On the basis of this definition and contrary to traditional opinion, Frye postulates that mere euphoniousness does not necessarily make for ‘musical’ poetry, and that sheer beauty of sound is often the sign of an unmusical poet. He argues, therefore, that “the literary meaning of musical is unmusical” (in The University of Toronto Quarterly XI [1941-2], p. 178). Frye also distinguishes between a sentimental and a technical use of the word ‘musical’: When, in poetry we have a predominating stress accent and a variable number of syllables between two stresses (usually four stresses to a line, corresponding to ‘common time’ in music), we have musical poetry [in a technical sense], that is, poetry which resembles in its structure the music contemporary with it. [...] Such phrases as ‘smooth musical flow’ or ‘harsh unmusical diction’ belong to the sentimental use. […] When we find a careful balancing of vowels and consonants and a dreamy sensuous flow of sound, we are probably dealing with an unmusical poet. […] It is more likely to be the harsh, rugged, dissonant poem (assuming of course some technical competence in the poet) that will show in poetry the tension and the driving accented impetus of music. […] When we find sharp barking accents, crabbed and obscure language, mouthfuls of consonants, and long lum-

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bering polysyllables, we are probably dealing with melos, or poetry which shows an analogy to music. (Anatomy of Criticism, 1957, pp. 255-6)

It seems to me that the various usages of ‘musical’ in literary criticism may be reduced to a few basic types of response. Ignoring those instances when the term is employed in such a muddled way that in the end it signifies nothing, we may distinguish three possibilities of implicated meaning: the acoustic, the evocative, and the structural. Even though both music and poetry consist of organized sound, I believe that the overall acoustic effect of poetry is very different from that of music. And while certain similar emotions or moods may be evoked both by a piece of literature and by a musical composition, this resemblance does not entitle us to describe the evocation contained in the literary work in musical terms. In the case of the acoustic and evocative responses, therefore, no direct connection between the two arts can be substantiated, and any association with the art of music is illusory. In short, I can see no appreciable gain in critical insight from such analogies. Only in the case of the third type of response – alluding to structural phenomena, to artistic arrangement in musiclike sequence – are we dealing with literary techniques which can be proven on occasion to be more or less analogous to certain techniques in actual music. Thus when we try to demonstrate the semblance of a specifically musical structure or device present in a literary work, the use of the term ‘musical’ seems to me legitimate. If ‘musical’ is to be retained in modern critical terminology, I would subscribe to Frye’s suggestion that it be restricted to “a quality in literature denoting a substantial analogy to, and in many cases an actual influence from, the art of music”. Like Frye, I would eliminate what he calls the sentimental, i. e., traditional usage, which corresponds more or less to what I characterized above as the acoustic response. I am willing to endorse what he designates as the technical use of ‘musical’, which is more or less equivalent to the ‘structural’ response. But I am not sure that by continuing to describe as ‘musical’ the “harsh, rugged, dissonant poem” with “crabbed and obscure lan-

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guage” we would be causing less semantic confusion than already exists. I suggest, therefore, that the adjective ‘musical’ be left to be employed by the poets, and that in criticism we stay away from it, unless we specifically refer to literary phenomena which have to do with some aspect of actual music. I propose that in the place of ‘musicality’ or ‘musical’ in the sentimental, impressionistic sense, we simply refer to the acoustic or phonetic quality of poetry or prose; and that within this broader acoustic context we distinguish between the euphonious and the cacophonous. By euphonious I would mean the poetic use of smooth, mellifluous sound patterns; and the adjective cacophonous would characterize the poetic use of non-euphonious sound effects, from the strident through the sibilant to the muted. I prefer these terms to others like harmonious and melodious or dissonant and discordant because they primarily signify a more general sound quality. But I admit that they also carry a musical connotation, however remote. Thus, by suggesting this set of terms, I am not strictly adhering to Wellek’s proposition of 1941. Nevertheless I hope that if these terms gain wide enough acceptance, we may be able to avoid much of the terminological confusion which the haphazard use of the word ‘musical’ has generated in literary criticism.

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Brecht’s Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger: Emblematic Structure as Epic Spectacle (1974) Brecht scholarship during the seventeen years since the poet’s death has grown to voluminous proportions. Yet only recently, in summing up the present state of research, Reinhold Grimm was prompted to write: “[…] die grundsätzliche Forschungssituation ist jedoch die gleiche geblieben. Zentrale Fragen sind weiterhin ungelöst; zahlreiche Einzelprobleme harren noch der Klärung”.1 The critical fate of Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger of 1933, Brecht’s only ballet and the last fruit of his memorable collaboration with Kurt Weill, seems symptomatic. That this unique, though at first glance unassuming little work has been all but neglected2 is surprising since critics have examined in considerable detail virtually everything Brecht wrote for the

1

Cf. the 3rd, rev. ed. of Reinhold Grimm’s invaluable Sammlung Metzler volume, Bertolt Brecht (Stuttgart, 1971), p. 104.

2

Except for a few shorter review articles in newspapers and journals of theater, dance, and music, and occasional references of primarily descriptive nature in the numerous books on Brecht, the present essay constitutes the first critical assessment entirely devoted to this work. Even the most up-to-date and comprehensive bibliography lists only a handful of brief treatments. Cf. Grimm, p. 57. Cf. also four additional items: anonymous review in The Dancing Times (London), August 1933; Horst Koegler, “Getanzte Literatur,” Theater heute, 1 (1960), 25-29; André Müller, “Zu gut verkäuflicher Ware gemacht. ‘Die sieben Todsünden’ von Bertolt Brecht und Kurt Weill in Frankfurt/ Main,” Theater der Zeit, 15 (1960), H. 6:65-68; Ernst Thomas, “Brecht-Weill: ‘Die sieben Todsünden’. Deutsche Erstaufführung in Frankfurt/Main," Musik im Unterricht, 51 (1960), 217-19.

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stage, even the short one-act play Die Bibel of the 15-year-old Gymnasiast.3 Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger is a hybrid among theatrical genres: a ballet combined with solo and ensemble singing based on Brecht’s scenario and poem cycle and set to music by Weill. Framed by a prologue and an epilogue, it is essentially a Stationendrama in miniature, consisting of a series of seven scenes each ostensibly depicting one of the seven deadly sins: “Faulheit”, “Stolz”, “Zorn”, “Völlerei”, “Unzucht”, “Habsucht”, and “Neid”4. Brecht chose a well-known subject to accommodate the complex theatrical design he had in mind involving no less than three basic artistic media: literature, music, and the dance. Adaptation of the religious concept of the seven deadly (or cardinal) sins, fraught with medieval symbolism, to the twentieth-century milieu of capitalistic exploitation and class struggle – preserving traditional ethical connotations of the topos only in the form of hypocritical pseudo-values and clichés – afforded Brecht the opportunity to develop his own ideological interpretation of the altered social conditions within an overtly didactic framework. For inspiration he must have particularly welcomed the loosely connected scenic portrayals of the sins in the paintings and drawings of Bosch and Breughel5 which are so akin in spirit

3

Die Bibel was first published in the Augsburg student paper Die ErnIe in January, 1914. Reprinted in Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Werke in 20 Bänden (Frankfurt/Main, 1967), 7, 3028-38. Cf. also Reinhold Grimm, "Brecht’s Beginnings," The Drama Review, 12 (1967), 29-34. 4

Bertolt Brecht, Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger, in Brecht, Gesammelte Werke in 20 Bänden (Frankfurt/Main, 1967), 7, 2858. Hereafter references to this edition for quotations from the ballet will be given in the text in parentheses, e. g.: (GW 7, 2858). 5

Cf. Brecht’s incisive Breughel commentary “Verfremdungseffekt in den erzählenden Bildern des älteren Breughel,” GW 18, 279-283. Cf. also Wolfgang Hütt, “Bertolt Brechts episches Theater und Probleme der bildenden Kunst," Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der M. Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 7 (1957-58), 821-41. As the author of Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England, based on Marlowe’s Edward

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and execution to the serial, episodic structure of the spectacle he had conceived. The topic itself was not novel in Brecht’s poetic practice: already the opening “Choral vom großen Baal” establishes “Wollust” as the major theme of the early play Baal, and the scene in Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny in which Jakob der Vielfraß eats himself to death in public is a grotesque example of “Völlerei”. No doubt aware of the long and illustrious history of the concept in theology, art, and literature, and thus relying on the traces of the religious and allegorical representations surviving in the universal consciousness6, the poet could proceed to construct his own, modern version on the theme. In Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger, a lower-middle-class family in Louisiana sends its daughter Anna on a trip to try her luck in the big city and earn enough money for building a house back home. To convey the ambivalence inherent in the “sinner”, Brecht splits the personality of Anna into Anna I, the cynical impresario with a practical sense and conscience, and Anna II, the emotional, impulsive, artistic beauty, the salable product with an all too human heart. During a period of seven years in seven major American cities, under the strict guidance of Anna I, Anna II confronts and successfully withstands the seven deadly sins of bourgeois society.

II, Brecht must also have known the famous scene in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus where the personified seven deadly sins make their appearance. 6

The literature dealing with the subject is vast In addition to Morton W. Bloomfield’s comprehensive monograph The Seven Deadly Sins. An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature (East Lansing, Mich., 1952), the following titles are especially helpful: Samuel C. Chew, The Pilgrimage of Life (New Haven, Conn., 1962); Hanno Fink, Die Sieben Todsünden in der mittelenglischen erbaulichen Literatur (Hamburg, 1969); Angus Fletcher, Allegory. The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca, N.Y., 1964); Marie Gothein, “Die Todsünden,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, 10 (1907), 416-86; Hans R. Jauss, “Form und Auffassung der Allegorie in der Tradition der Psychomachia (von Prudentius zum ersten ‘Romanz de la Rose’),” Medium Aevum Vivum: Festschrift für Walther Bulst, ed. H. R. Jauss and D. Schaller (Heidelberg, 1960), 179-206; and Frederick Rogers, The Seven Deadly Sins (London, 1907).

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Around 1926 Brecht began a systematic study of Marxism. With the help of Karl Korsch, his Marxist philosopher friend and expert teacher, the poet was thoroughly indoctrinated by 19337. Thus the blunt ideological content of Die sieben Todsünden comes as no surprise. Spelling out a condemnation of the capitalistic system which not only permits but actively encourages the flourishing of the ‘American dream’ as a practical necessity for survival, the ballet unmasks the uncompromising cruelty of bourgeois society toward human nature; it is a vitriolic satire of the competitive game of ‘making it’. More significant than the straightforward, unambiguous moral, however, is the subtly equivocal conceptual framework Brecht devises to get his message across. By appending the phrase “der Kleinbürger” to “Die sieben Todsünden” in the title, he particularizes the universal connotation of the well-known concept: at once the traditional topos is detached from its familiar context and assumes a novel, sociological reference. But Brecht does not stop at this initial stage of alienation. By adding antithetical explicatory phrases to the individual sins, he further twists the original connotations toward his didactic aim. Through ironic reversals of meaning, what he designates as ‘sins’ turn out to be basic human virtues. “Faulheit” by itself, for example, is one of the traditional deadly sins. Anna II reveals herself as only too human in being susceptible to sloth. But “Faulheit – im Begehen des Unrechts” (GW 7, 2858) is only regarded as a sin by the inhuman rules of bourgeois society. Wanting to be lazy in committing injustice, Anna II is in fact being virtuous. Consequently, by preventing Anna II from committing this ‘sin’, Anna I presents herself as a vicious agent of capitalist mentality. In a similar manner, Brecht alters the conventional meaning of one sin after another so that a dialectic pattern of connotations emerges: “Stolz” becomes pride in one’s own integrity, “Zorn” anger about the meanness of others, “Völlerei” indulgence in the pleasure of 7

See Wolfdietrich Rasch, “Bertolt Brechts marxistischer Lehrer. Zu einem ungedruckten Briefwechsel zwischen Brecht und Karl Korsch,” Merkur, 17 (1963), 9881003.

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eating normally, “Unzucht” genuine, unselfish love, “Habsucht” excessive greed in robbing and cheating8, and “Neid” envy of those who may indulge unscrupulously in being virtuous. Brecht’s text by itself is not among his most inspired. The original version is particularly skeletal and wooden compared to the text the poet prepared for Weill to set to music9. But, in large measure thanks to Weill’s imaginative musical realization, the work as a whole proves to be remarkably successful; and it bears the unmistakable stamp of the Brecht-Weill collaboration at its ‘culinary’ best. In spite of some shallow lines and occasional embarrassingly bare ideological clichés, the text is not without a peculiar charm and contains several typically Brechtian ideas. For example, Anna I and Anna II as the two aspects of a split personality anticipate Shen Te and Shui Ta in Der gute Mensch von Sezuan or the sober and drunk personalities of Herr Puntila. The fact that both Annas are simultaneously and continuously visible, however, is unique. The use of an ‘exotic’ setting (Louisiana) is likewise familiar from other plays such as Mahagonny (Southern U. S.), Im Dickicht der Städte, Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe and Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (Chicago), Mann ist Mann (British India), and Der kaukasische Kreidekreis (Russian Georgia). By transplanting contemporary social problems into a geographically distant milieu, the poet intends to alienate them and thereby bring about fresh awareness. The camouflaged moralist Brecht is clearly in his element in Die sieben Todsünden. The religious allusion of the title signals at the outset that this social satire is meant as a serious attack on the hypocrisy of the bourgeois moral code; from beneath the

8

As a Marxist, Brecht seems to be implying here that taking from the rich should be considered a virtue and that only indiscriminate greed is a sin. This section of the text is unconvincing in its logic.

9

The fact that the original text of the ballet only faintly resembles the version as it is usually performed presents serious difficulties for any discussion of the work in its totality.

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pseudo-religious pretense of decency and humaneness, the cruelty and ruthlessness of competitive capitalistic society emerge. The stage design, only partially suggested by the initial scenario, is as essential a dramatic component as the combined impact of Brecht’s poem cycle, the ballet action, and Weill’s music. In Caspar Neher’s original setting reminiscent of a circus production, seven gates with paper stretched across them form a semicircle at the back of the stage, labelled with the seven deadly sins. Anna II dances through one gate after the other, ripping through the paper. On one side of the stage the members of the family are seated on a small platform; and as the action proceeds the walls of the house gradually rise around them. Anna I stands across from the family on the other side of the stage10. Scored for a large symphonic orchestra with virtuoso instrumentation, Weill’s music is composed in seven melodically and rhythmically self-contained movements. The Introduction and Finaletto, corresponding to the prologue and epilogue sections in the text, exhibit a certain thematic similarity and thus round off the cycle of movements. Climactic musical passages usually occur in the form of orchestral interludes which serve as accompaniment of major portions of the ballet action. A bipartite musical structure within the individual movements is suggested by means of contrasted instrument groups, e. g., woodwinds versus strings. Weill uses the strings especially in soft, slow passages in order to create a nostalgic, bittersweet, sentimental mood. From time to time there are reminiscences of earlier Weill sound-combinations like the blend of banjo, piano, and percussion familiar from Die Dreigroschenoper. Recurring in leitmotivic fashion, the double bass or the bassoon signifies the domineering mother while woodwind figurations refer to the rest of the family. Consistently incorporated jazz elements and contemporary dance rhythms are easily recognizable throughout. A male quartet represent10

Cf. Gottfried von Einem and Siegfried Melchinger, eds., Caspar Neher (Hannover, 1966), p. 115.

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ing the family parodies the chorus in Greek drama and provides the pseudo-moralizing vocal commentary in mock-biblical language. The family members – the mother in the role of the choryphaeus (equipped with a deep buffo bass voice!), the father, and two brothers – alternate between solo arias and choral passages. The major vocal role of Anna I is particularly colorful and varied, combining narrative and commentary in straightforward songs and recitative-like passages reminiscent of the evangelist in oratorios. Diverse forms of musical alienation abound in the score and faithfully complement Brecht’s textual ‘Verfremdungseffekte’. Weill successfully parodies a variety of serious and less serious musical styles such as film music, “Gesangvereinstil”, grand opera, oratorio and cantata style, “Salonmusik”, a capella madrigal style, “Tingel-Tangel-Musik”, and circus and country fair music.

I Up to the present day there is a remarkable lack of verifiable information concerning the origins and subsequent fate of Die sieben Todsünden. Brecht wrote the text in the spring of 1933, presumably in Paris where he spent a few months before settling down in Danish exile11. Commissioned by Georges Balanchine’s ephemeral “Les Ballets 1933”, the ballet cantata was first produced in June 1933 at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées with Lotte Lenya as Anna I and Tilly Losch creating the dancing role of Anna II. Balanchine functioned as choreographer and the sets were designed by Brecht’s friend and longtime collaborator Caspar Neher12. Entitled Anna Anna ou Les Sept Péchés Capitaux but apparently sung in German13, Brecht’s first 11

Cf. GW 7, Anmerkungen, p. 1.

12

Cf. Bernard Taper, Balanchine (New York, 1960), p. 319, and also pp. 152-54; and von Einem and Melchinger, Neher, pp. 96-101. 13

According to Harry Graf Kessler who was present at the Paris performance. He reports the occasion in a diary entry to 17 June 1933: “Ich fand [Weills] Musik

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original venture in exile met with no success. The English performances in London later in the same year also remained without appreciable critical echo14. The Dancing Times of London, for example, found “nothing to clarify or elucidate the heavy darkness of the Germano-American text”15. Only one critic, Constant Lambert, was sensitive enough to perceive in 1934 that “The Seven Deadly Sins marks as great an improvement on Mahagonny as Mahagonny did on Die Dreigroschenoper” and that it is “the most important work in ballet form since Les Noces and Parade”16. Put on once more before the Second World War in Copenhagen in 1936, the ballet precipitated a scandal: the Danish king indignantly walked out in the middle of the performance17. It was not until 1958 in New York that the work was revived again, this time successfully18; and the first German performance in Frankfurt in 1960 also won over reviewers and audiences alike19. hübsch und eigenartig; allerdings kaum anders als die der ‘Dreigroschenoper’. Lotte Lenya sang mit ihrer kleinen, sympathischen Stimme (deutsch) Brechts Balladen, und Tilly Losch tanzte und mimte graziös und fesselnd.” Harry Graf Kessler, Tagebücher 1918-1937 (Frankfurt/Main, 1961), pp. 723-24. 14

Sung in English, in a translation by Edward James which seems to have got lost. Cf. John Willett, The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht (New York, 1968), p. 43. 15

Quoted by Martin Esslin in his Brecht: The Man and His Work (New York, 1971), pp. 66-67. 16

Constant Lambert, Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline (London, 1966), p. 197. The book was first published in 1934. 17

Cf. Hans Kirk’s review in Tiden (Copenhagen), 4 (1936), p. 372.

18

The English translation used for this production was done by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallmann but published only later as “The Seven Deadly Sins of the Lower Middle Class,” The Tulane Drama Review, 6 (1961), 123-29. There exists another, anonymous English translation (Copyright 1957, Brook House of Music, Inc.) accompanying the 1959 recording of the ballet (Columbia KL 5175) which is printed together with the presumably original stage version of the German text. Lotte Lenya sings the role of Anna I on this recording. Cf. Peter Bauland, The Hooded Eagle. Modern German Drama on the New York Stage (Syracuse, N.Y., 1968), pp. 186-187 and 275. Bauland is inaccurate on several details. 19

For contemporary reviews see n. 2.

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Lotte Lenya again sang Anna I in both productions. Since 1961 the work has become part of the standard repertory of several East German theaters20; and lately there have also been sporadic revivals in the United States and in the rest of Europe. In addition to the unfavorable reception of the early productions there are other possible reasons for the relative obscurity which still surrounds Die sieben Todsünden. First of all, Brecht’s original German text was not published until 195921. The work appeared for the first time in 1933 in French translation22. The first English version has been lost, while the second English rendering used in the 1958 New York production was printed only in 196123. But even Brecht’s German text – as we have grown accustomed to expect of him – exists in several versions which distinctly differ from the original; and the known stage version contains a great many additional and/or altered lines, especially in the choral passages24. The fact that the German text was not printed while Brecht was alive suggests that he considered the work artistically inferior and perhaps wanted to suppress it altogether25. Yet it is reasonable to assume, I believe, that in 1933 both Brecht and Weill – already well known as co-authors of Die Dreigro-

20

Cf. Werner Hecht, ed., Brecht-Dialog 1968 (München, 1969), p. 335.

21

First published in a separate pamphlet as Bertolt Brecht, Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger (Frankfurt/Main, 1959). Later also in Brecht, Gedichte, III (Frankfurt/ Main, 1961). Most accessible in GW 7, 2857-2871. 22

In Les Ballets 1933 de Georges Balanchine (Paris, 1933). Peter Bauland (Hooded Eagle, p. 186) is thus incorrect in stating that the text “was never published until 1959.” 23

See above notes 11 and 13.

24

Cf. the printed German text accompanying the Columbia recording (KL 5175) which, to my knowledge, is the only published stage version. 25

In his voluminous theoretic writings after 1933, including essays on musical theater such as “Über die Verwendung von Musik für ein episches Theater” (1935), Brecht never refers to Die sieben Todsünden.

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schenoper – hoped to launch their careers in exile by capturing Western audiences anew with this unusual stage spectacle. In spite of the overwhelmingly positive critical reaction after the New York and Frankfurt productions, scholarly opinion on Die sieben Todsünden continues to be negligible. Most critics who do mention the work in passing tacitly agree that the ballet is an unimpressive, misconceived, and justly forgotten by-product of the poet’s once so rewarding partnership with Kurt Weill26. Such a view is myopic, I believe. It is only partially attributable to the persisting confusion concerning origins and publishing history. Most likely it stems from the practice in Brecht studies of concentrating exclusively on works written either before or after 193327, thus disregarding his first year of exile. While it is justifiable to separate Brecht’s later period – which culminated in the writing of great plays such as Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, Leben des Galilei, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti, and Der kaukasische Kreidekreis – from the plays, operas, and Lehrstücke written before 1933, it seems to me essential to focus attention on this first year of exile as a decisive time of stock-taking and creative reflection at mid-point in the poet’s career. From this perspective, Die sieben Todsünden proves to be far from insignificant. As I shall attempt to demonstrate below, in this work we possess an important milestone in Brecht’s maturation process, a coherent and transparent model of his theory in practice. The ballet not only incorporates innovations in dramatic form evolved 26

The judgment of John Willett, otherwise a circumspect and reliable Brecht commentator, shall suffice here to suggest the general tenor of critical assessment: “Die sieben Todsünden [...] was a quite conscious regression on Brecht’s part. He never cared to print the songs which he wrote for it, and it seems a plain attempt to earn money in exile by recapturing the spirit of his greatest success.” Willett, Theatre, p. 136. 27

Cf. the radical periodization in books such as Klaus Schuhmann, Der Lyriker Bertolt Brecht 1913-1933 (Berlin, 1964); Ernst Schumacher, Die dramatischen Versuche Bertolt Brechts 1918-1933 (Berlin, 1955); and Walter Hinck, Die Dramaturgie des späten Brecht (Göttingen, 1966).

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up to 1933; it also anticipates epic theater techniques which are usually regarded as characteristic only of the later plays, especially of Der kaukasische Kreidekreis. I believe that two aspects of the formal design of Die sieben Todsünden merit particular consideration: emblematic structure and the combination of artistic media in a moralisticdidactic anti-Gesamtkunstwerk.

II In a recent article, Reinhold Grimm calls attention to Brecht’s fundamentally emblematic vision – whether conscious or not – as a decisive poetic strategy whose traces are omnipresent in the playwright’s works28. Though Grimm omits specific mention of Die sieben Todsünden in this connection, it seems to me that this work is perhaps best equipped to illustrate the nature of emblematic vision as a basic formative principle in Brecht’s conception of dramatic structure. Albrecht Schöne’s Emblematik und Drama im Zeitalter des Barock is to date the most comprehensive study of the profound influence of the emblematic tradition on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theater. In the chapter “Aufbau des Emblems und Funktion seiner Teile”29 Schöne expounds the basic tripartite pattern characteristic of most emblems included in the various standard collections published since Alciati’s epoch-making Emblematum liber of 1531. It it customary to distinguish three components in an emblem: the pictura or symbolic image or picture, accompanied by the preceding inscriptio or motto and the subsequent subscriptio, usually an explication in verse of the 28

Reinhold Grimm, “Marxistische Emblematik. Zu Bertolt Brechts ‘Kriegsfibel’,” Wissenschaft als Dialog. Studien zur Literatur und Kunst seit der Jahrhundertwende, eds. Renate von Heydebrand and Klaus Günther Just (Stuttgart, 1969), pp. 351-79. See especially pp. 372-79. 29

(Stuttgart, 1964), pp. 18-26. Cf. also Emblemata. Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. ]ahrhunderts, eds. Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schöne (Stuttgart, 1967).

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idea expressed in the combination of the inscriptio and the pictura. Schöne’s analytical results become particularly illuminating when he points to the many structural and functional elements in Baroque dramatic practice deriving from emblematic inspiration. While to some extent an emblematic orientation is perceptible in most of Brecht’s stage works, the unique feature of Die sieben Todsünden is that here the correspondences between emblematic intention and the poet’s well-known techniques of epic theater go far beyond mere generalities and significantly enhance the effectiveness of his didactic purpose. Moreover, I believe that an awareness of the ballet’s tightly-knit double emblematic structure can yield a number of new insights concerning Brecht’s overall conception of dramatic form. The following sketch will help to visualize the two distinct, but integrated patterns which emerge: DIE SIEBEN TODSÜNDEN DER KLEINBÜRGER List of the seven sins with suggested meanings – e.g., “Faulheit – im Begehen des Unrechts” SCENARIO CONCERNING ENTIRE WORK

INSCRIPTIO I inscriptiones II

PICTURA I

STAGE DIRECTIONS WITH BRIEF EXPLANATION’ OF THEME, PLOT, ROLES, SETTING, PROPS PROLOGUE: LIED DER SCHWESTER I) Faulheit Scenario Lied der Familie 2) Stolz Scenario Lied der Schwester

SUBSCRIPTIO I/a inscriptio II/1 pictura II/1 subscriptio II/1 inscriptio II/2 pictura II/2 subscriptio II/2

LIED DER FAMILIE 3) Zorn Scenario Lied der Schwester 4) Völlerei Scenario Lied der Familie

SUBSCRIPTIO I/b inscriptio II/3 pictura III3 subscriptio II/3 inscriptio II/4 pictura II/4 subscriptio II/4

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5) Unzucht Scenario Lied der Schwester 6) Habsucht Scenario Lied der Familie 7) Neid Scenario Lied der Schwester EPILOGUE: LIED DER SCHWESTER

inscriptio II/5 pictura II/5 subscriptio II/5 inscriptio II/6 pictura II/6 subscriptio II/6 inscriptio II/7 pictura II/7 subscriptio II/7 SUBSCRIPTIO I/c

The larger emblematic pattern (I) constitutes the overall structural framework of the ballet. The smaller pattern comprising the seven deadly sins in individual emblematic tableaux (II) is embedded in the larger pattern. In both patterns the title designations (of the entire work as well as of the individual scenes) correspond to the inscriptiones; during performances the scene titles are usually displayed conspicuously in large letters. Pictura I encompasses the stage action for the whole ballet including permanent components (e. g., basic setting, roles, stage position of characters and props) and changing ones (e. g., changes of scene, house rising in the background). It represents pictorially the dramatic events which are pantomimically executed to musical accompaniment and take the place of conventional dialogue in a scenic framework. The seven scenarios (picturae II) perform the same function with respect to the individual scenes. Providing a continuous moral commentary on the episodically unfolding dramatic action, the ten songs (six sung by Anna I and four by the family quartet) assume the emblematic function of the subscriptio. Though musico-poetic emblems in their own right30, these songs also supply the forward30

The recurring, identically worded stage directions signalling the appearance of each song intercepting the dramatic action in Die Dreigroschenoper attest to Brecht’s awareness of the emblematic nature of this device, e.g.: “Songbeleuchtung: goldenes Licht. Die Orgel wird illuminiert. An einer Stange kommen von oben drei Lampen herunter, und auf den Tafeln steht: Die Seeräuber-Jenny.” GW 2, 415. Similarly, in connecrion with Mutter Courage cf. Helene Weigel, ed., Theaterarbeit. 6 Aufführungen des Berliner Ensembles (Dresden, 1952), p. 274. Cf. also the following lines from the poem “Die Gesänge” (1950) in Gedichte aus dem “Messingkauf”, GW 9, 795:

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driving narrative force by informing the audience about the events. Subscriptiones I/a and I/c are thematically and musically connected: the first song sets the scene for the journey and anticipates the moral, while the last song completes the cycle of episodes and supplies – however equivocally – the final moral. The clear line of development that connects Brecht’s dramatic practices with the emblematically inspired Jesuit theater and Baroque drama need not be demonstrated here31. More important in our context is to specify how Brecht utilizes the emblematic framework underlying Die sieben Todsünden to suit his didactic intention. To put it another way, how does the presence of an emblematic structure enhance the effectiveness of Brecht’s epic theater techniques? The answer lies in the unique dual role of Anna. Central in every respect, present on the stage from beginning to end, and performing in the multiple role of singer, actor, and narrator, Anna I is the perfect authorial instrument to connect emblematic and epic structure. Singing her songs (subscriptiones) she is part of both the larger and smaller emblematic patterns; and through her acting as manager to Anna II, she also participates in the ballet (picturae). The role of narrator-commentator, controlling the episodic series of events on stage while also informing the spectators directly about them, once again links her both to the individual scenes (picturae II) and to interpreting their moral and social meaning (subscriptiones II). The representational and interpretive aspects of the split personality also reflect the emblematic relation between Anna II (pictura) and Anna I (subscriptio)32. “Trennt die Gesänge vom übrigen! / Durch ein Emblem der Musik, durch Wechsel der Beleuchtung / Durch Titel, durch Bilder zeigt an / Daß die Schwesterkunst nun / Die Bühne betritt.” 31

Cf. especially chapter IX in Reinhold Grimm, Bertolt Brecht. Die Struktur seines Werkes, 5th ed. (Nürnberg, 1968), pp. 77-84. Cf. also Brecht, “Vergnügungstheater oder Lehrtheater?,” GW 15, 272. 32

Cf. the striking parallel with Schone’s statement about the figure of Gryphius’ Leo Armenius: “Sich selber zeigt sie [die Figur] als pictura vor und verkündet zugleich die eigene subscriptio.” Schöne, Emblematik und Drama, p. 219. Cf. also:

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I fully agree with Andrzej Wirth’s observation in his stimulating essay “Über die stereometrische Struktur der Brechtschen Stücke” that in the final analysis “das angestrebte Ziel des Brechtschen Theaters ist die Erzählung auf der Bühne”33. Recognizing in Der kaukasische Kreidekreis the most accomplished form of epic theater, Wirth concludes: “Als der Kommentar immer mehr die Oberhand über die Handlung gewann, schließlich zum Mitschöpfer der Handlung selber wurde – da entstand das epische Theater.”34 I believe that this statement, while certainly true for Der kaukasische Kreidekreis, proves to be applicable to Die sieben Todsünden as well, written eleven years earlier. In fact, because of the imaginative fusion of emblematic and epic structure – implied in the basic scene sequence depicting the seven deadly sins and realized in the narrating-commentating role of Anna I and the assisting family chorus – the ballet can be considered the most transparent practical demonstration of Brecht’s conception of epic theater. Nowhere else do we encounter a dominating narrator figure that is so consistently delineated: Anna I presents, represents, controls, reports, and interprets the dramatic action while also participating in it herself. A closer look at Anna I and the chorus will show that most of the functions or devices characteristic of the singer and his musicians in Der kaukasische Kreidekreis can already be found in Die sieben Todsünden. I suggest that the narrative apparatus in the later play – adjusted, of course, to the particular requirements of that play – is only a modified and perhaps more sophisticated version of the authorial

“... die dramatische Figur erscheint in der Doppelrolle des Darstellenden und zugleich die eigene Darstellung Deutenden.” Ibid., p. 158. For a general treatment see Walter H. Sokel, “Brecht’s Split Characters and His Sense of the Tragic,’ in Peter Demetz, ed., Brecht: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962), pp. 12737. 33

In Reinhold Grimm, ed., Episches Theater (Köln, 1966), p. 227. First published in Sinn und Form, 2. Sonderheft Bertolt Brecht (Berlin, 1957), 346-87. 34

Ibid., p. 228. Writing in 1957, Wirth presumably was not yet familiar with Brecht’s ballet.

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instrument for “scenic narration”35 which Brecht conceived and utilized already in 1933. “Im Kaukasischen Kreidekreis verbirgt sich der Erzähler nicht hinter seiner Erzählung – er ist eine Gestalt, die sich dem Zuschauer zeigt,” observes Wirth36. In Die sieben Todsünden, too, Anna I unmistakably presents herself to the audience in the narrator’s role. But instead of arriving on the scene while the prologue is already in progress, as the singer does; she is positioned onstage from the outset. According to the initial stage directions: “Auf der Bühne steht eine kleine Tafel, auf der die Route der Tournee durch sieben Städte aufgezeichnet ist und vor der Anna I mit einem kleinen Zeigestock steht.” (GW 7, 2859) This device – reminiscent of the performing Bänkelsänger and frequently employed by Brecht – establishes the fundamentally didactic nature of the forthcoming spectacle: we are to expect illustrations of the moral principle suggested by the title of the work. Whereas in Der kaukasische Kreidekreis the traditional ‘play within a play’ device conveys the didactic purpose, the ballet presents seven illustrative scenic emblems spanned between the narrative framework of a prologue and epilogue. Anna I begins her singing narration by introducing herself (and her other self, Anna II), giving place and time of the commencing action, and orienting the audience about the circumstances of the moneymaking venture and her own attitude toward the imminent journey.37 As early as the third line of her first song she establishes contact with the audience by stepping out of her role and turning directly ad spectatores:

35

Ibid., p. 222.

36

Ibid.

37

Cf. “Der Sänger im Kaukasischen Kreidekreis führt in die Handlung auf der Bühne ein, bezeichnet ihre Zeit, ihren Ort, stellt die Helden vor. Mit einem Wort: er berichtet, was man gewöhnlich aus der Exposition erfährt.” Ibid., p. 223.

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Meine Schwester und ich stammen aus Louisiana Wo die Wasser des Mississippi unter dem Mond fließen Wie Sie aus den Liedern erfahren können. (GW 7, 2859)

Repeated verbatim in the epilogue, this type of direct address fulfills a multiple alienating function. First, it identifies Anna I as both narrator and active participant in the action, thereby suspending the theatrical illusion. Second, since both prologue and epilogue employ the present tense, it sets off the narrative framework from the individual episodes which are narrated in the past tense. And finally, by referring specifically to the ensuing songs, it lays bare the epic-emblematic structure of the work: a series of self-contained, pantomimically enacted scenes only loosely connected through the continuous presence of the narrator who provides commentary in the form of sung scenic narration. Having established direct contact with her audience at the outset, Anna I proceeds to demonstrate the alienating mechanics of her split personality. At the end of each stanza in her prologue she turns to Anna II – who, after all, stands next to her on the stage – for confirmation of the narrated details. But what now ensues dispels any trace of dramatic illusion. Since Anna I herself answers the questions she pretends to pose to Anna II, the expected scenic dialogue becomes narrated dialogue as part of the sustained scenic monologue, e. g.: Wir sind eigentlich nicht zwei Personen Sondern nur eine einzige. Wir heißen beide Anna Wir haben eine Vergangenheit und eine Zukunft Ein Herz und ein Sparkassenbuch Und jede macht nur, was für die andere gut ist Nicht wahr, Anna? Ja, Anna. (GW 7, 2860)

This type of narrated dialogue regularly recurs in the individual scenes when Anna I reports on “conversations” between herself and Anna II, analyzing the lesson to be learned from a particular experience they have just had. For example, Anna I concludes her song in the “Zorn” scene:

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Immer sagte ich zu ihr: halt du dich zurück, Anna Du weißt, wohin die Unbeherrschtheit führt! Und sie gab mir recht und sagte: Ich weiß, Anna. (GW 7, 2864)

Large portions of Anna I’s songs accompanying the journey are addressed in this rhetorical fashion to Anna II, containing analytical reflections and commentary. Instead of describing the dramatic events as presented by Anna II and the rest of the dancers, Anna I enters them as active participant: the practical conscience and guardian angel of her sister. Simultaneously, however, through her reflective generalizations about the action she communicates the humane and appealing character of Anna II who is more than susceptible to the many temptations she encounters. Only Anna I’s sober perseverance and calculated interventions enable Anna II to extricate herself from the succession of adverse situations. In the seventh and final episode entitled “Neid”, Anna I reveals once more her total control over Anna II and over the entire preceding dramatic action. After briefly recapitulating the morals learned in the foregoing episodes, she devotes the rest of her song to an elaboration of the overall ideological message, ostensibly for the benefit of Anna II: Schwester, wir alle sind frei geboren Wie es uns gefällt, können wir gehen im Licht Also gehen herum aufrecht wie im Triumph die Toren Aber wohin sie gehen, das wissen sie nicht. (GW 7, 2870)

In a tone of triumphant jubilation, composed by Weill as an effective marching song with rousing, emphatic rhythms, she no longer refers explicitly to Anna lI’s predictable, meek confirmation of her selfassured insights. Rather, since the battle is won and the seven deadly sins of bourgeois society have been successfully overcome, she now takes Anna lI’s approval for granted. Here the two aspects of the split personality seem to be reconciled and fused:

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Iß nicht, trink nicht und sei nicht träge Die Strafe bedenk, die auf Liebe steht! Bedenk, was geschieht, wenn du tätst, was dir läge! Nütze die Jugend nicht: sie vergeht! (GW 7, 2870)

The twisted logic of the climactic line “Nütze die Jugend nicht: sie vergeht!”, a supreme example of Brecht’s dialectic of alienation, clearly establishes Anna II in the final tableau as a helpless victim. She has sacrificed her youth and integrity on the altar of Mammon for the dubious cause of her family’s material security. Anna II has, however, not become identical with Anna I; the ambiguity of the split personality is maintained to the very end. In the epilogue the two sisters appear arm in arm about to embark on the return trip to their family and their newly built house in Louisiana. Compared to the interplay between the singer (narrator and chorus leader) and his musicians (chorus) in Der kaukasische Kreidekreis38, the narrative apparatus of the ballet seems at first glance less consistently integrated. The primary authorial instrument for scenic narration, Anna I, is physically separated from the male quartet representing her family back home. Also, her dual role as narrator and participant is dynamic, while the chorus remains static throughout. The members of the family, physically restricted to their platform on one side of the stage, cannot become participating actors. They have their own chorus leader in the person of the mother and function as a separate body offering their commentary from a distance. Nevertheless, the family chorus effectively complements Anna I in her capacity as mediator between the ballet’s emblematic and epic structures. Three out of the seven scenes – “Faulheit,” “Völlerei,” and “Habsucht” – receive choral commentary alone. In these episodes Anna I withdraws into the pantomimic ballet action and allows the chorus to provide the moralizing subscriptiones II. In the “Lied der Familie” at the end of the

38

Ibid.

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“Stolz” scene39, the family ensemble interrupts the story to reprimand the sisters for their initial blunders and especially for their lack of promising financial success up to that point in the action; in the overall context of the ballet this song belongs to the larger emblematic framework as subscriptio I/b. Leitmotivically recurring epigrammatic choral passages of various length40 can also be subsumed under the subscriptio-network of the larger emblematic pattern, Invariably counteracting the meaning expressed in the individual picturae, these ironic choral statements are strategically distributed throughout the work to bring about an overall structural and thematic coherence. For example, the pseudo-moralizing couplet sung by the chorus, “Wer über sich selber den Sieg erringt, / der erringt auch den Lohn”, first appears after Anna I’s song in the “Stolz” scene (subscriptio II/2) to give the sanction of family authority to her ‘moral’ pronouncements. The identical couplet reappears in the same function to interrupt Anna I’s song in the “Unzucht” scene and also to conclude the “Neid” scene. Within the smaller emblematic pattern, too, a similar use of the chorus to augment the impact of the subscriptio may be observed. In the “Faulheit” scene, for example, every line of the mother’s commentary as chorus leader is dutifully seconded by the rest of the family with the axiomatic, pseudo-proverbial refrain: “Müßiggang ist aller Laster Anfang”41. 39

In Brecht’s original text this "Lied der Familie” is included in the “Stolz” scene, but in the stage version, it belongs musically and dramatically to the subsequent “Zorn” scene. Cf. the text of the Columbia recording.

40

The longest choral refrain is quoted in the back of GW vol. 7, Anmerkungen, p. 1: “Der Herr erleuchte unsre Kinder / Daß sie den Weg erkennen, der zum Wohlstand führt. / Er gebe ihnen die Kraft und die Freudigkeit / Daß sie nicht sündigen gegen die Gesetze / Die da reich und glücklich machen.” 41

Cf. in this context Schöne’s statement on the role of such didactic axioms in the dramatic architecture of Baroque tragedy: “Die ‘emblematischen’ Sentenzen sind tragende Elemente im Bau des Trauerspiels: Pfeiler, zwischen denen die szenischen Bilder sich spannen, und Säulen, auf die das Bühnengeschehen als ein exemplarisches Geschehen sich gründet.” Schöne, Emblematik und Drama, p. 159.

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The brief choral interruptions of Anna I’s scenic narration thus effectively link her moralizing with the family’s running commentary. In the four individual songs of the chorus, on the other hand, Brecht provides the audience with glimpses of the family’s attitude and activities during the absence of Anna. For example, he includes snatches of a conversation (choral song in the “Faulheit” scene), the family’s reaction to Anna’s slow progress in making money (“Stolz” scene), a letter they receive from Anna and evaluating remarks on its content (“Völlerei” scene), and shows the family in the midst of discussing Anna’s adventures in Tennessee (Baltimore according to the stage version) while reading about them in the newspaper (“Habsucht” scene). To underscore the ambiguity of Anna’s split personality, Brecht has the family members refer to her by alternating between the use of singular and plural pronoun forms. Since direct communication between the chorus and Anna I is carefully avoided throughout, the two instances when a semblance of direct interplay does ensue are all the more telling examples of Brecht’s dramaturgical virtuosity. The device of accelerating the dramatic action through the intervention of the narrator – accomplished in Der kaukasische Kreidekreis by the singer alone42 – is ingeniously shared in Die sieben Todsünden by the family chorus and Anna I. Back in Louisiana, far away from the sisters’ turbulent activities, the family nevertheless proves to be so much a part of the progressing events that it exercises control over the action by admonishing Anna I, however indirectly. At one point the family even manages to speed up the action by eliciting a direct response from Anna I. In her next song she reacts to the indignant warning by using the same phrase:

42

“Das Primat des Erzählers im epischen Theater kommt auch darin zum Ausdruck, daß nicht die Handlung das Tempo seiner Erzählung bestimmt, sondern er selber über plötzliche Retardationen entscheidet, etwa über ein Beschleunigen der Handlung oder bezeichnende Verkürzungen.” Wirth, op. cit., p. 223.

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Familie: Das geht nicht vorwärts! Was die da schicken Das sind keine Summen, mit denen man ein Haus baut! …………… Anna I: Jetzt geht es vorwärts. Jetzt sind wir schon in Los Angeles. (GW 7, 2863, 2864)

Anna I seems to have overheard the chorus, even though this is, of course, impossible. Ironically enough, in stage reality her reaction is physically possible. Such comic incongruity readily suspends the theatrical illusion. Choral use of a deictic formula provides another instance of alienating mediation43. The family addresses Anna directly, as if to bridge over the physical distance: Denk an unser Haus in Louisiana! Sieh, es wächst schon, Stock- um Stockwerk wächst es! Halte an dich: Freßsucht ist von Übel. (GW 7, 2866)

Here the irony of the situation stems from the fact that both Annas, sharing the stage with the chorus, can look on as the house gradually rises in the background.

III “Bismarck hatte das Reich, Wagner das Gesamtkunstwerk gegründet, die beiden Schmiede batten geschmiedet und verschmolzen, und Paris war von beiden erobert worden.”44 This amusing remark à la Heine is only one of many such jibes scattered throughout Brecht’s theoretical writings. Indeed, Wagner’s idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk became the poet’s chief target in his relentless effort to create a radically different 43

Cf. the striking parallel here with Baroque dramatic practices, though extended in Brecht to include the character on stage: “Deiktische Formeln richten den Blick des Zuschauers und Lesers auf das dramatische Bild, wenn das Resümee erfolgt: Schaut oder Seht hier.” Schöne, op. cit., p. 161. 44

Brecht, “Über Bühnenmusik”, GW 15, 486.

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theatrical practice45. Brecht regarded the Wagnerian operatic model as a dangerous narcotic and strove to achieve the opposite effect himself. He wanted to activate rather than stupefy: Solange ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ bedeutet, daß das Gesamte ein Aufwaschen ist, solange also Künste ‘verschmelzt’ werden sollen, müssen die einzelnen Elemente alle gleichermaßen degradiert werden, indem jedes nur Stichwortbringer für das andere sein kann. Der Schmelzprozeß erfaßt den Zuschauer, der ebenfalls eingeschmolzen wird und einen passiven (leidenden) Teil des Gesamtkunstwerks darstellt. Solche Magie ist natürlich zu bekämpfen.46

In order to make empathy and abandonment to sensual pleasure on the part of the spectators as difficult as possible, he proposed – in contradistinction to Wagner’s synthesis of the arts – a strict separation of the major components in his theater (text, music, and production): So seien all die Schwesterkünste der Schauspielkunst hier geladen, nicht um ein ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ herzustellen, in dem sie sich alle aufgeben und verlieren, sondern sie sollen, zusammen mit der Schauspielkunst, die gemeinsame Aufgabe in ihrer verschiedenen Weise fördern, und ihr Verkehr miteinander besteht darin, daß sie sich gegenseitig verfremden. 47

Die sieben Todsünden is not only an exemplary model of Brecht’s creative conception of emblematic and epic structure as a didactic instrument; it is also an instructive illustration of how Brecht envis45

Walter Hinck is surely correct in understanding Brecht’s attack as also directed against Max Reinhardt’s production style. Hinck, Die Dramaturgie des späten Brecht (Göttingen, 1966), p. 110. Cf. also Hinck’s (p. 128) characterization of Reinhardt’s style: “Das unverwechselbare Kriterium der Reinhardtschen Inszenierungen: seine Kunst, Atmosphäre, märchen- und zauberhafte Atmosphäre, zu schaffen, der kongruente Einbau von Musik und Tanz im Sinne eines ‘Gesamtkunstwerks’, die betäubende Wirkung seiner Aufführungen versetzt den Zuschauer gerade in jenen Zustand völliger Identifikation, der eine Selbsttätigkeit, ein ‘Mitspielen’ am wenigsten möglich macht. In Max Reinhardts Bühne kulminiert das neuzeitliche Theater, hier erst wird es wirklich autonom. Hier überwältigt die ästhetische Realität der Bühne den Zuschauer ganz.” 46

Brecht, “Anmerkungen zur Oper ‘Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny’,” GW 17, 1010-1011. 47

Brecht, “Kleines Organon für das Theater,” GW 16, 698-99, no.74.

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aged his “Trennung der Elemente”48. Propelled in this context more by anti-Wagnerian than anti-Aristotelian considerations – his elements “Musik, Wort und Bild”49 correspond, after all, to Aristotle’s melos, lexis, and opsis as means and manner of mimetic representation – Brecht’s aim at an interplay of these autonomously functioning elements seems paradoxical if not unrealizable. Yet, in his practice interplay becomes counterplay. In our ballet cantata, for example, the scenic tableaux of the ballet action, the poem cycle delivered by the narrative apparatus of Anna I and the family chorus, and Weill’s strongly parodistic music are played off against one another in a manner which ensures that each of the three components takes turns in making its contribution to the total effect and thus preserves the autonomy of its individual artistic medium. I have already discussed the mechanics of interplay (or counterplay) between Anna I, the chorus, and the pantomimic ballet action. Even more successful in this respect is Weill’s musical setting which, necessarily related to all elements, provides a unifying superstructure of alienation. Among the various autonomous constituents, Brecht regarded music – especially in its capacity as counterpoint to the text – as the most important contribution to the concerted effort that was to produce the finished work. Weill, himself a theoretician of the new musical theater, agreed: “Das neue Operntheater, das heute entsteht, hat epischen Charakter. Denn da die berichtende Form den Zuschauer niemals in Ungewißheit oder in Zweifel über die Bühnenvorgänge läßt, so kann sich die Musik ihre eigene, selbständige, rein musikalische Wirkung vorbehalten.”50 To evaluate the numerous practical devices of musical alienation skillfully employed by Weill in Die sieben Todsünden would require a 48

GW 17, 1010. Cf. also GW 15, 440-41 and 495-96.

49

GW 17, 1010-1012.

50

Quoted in Egon Monk, “Der Einfluß Brechts,” Zeitgenössisches Musiktheater. Internationaler Kongress, Hamburg 1964, ed. Ernst Thomas (Hamburg, 1966), p. 73.

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separate investigation51. Here I can merely suggest a few without further comment, such as the so-called ‘Gegen-die-Musik-Sprechen’, the singer’s conscious deviation from the prescribed melodic line, alternation between singing and speaking, underscoring the message contained in key words or phrases of a song by irregular rhythmic accents or unusual intervals, sudden changes in intonation, acting against specific predictable moods created by the music, abrupt modulation within an accustomed harmonic context (e.g., sudden change in tonality), and unexpected switches in musical style for parodistic effect52. To give at least one example of the last mentioned device: Weill exposes the sanctimoniousness of the avaricious family by composing its leitmotivically recurring refrains as parodistic male chorales in majestic, pseudo-religious cantata style.

* I have not been able, nor have I intended, to give a comprehensive treatment of this unique work. At best, my essay breaks some critical ground, while many aspects of interpretation and explication remain undiscussed. I especially regret having had to forego analysis of the all-pervasive humor. My aim has been to call long overdue attention to Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger for reasons which I hope have become clear. The last work of the Brecht-Weill collaboration, it is Brecht’s only ballet. Written in 1933, it occupies a crucial position midway in the poet’s career, summing up his preceding dramaturgical 51

A comprehensive and musicologically sound study of the Brecht-Weill collaboration on the model of Fritz Hennenberg’s excellent Dessau-Brecht. Musikalische Arbeiten (Berlin, 1963) remains to date a serious desideratum in Brecht research. Günter Hartung’s article, “Zur epischen Oper Brechts und WeilIs,” in Wiss. Zeitschrift der M. Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg. Gesellschaftswiss. – Sprachwiss. Reihe, 8 (1959), 659-73, deals with the partnership up to around 1930. 52

For extensive treatment of these and other devices see Hennenberg, op.cit., especially pp. 204-45.

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innovations and pointing forward to techniques further perfected in the later plays. Because of its extreme brevity and complex yet rigorous construction, it can serve as a model for the study of Brecht’s basic conception of dramatic form. In fact, as a structural model it represents the most consistent realization among Brecht’s stage works of an effective fusion of emblematic framework and epic theater techniques, achieved through a particularly imaginative use of the narrator figure and the chorus as integral parts of the authorial instrument for scenic narration. And finally, incorporating various artistic media, the ballet is a conscious and successful attempt to create a moralisticdidactic anti-Gesamtkunstwerk in parodistic attire.

„O Wort, du Wort, das mir fehlt!“* Der Realismusbegriff in der Musik (1975)

Wer im folgenden einen zusammenfassenden oder gar endgültigen Bericht über den musikalischen Realismusbegriff erwartet, wird enttäuscht werden. Eine solche Zusammenschau steht aus gewichtigen Gründen noch aus. Allenfalls lassen sich heute die Wurzeln, Dimensionen und Schattierungen der bisherigen Realismusauffassung in der Musik skizzieren. Beginnen wir mit einem frappanten Beispiel: Tschaikowskis Ouvertüre 1812. Man mag sich fragen, was diese Musik bedeutet und inwiefern sie fähig ist, als künstlerisches Material Wirklichkeitsbezüge aufzuweisen oder gar ‚die Wirklichkeit widerzuspiegeln’. Die ebenso frappante Antwort liefert ein Bericht aus der Zeitschrift Time:1 Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture is a medley of the sounds of war. Cannons roar, bells chime, whistles and trumpets pierce the muffled drumbeat. Seeking superrealism in his interpretation, Atlanta Symphony Conductor Robert Shaw installed 16 electronically controlled explosive devices to simulate cannons in the pit. Last week, before a crowd of 1,500, he pressed a button on the conductor’s stand on cue, and a smoky, skull-splitting blast filled the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center. That triggered a smoke-sensitive automatic fire alarm. In minutes, 25 eager firemen charged into the auditorium, axes and hoses at the ready. While a dazed audience watched helplessly, the firemen made for the smoke-filled pit and came within a split second of dousing both crowd and orchestra. Shaw admitted to confusion. ‘As the smoke cleared and firemen in full asbestos regalia appeared, it became apparent that what I had mistaken in the din of battle as a premature entry of chimes was the smell-all, tell-all alarm that did not know its brass from the principal bass.’

* Die Schlußworte Moses’ im 2. Akt von Arnold Schönberg: Moses und Aron (1932). 1

Time (l. Juli 1974).

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Sind das musikalische Vorgänge, die wir als ‚realistisch’ bezeichnen dürfen? Haben wir es hier etwa mit musikalischem Naturalismus zu tun? Oder handelt es sich einfach um Programmusik? Wo sind terminologisch die Grenzen zu ziehen? „Musik, eine realistische Kunst“: So lautet der Titel eines Essays von Michel Butor, geschrieben 1959. Wie erfrischend unproblematisch klingt doch dieser Titel, besonders wenn man mit der vertrackten Realismus-Diskussion in den anderen Künsten vertraut ist! Wäre es tatsächlich möglich, daß uns in der Musik der verruchte terminologische Wirrwarr erspart bliebe? Bei Butor stößt man auf eine Definition von imponierender Sicherheit:2 Ich erkläre Musik deshalb zu einer realistischen Kunst, weil sie uns, selbst in ihren höchsten, von allem scheinbar am stärksten losgelösten Formen, etwas über die Welt lehrt, weil die musikalische Grammatik eine Grammatik des Wirklichen ist, weil die Gesänge das Leben verändern.

Die Versuchung ist groß, einem so elegant formulierten Satz unkritisch zuzustimmen. Beim schärferen Hinschauen jedoch stellt sich der Inhalt als höchst problematisch heraus. Ist Musik wirklich imstande, uns etwas über die Welt zu lehren? Was bedeutet „eine Grammatik des Wirklichen“? Wieso „verändern die Gesänge das Leben“? Butor bleibt uns eine plausible Antwort schuldig. Unsere Fragestellung aber eröffnet überraschende Perspektiven, die uns mitten in die Problematik des musikalischen Realismus3 und damit in die Kernproblematik der abenteuerlichen Geschichte der Musikästhetik führen: von den platonischen und aristotelischen Mimesisüberlegungen über die Spekulationen eines Vincenzo Galilei, die Affektenlehre des 18. Jahr-

2

Michel Butor, Musik, eine realistische Kunst. In: Essays zur modernen Literatur und Musik (München, 1965), 66.

3

Vgl. Norman Cazden, Towards a Theory of Realism in Music. In: JAAC, 10 (1951), 135-151; Cazden, Realism in Abstract Music. In: Music and Letters, 36 (1955),17-38; Paul L. Frank, Realism and Naturalism in Music. In: JAAC, 11 (1952), 55-60.

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hunderts, die romantische Stimmungsästhetik, die ProgrammusikTheorien eines Franz Liszt, die formalistische Musikauffassung eines Eduard Hanslick und die Realismus-Theorien der russischen Revolutions-Demokraten Belinski, Dobroljubow und Tschernyschewski bis hin zu Musikästhetikern des 20. Jahrhunderts wie etwa Arnold Schering, August Halm, Ernst Kurth und Theodor Adorno, um nur einige Stadien und Repräsentanten zu nennen. Am intensivsten wird natürlich die Realismus-Diskussion in der marxistischen Musikästhetik geführt, wo die Legitimierung des Realismusbegriffs unmittelbar der Wesensbestimmung der sozialistisch-realistischen Kunstauffassung dient .4 Butors Aufsatz ist eine der spärlichen westlichen Publikationen, die sich ausdrücklich mit dem Realismusbegriff in der Musik beschäftigen. Immer wieder sind es Ästhetiker in den östlichen Ländern, die – unter Berufung auf die marxistisch-leninistische Methode – kritische Versuche einer stark geschichtlich konzipierten theoretischen Zusammenschau unternommen haben. Nicht einmal das unleugbare intellektuelle Niveau dieser Debatte kann aber ihre tief verwurzelte Aporie überdecken. Selbst Georg Lukàcs hält es für nötig, das umfangreiche Musikkapitel in seiner Ästhetik mit einer Apologie zu beginnen:5 In unseren Tagen wird von sehr vielen Seiten der mimetische Charakter der Musik bestritten. Ja, das Selbstverständlichnehmen der Negation ihrer Abbildlichkeit wird oft als Hauptargument gegen die Widerspiegelungstheorie überhaupt eingesetzt. Solche Gedankengänge stehen theoretisch auf schwachen Füßen. 4

Vgl. z. B. W. Wanslow, Über die Widerspiegelung der Wirklichkeit in der Musik (Moskau, 1953); Zofia Lissa, Fragen der Musikästhetik (Berlin, 1954); L. Lesznai, Realistische Ausdrucksmittel in der Musik Bela Bartóks. In: Studia Musicologica, 5 (1963), 469-479; Sinn und Form. Sonderheft Hanns Eisler (1964); Günter Mayer, Zur Dialektik des musikalischen Materials. In: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 14 (1966), 1367-1388; Heinz Alfred Brockhaus, Probleme der Realismustheorie. In: Sammelbände zur Musikgeschichte der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Bd. II (Berlin, 1971), 24-76; und Klaus Mehner, Überlegungen zum Gegenstand und zu den Aufgaben der Musikästhetik. In: Weimarer Beiträge, 18 (1972), H. 9, 66-98.

5

Georg Lukàcs, Ästhetik, Teil I: Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen (Neuwied, 1963), 2. Halbbd., 330.

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Obwohl Lukàcs „die radikal unbestimmte Gegenständlichkeit“ der Musik offen zugibt, entwickelt er seine bekannte doppelte Widerspiegelungstheorie trotzdem am Beispiel der Musik. Es sind ontologische und deshalb manchmal unangenehme Fragen, die hier berührt werden müssen. Denn wie steht es eigentlich um den Realismus in der Musik, der abstraktesten unter den Künsten? Auf den ersten Blick scheint dieser Terminus eine contradictio in adjecto zu sein. Sind wir daher berechtigt, überhaupt von einem konkreten musikalischen Ausdruck zu sprechen? Und – falls er sich aufweisen läßt – mit welchen Maßstäben sollen wir ihn bewerten? Der DDRMusikästhetiker Klaus Mehner glaubte noch 1972 auf diese Fragen eine ganz eindeutige Antwort geben zu können:6 Die entscheidende Frage ist, in welch spezifischer Weise die Musik in der Lage ist, auf Erscheinungen der Wirklichkeit zu reagieren. Daß es sich dabei um die zentrale Frage handelt, zeigt die musikästhetische Literatur der letzten zwanzig Jahre ganz eindeutig; zentral aber auch deshalb, weil die Geschichte der Musikästhetik stark voneinander abweichende Antworten darauf erbracht hat. Während in der Mimesis-Lehre, in der Affektenlehre oder in der Intonationstheorie entscheidende Ansätze auch für unsere dialektisch-materialistische Betrachtungsweise ausgearbeitet worden sind, haben idealistische und reaktionäre Tendenzen in der Musikästhetik die Musik als ein in sich ruhendes, sich selbst genügendes Reich interpretiert und ihr den Wirklichkeitsbezug mehr oder weniger abgesprochen.

Doch diese Fragen lassen sich auch anders beantworten. Das mag folgende Zitatauswahl belegen: (Musik) ist diejenige Kunst, die am meisten das Körperliche abstreift, indem sie reine Bewegung selbst als solche, von dem Gegenstand abgezogen, vorstellt und von unsichtbaren, fast geistigen Flügeln getragen wird. (Schelling)7 Daß nun aber die Musik ihre volle Wirkung ausübe, dazu gehört noch mehr als das bloß abstrakte Tönen in seiner zeitlichen Bewegung. Die zweite Seite, die hin-

6 7

Klaus Mehner, Überlegungen, 69.

F. W. J. Schelling, Sämtliche Werke (Stuttgart, 1859), I. Abt., Bd. V, 1802, 1803. II, 502.

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zukommen muß, ist ein Inhalt, eine geistvolle Empfindung für das Gemüt, und der Ausdruck, die Seele dieses Inhalts in den Tönen. (Hegel)8 Die Musik ist unschätzbar als letztes Begeisterungsmittel (...). Aber die Literatur muß ihr vorangegangen sein. Musik allein bringt die Welt nicht vorwärts. Musik allein ist gefährlich. (Th. Mann)9 Keine Kunst ist so sehr sozial bedingt wie die angeblich selbsttätige, gar mechanische selbstgerechte Musik; es wimmelt in ihr von historischem Materialismus. (Bloch)10 Musik ist sprachähnlich (...). Aber Musik ist nicht Sprache. Ihre Sprachähnlichkeit weist den Weg ins Innere, doch auch ins Vage. Wer Musik wörtlich als Sprache nimmt, den führt sie ins Irre. (Adorno)11 I consider that music is, by its very nature, powerless to express anything at all (...), if, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion, and not a reality. (Strawinski)12 Es ist nicht mehr und nicht weniger gefordert, als daß unsere Musik die Menschen befähigen soll, Einblicke in unser Zeitalter zu gewinnen, und das mit hohem Vergnügen und hoher Sittlichkeit. (Brecht)13

Wir haben hier eine verblüffende, jedoch für den Sachverhalt typische Mischung von Populärphilosophie und echtem Scharfsinn, ideologischer Überzeugung und edler Einfalt. Was soll man sich aber bei solcher Abstraktheit und Verallgemeinerung des Ausdrucks überhaupt unter Musik vorstellen? Vielleicht helfen uns an dieser Stelle einige praktische Beispiele weiter. Welchen Sinngehalt besitzt etwa die Schlittenfahrt von Leopold Mozart? Doch könnte man nicht auch eine 8

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Ästhetik (Berlin – Weimar, 1965), II, 278.

9

Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg (Frankfurt, 1960), III, 160-161.

10

Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung (Frankfurt, 1973), III, 1248-1249.

11

Th. W. Adorno, Fragment über Musik und Sprache. In: Musik und Dichtung (München, 1953), 146. 12

Igor Stravinsky, Stravinsky: An Autobiography (New York, 1936), 83-84.

13

Zit. nach Heinz Josef Herbort, Weder Buh noch Bravo. Die Zeit, 26. März 1965,

17.

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gewisse Passage aus Bruno Madernas Oboenkonzert als “Schlittenfahrt” betiteln? Das ‘Realistische’ drückt sich hier meist nur im Titel aus. Um die Schwierigkeiten der modernen Realismus-Diskussion wirklich verstehen zu können, müssen wir uns zunächst die musikästhetischen Voraussetzungen vergegenwärtigen. Und zwar werde ich mich dabei auf die sogenannte ‘absolute Musik’, das heißt Musik ohne unmittelbare Verbindung mit einem Text, konzentrieren. Daß man dabei das Problem nicht voll ausdiskutieren kann, liegt in der Natur der Sache. Der Ursprung musikalischer Realismusauffassungen ist in der heute noch weithin angenommenen magischen Kraft der Musik zu suchen. Schon in uralten Mythen wird Musik als etwas Magisches und Heilendes empfunden. Aus China wird zum Beispiel die Geschichte von Schi-Da überliefert, einem legendären Harfenspieler, der angeblich fähig war, mit seinem fünfsaitigen Instrument die bösen Winde zu besänftigen und Früchten und Lebewesen Kraft zu spenden.14 Die ägyptische Hathor-Mythe erzählt von Hathor-Tefnut, der Tochter des Sonnengottes Re: Ihr wildes Gemüt konnte nur durch Musik besänftigt werden. Aus der griechischen Welt ist uns neben dem Gesang der Sirenen die Orpheus-Mythe am vertrautesten; sie ist noch in Mozarts Zauberflöte wiederzuerkennen. Aufgrund solcher Beispiele ist es möglich, in den Reflexionen über Funktion und Wirkung der Musik zwei Grundtypen zu erkennen: einerseits das grundsätzlich Böse, Dämonische, Fremdartige, andererseits die beruhigende, harmonieschaffende, humanisierende Wirkung der Musik. Die Auffassung von Musik als Magie hat in gewissem Sinne schon einen ethischen und anthropozentrischen Inhalt. Bis zu den musikalischen Implikationen der platonischen Ethoslehre und der aristotelischen Mimesiskonzeption ist jedoch noch ein langer Weg zurückzule14

II/l.

Liä Dsi, Das wahre Buch vom quellenden Ursprung (Jena, 1921), Buch V, Nr.

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gen – ein Weg, der durch die pythagoräische Sphärenharmonie und Zahlentheorie führt. Hier wird die Musik erstmals abstrahiert, verabsolutiert, vergeistigt. „Weltenmusik (musica mundana, Sphärenmusik), Körpermusik (musica humana) und eigentliche Tonkunst (musica instrumentalis) treten hervor als weit zurückreichende Grundteilung“ der musikalischen Erscheinungen.15 Daß sich solche Elemente kosmologisch-noëtischer Musikanschauung auch in der modernen Musik niedergeschlagen haben, beweist etwa Mozarts Verwendung der freimaurerischen Dreizahlsymbolik in der Zauberflöte und der stark mathematisch-kombinatorische Zug des Schönbergschen Zwölftonsystems. Noëtik ist aber noch keine richtige Ästhetik. „Musik ist (hier) nicht als reale, sinnfällige Kunst, sondern als Symbol der Weltgesetzlichkeit, als Wahrheit, Wissenschaft wertvoll.“16 Jedoch kennzeichnet die Beschäftigung mit der Zahlenmystik den Anfang der Musikästhetik als Wissenschaft. Die bedeutendste Leistung der Pythagoräer war nämlich das Aufdecken der genauen Meßbarkeit der Tonhöhenverhältnisse und dadurch die Begründung der systematischen Musiktheorie, die dann im Mittelalter als streng mathematische Disziplin weiterentwickelt wurde. Ohne die pythagoräischen Zahlenspekulationen wären auch Platons Äußerungen nicht denkbar gewesen. Seine Musikästhetik basiert freilich eher auf der Überzeugung, daß die einzelnen Tonarten bestimmten Seelenhaltungen entsprechen und sich demgemäß auf die Sitten positiv oder negativ auswirken können. Im Staat spricht er vor allem dem ernsten Dorischen und (mit Vorbehalt) dem klugen Phrygischen die Gabe zu, die Jugend in allen staatsbürgerlichen Tugenden zu befestigen, während im ‘Gastmahl’ die Flötenspielerin als Trägerin asiatischer Sinnlichkeit weg17 geschickt wird, bevor die geistige Auseinandersetzung beginnt. 15

Hans Joachim Moser, Musikästhetik (Berlin, 1953), 149.

16

Rudolf Schäfke, Geschichte der Musikästhetik in Umrissen (Berlin, 1934), 35.

17

Moser, Musikästhetik, 150.

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Platons Ansichten über die didaktisch-erzieherische Rolle und potentielle politische Gefährlichkeit der Musik sind bekannt genug und immer noch aktuell, nicht zuletzt weil sie der sozialistisch-realistischen Musikauffassung zugrunde liegen und vornehmlich in der Sowjetunion auch heute noch uneingeschränkt Verwendung finden. Besonders aufschlußreich sind die musikalischen Bezüge der aristotelischen Nachahmungstheorie. Aristoteles, der sich von der pythagoräischen Zahlenhegemonie distanziert, teilt und erweitert Platons Glauben an den konkreten ethischen Gehalt der Musik: Nicht nur Gefühlszustände, sondern auch Charaktereigenschaften und sogar bestimmte Leidenschaften können ihm zufolge durch musikalische Mimesis übermittelt werden. Das Mimetische in der Musik bedeutet aber für Aristoteles nicht einfach treue, gleichsam mechanische Nachahmung der Natur. Vielmehr besteht für ihn die Funktion der Musik darin, die Naturtöne künstlerisch neuschöpfend in idealisierte Musiktöne zu verwandeln. Wir finden in der Gegenüberstellung der pythagoräischen Zahlenmystik und der platonisch-aristotelischen Ethos- und Mimesislehre die später geradezu antinomisch gespaltene Entwicklungslinie der abendländischen Musikästhetik deutlich vorgezeichnet. Die kosmologischmathematische, pythagoräische Richtung kulminiert in der modernen, formalistisch orientierten idealistischen Musikauffassung, während die mehr wirklichkeitsnahe, emotionsbezogene, also anthropozentrische aristotelische Richtung auf den angeblich unmittelbar sozialen, realistischen Inhalt der Musik in den jüngsten Musikauffassungen marxistischer Prägung vorausweist. Der Sprung zu Vincenzo Galilei wird weniger gewagt erscheinen, sobald wir Galileis erstaunlich modernen Beitrag zur Musikästhetik näher untersuchen. Die Erneuerung der aristotelischen Mimesiskonzeption bei ihm markiert den Anfang neuzeitlicher Spekulationen über die Möglichkeiten des musikalischen Realismus. Als führender Theoretiker der Florentiner Camerata argumentiert er in seinem 1581 veröffentlichten Dialogo della musica antica e moderna gegen die poly-

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phone Kontrapunktik rein instrumentalen Ursprungs und für eine enge Bindung des Musikalischen an die Rhetorik der Sprache, für eine sprechende Musik, einen wortgebundenen Stil: den sogenannten stile recitativo. In Übereinstimmung mit Galilei definiert Giulio Caccini, ein anderer Wortführer der Camerata, die Musik als eine „Art von harmonischer Sprache“.18 Nach Galilei drückt die Musik „die im ganzen Text enthaltene Seelenbewegung richtig und wahr aus. Dazu muß sie auf korrekte Betonung der Worte, auf Höhe und Tiefe, Rhythmik, Akzentuierung der affektvollen Rede achten.“19 Galilei verlangt darüber hinaus vom Komponisten, daß er die verschiedenen Stile der sozialen Stände, ihre typischen Temperamente und Stimmungen genau berücksichtige. Obwohl das Problem der Sprachähnlichkeit weiterhin der Leitfaden inhaltorientierter Musikdeutungsversuche bleibt, wird schon im 17. und dann im 18. Jahrhundert eine Akzentverschiebung im ethischemotionalen Gehalt erkennbar. Zwar immer noch dem aristotelischen Mimesis-Erbe verpflichtet, tritt nun der Glaube an die Ausdrucksfähigkeit der Musik, vornehmlich in bezug auf Empfindungen und Leidenschaften, in den Vordergrund (musica movet affectus). Typisch für die Anfänge dieser musikalischen Affektenlehre ist Johann Matthesons Vollkommener Capellmeister von 1739:20 Weil nun die Instrumental-Musik nichts anders ist, als eine Ton-Sprache oder Klang-Rede, so muß sie ihre eigentliche Absicht allemahl auf eine gewisse Gemüths-Bewegung richten, welche zu erregen, der Nachdruck in den Intervallen u. dg. wol in Acht genommen werden müssen.

Damit beginnt die lange fällige Emanzipation der Instrumentalmusik von der textbeherrschten Vokalmusik. Sie kulminiert in der Zusammenstellung von Beispielsammlungen, in denen mit wörterbuch18

Schäfke, Geschichte der Musikästhetik in Umrissen, 279.

19

Ebd., 283.

20

Johann Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg, 1739), 82.

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artigem Schematismus einzelne Affekte wie Liebe, Hoffnung, Furcht, Traurigkeit bestimmten musikalischen Elementen wie Intervallen, allgemein bekannten Läufen oder stereotypen Wendungen zugeordnet werden. Es entstand so ein Gemeingut von Formeln, das beim Komponieren sogar praktische Hilfe leisten sollte. Für den bekannten Flötenvirtuosen Johann Joachim Quantz etwa rufen die kleinen Intervalle „die Wirkung des Schmeichelnden, Traurigen, Zärtlichen, die großen die des Freudigen, Lustigen, Frechen hervor“.21 Die systematische Ausarbeitung der musikalischen Affektenlehre ist vor allem die Leistung der französischen Aufklärungsästhetik von Batteux bis Diderot, d’Alembert und Rousseau, verbunden mit den Ansichten einiger Deutscher wie Mattheson, Heinse und Herder. Das Grundprinzip bleibt weiterhin die Naturnachahmung. Musik ist natürlich, wenn sie die Welt menschlicher Affekte widerspiegelt und zur unmittelbaren Sprache der Gefühle wird. Sprachähnlichkeit wird also gleichbedeutend mit Naturähnlichkeit; der bisherige Primat der Harmonie in musikalischen Spekulationen (besonders von Rameau vertreten) wird so durch den Primat der Melodie ersetzt. Der künstlichen Eigenart der Harmonie gegenüber betont Rousseau die natürliche Eigenart der Melodie, der er auch die Hauptrolle im musikalischen Ausdruck zuschreibt. Die Modernität dieser Richtung der Affektenlehre ist in ihrem melozentrischen Impuls klar zu erkennen. Die Entwicklungslinie führt nämlich über die russischen Revolutions-Demokraten zur marxistischen Intonationslehre. Es ist vielleicht wenig bekannt, daß Tschernyschewskis bahnbrechende Bemühungen um die Klärung des ästhetischen Verhältnisses zwischen Kunst und Wirklichkeit durch eine Kritik am idealistischen Schönheitsbegriff auch musikbezogene Überlegungen einschließen. Tschernyschewski, indem er die Instrumentalmusik prinzipiell als Gesangsnachahmung, als Begleitung des naturgegebenen Gesangs auffaßt, nimmt die melozentrische Orientation der 21

Schäfke, Geschichte der Musikästhetik in Umrissen, 309.

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Affektenlehre wieder auf. Nach Tschernyschewski ist allein das Volkslied fähig, das eigentümlich Naturschöne in der Musik auszudrücken. Nicht der romantische Volksliedkult ist hier gemeint, sondern das Streben nach einer wirklichkeitsnahen Volkstümlichkeit, die in Mussorgskis Kompositionen vielleicht ihren charakteristischsten Ausdruck gefunden hat. Das musikalisch Schöne ist nie „rein musikalisch“, sondern steht immer in enger Verbindung zur Lebenswahrheit des musikalischen Ausdrucks – mit dieser Auffassung begründet Tschernyschewski die sich im Osten bis heute haltende ästhetische Theorie des musikalischen Realismus.22 Im Gegensatz zum Prinzip der sprachbezogenen, realistischtonmalenden Naturnachahmung französischen Ursprungs heben englische Ästhetiker des 18. Jahrhunderts wie Charles Avison, James Harris, Daniel Webb und Thomas Twinning die subjektive, emotionale Seite der Affektenlehre hervor. Die geringe nachahmende Fähigkeit der Musik, „durch direkte Ähnlichkeit Ideen zu erwecken“, lehnen sie einstimmig ab. Ihr Glaubensbekenntnis formuliert Daniel Webb am prägnantesten:23 In der Musik ist es besser, gar keine, als falsche Ideen zu haben; und immer sicherer sich auf die bloße Wirkung des Eindrucks zu verlassen, als auf die müßigen Spielwerke einer gezwungenen Einbildungskraft.

Der englische Zweig der Affektenlehre ebnet den Weg zur romantischen, quasi-impressionistischen Stimmungsästhetik. Als Kostprobe dürfte eine typische Aussage aus Wackenroders Essay Das eigentümliche innere Wesen der Tonkunst und die Seelenlehre der heutigen Instrumentalmusik genügen:24 22

Vgl. N. G. Tschernyschewski, Ausgewählte Werke (Moskau, 1949).

23

Daniel Webb, Observation on the Correspondence between Poetry and Music (London, 1769). Zit. nach J. J. Eschenburgs Übersetzung Betrachtungen über die Poesie und Musik (Leipzig, 1771), 99. 24

W. H. Wackenroder, Werke und Briefe, Hrsg. von Friedrich von der Leyen (Jena, 1910), I, 192.

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Aber in diesen Wellen (der Tonkunst) strömt recht eigentlich nur das reine, formlose Wesen, der Gang und die Farbe, und auch vornehmlich der tausendfältige Übergang der Empfindungen; die idealische, engelreine Kunst weiß in ihrer Unschuld weder den Ursprung, noch das Ziel ihrer Regungen, kennt nicht den Zusammenhang ihrer Gefühle mit der wirklichen Welt.

Auf diesem Wege schreiten dann Friedrich H. Dalberg („Der Gegenstand der Musik ist der Ton, ihr Zweck: das Wohlgefallen des Gehörs“)25 und Eduard Hanslick („Tönend bewegte Formen sind einzig und allein Inhalt und Gegenstand der Musik“)26 weiter. Das eigentliche Bindeglied zwischen den englischen Ästhetikern und Hanslick finden wir jedoch in Hans Georg Nägelis Vorlesungen über Musik mit Berücksichtigung des Dilettanten (1826). Nach Nägeli kann die Musik weder etwas darstellen noch etwas nachahmen, sondern sie ist (ein) spielendes Wesen, weiter nichts. Sie hat auch keinen Inhalt, wie man sonst meinte, und was man ihr auch andichten wollte. Sie hat nur Formen, geregelte Zusammenverbindung von Tönen und Tonreihen zu einem Ganzen.27

Als pointierte Attacke gegen die romantische Ästhetik des Musikalisch-Poetischen, also gegen eine radikale Literarisierung der Musik, die in der Form der sogenannten Programmusik das Musikschaffen des 19. Jahrhunderts beherrscht, ist Hanslicks epochemachendes Buch Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (1854) direkt, wenn auch zwischen den Zeilen, gegen die dramatisch-illustrierende Tendenz in der Kunst Wagners und Liszts gerichtet. Wesentlicher scheint mir freilich die Tatsache zu sein, daß Hanslick – wie später auch Strawinski – die Musik von vornherein für unfähig hält, irgendeine Intention auszudrücken. Diese kategorische Ablehnung außermusikalischer Inhalte ist gleichbedeutend mit der Negation jeglicher Bemühungen um einen überzeugenden künstlerischen Realismusbegriff in der Musik. 25

Friedrich H. Dalberg, Blicke eines Tonkünstlers in die Musik der Geister (Mannheim, 1787), 16. 26

Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (Wien, 1854), 32.

27

(Stuttgart – Tübingen, 1826), 32.

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Es ist gerade Hanslicks Auffassung von Musik als tönender Bewegung, auf die psychologisierende Theoretiker wie August Halm, Heinrich Schenker und Ernst Kurth zurückgreifen, um in der Musik vor allem das Phänomen der Bewegung zu betonen. Nach Kurth28 zum Beispiel ist die Musik keine Spiegelung der Natur, sondern das Erlebnis ihrer rätselhaften Energien selbst in uns; die Spannungsempfindungen in uns sind das eigentümliche Verspüren von gleichartigen lebendigen Kräften, wie sie sich im Uranfang alles physischen und organischen Lebens offenbaren.

Diese Anerkennung der musikalischen Form als Prozeß und Tätigkeit und nicht bloß als Zustand ist ohne Zweifel der wichtigste Beitrag der ‚Energetiker’ Kurth und Halm. Er bildet auch den Ausgangspunkt für die Ausarbeitung der modernen Intonationslehre durch die russischen Musikästhetiker Jaworski und Assafjew. Was schon dem Musikkapitel in Hegels Ästhetik als zentrale Einsicht zugrunde lag, nämlich die unmittelbare Zeitbedingtheit und Prozessualität der Musik als dialektischer Bewegungsvorgang, wird am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts auf psychologischem Umweg wiederentdeckt und später zum theoretischen Fundament der marxistischen Realismusauslegung umfunktioniert. Die Häufigkeit meiner Hinweise auf den Begriff ‚Intonation’ mag den Eindruck erwecken, wir hätten es hier mit einem erlösenden Oberbegriff zu tun, der tatsächlich imstande wäre, die Abbildfunktion der Musik als eine Form des gesellschaftlichen Bewußtseins zu legitimieren. Das ist keineswegs der Fall. Die marxistische Musikästhetik war lange Zeit im Bann dieser für sie zentralen Kategorie befangen, deren Verwendbarkeit für die Bestimmung des musikalischen Realismus aber heute mehr und mehr in Frage gestellt wird. Die umfassend-

28

Ernst Kurth, Die romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners Tristan (Berlin, 1923), 4.

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ste Definition stammt von dem sowjetischen Kritiker W. A. Bely aus dem Jahre 1952:29 Die Intonation kann man ein melodisches Gebilde nennen, das eine bestimmte Ausdrucksbedeutung besitzt, seinen bestimmten Charakter hat und typisch für die Entwicklung eines musikalischen Ganzen, eines Musikwerkes ist.

Zwanzig Jahre später definierte Klaus Mehner die Intonationstheorie als den Versuch einer Analogiebildung zwischen musikalischen und außermusikalischen Erscheinungen; die Intonationen werden als funktionelle Größen der musikalischen Gestaltungsweise betrachtet und als Träger einer selbständigen Information verstanden. Man denke dabei nur an mögliche akustische (etwa Geräusche oder Klänge) oder Bewegungsintonationen (zum Beispiel die Marschintonation) und zum Teil auch an ‘optisch’ vermittelte Intonationen (etwa Räumlichkeit und Helligkeit).30

Mit Hilfe des Intonationsbegriffs also versucht die marxistische Musikästhetik zu klären, wie die musikalische Mimesis sich als Widerspiegelung gesellschaftlicher Verhältnisse konkretisieren kann. Es handelt sich darum, daß das musikalische Gefüge sich in der Regel nicht aus den kleinsten, atomisierten Einheiten zusammensetzt. Vielmehr gibt es gewisse, schon aus mehreren Elementen vorgeformte größere Einheiten (wie Melodiewendungen oder harmonische Modulationen), die sich, durch Verknüpfung immer größer werdend, zur Totalität des Musikwerkes strukturieren. Diese Grundformeln werden in der marxistischen Literatur als ‚Intonationen’ bezeichnet. Es fragt sich, welchen Bedeutungsinhalt und somit selbständigen Informationswert sie besitzen. Man denke an ein Stück satirischer Instrumentalmusik, das von der zeitgenössischen Kritik als „Pornophonie“ bezeichnet wurde. Es ist das groteske, auf eine derb naturalistische Verführungsszene folgende

29

Zit. nach Lissa, Fragen der Musikästhetik (Berlin, 1954), 237.

30

Mehner, Überlegungen, 81.

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Zwischenspiel aus Schostakowitschs Oper Lady Macbeth von Mzensk (1934) – ein Musterbeispiel des späten Verismo. Mit vulgär karikierenden Glissandi eines Bläserchors soll hier der Höhepunkt eines Geschlechtsakts hinter dem Vorhang verdeutlicht werden. Freilich, selbst wenn wir die unmittelbare Suggestivkraft dieser Musik anerkennen, bleibt doch die Frage, ob wir ohne eine Vertrautheit mit der Handlung diese Musik als dargestellte Erotik empfinden würden. Ja, selbst bei manchen Vogelgesang-Imitationen, wie dem Gezwitscher in Bartóks 3. Klavierkonzert oder in Messiaens Chants d’oiseaux, ist die ‘realistische’ Ausbeute recht mager. Der Begriff ‘Intonation’ wurde wohl zum erstenmal in der Studie Der Aufbau der musikalischen Sprache (1908) von Boleslav Jaworski benutzt. Jaworski definiert hier die Intonation als kleinste musikalische Einheit, als Kombination kleinster Tonelemente, die schon in sich bedeutungs- und ausdrucksfähig sind. Offensichtlich weist diese Formulierung auf die sprachbezogene Richtung der musikalischen Affektenlehre zurück: Ihr Gültigkeitsanspruch beruht nach wie vor auf der Annahme, daß die vor allem akustische Sprachähnlichkeit der Musik einen allgemein zugänglichen Bedeutungsinhalt garantiere. Boris Assafjew erweitert Jaworskis Analogie, indem er zunächst die gleichzeitige Präsenz von Gefühls- und Bedeutungsinhalten betont, in der Musik wie auch in der Sprache. Noch in seinen frühen Abhandlungen treibt Assafjew seine Vermutungen über die Sprachähnlichkeit der Musik so weit, daß er behauptet, einzelne Intervalle könnten bestimmte begriffliche Gehalte aufweisen. Er spricht sogar, kühn genug, von der Gleichwertigkeit strukturierter Klangvorstellungen mit intonierenden sprachlichen Aussagen, d. h. von einer Gleichwertigkeit von musikalischem und begrifflichem Denken. Weniger irrtümlich erscheinen mir dagegen die im Tschernyschewskischen Sinne melozentrisch orientierten Versuche Assafjews, die sich in seinem 1947 erschienenen Buch Die musikalische Form als Prozeß zu einer Dialektik der Prozessualität und der Dinglichkeit der Musik kristallisieren.

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Der Assafjewsche Intonationsbegriff wurde leider nie eindeutig definiert. Kein Wunder daher, daß das ursprünglich hervorgehobene Gleichgewicht zwischen emotionaler und sinnhafter Bedeutung der Intonation in der Shdanow-Zeit zugunsten des emotionalen Inhalts umgedeutet wurde. Die einseitige Unterschätzung des Sinngehalts (und damit des rationalistischen Experimentierens) ermöglichte den stalinistischen Dogmatikern die offizielle Ablehnung moderner musikalischer Neuerungsversuche, die kategorisch zu formalistischen Dekadenzerscheinungen gestempelt wurden. Shdanows eigene, im Januar 1948 vor dem ZK der KPdSU vorgetragene Formulierung verdeutlicht die Anwendung dieser theoretischen Verzerrungen auf die zeitgenössische Musikpraxis:31 Tatsächlich haben wir einen sehr scharfen, wenn auch nach außen hin maskierten Kampf zweier Richtungen in der sowjetischen Musik zu verzeichnen. Die eine Richtung stellt das gesunde, fortschrittliche Prinzip der Sowjetmusik dar, das auf der Anerkennung der gewaltigen Rolle des klassischen Erbes, insbesondere der Traditionen der russischen musikalischen Schule, auf der Verbindung des hohen Ideengehalts und Inhaltsreichtums der Musik, ihrer Wahrhaftigkeit und Realistik, ihrer tiefen, organischen Verbundenheit mit dem Volke, seinem musikalischen, seinem Liedschaffen einerseits, mit dem hohen, professionellen Können andererseits basiert. Die andere Richtung ist der Ausdruck eines Formalismus, der der Sowjetkunst fremd ist; sie bedeutet unter dem Banner eines angeblichen Neuerertums die Abkehr vom klassischen Erbe, die Abkehr von der Volkstümlichkeit der Musik und vom Dienst am Volke zugunsten des Dienstes an den rein individualistischen Empfindungen einer kleinen Gruppe auserwählter Ästheten.

Vom Assafjewschen Intonationsbegriff bleibt hier nur die von Shdanow emphatisch propagierte Forderung nach Programmhaftigkeit in der Musik übrig. Ihr zufolge kann der Sinngehalt der Musik nur in einem außermusikalischen Programm enthalten sein. Dieses musikalische Programm verhält sich aber zur Musik selber wie der Bedeutungsinhalt der Sprache zum Gefühlsinhalt der Musik. 31

A. A. Shdanow, Fragen der sowjetischen Musikkultur. Diskussionsbeitrag auf der Beratung von Vertretern der sowjetischen Musik im ZK der KPdSU (B), Januar 1948. In: Beiträge zum sozialistischen Realismus. Grundsätzliches über Kunst und Literatur (Berlin, 1953), 47.

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Damit sind wir bei der sozialistisch-realistischen Auffassung des musikalischen Realismus angelangt. Für die Musik nämlich, behauptet noch 1971 der DDR-Musikästhetiker Heinz Alfred Brockhaus, ist die Theorie des sozialistischen Realismus auch das, was wir mit Fug und Recht die marxistisch-leninistische Philosophie unserer neuen Musik nennen, ein theoretisch philosophisches System, das seinen Sinn nicht nur in der neuartigen Interpretation der Welt des Musikalischen, sondern vor allem in seiner sozialistischen Veränderung sieht.32

Nur bei einem solchen Parteilichkeitsanspruch ist es begreiflich, daß eine dermaßen groteske Werkanalyse wie die von Alexei Tolstoi zur Fünften Sinfonie von Schostakowitsch ernstgenommen und sogar als modellhaft gepriesen werden konnte:33 Music must present the consummate formulation of the psychological tribulations of mankind, it should accumulate man’s energy. Here we have the ‘symphony of Socialism’. It begins with the Largo of the masses working underground, and accelerando corresponds to the subway system; the Allegro in its turn symbolizes gigantic factory machinery and its victory over nature. The Adagio represents the synthesis of Soviet culture, science, and art. The Scherzo reflects the athletic life of the happy inhabitants of the Union. As for the Finale, it is the image of the gratitude and the enthusiasm of the masses.

Diese Art von Realismusauffassung können wir kaum als ‘wissenschaftlich’ fundierte ästhetische Theorie akzeptieren. Georg Lukàcs’ musikästhetische Spekulationen dürfen wir dagegen keineswegs als parteiliche Verirrungen abtun; schon deshalb nicht, weil er sich von den sektiererischen Verteidigern des sozialistischen Realismus, (die) die sogenannte Grundidee eines Werkes zur begrifflichen Allgemeinheit erheben und in deren Wahrheit oder Unwahrheit das gesuchte Kriterium des musikalischen Realismus zu finden meinen,34

32

Brockhaus, Probleme der Realismustheorie, 36.

33

Zit. nach Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music (New York, 1959), 121.

34

Lukàcs, Ästhetik, Teil I, 2. Halbbd., 392-393.

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selber distanziert hat. Noch stärker als sonst in seinem Denken von Hegel zehrend, entwickelt Lukàcs seine doppelte Widerspiegelungstheorie aufgrund der dialektischen Zusammengehörigkeit der bestimmten und unbestimmten Gegenständlichkeit der Musik:35 Die Bestimmtheit der musikalischen Formenwelt lebt zwar in organischer Koexistenz mit einer ihr zugeordneten, von ihr evozierten Welt der unbestimmten Gegenständlichkeit. Auch hier gilt, daß diese keine Unbestimmtheit schlechthin ist, sondern eine konkrete, eine bis zu einem gewissen Grad bestimmte Unbestimmtheit; daß diese dementsprechend sehr unterschiedliche Stufen der Erscheinungsweise haben kann, ohne das Allegorisieren der Programmusik auch nur zu streifen, ist selbstverständlich. Werke wie die ‘Eroica’ oder die ‘Pastorale’ zeigen, wieweit diese Grenzen vorgeschoben sein können, ohne in jenes Extrem umzuschlagen. Aus solchen Werken wird aber zugleich evident, wie gleitend das Wesen dieser bestimmten Unbestimmtheit ist: es gibt keine allgemein angebbare Grenze, die diese Werke von jenen trennt, in denen die Unbestimmtheit keinerlei derartig konkrete Determination erhält.

Aus musikästhetischer Sicht – und Lukàcs bekennt hier mehrmals seine mangelnde Kompetenz – ist es offensichtlich, daß sein Begriff der Gegenständlichkeit durchaus als die bestimmte Prozessualität der Musik, ihrem Wesen nach eine rein musikbezogene Formkategorie, präzisiert werden kann. So weitergedacht, ermöglicht die Lukàcs’sche Insistenz auf einer dialektischen Wechselwirkung zwischen bestimmter und unbestimmter Gegenständlichkeit eine souveräne Definition, wonach der spezifische Gegenstand der Musik als Bewegung der inneren und äußeren Welt in ihrer allgemeinsten Gesetzlichkeit, der eigenständigen Subjekt-Objekt-Welt entsprechend, aufgefaßt werden kann. Die potentielle Verwendbarkeit dieser Definition als Grundlage eines plausiblen musikalischen Realismusbegriffs führt womöglich zur Befreiung der doppelten Widerspiegelungstheorie von der Exklusivität der Musikbezogenheit und schlägt dadurch eine Brücke zur allmählichen Erkenntnis einer Wesensverwandtschaft der „allgemeinen Kriterien eines Realismus in der Musik mit denen der anderen Künste“.36 35

Ebd., 1. Halbbd., 741.

36

Ebd., 2. Halbbd., 395.

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Theodor Adorno dagegen lehnt die Möglichkeit eines künstlerischen Realismus in der Musik kategorisch ab. Wiederholt betont er, Musik sei „nicht gegenständlich und nicht begreiflich. (...) Sie findet sich in der gesellschaftlichen Struktur, der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit, vermag aber nicht von sich aus etwas Wesentliches über sie“.37 Lukàcs’ Widerspiegelungstheorie ist für Adorno ebenfalls nicht überzeugend. Trotz wesentlicher Auffassungsunterschiede aber sehe ich dennoch eine Möglichkeit zur partiellen Aussöhnung eben darin, daß Adorno – wie Lukàcs – letzten Endes die spezifische Gegenständlichkeit der Musik in ihrem eigenen, musikimmanenten Funktionieren anerkennt und die dialektische Wechselwirkung der musikalischen Objektivität und Subjektivität als den zu erreichenden Idealzustand bezeichnet. Der Hauptunterschied liegt im Perspektivenentwurf, den Adorno in seiner Philosophie der neuen Musik (1949) über die polarisierte Entwicklung der Musik im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert vorlegt und den er – im Gegensatz zu Lukàcs’ in der Grundeinstellung progressiver, optimistischer Prognose – eindeutig negativ auswertet. Wie bekannt, sieht Adorno in Strawinskis verfremdendem Restaurationsimpuls und in Schönbergs nonkonformistischem Radikalismus die zwei unversöhnlichen Gegenpole einer Typologie der modernen Musik. Bei Strawinski führe die programmatisch antisubjektive, ironisierende Kompositionsmethode zur Schein-Objektivität und totalen Verdinglichung der Musik, während Schönbergs „authentische“ Angst vor einer totalen Vernichtung der musikalischen Subjektivität ihn zum verzweifelten Suchen nach objektiven Formkategorien, nach einem rationalen System zwinge.38 In unserem Zusammenhang ist besonders die weitere Anwendung von Adornos Polaritätstheorie auf die Periode nach 1950 aufschlußreich. Strawinskis antimelodisch eingestellte, stark rhythmisch und 37

Th. W. Adorno, Über einige Schwierigkeiten des Komponierens heute. In: Aspekte der Modernität. Hrsg. von Hans Steffen (Göttingen, 1965), 139. 38

Ebd.

92

klangfarbenorientierte Kompositionsmethode lebt nämlich in extremer, wenn auch traditioneller Form bei Orff, doch ebenso in der elektronischen Musik Stockhausens und der musique concrète Pierre Schaeffers weiter. In diesen Richtungen macht sich eine im alltäglichen Sinn ‘realistische’ Tendenz bemerkbar. Die musikalische Gegenständlichkeit der musique concrète scheint zum Beispiel viel bestimmbarer als bei früheren Musikarten. Das dialektische Nebeneinander von neuesten Richtungen wie Aleatorik (John Cage) und Konstruktivismus (Milton Babbitt) ist ebenfalls von Strawinskis Impressionismus im Gegensatz zu Schönbergs Serialismus abzuleiten. Es sind die Vertreter der sogenannten ‘stochastischen’ Musik – einer auf Wahrscheinlichkeitsberechnungen basierenden Improvisation – wie Xenakis und Penderecki, die sich heute um eine Synthese von Aleatorik und Konstruktivismus bemühen. Die Geschichte einzelner realistischer Elemente ist eines, und die Normen des Realismus ein anderes; und selbst der tiefere Blick in die Vergangenheit vermag die Notwendigkeit einer systematischen Beschreibung nicht aus der Welt zu schaffen,

schrieb Peter Demetz in einem Beitrag zur Definition des literarischen 39 Realismus. Im musikalischen Bereich sollte es auch nicht anders sein. Nach unserem Überblick scheint jedoch die Annahme berechtigt, daß auf musikästhetischem Gebiet die Fragestellung etwas anderes sein muß. Hier handelt es sich nicht so sehr um das Was als vielmehr darum, ob und wie Realismus in der Musik überhaupt möglich ist. Nach dem Stichwort ‘Realismus’ sucht man sogar in manchen musikalischen Fachlexika umsonst. Der vernünftigste Definitionsversuch, den ich ausfindig machen konnte, illustriert zugleich die semantische Verwirrung, die auf diesem Gebiet herrscht:40

39

Peter Demetz, Zur Definition des Realismus. In: Literatur und Kritik, 16/17 (1967), 336. 40

Nicolas Slonimsky, Music since 1900 (New York, 41971), 1485.

93

Generally speaking, the term realism as applied to music describes a type of programmatic romanticism, which is intended to picture a landscape or represent a psychological state. Realism has aquired a special meaning in the nomenclature of Soviet music, usually appearing in the dual formula of socialist realism whose function it is to give a realistic reflection of contemporary life from the standpoint of Socialist society.

Doch auch diese Definition bleibt letztlich ein vages Konglomerat von Begriffen, die kaum zu einem einheitlichen Realismuskonzept zusammengefaßt werden können. Was den sozialistisch-realistischen Realismus in der Musik betrifft, so halte ich ihn für eine pseudo-ästhetische Fiktion, von Parteifunktionären erfunden, um eine Niveausenkung des allgemeinen Musikverständnisses herbeizuführen und diese im nachhinein didaktisch legitimieren zu können. Das Ergebnis der Implementierung dieser Fiktion in der heutigen sozialistischen Musik ergibt Symptome einer verhängnisvollen Krankheit: bornierte Programmhaftigkeit, Verdünnung des musikalischen Materials, kategorische Ablehnung von Neuerungsversuchen und damit Stagnation. Außerhalb des sozialistisch-realistischen Kontexts sehe ich die Chancen für eine überzeugende Begriffsbestimmung des musikalischen Realismus womöglich noch weniger ‘realistisch’. Aus dem westlichen Lager ist mir als wissenschaftlich ernst zu nehmender Beitrag nur ein Aufsatz des amerikanischen Musikologen Norman Cazden bekannt, der sich mit Termini wie „Naturalismus und Piktoralismus“ in der Musik beschäftigt:41 Realism in music is the totality of concrete reference to the common experience of human beings as embodied in all the formal elements of musical art. It is the inner content of music, not the exterior coating. Realism is therefore the opposite of naturalism, wherein musical form is denied for the sake of a surface imitation; and of pictorialism, wherein a chance verbal connection relates essentially unlike qualities.

41

Cazden, Towards a Theory of Realism in Music, 150.

94

Es ist Cazdens Verdienst, mit Nachdruck auf die ästhetische Minderwertigkeit naturalistischer Imitationsexperimente hingewiesen zu haben. Soviel hat aber 1818 schon Goethe erkannt, als er fragte, „was der Musiker malen“ dürfe:42 Nichts und Alles. Nichts, wie er es durch die äußern Sinne empfängt darf er nachahmen; aber alles darf er darstellen was er bei diesen äußern Sinneseinwirkungen empfindet. Den Donner in der Musik nachzuahmen ist keine Kunst, aber der Musiker, der das Gefühl in mir erregt als wenn ich donnern hörte würde sehr schätzbar sein. Das Innere in Stimmung zu setzen, ohne die gemeinen äußern Mittel zu brauchen ist der Musik großes und edles Vorrecht.

42

J. W. Goethe, Briefe (München, 1958), 827.

Kreativität als Selbstüberwindung Thomas Manns permanente ‚Wagner-Krise’ (1976) Wenn unter Literaturforschern und -kritikern von den mannigfaltigen Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Literatur und Musik die Rede ist – und dieses komplexe, bisher viel gescholtene Grenzgebiet der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft wird in letzter Zeit mit kompetenterer musikalischer Sachkenntnis zum legitimen Studiengegenstand erhoben1 –, fällt unumgänglich der Name Thomas Mann. Sein von Musik und Musikern inspiriertes Gesamtwerk liefert tatsächlich wie kein anderes in der Moderne Paradebeispiele für die seltene Fähigkeit eines Prosaschriftstellers, in seiner dichterischen Praxis die Schwesterkünste fruchtbar miteinander in Verbindung zu bringen und auf weltliterarischem Niveau erzähltechnisch zu integrieren. Thomas Mann war schon zu Lebzeiten ein Lieblingsgegenstand der Kritik; und die neuesten bibliographischen Monumente in Ost und West bestätigen nur allzu deutlich den dubiosen Umfang einer Sekundärliteratur kaum überschaubaren Ausmaßes.2 Infolgedessen dürfte man annehmen, daß unter solchen quantitativ ‚günstigen’ Umständen das als allgemein für zentral anerkannte Thema ‚Thomas Mann und die Musik’ schon umsichtig genug durchleuchtet wurde. Abgesehen 1

Vgl. z. B. Ulrich Weisstein: Einführung in die Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Stuttgart 1968, bes. Kapitel VIII (Exkurs: Wechselseitige Erhellung der Künste); Comparative Literature, 22 (1970), H. 2: Special Number on Music and Literature; und Calvin S. Brown: Musico-Literary Research in the Last Two Decades, in: Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, 19 (1970), S. 5-27.

2

Klaus W. Jonas: Die Thomas-Mann-Literatur. Band I: Bibliographie der Kritik 1896 bis 1955, Berlin 1972, 458 Seiten; und Harry Matter: Die Literatur über Thomas Mann. Eine Bibliographie 1898-1969, Berlin und Weimar 1972, 2 Bde., 701 und 637 Seiten.

96

von der wertvollen, heute noch richtungweisenden, wiewohl im großen Ganzen doch ergänzungsbedürftigen Pionierarbeit von Viktor Žmegač, Die Musik im Schaffen Thomas Manns,3 ist das aber nicht der Fall: eine der Gewichtigkeit des Themas entsprechende Zusammenschau ist noch nicht geleistet worden. Als Ausgangspunkt dazu wäre nach wie vor „ein spezieller Forschungsbericht wünschenswert“4, der die sonstigen, eher spärlichen Einzelveröffentlichungen zu den musikbezogenen Teilaspekten des erzählerischen und essayistischen Werkes sichtet. Solch ein Bericht ist im begrenzten Raum des gegenwärtigen Beitrags nicht einmal in Ansätzen möglich. Statt einer verallgemeinernden und notwendigerweise skizzenhaften Charakterisierung von noch nicht genügend ausgereiften Einzelpositionen erscheint es hier eher wünschenswert und fruchtbar, mich auf einen einzigen, jedoch das Gesamtwerk betreffenden zentralen Problemkomplex zu konzentrieren: nämlich auf das viel umstrittene Wagner-Bild Thomas Manns5. Eine nüchtern und kritisch angelegte Neuauswertung von Thomas Manns Wagner-Erlebnis ist beim heutigen Stand der Forschung uner3

Zagreb 1959 (künftig: Žmegač).

4

Herbert Lehnert: Thomas-Mann-Forschung. Ein Bericht. Stuttgart 1968 (künftig: Lehnert), S. 114.

5

Vgl. dazu u. a. Anna Jacobson: Das Wagner-Erlebnis Thomas Manns, in: Germanic Review, 5 (1930), S. 166-179; Martin Gregor: Wagner und kein Ende, Bayreuth 1958 (künftig: Gregor); Werner Vortriede: Richard Wagners “Tod in Venedig”, in: Euphorion, 52 (1959), S. 378-396; William Blissett: Thomas Mann: The Last Wagnerite, in: Germanic Review, 35 (1960), S. 50-76; Willi Schuh: Zum Geleit, in: Thomas Mann, Wagner und unsere Zeit, Frankfurt/M. 1963 (künftig: Schuh); Jürgen Mainka: Eine Polemik um Thomas Manns Wagnerbild, in: Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft, 5 (1963), S. 231-234; Andreas Oplatka: Thomas Mann und Richard Wagner, in: Schweizer Monatshefte, 45 (1965), S. 672-679; Gerhard Kluge: Das Leitmotiv als Sinnträger in „Der kleine Herr Friedemann“, in: JDSG, 11 (1967), S. 484-526; Hans Wysling: ‘Mythos und Psychologie’ bei Thomas Mann, in: E.T.H. Kultur und Staatswissenschaftliche Schriften, H. 130, Zürich 1969, S. 5-23; Erwin Koppen: Vom Decadent zum Proto-Hitler. Wagner-Bilder Thomas Manns, in: Thomas Mann und die Tradition, hg. v. Peter Pütz, Frankfurt/M. 1971, S. 201-224; Erwin Koppen: Dekadenter Wagnerismus. Studien zur europäischen Literatur des Fin de siècle, Berlin 1973; sowie Hans Vaget und Dagmar Barnouw: Thomas Mann. Studien zu Fragen der Rezeption, Bern und Frankfurt/M. 1975 (künftig: Vaget), S. 3-81.

97

läßlich geworden. Mit Recht wendet sich nämlich die neueste Thomas-Mann-Kritik mehr und mehr dem noch nicht erschöpfend genug beleuchteten Frühwerk zu, wo unter den vielfältigen „rückwärtigen Bindungen“6 Thomas Manns diejenige an Wagner die vielleicht bedeutendste und am meisten werkbezogene Einflußwirkung ausübt. Wie Hans Rudolf Vaget in einem vor kurzem erschienenen und für unser Thema unentbehrlichen Beitrag „‚Goethe oder Wagner’. Studien zu Thomas Manns Goethe-Rezeption 1905-1912“ überzeugend betont, ist „Wagners Bedeutung für Thomas Mann [...] um so höher einzuschätzen, als er mit Wagners Musik früher vertraut wurde als mit den Schriften Schopenhauers und Nietzsches. Nicht diese, sondern eben Wagners Musik stand als künstlerisches Vorbild über den frühen Werken.“ Mit sicherem Urteil weist Vaget im weiteren auf die korrekturbedürftige Tatsache hin, daß „diese frühe Orientierung an Wagner [...] in der Thomas-Mann-Forschung gewöhnlich verkannt oder auf das simple Klischee von der Nachahmung der Wagnerschen Leitmotivtechnik reduziert“ wird7. Der Nachweis von Wagner-Spuren im Frühwerk ist keineswegs neu, wurde aber bisher noch nicht ausreichend mit genauen, auf die fiktionsbildende und erzähltechnische Funktion von Wagners Kunst eingehenden Werkinterpretationen untermauert. Eine besonders lohnende Aufgabe wäre z. B., die in Struktur, Wortwahl und Wortschatz auf den ganzen Roman übergreifende Textstelle mit Hannos Wagnerischer Klavierimprovisation am Schluß der Buddenbrooks ausführlich zu untersuchen. Diese virtuose, in ihrer Mehrschichtigkeit Wagners musikalische Technik ins Epische transponierende Musikbeschreibung spielt nicht nur auf bestimmte Wagner-Opern an und weist eine eigene musikalische Struktur auf, sondern enthält auch stichwortartig zusammenfassende Charakterisierungen typischer Merkmale der vier 6

Thomas Mann: Gesammelte Werke in dreizehn Bänden, Frankfurt/M. 1974 (künftig nach Bandnummer und Seitenzahl zitiert), XI, 312.

7

Vaget, S. 17.

98

dargestellten Buddenbrook-Generationen, der Hauptfiguren und der wichtigsten Ereignisse in der Familiengeschichte. Statt den Text als Ausgangspunkt zu nehmen, unterliegen die meisten Mann-Interpreten heute noch der nur allzu verständlichen Verlockung, sich durch die treffend formulierten, wiewohl häufig mit Absicht vagen, kontradiktorischen Kommentare dieses ausgesprochen selbstdeutungsfreudigen Autors irreführen zu lassen. Eine ähnliche interpretatorische Aporie herrscht in bezug auf Wagner-Spuren im Spätwerk. Das überrascht nicht, da in der Forschungsliteratur die sachlichen, analytischen Einsichten meistens zugunsten der weniger konkret werkbezogenen, eher verallgemeinernden Meinungen übersehen oder unterdrückt werden. Es ist z. B. bedauerlich, daß Willi Schuhs hellsichtiger Hinweis von 1963 offenbar ignoriert wurde: Wer den Sinn des Wörtleins ‚und’ zwischen den Namen Richard Wagner und Thomas Mann ergründen will, muß den Spuren der Wagner-Bewunderung und der Wagner-Kritik nicht nur im essayistischen Werk Thomas Manns und in den Briefen, sondern auch im dichterischen Werk [...] aufmerksam nachgehen.8

Daß gerade Wagner bisher in der textorientierten Thomas-MannForschung ein Schattendasein führte, ist vielleicht kein Zufall, besonders wenn man bedenkt, daß Herbert Lehnerts 1968 mit der Autorität eines Experten apodiktisch formulierte Bemerkung vorschnell und ungeprüft akzeptiert wurde: „Im ganzen kann man sagen, daß ein Durchgang durch Thomas Manns Werk unter dem Gesichtspunkt Wagner wesentlich unbefriedigender ist als einer unter dem Gesichtspunkt Nietzsches oder Goethes“9. Dieser Satz steht in Lehnerts verdienstvollem Standardwerk Thomas-Mann-Forschung. Ein Bericht, in dem er jedoch an anderer Stelle seine Musikkenntnisse offen als unzureichend bezeichnet:

8

Schuh, S. 7.

9

Lehnert, S. 100.

99

Mein Urteil ist unsicher in diesem Bereich, aus mehreren Gründen. Spezielle musikologische Kenntnisse fehlen mir, sind aber wohl für einen literarisch-musikalischen Komplex unerläßlich, der an einzelnen Stellen über die Kompetenz des Amateurs hinausgeht, mag auch Thomas Mann im Grunde noch diesen Status behalten haben.10

Wo also wäre der Schlüssel zu einem sachgerechten Verständnis der Thomas Mann-Wagner-Beziehung zu suchen? Sicherlich nicht in den unreflektierten, bloß sensationserregenden Verleumdungen eines Hanjo Kesting, der neulich im Spiegel – sich seiner von der unwissenden Öffentlichkeit gesicherten Narrenfreiheit bewußt – die zwei Namen auf Kosten Nietzsches11 wie folgt miteinander verband: „Was Richard Wagner für die Musik bedeutete, bedeutet – mit allerdings kleinerem Radius – Thomas Mann für die Literatur: die Heraufkunft des Schauspielers“12. Es war doch gerade Wagners unehrliche Schauspielernatur und seine Theatromanie, die Thomas Mann, wie schon vor ihm Nietzsche13, in wiederholten Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Phänomen Wagner auch noch im Doktor Faustus als abstoßend empfunden hatte14. Für unseren Zusammenhang scheint es mir zunächst sinnvoller, die Frage zu stellen, ob wir bei Thomas Mann – wie Hans Vaget es tut – von einer echt empfundenen und bewußt durchgemachten „Wagner-Krise“ zu sprechen und ob wir diese Krise tatsächlich als eine „Entgegensetzung von Wagner und Goethe“15 und eine etwa um das Jahr 1911 – also vor dem Tod in Venedig – angesetzte gleichzeiti10

ebda., S. 114.

11

Vgl. Friedrich Nietzsche: Der Fall Wagner, in: Nietzsche, Werke in drei Bänden, hg. v. Karl Schlechta, München 1966 (künftig: Nietzsche), Bd. II, S. 925. 12

Der Spiegel, H. 22 (26. Mai 1975).

13

Nietzsche, Bd. II, S. 919-923.

14

Bezeichnenderweise kehrt Manns Apostrophierung Wagners u. a. als “gelernter Massenerschütterer” aus dem 1937-Essay “Richard Wagner und der ‘Ring des Nibelungen’” (IX, 505) in der Stockholmer Erstausgabe des Doktor Faustus (1947) wieder (S.100). 15

Vaget, S. 19.

100

ge „Annäherung an Goethe“ und „Distanzierung von Wagner16“ aufzufassen berechtigt sind. Was Thomas Manns Verhältnis zu Goethe angeht, finde ich Vagets sorgfältig dokumentierte Studie vollkommen überzeugend. Aufgrund von analytisch aufgearbeitetem Belegmaterial, welches eine plausible Neuinterpretation des Tod in Venedig einschließt, gelingt es ihm zu beweisen, daß „eine intime Vertrautheit Thomas Manns mit dem Werk Goethes nicht erst 1921/22, sondern schon 1912 vorausgesetzt werden muß“17. So erhellend diese These auch in bezug auf Thomas Manns Goethe-Rezeption sein mag, durch Vagets Beweisführung, Manns gleichzeitige Wagner-Rezeption betreffend, ergibt sich dennoch eine Akzentverschiebung, die nach Klärung verlangt. Die drei Texte aus dem Jahre 1911, die als theoretische Hauptdokumente für Thomas Manns überwundene „Wagner-Krise“ angeführt werden – es sind keine Stellen aus dem Erzählwerk, sondern aus Privatbriefen und aus einem Antwort-Aufsatz auf eine Rundfrage – bezeugen keineswegs eine eindeutige Abrechnung mit dem Phänomen Wagner als Manns Jugendliebe, die von nun an entschieden der Vergangenheit angehört18. Vielmehr bestätigen alle drei Zeugnisse den gleichen „Ausdruck einer enthusiastischen Ambivalenz, von der mein [Thomas Manns] Verhältnis zu Wagner nun einmal bestimmt ist und die man schlecht und recht Leidenschaft nennen könnte“ (X, 928). So nämlich äußert sich noch 1951 der 76jährige Thomas Mann über den Gegenstand seiner Haß-Liebe. Obwohl das Wort „Krise“ tatsächlich fällt, geht selbst aus dem Brief von 1911 an Ernst Bertram klar hervor, daß 16

ebda., S. 24.

17

ebda., S. 59.

18

Vgl. Thomas Mann an Ernst Bertram, 11. Aug. 1911, in: Thomas Mann an Ernst Bertram. Briefe aus den Jahren 1910-1955, hg. v. Inge Jens, Pfullingen, 1960 (künftig: Mann an Bertram), S. 10; Thomas Mann an Julius Bab, 14. Sept. 1911, in: Thomas Mann. Briefe 1889-1936, hg. v. Erika Mann, Frankfurt/M. 1962 (künftig: Br. 1), S. 91; und Thomas Mann: Über die Kunst Richard Wagners, (X, 840-842).

101

was der Merker [die Wiener Zeitschrift, in welcher der Aufsatz von 1911, betitelt ‚Auseinandersetzung mit Richard Wagner’, erstmals abgedruckt wurde] meine [Thomas Manns] ‚Abrechnung mit Wagner’ nennt, die eigentlich unverantwortlich skizzenhafte und journalistische Abfertigung eines Gegenstandes [ist], den auf eine gründliche und entscheidende Weise zu behandeln eigentlich der Augenblick gekommen wäre. [...] Von der Krise, in der ich mich dieser Kunst gegenüber befinde, gibt das Aufsätzchen keine Vorstellung [...] Mit der Zeit werde ich wohl ruhiger und gerechter denken lernen.19

Der Ertrag von Thomas Manns intensiv reflektierter Auseinandersetzung mit Wagners Gesamtwerk und dessen Wirkung kommt in der Tat erst später, nach zwanzig Jahren weiterer Beschäftigung und wiederholten Gelegenheitsäußerungen ähnlich ambivalenten Inhalts, in den zwei groß angelegten Wagner-Essays: „Leiden und Größe Richard Wagners“ (1933) und „Richard Wagner und der ‚Ring des Nibelungen’“ (1937). Die Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen von 1918 sind ebensowenig frei von Manns andauernder „Wagner-Krise“ wie das Erzählwerk selber. In diesem Zusammenhang sollte es hier genügen, auf den bedeutungsschweren Romantitel und auf Settembrinis musikbezogene Bemerkungen im Zauberberg zu verweisen, von den Spuren tiefverwurzelter Wagnerscher Inspiration in der Gesamtstruktur und den thematischen und erzähltechnischen Einzelheiten der JosephTetralogie nicht zu reden. Auf die Frage von Wagners übergreifender Bedeutung auch für das Spätwerk, insbesondere im Doktor Faustus, komme ich noch zurück. Wesentlich problematischer, gleichzeitig aber auch lohnender für eine unvoreingenommene Gesamtinterpretation des Mann-WagnerVerhältnisses, ist die Stellungnahme zum Thema „Goethe oder Wagner“. Die auch von Vaget zitierte Schlüsselstelle aus einem Brief Thomas Manns von 1911 an Julius Bab lautet: Die Deutschen sollte man vor die Entscheidung stellen: Goethe oder Wagner. Beides zusammen geht nicht. Aber ich fürchte, sie würden ‚Wagner’ sagen. Oder doch vielleicht nicht? Sollte nicht doch vielleicht jeder Deutsche im Grunde seines Herzens wissen, daß Goethe ein unvergleichlich verehrungs- und vertrauens19

Mann an Bertram, S. 10.

102

würdigerer Führer und Nationalheld ist, als dieser schnupfende Gnom aus Sachsen mit dem Bombentalent und dem schäbigen Charakter?20

Vagets Belege und Kommentare zu dieser frappanten Briefstelle sind im einzelnen durchaus plausibel. Seine Schlußfolgerung jedoch, daß u. a. aufgrund dieser unpersönlich gehaltenen, wiewohl rhetorisch zugespitzten Entgegensetzung von Wagner und Goethe Mann selber sich zu einer Entscheidung für Goethe durchzwingt21, ist beim Mangel an beweiskräftigerer Evidenz in Frage zu stellen. Vielmehr drücken diese Sätze absichtlich ausgewogener Prägung die gleiche Ambivalenz der Mannschen Position Wagner gegenüber aus, von der schon vorhin die Rede war. Es führt eher zu einem verwirrungstiftenden Mißverständnis der Eigenart des Mannschen Schaffensprozesses, wenn man seine konsequent aufrechterhaltene und bewußt relativierende Dauerposition eines „Sowohl-als-auch“ – besonders in Sachen Wagner – als ein chronologisch festlegbares, kategorisches „EntwederOder“ interpretiert22. Ohne Zweifel wird in diesem Brief die Quintessenz von Thomas Manns nie zu seiner eigenen Befriedigung gelöstem Hauptdilemma prägnant wiedergegeben; ein eigentlich unlösbares Dilemma, das sein schriftstellerisches Schaffen im Zeichen seiner Rezeption der Wagner-Kritik Nietzsches zeitlebens hin- und herschwankend begleitet. Die Tatsache aber, daß Mann „die boshaften Ausfälle [Nietzsches] gegen Wagner [...] nur als die negative Seite einer andauernden Wagner-Leidenschaft [deutet], in der man nicht unbedingt einen Bruch sehen muß“23, gilt in gleichem Maße für seine eigene künstlerische Praxis, für seine eigenen Ausfälle gegen Wagner.

20

Br. 1, S. 91.

21

Vaget, S. 19.

22

Vgl. dazu Helmut Koopmann. Thomas Mann. Theorie und Praxis der epischen Ironie, in: Deutsche Romantheorien, hg. v. Reinhold Grimm, Frankfurt/M. und Bonn 1968, S. 280. 23

Gregor, S. 30.

103

Die polemische Alternative Goethe oder Wagner stellt sich Thomas Mann wiederholt nach Nietzsches Muster, aber immer nur als Selbstprovokation, als Selbstklarifikation. Was sein Werk angeht, bleibt er durchwegs darum bemüht, beide Riesenkonstellationen, Goethe und Wagner – wie kontradiktorisch diese Gegenüberstellung auch sein mag – nebeneinander in seine Fiktionswelt zu integrieren. Noch 1937 im Essay „Richard Wagner und der ‚Ring des Nibelungen’“ formuliert er unmißverständlich: Denn dies beides sind ja wir, – Goethe und Wagner, beides ist Deutschland. Es sind die höchsten Namen für zwei Seelen in unserer Brust, die sich voneinander trennen wollen und deren Widerstreit wir doch als ewig fruchtbar, als Lebensquell inneren Reichtums immer aufs neue empfinden lernen müssen [...] (IX, 507)

Zu einer endgültigen Wahl zwischen Goethe und Wagner, auch wenn er diese Wahl aufrichtig treffen wollte, konnte er sich nie völlig durchringen. Für den repräsentierenden und repräsentativsten deutschen Schriftsteller des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts war Goethe das überlebensgroße künstlerische Vorbild. Als Gegenpol, als eine Art AntiVorbild, bewunderte Thomas Mann jedoch gleichzeitig – in diesem Fall mit einer kritischen Leidenschaft wider Willen – „diesen schnupfenden Gnom aus Sachsen mit dem Bombentalent und dem schäbigen Charakter“, dessen musikdramatische Monumentalkunst „so stimulierend wie sonst nichts in der Welt“ (X, 840) eine dauernde schöpferische Faszination auf ihn als Epiker ausübte. Thomas Manns Selbststilisierung als des Goethe der Moderne ist daher ohne die unauslöschliche Prägung durch sein Wagner-Erlebnis nicht zu verstehen; sie wurde von Anfang an von einer bewußt angestrebten Selbstüberwindung, ja von einer schöpferisch befruchtenden, fortwährenden Verdrängung des Phänomens Richard Wagner begleitet. Den vielleicht schlagkräftigsten Beweis für Thomas Manns permanente „Wagner-Krise“ im Spätwerk liefert der Roman Doktor Faustus. Erstaunlicherweise ist dieser grundlegende Aspekt des Romans in der Kritik bisher fast völlig unbeachtet geblieben. Unter renommierten Thomas-Mann-Kennern sind es nur wenige wie Hans Mayer, Martin

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Gregor, Jonas Lesser und Peter Altenberg – und ihre scharfsinnigen Werkanalysen aus den fünfziger und sechziger Jahren werden in der neuesten Forschung kaum mehr rezipiert24 –, die Joseph Kermans zweifellos zutreffender Behauptung zustimmen würden, daß „Manns novel Doktor Faustus [...] the most impressively Wagnerian work of our time“25 sei. Kermans Adjektiv „Wagnerian“ impliziert nicht nur Thomas Manns schöpferisch assimilierende Anwendung von Wagners Kompositionstechnik und musikdramatischen Darstellungsmitteln. Vielmehr weist es auch darauf hin, daß der ganze Roman stillschweigend um und gegen das Kulturphänomen Richard Wagner konstruiert ist und sich – wenn auch immer wieder nur als indirektes Gegenbeispiel – mit dessen überwältigender Nachwirkung konsequent auseinandersetzt. Wagners Gestalt erweist sich daher als die hintergründige, für die musikgeschichtlich orientierte Romanthematik unentbehrliche Verbindungsfigur zwischen den zwei sonst im Doktor Faustus dominierenden Musikergestalten: Beethoven und Leverkühn. Es handelt sich im Faustus-Roman um einen Musiker, dessen kompositorische Neuerungsversuche, nachromantische Emotionsbeladenheit überwindend, das extrem-nüchtern Esoterische und Konstruktive in der Entwicklung der modernen Musik paradigmatisch darstellen sollen. Wagnerisch also können Leverkühns Werke wohl kaum bezeichnet werden. Ebenfalls muß man zugeben, daß direkte Hinweise auf Wagner im Roman an die eindrucksvolle Zahl derer auf Beethoven bei weitem nicht heranreichen26. Vielleicht sind es eben diese und ähnliche, nur scheinbar beweiskräftige Indizien, die auch die zuverlässigsten Kritiker wiederholt zu Fehlinterpretationen der Wagnerschen 24

Vgl. Hans Mayer: Thomas Mann. Werk und Entwicklung, Berlin 1950; Gregor, op. cit.; Jonas Lesser, Thomas Mann in der Epoche seiner Vollendung, München 1952; und Peter Altenberg: Die Romane Thomas Manns, Bad Homburg vor der Höhe 1961. 25 26

Joseph Kerman: Opera as Drama, New York 1952, S. 193.

Vgl. dazu Gunilla Bergsten: Musical Symbolism in Thomas Manns „Doktor Faustus“, in: Orbis litterarum, 14 (1959), S. 206-214.

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Präsenz im Doktor Faustus verleiten. Viktor Žmegač findet z. B. den Umstand bemerkenswert, daß das Musikdrama Wagners so gar keinen Einfluß auf Leverkühn ausübt, daß es nicht einmal erwähnt wird. Stellt man nämlich auch noch die wenigen, ausgesprochen kühlen Bemerkungen über Wagner daneben, so gewinnt man mit Recht den Eindruck, daß die Bayreuther Musik [...] dem geistigen Stil der Faustuswelt nicht zu entsprechen vermochte und demzufolge aus ihrem innersten Kreis ausgeschlossen blieb.27

Beträchtliche Wagner-Spuren vermißt auch Gunilla Bergsten: Diese Jugendliebe Manns [d. h. Wagner] wird im Roman zwar an einigen Stellen genannt, aber nur gleichsam nebenher, was erstaunlich scheinen mag, wenn man den Wagnerkult Manns in seinen früheren Werken in Betracht zieht. In den Buddenbrooks, im Tristan, in Leiden und Größe Richard Wagners u. a. tritt Wagner nicht nur als der Lieblingskomponist Manns auf, sondern auch als eine der wichtigsten Persönlichkeiten im geistigen und musikalischen Leben Deutschlands, und es liegt kein Grund zu der Annahme vor, daß Mann seine Meinung in dieser Hinsicht grundlegend geändert habe.28

Erwin Koppen, Autor der bisher aufschlußreichsten komparatistischen Studie des europäischen Wagnerismus29, urteilt ebenso unentschlossen: Es ist merkwürdig, daß Thomas Mann [seine] politische Auseinandersetzung mit Wagner nicht in seinem erzählenden Werk fortgesetzt hat, obwohl sich der nun entstehende „Doktor Faustus“ dazu angeboten hätte. Die Gestalt Adrian Leverkühns trägt nicht die Züge Wagners, und es scheint auch so, als habe Thomas Mann Wagner aus dem „Doktor Faustus“ geradezu herausgehalten.30

27

Žmegač, S. 80.

28

Gunilla Bergsten, Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus. Untersuchungen zu den Quellen und zur Struktur des Romans, Lund 1963, S. 182. 29

Erwin Koppen: Dekadenter Wagnerismus. Studien zur europäischen Literatur des Fin de siècle, Berlin 1973.

30

Erwin Koppen: Vom Décadent zum Proto-Hitler. Wagner-Bilder Thomas Manns, in: Thomas Mann und die Tradition, hg. v. Peter Pütz, Frankfurt/M. 1971, S. 221.

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Auch wenn er die entsprechenden Wagner-Spuren noch nicht erkennt, ahnt Koppen den Zusammenhang zwischen der politischen Thematik des Romans als symbolischer Darstellung der barbarischen Elemente des Nazismus und Thomas Manns Auslegung Wagners als künstlerisch verklärter Manifestation der dunklen, letzten Endes zerstörerischen Kraft dionysischer Berauschtheit. In seiner 1974 erschienenen Gesamtdeutung Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition gelingt es T. J. Reed – ohne jedoch, daß er Wagners erzählerische Funktion im Roman ausdrücklich wahrnimmt –, die einleuchtende, wenn auch provozierend anmutende These zu formulieren, die in der Forschung vorerst wenig Zustimmung ernten wird: „This is the bedrock of Doktor Faustus: not the Faust myth, but the theory of the Dionysiac“31. Ohne Zweifel erschließt Reeds These interpretatorisches Neuland, wobei der Einbezug von Wagner als hinter den Kulissen anwesendem Katalysator des Dämonisch-Dionysischen im Roman allerdings noch anhand von relevanten Textbeispielen zu belegen wäre. Es muß hier genügen, wenn ich als Ansatz zu einer ausführlichen Analyse auf einige beziehungsreiche Stellen verweise, die die ständige und subtil verschleierte Präsenz Wagners im Doktor Faustus deutlich erscheinen lassen. „Diejenigen Prosawerke, die Wagner nicht wörtlich und ausdrücklich erwähnen, sind Kunstwerke im Vermeiden und lassen ihn gegenwärtiger erscheinen denn je.“32 So ein „Kunstwerk im Vermeiden“ ist Manns Doktor Faustus und in solchem Sinne spürt man Wagnerisches Fluidum überall im Roman. Schon früh in der Lebensgeschichte des „deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn“ sind es die bemerkenswerte Wortwahl und aufs erste befremdende Ausdrucksweise des Erzählers, die in uns ahnungslosen Lesern Verdacht erregen. Zeitblom läßt Jonathan Leverkühn, Adrians Vater, vor unseren Augen „die elementa spekulieren“ (VI, 22). Über „Exotische Falter und Meergetier“, von 31

T. J. Reed: Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition, Oxford 1974, S. 396.

32

Gregor, S. 17.

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Vater Leverkühns „Hang zur Zauberei“ und „zweideutigen Launen, halbverhüllten und sonderbar ins Ungewisse weisenden Allusionen“ (VI, 22), von der „Zeichenschrift auf den Schalen gewisser Muscheln“ und ihrem „Warnungsprunk“ (VI, 25), von einem „werkmeisterlichen Zwischengott“ und der „Eitelkeit des Sichtbaren“ (VI, 26) wird da geredet, ehe wir auf einen zusammenfassenden Absatz stoßen, der indirekt auf die paradoxe Eigenart von Wagners Artistik anspielt und in welchem kaum verkennbar aus der Parsifal- und Tristan-Welt vertraute Requisiten aufgezählt werden: Zuweilen war sie tückisch, diese Außenästhetik; denn gewisse Kegelschnecken, reizend asymmetrische, in ein geädertes Blaßrosa oder weißgeflecktes Honigbraun getauchte Erscheinungen, waren wegen ihres Giftbisses berüchtigt, – und überhaupt war [...] eine gewisse Anrüchigkeit oder phantastische Zweideutigkeit von dieser ganzen wunderlichen Sektion des Lebens nicht fernzuhalten. Eine sonderbare Ambivalenz der Anschauung hatte sich immer in dem sehr verschiedenartigen Gebrauch kundgegeben, den man von den Prunkgeschöpfen machte. Sie hatten im Mittelalter zum stehenden Inventar der Hexenküchen und AlchimistenGewölbe gehört und waren als die passenden Gefäße für Gifte und Liebestränke befunden worden. Andererseits und zugleich aber hatten sie beim Gottesdienst zu Muschelschreinen für Hostien und Reliquien und sogar als Abendmahlskelche gedient. Wie vieles berührt sich hier – Gift und Schönheit, Gift und Zauberei, aber auch Zauberei und Liturgie. Wenn wir es nicht dachten, so gaben Jonathan Leverkühns Kommentare es uns doch unbestimmt zu empfinden. (VI, 26)

Später in Kaisersaschern, mitten in einem seiner großartigen Vorträge, läßt Kretzschmar den Namen Kundry erklingen, der „Büßerin in der Hölle des Zauberweibes“, „die nicht wolle, was sie tue, und weiche Arme der Lust um den Nacken des Toren schlinge“ (VI, 85). In dieser Charakterisierung fällt es nicht schwer, die symbolische Vorausweisung auf die Versucher-Verführer-Rolle der Hetaera Esmeralda zu erkennen, die Adrian bei ihrer ersten Begegnung in Halle „mit dem nackten Arm seine Wange streicheln“ wird (VI, 198) – eine subtile Manifestation des Motivs der geheimnisvollen Identität als assoziative Erzähltechnik mit Hilfe der Wagnerischen Schlüsselfigur. Eine andere typische Stelle enthält Leverkühns Beschreibung der LeonorenOuvertüre Nr. 3, wo Wagner – diesmal ungenannt – gegen Beethoven ausgespielt wird:

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Lieber Freund[...], das ist ein vollkommenes Musikstück! Klassizismus, – ja; raffiniert ist es in keinem Zuge, aber es ist groß. Ich sage nicht: denn es ist groß, weil es auch raffinierte Größe gibt, aber die ist im Grunde viel familiärer. (VI, 107)

Wessen „raffinierte Größe“ hier gemeint ist, bedarf wohl keiner weiteren Erklärung. Das eindeutigste Beispiel für Adrians ironisch-kritische Stellungnahme zu Wagner bringt Kapitel XV, mit der „undeklarierten Nachbildung des dritten Meistersinger-Vorspiels“ (XI, 196), die ich an anderem Ort schon ausführlich interpretiert habe33. Unmittelbar auf diese meisterhafte Beschreibung eines vorhandenen Musikstücks folgt eine der häufig zitierten Kernstellen des Romans: „Warum müssen fast alle Dinge mir als ihre eigene Parodie erscheinen? Warum muß es mir vorkommen, als ob fast alle, nein, alle Mittel und Konvenienzen der Kunst heute nur noch zur Parodie taugten?“ (VI, 180). Parodie also erfüllt im Doktor Faustus eine Doppelfunktion: Einerseits fungiert sie als ein auf Wagners Kunst bezogenes Zentralmotiv innerhalb des Romans, andererseits aber verkörpert sie ein fruchtbares Stilmittel, durch welches der junge Adrian das Phänomen Wagner assimilierend bewältigen und auch überwinden kann; ein Phänomen, das zur Ausprägung der schöpferischen Physiognomie Leverkühns sowie auch Thomas Manns entscheidend beigetragen hat. Keineswegs überrascht es daher, wenn der junge Leverkühn dennoch offen zugibt, „daß die ganze deutsche Musikentwicklung zu dem Wort-Ton-Drama Wagners hinstrebe und ihr Ziel darin finde“ (VI, 218), obwohl er selber darüber hinaus will und seine Musik für Love’s Labour’s Lost „so unwagnerisch wie möglich, der Natur-Dämonie und dem mythischen Pathos am allerentferntesten“ (VI, 218) zu komponieren versucht. Übrigens ist es kein Zufall, daß Adrian für seinen Opernstoff auf Shakespeare zurückgreift: Beim Abschluß der Komposition von Leverkühns Love’s Labour’s Lost und Wagners Das Liebesverbot (1836) sind beide Kom33

Siehe Steven Paul Scher: Verbal Music in German Literature, New Haven and London 1968, S. 106-142.

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ponisten dreiundzwanzig Jahre alt, und Wagners Stoff fußt ebenfalls auf Shakespeare (Measure for Measure). Aber selbst über die thematische Ähnlichkeit hinaus ist eine tiefere Affinität erkennbar zwischen Wagners Operabuffa-Fassung von Shakespeares ursprünglich düsterem Stück und Leverkühns Bemühungen, den Geist echter Shakespearescher Komik in seiner Vertonung neu zu beleben. Immer wieder begegnen wir Schlüsselstellen im Roman, die zwar verschleiert, aber dennoch unmißverständlich auf Manns kritischambivalente Wagner-Rezeption und deren bewußte, in Erzählfiktion sublimierte Verdrängung verweisen. Hierher gehören z. B. Adrians wichtige Bemerkungen während der Komposition seiner Gestaromanorum-Musik über die Durchbruch-Idee und den von Nietzsche herrührenden Erlöser-Gedanken34: Wem also der Durchbruch gelänge aus geistiger Kälte in eine Wagniswelt neuen Gefühls, ihn sollte man wohl den Erlöser der Kunst nennen. Erlösung [...]. ein romantisches Wort; und ein Harmoniker-Wort, das Handlungswort für die Kadenz-Seligkeit der harmonischen Musik. Ist es nicht komisch, daß die Musik sich eine Zeitlang als Erlösungsmittel empfand, während sie doch selbst, wie alle Kunst, der Erlösung bedarf [...] (VI, 428)

Folglich verwundert es dann wenig, wenn Leverkühn später erneut erklärt, die Konzeption des Schlusses seiner Apocalypsis cum figuris „sei weit entfernt von romantischer Erlösungsmusik“ (VI, 479). Um abschließend noch einmal kurz auf die entscheidende Frage „Goethe oder Wagner“ zurückzukommen, ist es vielleicht nicht abwegig, Thomas Manns oben erwähnte „Auseinandersetzung mit Richard Wagner“ von 1911 mit einer Leverkühn-Aussage verblüffend ähnlichen Inhalts direkt in Verbindung zu setzen. Die Stelle von 1911 lautet: Denke ich aber an das Meisterwerk des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, so schwebt mir etwas vor, was sich von dem Wagner’schen sehr wesentlich und, wie ich glaube, vorteilhaft unterscheidet, – irgend etwas ausnehmend Logisches, Formvolles und

34

Nietzsche, Bd. II, S. 908.

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Klares, etwas zugleich Strenges und Heiteres, von nicht geringerer Willensanspannung als jenes, aber von kühlerer, vornehmerer und selbst gesunderer Geistigkeit, etwas, das seine Größe nicht im Barock-Kolossalischen und seine Schönheit nicht im Rausche sucht, – eine neue Klassizität, dünkt mich, muß kommen. (X, 842)

Im Vergleich dazu Adrian: Die ganze Lebensstimmung der Kunst [...] wird sich ändern, und zwar ins HeiterBescheidenere, – es ist unvermeidlich, und es ist ein Glück. Viel melancholische Ambition wird von ihr abfallen und eine neue Unschuld, ja Harmlosigkeit ihr Teil sein. Die Zukunft wird in ihr, sie selbst wird wieder in sich die Dienerin sehen an einer Gemeinschaft, die weit mehr als ‚Bildung’ umfassen und Kultur nicht haben, vielleicht aber eine sein wird. Wir stellen es uns nur mit Mühe vor, und doch wird es das geben und wird das Natürliche sein: eine Kunst ohne Leiden, seelisch gesund, unfeierlich, untraurig-zutraulich, eine Kunst mit der Menschheit auf du und du [...] (VI, 429)

Die Aussage von 1911 deutet Hans Vaget vor allem als ein Zeichen für Manns Zuwendung zu Goethes Kunstideal, insbesondere zum episch-klassizistischen Stilideal der Wahlverwandtschaften35. Ich neige eher dazu, sie als eine typisch Mannsche ahnungsvolle Vorwegnahme der eigenen epischen Zukunftsmusik der Moderne, des im Doktor Faustus erstrebten Ideals Leverkühnschen Schaffens aufzufassen. Den einzigen Weg zur Verwirklichung dieses Kunstideals sieht der frühe Thomas Mann wie auch sein Adrian Leverkühn in der Überwindung der Kunst Richard Wagners, über welche er 1910 an Hermann Hesse schreibt: [...] diese ebenso exklusive wie demagogische Kunst, die mein Ideal, meine Bedürfnisse vielleicht auf immer beeinflußt, um nicht zu sagen, korrumpiert hat. Nietzsche spricht einmal von Wagners ‚wechselnder Optik’: bald in Hinsicht auf die gröbsten Bedürfnisse, bald in Hinsicht auf die raffiniertesten. Dies ist der Einfluß, den ich meine, und ich weiß nicht, ob ich je den Willen finden werde, mich seiner völlig zu entschlagen.36 35

Vaget, S. 21. Vgl. auch S. 60: „Die anvisierte neue Klassizität kann so als ‚entwagnerte’ epische ‚Musikalität’ verstanden werden.“

36

Thomas Mann. Briefe 1948-1955 und Nachlese, hg. v. Erika Mann, Frankfurt/M. 1965, S. 457.

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Thomas Manns Werk zeugt durchgehend davon, daß er sich von Wagner, trotz und wegen seiner lebenslangen schöpferischen Auseinandersetzung mit ihm, nie endgültig befreien konnte. Wir sind berechtigt, wie ich meine, wenn auch nur dieses eine Mal, ihn beim Wort zu nehmen und ihm zu trauen, wenn er 1942 in einem Brief an Agnes Meyer behauptet: „[...] meine Redeweise über Wagner hat nichts mit Chronologie und Entwicklung zu tun. Es ist und bleibt ‚ambivalent’; und ich kann heute so über ihn schreiben und morgen so.“37

37

Thomas Mann. Briefe 1937-1947, hg. v. Erika Mann, Frankfurt/M. 1963, S. 239.

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Temporality and Mediation W. H. Wackenroder and E. T. A. Hoffmann as Literary Historicists of Music (1976) Among the ingenious inventions of Romanticism, none transformed more radically the predominant modes of speculative thinking and had more lasting consequences for the modern human condition than the idea of history. It need hardly be rehearsed that the nineteenth century witnessed the rise and rule of historical consciousness in the writing of history proper as well as in philosophy, literature, and the arts. Until today we have not ceased to groan under the heavy burden of what classic theorists of widely diverging persuasions like Herder, Ranke, Hegel, Nietzsche, Meinecke, and Troeltsch have said about it all. Although it is difficult to resist the temptation to continue in this melancholy vein and reassess the relevant statements and attitudes, as has been customary in the scholarship dealing with historicism, I shall not succumb. For when we contemplate the problematic and elusive symbiosis of “History and Music”, it becomes obvious that such a catalogue of warriors and their views would not get us very far. Not that we cannot confirm the existence of a body of texts, however slim, which constitutes musical historiography.1 In matters of music, what we lack has not been its history, but the music itself. About the beginnings of music as an artistic product of the imagination we are still very much in the dark; and even the earliest reliably documented musical compositions and events in music history do not emerge until relatively late in Western civilization. There is simply no Homer in 1

For initial orientation see Warren Dwight Allen’s Philosophies of Music History. A Study of General Histories of Music 1600-1960 (New York, 1962).

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music: no scores are preserved which would be comparable in historical significance to surviving examples of Greek and Roman architecture and sculpture, or to the wall paintings of Pompeii. Music that is two or three hundred years old, say Bach or Palestrina, still today we regard without hesitation as old; and it is really hard for us to conceive of the acoustic or iconic representations of anything much older than plainsong. The rest remains subject to speculative prehistory or, literally, silence. If the music-historical horizon is this limited today, it is not surprising that it was even more limited throughout the nineteenth century. As late as 1894 a competent musicologist like Eduard Hanslick could confess in all earnestness: Für die Geschichte beginnt mir unsere lebendige Musik mit Bach und Händel. Für mein Herz beginnt sie erst mit Mozart, gipfelt in Beethoven, Schumann und Brahms.2

Even Nietzsche in his eloquent attack on historicism – a designation he scrupulously avoids, preferring instead to talk about “historische Krankheit” and “Übermaß des Historischen” – even Nietzsche can still recommend music as a panacea against the attitude of contemporary architects and sculptors who tend to see keine neuen Gestalten vor sich, sondern immer nur die alten hinter sich; so dienen sie der Historie, aber nicht dem Leben, und sind tot, bevor sie gestorben sind ... Wahres, fruchtbares Leben, das heißt gegenwärtig allein: Musik.3

Here, as so often elsewhere, Nietzsche displays no willful ignorance of history, but rather betrays himself as a direct descendant of Rousseau and early Romantic aestheticians like Wackenroder, Novalis, and the Schlegels.

2

Eduard Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben (Berlin, 1894), II, 307.

3

Friedrich Nietzsche, Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen (Leipzig, 1930), p. 334.

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Statements such as Hanslick’s and Nietzsche’s should not discourage us, however, from asking the fundamental question: Can we have a meaningful discussion of historicism in music comparable to historicism in literature and in the visual arts? I believe we can. To be sure, while its early stages may be traced back to around 1800 and before, a broader awareness of music as history is a more recent development and does not come to full bloom until after Wagner and Nietzsche. Musical compositions since 1900 attesting to such an awareness readily come to mind: Pfitzner’s opera Palestrina (1917), Prokofief’s Classical Symphony (1917), and numerous works by Mahler, Reger, Stravinsky, Ives, Ravel, or even by such living composers as Carl Orff, Shostakovich, or George Crumb. But renewed attempts to ascertain specific points of tangency between romanticism and historicism have drawn attention at last also to the pre-Wagnerian period. As far as I can see, only during the last decade or so has modern musicological research begun to explore systematically the origins of historicism in music.4 Apart from heated debates on applicable terminology and problems of definition uncannily familiar from other disciplines, the discussion centers on major trends and events reflecting growing preoccupation with older music such as the early nineteenth-century Palestrina renaissance and Bach revival, Mendelssohn’s legendary 1829 performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and the launching after 1820 of the so-called “historical concerts” all over Europe, in addition to which there were more and more organized concerts devoted exclusively to the music of an emerging canon of great composers of the last eighty years, above all Bach, Händel, Gluck, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Weber.5 The growing sense of history on the part of

4

See esp. Walter Salmen, ed., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Musikanschauung im 19. Jahrhundert (Regensburg, 1965) and Walter Wiora, ed., Die Ausbreitung des Historismus über die Musik (Regensburg, 1969).

5

Cf. Monika Lichtenfeld, “Zur Geschichte, Idee und Ästhetik des historischen Konzerts”, in Wiora, pp. 41-53.

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nineteenth-century composers is likewise of recent scholarly interest.6 Louis Spohr’s Sixth Symphony of 1839, entitled Historische Sinfonie im Styl und Geschmack vier verschiedener Zeitabschnitte, constitutes perhaps the most striking document attempting to integrate a pronounced historicist attitude into an actual piece of music. Preoccupation with the historical method of inquiry is here effectively translated into musical practice. Spohr’s obsession with chronology and his strictly diachronic imagination become apparent in the titles assigned to the individual movements: “Erster Satz: Bach-Händelsche Periode, 1720; Larghetto: Haydn-Mozartsche, 1780; Scherzo: Beethovensche, 1810; Finale: Allerneueste Periode, 1840”. Not surprisingly, Spohr’s Concertino for orchestra – also composed in 1839 – consists of two movements and bears the title: Sonst und Jetzt. Finally, in the area of music history proper, more and more critical light is being shed on the work of nineteenth-century historiographers of music like Raphael Georg Kiesewetter, Carl von Winterfeld, August Wilhelm Ambros, François-Joseph Fetis, and some later authors.7 Reading in what seems to be the only book so far on the history of musical historiography claiming comprehensiveness, Warren Dwight Allen’s Philosophies of Music History. A Study of General Histories of Music 1600-1960 (first published in 1939 and reissued in 1962), I came across the following overstatement: No musicological research worthy of the name was carried on from Forkel’s history in 1788 to Kiesewetter’s in 1834 – roughly equivalent to the period of Beethoven’s creative life.8

While Allen’s study is in need of extensive revision, his remark deserves serious reflection and substantiation. Even if it is only partially 6

Cf. Erich Doflein, “Historismus in der Musik”, in Wiora, pp. 9-39.

7

Cf. Bernhard Meier, “Zur Musikhistoriographie des 19 Jahrhunderts”, in Wiora, pp. 169-207.

8

Allen, p. 85.

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true, I believe it is no coincidence that the time span conspicuously lacking genuine historiographical activity in music roughly corresponds to the period we customarily associate with German literary Romanticism and philosophical idealism. Two distinct lines of development may be discerned during this period. First, under the formidable shadow of the two monumental narrative histories of music by Burney and Hawkins (both published in London beginning in 1776 and promptly translated into German), reliable positivists like E. L. Gerber and H. C. Koch resorted to compiling useful lexica and dictionaries of a biographical and bibliographical nature.9 More aesthetically and critically oriented theorists like Sulzer and Herder, on the other hand, adopted and further cultivated the late eighteenth-century British trend in aesthetics: speculation about the correspondences among the fine arts. The culmination of this trend came, as M. H. Abrams has shown, with the emergence of early romantic “melomaniacs” such as Wackenroder, Tieck, Novalis, Schelling, the physicist Ritter, and a little later E. T. A. Hoffmann: they were enamored of the expressive power of pure instrumental music and convinced of the supremacy of music over the other arts. Having discovered in music “the art most immediately expressive of spirit and emotion”10, these melomaniacs upset the well-established eighteenth-century hierarchy of art forms and dislodged the hegemony of ut pictura poesis, only to declare their belief in ut musica poesis.11

9

Charles Burney, A General History of Music from the earliest ages to the present period, 4 vols. (London, 1776 1789); John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, 4 vols. (London, 1776); Ernst Ludwig Gerber, Historischbiographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler (Leipzig, 1790-92); and Heinrich Christoph Koch, Musikalisches Lexikon (Leipzig, 1802). 10

M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York, 1953), p. 50. 11

For a detailed discussion see Steven P. Scher, Verbal Music in German Literature (New Haven and London, 1968), pp. 156-59.

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When we attempt to account for the postulated historiographical hiatus, therefore, it seems to me crucial to focus on Romantic theories of music as they evolved along with Romantic theories of poetry in relation to conceptions of the historical process and to the function of temporal experience for the individual works themselves. Far from being merely ephemeral, time-bound modes of aesthetic perception, the types of historical consciousness inherent in Romantic attitudes toward music proved paradigmatic for theorists and historians of music throughout the nineteenth century. Two prominent Romanticists occupy key positions in our context: W. H. Wackenroder and E. T. A. Hoffmann; I find the interplay of historicism and musical aesthetics as reflected in their views particularly illuminating. The choice of these two authors is appropriate, I believe, since both possessed a high degree of competence in musical matters, unlike Tieck, Novalis, Schelling, and the Schlegels, who nevertheless did not hesitate on occasion to include music in their aesthetic theorizing. Though not concurrently, both Wackenroder and Hoffmann studied with Johann Friedrich Reichardt, a leading musical personality of the period and a storehouse of historical information, albeit superficial. Wackenroder attended Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s lectures in Göttingen, was intimately familiar with Forkel’s two-volume history of music, and could conceivably have become a professional musician himself, had he not died at the age of 24 in 1798.12 Hoffmann’s musical credentials, of course, have long been established beyond question: he was a composer of considerable merit and – with his unsurpassed blend of professional expertise, poetic imagination, and writing skill – the founder of modern music criticism.13

12

Cf. A. Gillies’ introduction to W. H. Wackenroder and Ludwig Tieck, Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (Oxford, 1966), esp. pp. xxviii-xxix. 13

See E. T. A. Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik. Nachlese, ed. Friedrich Schnapp (Munich, 1963).

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Although their ideas about music and music history were in many ways similar, ultimately Wackenroder and Hoffmann may be regarded as representing two different approaches which prove to be not only characteristic of the early stages of musical historicism but are also easily traceable in the ideology behind later manifestations of musical aesthetics and historiography. What are some of the views they share? First of all, they believe with Novalis that the world must be romanticized in order to regain the original sense of harmony. Thus, like most Romantic thinkers, Wackenroder and Hoffmann firmly endorse a larger scheme of history, consisting of three periods: (1) the original state of innocence and equilibrium, characterized by the gentle rule of poetry over the human condition. What follows is (2) a process of depoetization which they experience in their desolate present as a loss of ideal values, an inescapably time-bound state of being. The final period, then, is utopian and transcendental: (3) the belief in the possibility of “repoetization” (A. W. Schlegel’s coinage), regeneration, and reintegration which would mean a return to the original, ideal state; that is harmony reestablished.14 Robert Schumann’s programmatic policy statement introducing the second volume of his Neue Zeitschrift für Musik illustrates how deeply rooted the notion of this triadic historical scheme still was in 1835: Unsere Gesinnung [...] ist diese: an die alte Zeit und ihre Werke mit allem Nachdruck zu erinnern, darauf aufmerksam zu machen, wie nur an so reinem Quelle neue Kunstschönheiten gekräftigt werden können – sodann, die letzte Vergangenheit, die nur auf Steigerung äusserlicher Virtuosität ausging, als eine unkünstlerische zu bekämpfen – endlich, eine neue poetische Zeit vorzubereiten, beschleunigen zu helfen.15

14

Cf. Walter Wiora, “Die Musik im Weltbild der deutschen Romantik”, in Salmen, pp. 11-59. 15

Robert Schumann, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (Leipzig), II (1835), p. 3.

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For Wackenroder, thinking about music means myth-making and not policy-making. In a unique piece of Romantic mythology in miniature, called “Ein wunderbares morgenländisches Märchen von einem nackten Heiligen” (l799)16 and identified as a musical essay attributed to his fictitious musician figure Joseph Berglinger, Wackenroder successfully renders his philosophy of time, history, and music in the condensed form of a poetic allegory. Living in a cave adjacent to a little river rushing by, the naked saint seems to hear the roaring revolutions of the Wheel of Time (“das Rad der Zeit”) and feels compelled to turn it with his own hands day and night, “damit die Zeit ja nicht in die Gefahr komme, nur einen Augenblick stillzustehn”. He cannot endure the sight of people going about their business nearby, gathering herbs or felling wood. He is unable to comprehend how human beings find it at all possible to work at something else, to take on a “taktloses Geschäft”, to remain preoccupied with earthly trivialities while Time keeps rolling on. No matter how desperately he wants now and again to free himself (“er wollte sich ausserhalb oder in sich vor sich selber retten”), he cannot but continue to turn the Wheel of Time feverishly for years on end. One moonlit summer night, however, the naked saint perceives “ätherische Musik” emanating from a light skiff floating up the stream: two lovers sing of the beauty of their love. The power of this “schwimmende Welt von Tönen” breaks the spell at last: the roaring Wheel of Time disappears, together with the Saint’s earthly frame. A phantom of angelic beauty is seen ascending “in tanzender Bewegung” out of the cave into the sky; and it appeared to the lovers that they were beholding the “Genius der Liebe und der Musik”. The Oriental setting intimates symbolic, universal dimensions, and the immediately obvious tripartite structure allows for an interpretation of Wackenroder’s tale as a variation of the familiar triadic con16

Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Werke und Briefe, ed. Friedrich von der Leyen (Jena, 1910) I, pp. 156-62. The quotes from his tale in the subsequent paragraph are taken from these pages.

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ception of history in which the problem of temporality and Romantic notions of time-consciousness and self-consciousness are inextricably intertwined with the idea of music as a redemptive, metaphysical force.17 Accordingly, I discern three distinct modes of temporal consciousness. First, we have the situation of the herb gatherers and wood cutters for whom the experience of time is totally unproblematic. As they are independent of time-consciousness, their human condition can be described as an unmeditated and therefore un-self-conscious state of being-in-time. Unaware of their own historicity, they exist in a state of blissful timelessness, as it were, which assures for them an illusion of freedom. The second mode is represented by the naked saint for whom time becomes a problematic, inescapable notion to such an overpowering extent that his self-consciousness becomes confined to his time-consciousness: he can no longer conceive of reality except in terms of his awareness of being-in-time. A captive of time, he is totally paralyzed by the sense of his own historicity. The third mode offers the only solution for the saint’s existential dilemma: reconciliation between self-consciousness and time-consciousness, which is possible only through the combined redemptive power of love and music. A means of salvation and liberation, music is seen by Wackenroder as a corrective measure, a unique temporal system which is capable of superseding the rigid monotony of time’s rhythmic structure by shaping it into music’s own rhythmic structure of infinite variety. The implication is clear, however, that such a metaphysical operation restoring the lost sense of freedom to the human condition can be conceived only in a realm beyond time and history, in the realm of music which Wackenroder elsewhere calls “das Land des Glaubens”18. No-

17

For recent critical literature or this tale see esp. Elmar Hertrich, Joseph Berglinger. Eine Studie zu Wackenroders Musiker-Dichtung (Berlin, 1969), pp. 163-92, and Klaus Weimar, Versuch über Voraussetzung und Entstehung der Romantik (Tübingen, 1968), pp. 63-71.

18

Wackenroder, I, p. 164.

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valis proclaims the need for a “romanticization” of the world; Wackenroder calls for “musicalization” and means the same. Wackenroder’s conception of temporality and the historical process as it emerges in this remarkable tale is unusually specific; in his other writings he tends to resort to vague generalizations. At best he would acknowledge the superiority of what he calls “das eigentümliche innere Wesen”19 of new music – that is the purely instrumental compositions of his own time by Haydn or Mozart – over whatever little he knew of older music, especially older church music. But music to Wackenroder always means absolute music; that is, symphonic, instrumental music. Although in his discourses on the visual arts he often names his favorite Italian and German masters and their achievements, in his musical reveries he never mentions specific composers or works. Precisely because he conceives of music in the abstract temporal sense and virtually equates it with religion, this highest of all arts is for him not only sacrosanct, but also beyond the need of mundane comparisons. Along with Herder, Reichardt, Tieck, and E. T. A. Hoffmann, in his own enthusiastic manner Wackenroder clearly belongs to those intellectuals who prepared the aesthetic climate for the early nineteenth-century Palestrina renaissance. Yet, he would hardly have subscribed to typical later manifestations of the enthusiastic critical trend like Alexandre Choron’s “Palestrina c’est le Racine, c’est le Raphael, c’est le Jesus-Christ de la musique”.20 In his book Über Reinheit der Tonkunst (1825), A. F. J. Thibaut even goes as far as mentioning Palestrina and Homer in one breath and calling Händel the Shakespeare of music.21 Unlike Wackenroder, Hoffmann would have approved of such hyperbolic glorifications. He himself hailed Mozart as the Shake19

Wackenroder I, p. 182.

20

Quoted in Abbé Daniel, Rapport sur le concours ouvert pour l’éloge de Choron (Paris, 1845), p. 2. 21

A. F. J. Thibaut, Über Reinheit der Tonkunst (Heidelberg, 1825), p. 95 and p. 83.

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speare of music, and Palestrina as the founding father of music who is “einfach, wahrhaft, kindlich fromm, stark und mächtig, echt christlich in seinen Werken wie in der Malerei Pietro von Cortona und unser Albrecht Dürer.”22 Despite the legitimate charge of occasional impressionism that might be leveled at the author of such sweeping comparisons, Hoffmann nevertheless exhibits a thoroughly conscious historicist attitude in musical matters. Ample evidence of his preoccupation with the historical process can be found throughout his musical writings; and there is never any doubt that Hoffmann speaks in the capacity of the experienced, practicing musician who is firmly grounded in theory as well as in compositional and performance techniques. Because he invariably commences his reviews with short historical sketches combined with critical reflections on the respective musical genres, he not only places the analyzed works in a historical framework, but also paves the way for their future reception. His pioneering review essays between 1810 and 1814 in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the two Piano Trios op. 70, the Coriolanus overture, the Egmont music, and the C-Major Mass, for example, were in large measure responsible for the composer’s subsequent image as a quintessentially Romantic artist. It is less well known that Hoffmann also had a considerable share in breaking ground for the Palestrina and Bach revivals. His influential pronouncements, admittedly based more on a healthy critical instinct than on an extensive knowledge of the actual works by these past masters, must be seen in the proper context of contemporary intellectual currents. It is instructive in this respect to trace the tortuous history of the familiar comparison of Bach’s music to the Strassburg cathedral, a comparison usually attributed to Hoffmann. In 1782, Reichardt was the first to cite Goethe’s 1772 essay “Von deutscher Baukunst” in connection with 22

E. T. A. Hoffmann, “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik”, in Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik. Nachlese, p. 216.

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his efforts to substantiate Bach’s greatness.23 No doubt inspired by Reichardt’s text, as well as by Wackenroder’s piece entitled “Die Peterskirche” in the Phantasien über die Kunst of 1799, Hoffmann in 1814 combines the disparate sources in one striking thought: Sebastian Bachs Musik verhält sich zu der Musik der alten Italiener ebenso, wie 24 der Münster in Straßburg zu der Peterskirche in Rom.

And in 1821 Carl Maria von Weber adds the universalizing touch by directly equating Bach’s “Grossartigkeit, Erhabenheit und Pracht” and “künstliche kontrapunktische Verflechtungen” with a “wahrhaft gotischen Dom der Kunstkirche”25: the image has now become an expression of affinity between specific musical and architectural styles. This simple example may serve to illustrate the powerful role that transmutation and assimilation of intellectual property, involving a genuine interpenetration of the various arts, assumed in shaping historical consciousness. The clearest and most significant expression of Hoffmann’s contribution as both critic and mediator may be found in his analytical treatise entitled “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik” (1814). Hoffmann offers here nothing less than a severely critical mini-history of church music as a genre, a panoramic view of its evolution interspersed with individual portraits of its most meritorious representatives, past and contemporary. Predictably, Hoffmann finds his hero in Palestrina, followed at a considerable distance by lesser though still positively evaluated Italian composers like Allegri, Alessandro Scarlatti, Benedetto Marcello, and Leonardo Leo; and Handel and Bach are still included as the last great figures of the Golden Age of Church music. 23

Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Kunstmagazin (Berlin, 1782), p. 196 f.

24

E. T. A. Hoffmann, “Höchst zerstreute Gedanken”, in Hoffmann, Fantasie- und Nachtstücke (Munich, 1960), p. 50.

25

Carl Maria von Weber, Sämtliche Schriften, ed. Georg Kaiser (Berlin and Leipzig, 1908), p. 342.

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In broad outlines, Hoffmann, too, adheres to the familiar triadic conception of history, except that with his many references to specific names and compositions one no longer senses the vague, predominantly subjective stance so typical of early Romantic visionaries such as Wackenroder. But it is especially fascinating to observe how skillfully Hoffmann manipulates this scheme to fit his own ideology of history, according to which the history of church music is a history of gradual decline. In his view, the Golden Age of church music as an expression of a truly “religious cult” reached its peak with the works of Palestrina and came to an end after the middle of the eighteenth century. At this time a deplorable tendency toward “Verweichlichung” and “ekle Süsslichkeit” set in which banished all seriousness, all dignity from church music.26 Among contemporary works only Mozart’s Requiem receives unconditional praise. Otherwise not even the religious compositions of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven escape Hoffmann’s condemnation. For the future of the genre Hoffmann sees little hope; and it is here that he assumes the role of mediator between the old and the new styles. Tacitly, however, he comes to an important realization. On the one hand he is firmly convinced of the impossibility of returning to Palestrina’s “Einfachheit und Grösse”, while on the other hand he believes that “die Instrumentalmusik sich in neuerer Zeit zu einer Höhe erhoben hat, die die alten Meister nicht ahnten”27. The only way Hoffmann can reconcile these convictions is to advocate regeneration rather than mere restoration in the form of a progressive synthesis of old and new approaches. Thus Hoffmann’s constructive recommendations for influencing musical progress in the right direction transcend the genre of church music and reflect unequivocally the attitude of a mediating historicist: present-day musicians must learn from the grand old masters but must also assimilate and make creative use of innovative contemporary practices. 26

Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik. Nachlese, p. 227.

27

Hoffmann, Schriften, pp. 230-31.

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Even from this brief discussion, I hope it has become apparent how differently Wackenroder and Hoffmann viewed the interaction between music and history and how each in his own way prepared the ground for major interpretive trends of modern historicism in music. Accordingly, I suggest that we term Wackenroder a visionary historicist of temporality and Hoffmann a critical historicist of mediation. That Hoffmann must have been aware – and also somewhat afraid – of the modernity of his own mediating historical perspective is evident in the reserved concluding paragraph of “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik”, which is curiously out of tune with the rest of his essay. Suddenly he lapses back into a Wackenroder-like rhetoric of temporality that sounds an unexpectedly hesitant note: Immer weiter fort und fort treibt der waltende Weltgeist; nie kehren die verschwundenen Gestalten, so wie sie sich in der Lust des Körperlebens bewegten, wieder: aber ewig, unvergänglich ist das Wahrhaftige, und eine wunderbare Geistergemeinschaft schlingt ihr geheimnisvolles Band um Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. Noch leben geistig die alten, hohen Meister; nicht verklungen sind ihre Gesänge: nur nicht vernommen wurden sie im brausenden, tobenden Geräusch des ausgelassenen, wilden Treibens, das über uns einbrach. Mag die Zeit der Erfüllung unseres Hoffens nicht mehr fern sein, mag ein frommes Leben in Friede und Freudigkeit beginnen, und die Musik frei und kräftig ihre Seraphsschwingen regen, um aufs neue den Flug zu dem Jenseits zu beginnen, das ihre Heimat ist, und von dem Trost und Heil in die unruhvolle Brust des Menschen hinabstrahlt.28

28

Hoffmann, Schriften, p. 235.

Carl Maria von Weber’s Tonkünstlers Leben: The Composer as Novelist? (1978) The affinities and interrelations between literature and music, in aesthetic theory and artistic practice, have been explored substantially1. There are few if any artists of stature who achieved real distinction and lasting fame in both media of expression. One may think of the formidable figure of Richard Wagner, followed perhaps, at some distance, by E. T. A. Hoffmann. But no more convincing examples of this rare combination of outstanding musical and literary talent come to mind. And not even Wagner or Hoffmann qualify without reservations: the poetic value of Wagner’s opera texts and prose writings remains questionable, while in the proper perspective Hoffmann’s compositional activities (primarily his Undine of 1816, the first truly romantic opera, five years before Weber’s Der Freischütz) merit only historical significance. Qualitatively, Hoffmann the author and pioneering music critic no doubt overshadows the composer Hoffmann: posterity holds him in high esteem – no matter how much against his own will – as a brilliant writer who also composed. Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826), on the other hand, is remembered today as one of the great nineteenthcentury composers. Only a few initiates are aware of the fact that Weber the musician and music critic was also a writer of considerable literary merit. His fate as a prominent composer who also wrote is thus conversely similar to that of Hoffmann. 1

Originating in eighteenth-century British aesthetics, musico-literary studies have become increasingly popular in recent decades, thanks in large measure to Calvin S. Brown, the pioneering authority in this complex field. See especially his “MusicoLiterary Research in the Last Two Decades,” YCGL, 19 (1970), 5-27.

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But the similarities do not end here. As if being gifted in composition and writing were not enough, both artists were also talented in painting, drawing, conducting, and in all aspects of the theater. Not unlike Hoffmann who began composing as a youngster and kept it up until shortly before his death, Weber published his first piece of music criticism at the age of fourteen2 and from 1809 on, when he was twenty-three, frequently contributed reviews to Rochlitz’ prestigious Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. 1809 is also the year in which Weber first conceived of a genuinely literary work that proved to be distinctive enough in form, subject matter, style, and overall artistic inventiveness to warrant him more than an honorable mention in literary history. Perhaps because it was never completed and for long only bits and pieces of it were published, Weber’s semi-autobiographical and quintessentially romantic novel fragment entitled Tonkünstlers Leben, eine Arabeske has not reccived due consideration until today3. Encouraged by acquaintances such as Hoffmann, Tieck, Brentano, Jean Paul, and Rochlitz who were familiar with the ambitious literary project of their musician friend, Weber worked on Tonkünstlers Leben – intermittently, though with persistence – for over a decade (18091820). From two brief chapter-by-chapter outlines he left behind, it seems that Weber planned a novel of twenty-three full chapters, along 2

“Beantwortung von Kritikern über die Oper Das Waldmädchen,” first published in Gnädigst bewilligte Freyberger gemeinnützigen Nachrichten für das chursächsische Erzgebirge (1801), p. 69. 3

“Tonkünstlers Leben. Fragmente eines Romans,1809-1820” in Carl Maria von Weber, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Georg Kaiser (Berlin and Leipzig, 1908), pp. 437510. Hereafter references to Weber’s text will be cited from this edition, with page numbers in parentheses. – No study so far has been devoted exclusively to Tonkünstlers Leben. The following articles, dealing with Weber’s literary and critical activities, contain much valuable information but also numerous factual and interpretive inaccuracies: Gerald Abraham, “Weber as Novelist and Critic,” Musical Quarterly, 20 (1934), 27-38; Paul Bülow, “Weber im Roman und in der Novelle,” Zeitschrift für Deutschkunde, 42 (1928), 282-86; Andre Coeuroy, “Weber as a Writer,” Musical Quarterly, 11 (1925), 97-115; Georg Kaiser, “Weber als Schriftsteller,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 81 (1914), 85-88 and 101-104; Friedrich Kerst-Elberfeld, “Carl Maria von Weber als Schriftsteller,” Die Musik, 18-19 (1906), 324-30.

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with a concluding section called “Letzter Wille des Künstlers” (444). As it happens, the accumulated fragments were never arranged by the author himself in any meaningful novelistic sequence but were left in disarray. In addition to the outlines to which Weber ultimately paid little attention, the conglomerate contains several more or less polished and completed chapters, some of them in various versions (chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, 6), open-ended snippets of chapters 2 and 8, as well as marginal notes, diverse ideas, and aphoristic comments which were eventually to be incorporated into the novel4. Only two parts of the unfinishod novel were published during Weber’s lifetime and a third segment in 1827, shortly after his death: 1) “Fragment einer musikalischen Reise, die vielleicht erscheinen wird” in 1809 in Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände (identical with Chapter 4); 2) “Bruchstücke aus Tonkünstlers Leben. Eine Arabeske von Carl Maria von Weber” in 1821 in Die Muse, edited by Friedrich Kind, the librettist of Der Freischütz (Chapters 1, 3, 5); and 3) “Viertes Bruchstück aus: Tonkünstlers Leben. Eine Arabeske. Von Carl Maria von Weber” (a large portion of Chapter 6) in 1827 in W. G. Becker’s Taschenbuch zum geselligen Vergnügen5. The titles of these publications are revealing, for they stress the idea of fragmentariness and the concept of the arabesque which are so pervasive throughout Weber’s novelistic effort. Theodor Hell is responsible for the plausible arrangement of the extant fragments (1828), also used in Georg Kaiser’s critical edition of Weber’s writings (1908)6. Hell recognized that a chronological arrangement of the scattered fragments would be futile and opted instead felicitously for the principle of structural coherence. Consequently, in its present and presumably final shape Weber’s 4

Cf. the detailed chronology of the individual fragments in Kaiser, pp. CXXCXXI. 5 6

Cf. the annotated list of these original publications in Kaiser, pp. CXXI-CXXIV.

Hinterlassene Schriften von C. M. v. Weber, ed. by Theodor Hell, 3 vols. (Dresden and Leipzig, 1828). Cf. also Kaiser, p. CXXIV.

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Tonkünstlers Leben resembles the formal construction of Friedrich Schlegel’s celebrated novelistic tour de force, Lucinde (1799), likewise a fragment. Fragmentariness, of course, is the essence of Friedrich Schlegel’s artistic physiognomy. In a concentrated effort of a lifetime devoted to speculative philosophizing and criticism he evolved a theory in which he proclaimed the hegemony of fragmentariness as the guiding principle of intellectual creativity: “[...] der Sinn für Fragmente und Projekte sei der transzendentale Bestandteil des historischen Geistes”7. Such a theory was for Schlegel – the master aphorist who abandoned most of his projects unfinished – surely in large measure self-justification: “Viele Werke der Alten sind Fragmente geworden. Viele Werke der Neuern sind es gleich bei der Entstehung.”8 Weber’s novel fragment is only one of astonishingly many romantic works in this genre which reflect their authors’ affinity with Schlegel’s persuasive creed, as exemplified in his Lucinde, Tieck’s Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen, Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Jean Paul’s Flegeljahre, Arnim’s Die Kronenwächter, and Hoffmann’s Kater Murr, to mention only a prominent few. Schlegel’s glorification of the fragment constitutes only a part of his all-encompassing theory of the novel which he defines in its ideal form as ‘arabesque’: “Das Wesentliche im Roman ist die chaotische Form – Arabeske, Märchen”9. It is well-nigh impossible to attempt a meaningful summary of Schlegel’s multifaceted usage of the term ‘Arabeske’ without indulging in crude simplification10. In our context 7

Friedrich Schlegel, Athenäums-Fragment No. 22, in Schlegel, Schriften zur Literatur, ed. by Wolfdietrich Rasch (München, 1972), p. 27. 8

Athenäums-Fragment No. 24. Ibid, p. 27.

9

Friedrich Schlegel, LN, 1804, in Schlegel, Literary Notebooks, 1797-1801, ed. by Hans Eichner (London, 1957), p. 180. 10

For the most comprehensive treatment of the term, see Karl Konrad Polheim, Die Arabeske. Ansichten und Ideen aus Friedrich Schlegels Poetik (München-PaderbornWien, 1966).

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it must suffice to say that Schlegel envisioned the ideal novel (Roman) as a grandiose, all-inclusive fictional construct which would readily accommodate prose, lyrics, dramatic poetry, dialogues, letters, essayistic digressions, dreams etc., as well as manifestations of the other arts and even the sciences. The artistic fusion of all these heterogeneous elements was to be accomplished by means of ‘arabesque’ form, i. e., a combination of “infinite plenitude” with “infinite unity”, a juxtaposition of “symmetry and chaos”, “artistically arranged confusion”, and a “charming symmetry of contradictions”11. Predictably, Schlegel designated Lucinde as a “Naturarabeske”12. And likewise predictably, as in the case of his idea of fragmentariness, he added a touch of the universal in that he pronounced “die Arabeske für eine ganz bestimmte und wesentliche Form oder Äußerungsart der Poesie”13. Ever since the publication of Lucinde and Gespräch über die Poesie (1800), Schlegel’s concept of the arabesque had been well known in European intellectual circles. Himself by no means a literary theorist but surely an informed reader of contemporary literature, Weber must have been aware of the generic connotations inherent in the term. Indeed, Tonkünstlers Leben reads very much like a fictional entity fashioned after Schlegel’s prescription. Though the musician’s perspective prevails throughout, Weber’s novelistic attempt is consciously self-reflective. The following insight, for example, appended to the fragment, applies equally to the creative process in music and in literature: “Das erste Stück einer anderen Gattung ist immer das schwerste, es ist leicht in Nachahmung zu verfallen; hat man erst eins gemacht, seinen Ideengang in dieses neue Modell gepreßt, so geht es” (p. 509). The romantic notion of planned form in the form of deliberate formlessness, which is so apparent in Schlegel’s Lucinde, can also 11

Cf. esp. Hans Eichner, Friedrich Schlegel (New York, 1970), pp. 62-64 and 68-

69. 12

Quoted in Polheim, p. 251.

13

Friedrich Schlegel, “Brief über den Roman,” in Rasch, p. 313.

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be detected in Tonkünstlers Leben. Somewhat extravagantly, Weber intended to head each of the novel’s chapters with a musical note, beginning the sequence with the C below the bass clef. As the hero reviews his life story at the end of the work, these notes would build up to a chorale. Moreover, the same notes were to form a Zirkelkanon within the novel, sounding the same backwards and forwards. All this was meant to provide the reader with a composite “Bild des menschlichen Lebens überhaupt” (p. 504). In the framework of the romantic novel tradition à la Schlegel, Tonkünstlers Leben – a deliberate mixture of genres, “Chaos” and “eros”14, melancholy musings and parodistic wit, social ethics and musical aesthetics – deserves to be remembered as a fascinating and potentially successful experiment in narrative fiction. Naturally, if viewed according to criteria normally applied to the conventional (non-romantic) novel, the impression is less favorable. Though Weber’s text purports to be a Künstlerroman relating the adventures and experiences of a traveling young musician, not even Felix (or “A”), its composer protagonist, is convincingly delineated to come alive as a fullblooded character. His relationship to his friend Diehl, his abortive love affair with Emilie, and his brief sojourn at the court of the Prince are sketched much too sparsely. Dario, the only figure with a potential for narrative portrayal, appears but for a fleeting moment in chapter 6. His promising character traits are only suggested in the synopsis of Chapter 21: Dario ist kalt und trocken, aus italienischer Familie, Mathematikus, Verächter der Musik; Atheist, unter der Maske des strengsten Ernstes, in dem zuweilen eine teuflische Glätte und Gewandtheit anzieht. Wie die Klapperschlange, zieht er selbst Felix an sich, der ihn gegen Diehl, welcher ihn durchaus nicht leiden kann, immer verteidigt. (p. 444)

14

“Chaos and eros ist wohl die beste Erklärung des Romantischen.” Friedrich Schlegel, LN, 1760, in Literary Notebooks, p. 176.

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The contrived story line is so fragile that it scarcely sustains the essentially unintegrated episodes. It seems to serve Weber merely as a pretext for incorporating autobiographical reminiscences along with social criticism in the guise of caustic remarks concerning the composer’s lot in a society indifferent to the arts, expert accounts of a musician’s state of mind while engaged in the act of composition (presumably Weber’s own experiences), animated dialogues on the theory and practice of writing and producing opera and drama, and tendentious but highly entertaining parodies of contemporary musical customs and Italian, French, and German opera. The interspersed autobiographical details are so scant and general that their overall impact on the novel fragment proves to be peripheral. More carefully integrated in the narrative are Weber’s genuinely inspired reflections on the nature of music and on the creative aspects of compositional practice. To be sure, his views and occasional definitions unmistakably echo Wackenroder’s and Hoffmann’s musically oriented writings which provided the foundation for a distinctly romantic aesthetics of music15. Yet in many instances Weber’s formulations are so profound and original that they merit recognition and scrutiny in their own right. Particularly revealing for Weber’s aesthetics is the spontaneous manner in which his composer-hero – availing himself of a characteristically synaesthetic vocabulary (“Das heilige Crescendo der Natur im lichtbringenden Äther erhob mein still ergebenes Gemüt zu fromm heiterer Ahndungsregung.”) – musicalizes his experience of contemplating nature: Das Anschauen einer Gegend ist mir die Aufführung eines Musikstücks. Ich erfühle das Ganze, ohne mich bei den es hervorbringenden Einzelheiten aufzuhalten; mit einem Worte, die Gegend bewegt sich mir, seltsam genug, in der Zeit. Sie ist mir ein sukzessiver Genuß. (pp. 451-52)

15

Cf. Steven Paul Scher, “Temporality and Mediation: W.H. Wackenroder and E. T. A. Hoffmann as Literary Historicists of Music,” JEGP, 75 (1976), 492-502.

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And it is precisely the revelation of this totality of musically, temporally experienced nature, the ultimate identity of nature and music, which empowers the truly gifted composer to comprehend the divine secret of music: his “spiritual, inner ear” is able to hear “ganze Perioden, ja ganze Stücke auf einmal, [...] das Ganze auch in seinen Teilen” (p. 450). In contradistinction to the privileged vantage paint of real compositional talent, Weber vividly renders the predicament of the composing bungler who, for lack of imagination a prisoner of his own “pianofingers”, is forever destined to remain derivative: Denn eben diese Hände, diese verdammten Klavierfinger, die über dem ewigen Üben und Meistern an ihnen endlich eine Art von Selbständigkeit und eigenwilligen Verstand erhalten, sind bewußtlose Tyrannen und Zwingherren der Schöpfungskraft. Sie erfinden nichts Neues, ja alles Neue ist ihnen unbequem. (pp. 44950)

At one point the universal import of Weber’s insight concerning the notion of the ineffable in the supreme moment of artistic creation even reaches the level of Wordsworth’s aesthetic theorizing. Here is Weber’s version of Wordsworth’s definition of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and “emotion recollected in tranquillity”: Alles Tiefempfundene fühlt sich, aber sagt sich nicht. Der Moment, Geistesprodukte zu erschaffen, muß in jener gewissen ruhigen Stimmung als Grundelement sich bewegen, welche eigner, in dem Augenblicke willkürlich erzeugter Begeisterung fähig, das individuelle Ich, sozusagen, ganz zu verlassen und in das andere, das zu schaffende, überzugehen imstande ist.

In the literary realm Weber’s more emotionally charged aesthetic stance exhibits a fundamental affinity with typically romantic theorizing. The practice of musical composition, on the other hand, he regarded as a more disciplined intellectual activity, requiring the highest degree of concentration. Thus it is not without an element of surprise (fully intended by the author, I believe) that behind the composer-

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hero’s unique compositional method we discern Weber the classicist and disciple of his idol Mozart: Denn ich kann sehr bequem von ganz andern Gegenständen zusammenhängend sprechen und doch, mit voller Seele und ganz von meinem Objekte erfüllt, Tonideen bilden und komponieren. (p. 499)

Chapter 5 of Tonkünstlers Leben – a unique blend of musicoliterary theory as dramatized fiction and fictionalized music criticism, comparable in subject matter and narrative design only to Hoffmann’s brilliant Der Dichter und der Komponist (1813) – features Weber the writer at his best. What starts out as a dialogue between Felix and his friend Diehl on whether dramatic masterpieces such as Schiller’s Wallenstein ought to be presented on stage uncut or abridged soon gives way to the composer-hero’s impassioned critical analysis of the contemporary operatic scene. The central passage of this analysis, containing one of the earliest definitions of the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, has even become well known independent of the novel fragment. Weber himself considered it so important, as part of his sustained effort to promote German opera, that he quoted it virtually verbatim in his famous 1817 review of Hoffmann’s Undine: Es versteht sich von selbst, daß ich von der Oper spreche, die der Deutsche will: ein in sich abgeschlossenes Kunstwerk, wo alle Teile und Beiträge der verwandten und benutzten Künste ineinanderschmelzend verschwinden und auf gewisse Weise untergehend – eine neue Welt bilden. (p. 129)

Weber’s elaboration on this definition is likewise instructive: Die Natur und das innere Wesen der Oper, aus Ganzen im Ganzen bestehend, gebiert diese große Schwierigkeit [i.e. that most of the existing works do not achieve the desirable effect of totality], die nur den Heroen der Kunst zu überwinden gelang. Jedes Musikstück erscheint durch den ihm zukommenden Bau als ein selbständig organisches, in sich abgeschlossenes Wesen. Doch soll es als Teil des Gebäudes verschwinden in der Anschauung desselben; doch kann und soll es dabei (das Ensemblestück vornehmlich), verschiedene Außenseiten zugleich zeigend, ein vielfältiger, auf einen Blick zu übersehender Januskopf sein. (pp. 12930)

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As reflected in these formulations and frequently elsewhere in his writings, the idea of self-contained totality constitutes an indispensable conceptual cornerstone in Weber’s aesthetics. For example, as the notion central to the ideal operatic model, it clearly echoes the composer-hero’s perception in chapter 1 of musically experienced nature as a temporally conditioned totality. From the foregoing discussion the author of Tonkünstlers Leben emerges as an imaginative and in many ways original aesthetician of music and a respectable musician-writer of modest novelistic ambitions. But such an assessment does justice to only one side of Weber’s writing talent. An avid and prolific practitioner of comic occasional poetry16, Weber had a definite knack for satirical criticism in the form of parodistic humor. His genuine literary flair manifests itself most directly in the hilarious parodies – predominantly in verse – which are included in his novel fragment. Intended primarily as comic relief, though always with a serious didactic undertone, these interspersed parodistic episodes represent an impressive literary achievement. Most literary and sophisticated among them is Weber’s inspired rewrite in Chapter 5 of the Kapuziner’s speech from Wallensteins Lager. Rather than aiming his parodistic intent at Schiller, Weber faithfully adheres to the original metric and rhyme scheme and simply employs Schiller’s speech (itself already a parodistic adaptation of a text by Abraham a Santa Clara) as a convenient vehicle to accommodate specific aspects of his target of ridicule: shoddy musicianship, commercialization of musical life, and the primacy of Italian opera. The parodistic sting here is in the ingenious distortion and substitution of diction and syntax by means of which Weber transforms the Kapuziner’s religiously tinged tirade against the atrocities of Wallenstein’s dissolute soldiers during the Thirty Years’ War into a witty indictment of the declining quality of contemporary music in general and the irate 16

See Weber’s numerous poems and humoristic prose in Kaiser, pp. 417-37 and 513-38.

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battle between Italian and German opera in particular. A juxtaposition of the beginning lines from both speeches suffices to illustrate Weber’s method: Schiller: Heisa, juchheia! Dudeldumdei! Das geht ja hoch her. Bin auch dabei! Ist das eine Armee von Christen? Sind wir Türken? Sind wir Antibaptisten? Treibt man so mit dem Sonntag Spott, Als hätte der allmächtige Gott Das Chiragra, könnte nicht dreinschlagen? Ist jetzt Zeit zu Saufgelagen? Zu Banketten und Feiertagen? . . . Was steht ihr und legt die Hände in Schoß? Die Kriegsfuri ist an der Donau los, Das Bollwerk des Bayerlands ist gefallen, Regenspurg ist in des Feindes Krallen, Und die Armee liegt hier in Böhmen, Pflegt den Bauch, läßt sichs wenig grämen, Kümmert sich mehr um den Krug als den Krieg, Wetzt lieber den Schnabel als den Sabel, Hetzt sich lieber herum mit der Dirn, Frißt den Ochsen lieber als den Oxenstirn. Die Christenheit trauert in Sack und Asche, 17 Der Soldat füllt sich nur die Tasche. Weber: Heisa, Juchheisa! Dudeldumdei! Das geht ja toll her, bin nicht dabei. Ist das eine Art Komponisten? Seid ihr Türken, seid ihr noch Melodisten? Treibt man so mit der Tonkunst Spott, Als hätte der alte Musengott Das Chiragra, könnte nicht dreinschlagen? Ist jetzt die Zeit der Orchesterplagen, Mit Pickelflöten und Trommelschlagen? Ihr steht nicht hier und legt die Hände in den Schoß, Die Kriegsfurie ist in den Tönen los. Das Bollwerk des reinen Sangs ist gefallen, Italien ist in des Feindes Krallen, Weil der Komponist liegt im Bequemen, 17

Friedrich Schiller, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Gerhard Fricke and Herbert G. Göpfert (München: Hanser, 1965), II, 292.

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Höhnt die Natur, läßt sich wenig grämen, Kümmert sich mehr um den Knall als den Schall, Pflegt lieber die Narrheit, als Wahrheit, Hetzt die Hörer lieber toll im Gehirn, Hat das Honorar lieber als das Honoriern. Die Kunstfreunde trauern in Sack und Asche, Der Direktor füllt sich nur die Tasche. (p. 473)

Genuine sense of humor has traditionally been a rare commodity among German writers. It is a pleasant surprise, therefore, to discover in the opera parodies of Chapter 7 Weber the master humorist. Once again, the awkward attempt to couch his parodies in a plausible narrative framework must be judged a novelistic failure; the inclusion of the parodistic interlude is not well motivated and the pretext of promoting the cause of German opera is all too transparent. In the midst of a masked ball which the composer-hero Felix reluctantly attends, a Hanswurst appears as self-appointed master of ceremonies and promises entertainment on a grand scale: “eine große deklamatorische, dramatische, melopoetische, allegorische Darstellung in Versen” (p. 480). What follows, however, more than compensates for the contrived narrative situation. The orchestra produces some noise, “das in Italien Ouverture genannt wird”, and the prima donna begins the pungent persiflage of Italian opera: Recit. Oh Dio – – – addio – – – – – – – – – – – Arioso. Oh non pianger mio bene – – – – – – – – – – Ti lascio – Idol mio – – – – oime – – Allegro. Già la Tromba suona – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Colla parte. Per te morir io voglio – – – – – – – – – – – – – – piu stretto. O Felicita – – (Auf Ta ein Triller von zehn Takten; das Publikum applaudierte unmenschlich.) Duetto. – Caro – – ! – Cara – – ! a Due. Sorte amara – –

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(Auf amara, wegen des a, die süßesten Terzienpassagen.) Allegro. – oh barbaro tormento – (Es hatte kein Mensch zugehört, aber ein Kenner rief Bravo! Bravo! [applaudierte] und das ganze Publikum fiel fortissimo ein.) (pp.480-81)

Weber is truly in his element here, poking fun at the worst features of an operatic style cultivated by his arch enemy Rossini whom he passionately attacked wherever he could. Hanswurst’s ensuing commentary is equally vitriolic as he enumerates Weber’s favorite charges against Italian opera: shallowness of melodic and harmonic invention, predilection for bombastic situations, and a severe lack of dramatic tension in music and text alike. Though more tolerant, the lampoon of French grand opera (freely adapted by Weber from an eighteenth-century parody) likewise concentrates on a few chronic shortcomings: exaggerated adherence to classical rules (“Die Handlung spielt zwischen 12 Uhr und Mittag”), the emptiness of lofty declamatory style, and the superficiality of grandiose stage spectacles: Erster Akt. La Princesse. Cher Prince, on nous unit. Le Prince. J’en suis ravi, Princesse; Peuple, chantez, dansez, montrez votre allégresse! Choeur. Chantons, dansons, montrons notre allégresse! Ende des ersten Aktes. Zweiter Akt. La Princesse. Amour! (Kriegerisches Getöse. Die Prinzessin fällt in Ohnmacht. Der Prinz erscheint kämpfend gegen seine Feinde und wird erschlagen.) Cher prince! Le Prince. Hélas! La Princesse. Quoi? Le Prince. J’expire! La Princesse. O Malheur! Peuple, chantez, dansez, montrez votre douleur! Choeur. Chantons, dansons, montrons notre douleur! Ein Marsch schließt den zweiten Akt. Dritter Akt. Pallas erscheint in den Wolken. Pallas. Pallas te rend le jour. La Princesse. Ah quel moment! Le Prince. Oû suis-je?

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Peuple, chantez, dansez, célébrez ce prodige! Choeur. Dansons, chantons, célébrons ce prodige! Fin.

(p. 483)

It is to Weber’s credit that when at last he comes to the vicissitudes of German opera he can muster up enough distance and objectivity to ridicule his own country’s products just as mercilessly. The elaborate parody begins with the choice of subject matter expressed in its title (Agnes Bernauerin, romantisch-vaterländisches Tonspiel) and continues with less than exacting specifications as to cast and place of action (“Personen, so viel vonnöten. Handlung im Herzen von Deutschland”). Weber manages to assemble a colorful collection of every imaginable stock character on the contemporary German operatic stage: a happily absurd mix of innocent maidens, noble seducers, villains (one by the name of Kaspar!), robbers, ghosts, hermits, minnesingers, genies, etc. The deliberately insipid skit provides unadulterated fun from beginning to end, especially since a great deal of it turns out to be prophetic self-parody: even Der Freischütz (1821), Euryanthe (1825) and Oberon (1826) – Weber’s three best operas – still abound with similar stereotypical figures, requisites, and other incongruous ingredients. Perhaps the delightfully chaotic Finale to Act One of Agnes Bernauerin conveys Weber’s parodistic style most aptly: Finale. (Waldige Felsengegend. – Links im Hintergrunde ein Schloß, gegenüber ein Weinberg, weiter vor eine Einsiedlerhütte. – Links vorn eine Höhle, weiter vorn eine Laube, in der Mitte zwei hohle Bäume, weiter vorn ein unterirdischer Gang.) Einsiedler (tritt auf im singenden Gebete). – Agnes (singt eine Arie im Schlosse, wozu Chor von Winzerinnen auf der andern Seite.) – In der Laube schlummert Albrecht (und singt träumend in abgebrochenen Tönen). – Kaspar (singt vor Furcht eine Polonaise in den hohlen Bäumen). – Räuber (in der Höhle singen einen wilden Chor). – Genien (schweben schützend über Albrecht). – Kriegsgetümmel hinter der Szene. – Ferner Marsch von der andern Seite. – Natürlich alles zugleich. – Zwei Blitze fahren von verschiedenen Seiten herab und zerschmettern einiges. Alle. Ha! (Der Vorhang fällt.) (p. 487)

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An analysis of the parodistic aspects of Tonkünstlers Leben would not be complete without at least a cursory mention of the composer-hero’s dream in Chapter 4, another tribute to Weber’s inventive literary imagination (pp. 462-66). Felix dreams that he has overheard the instruments of a large orchestra as they discussed – rather critically, each from his own expert instrumentalist perspective – the deplorable quality of the symphonic and operatic repertory of the time. The dream concludes with a current (1809) example of a typically flawed work, however unidentified: Nein, hört das Rezept der neuesten Sinfonie, das ich soeben von Wien erhalte, und urteilt darnach: Erstens, ein langsames Tempo, voll kurzer abgerissener Ideen, wo ja keine mit der andern Zusammenhang haben darf, alle Viertelstunden drei oder vier Noten! – das spannt! dann ein dumpfer Paukenwirbel und mysteriöse Bratschensätze, alles mit der gehörigen Portion Generalpausen und Halte geschmückt; endlich, nachdem der Zuhörer vor lauter Spannung schon auf das Allegro Verzicht getan, ein wütendes Tempo, in welchem aber hauptsächlich dafür gesorgt sein muß, daß kein Hauptgedanke hervortritt und dem Zuhörer desto mehr selbst zu suchen übrig bleibt; Übergänge von einem Tone in den andern dürfen nicht fehlen; man braucht sich aber deswegen gar nicht zu genieren, man braucht z. B. wie Paer in der Leonore nur einen Lauf durch die halben Töne zu machen und auf dem Tone, in den man gern will, stehenzubleiben, so ist die Modulation fertig. Überhaupt vermeide man alles Geregelte, denn die Regel fesselt nur das Genie. – (p. 465)

Until recently, this viciously ironic piece of verbal music has been regarded (even by Weber scholars) as a parodistic putdown of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony (1807) and a creditable proof of Weber’s notoriously myopic view of Beethoven’s genius. But, as John Warrack, Weber’s latest biographer, has convincingly proven, the descriptive details are “too vague for identification”: “since Weber deliberately avoided mention of any particular work here but did not hesitate to name the Eroica previously, he was attacking a generalized target.”18 It seems appropriate to conclude that Tonkünstlers Leben, however unfinished, constitutes a significant literary achievement. The musi18

John Warrack, Carl Maria von Weber (London, 1968), pp. 94-95.

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cian-author of this unique novel fragment proves to be a spirited and versatile writer of fiction, fully conscious of the literary currents of his time and endowed with a healthy sense of humor and considerable parodistic talent. Above all its innate fragmentariness and arabesque form are the decisive features which distinguish Weber’s novelistic experiment as yet another remarkable literary document of early nineteenth-century romantic sensibility.

Beethoven and the Word: Literary Affinity or Artistic Necessity? (1980/81) Aber die Musik und Sprache gehörten zusammen, sie seien im Grunde eins, die Sprache Musik, die Musik eine Sprache, und getrennt berufe immer das eine sich auf das andere, ahme das andere nach, bediene sich der Mittel des anderen, gebe immer das eine sich als das Substitut des anderen zu verstehen. Wie Musik zunächst Wort sei, wortmäßig vorgedacht und geplant werden könne, wolle er mir durch die Tatsache demonstrieren, daß man Beethoven beim Komponieren in Worten beobachtet habe. „Was schreibt er da in sein Taschenbuch?“, habe es geheißen. – „Er komponiert.“ – „Aber er schreibt Worte, nicht Noten.“ – ja, das war so seine Art. Er zeichnete gewöhnlich in Worten den Ideengang einer Komposition auf, indem er höchstens ein paar Noten zwischenhinein streute. – [...] Der künstlerische Gedanke, meinte er, bilde wohl überhaupt eine eigene und einzige geistige Kategorie, aber schwerlich werde je der erste Entwurf zu einem Bilde, einer Statue in Worten bestanden haben, – was für die besondere Zusammengehörigkeit von Musik und Sprache zeuge. Es sei sehr natürlich, daß die Musik am Wort entbrenne, das Wort aus der Musik hervorbräche, wie es sich gegen Ende der Neunten Symphonie ereigne.1

I am about to offer, with considerable trepidation, some highly tentative remarks on Beethoven’s literariness – by which I mean Beethoven’s awareness of, and attitude toward, literature in the widest sense, including his interest in all forms of verbal expression, the nature and extent of his literary knowledge, his predilection for certain authors and specific literary works, past and contemporary, and the demonstrable impact of the written word on his music, particularly vocal music. It is not without design, therefore, that I began by quoting Thomas Mann’s Adrian Leverkühn, talking to his loyal friend Serenus Zeitblom about Beethoven and the word. A curious blend of anecdotal material treated as straightforward fact and aesthetic speculation yielding interpretive conclusions based on this ‘anecdotal’ fact, the cited 1

Thomas Mann: Doktor Faustus, Stockholm 1947, 253.

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passage represents Beethoven reception at its belletristic best. But Doktor Faustus is fiction, after all; and Thomas Mann, unsurpassed master of epic montage, surely does not need to be exonerated from such a subtle blurring of the boundaries between fact and fiction. The trouble is that a large portion of the supposedly scholarly commentary comprising Beethoven research over the last century and a half – voluminous beyond belief and showing no signs of abating – also reads like fiction, except that most of it is bad, unconvincing fiction, with hardly any belletristic flair, yet full of unverifiable legends and personal reminiscences of contemporaries which in time have become widely accepted and frequently quoted pseudofacts and which together make up the familiar, larger-than-life portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven the man and artist as we see him today. To be sure, Thomas Mann made ingenious use of the unusual anecdote which he found in at least two seemingly authoritative sources,2 and which can be traced back to some ‘Recollections’ published in 1840 by Karl Johann Braun von Braunthal who, allegedly in the company of Schubert, had observed Beethoven at a Viennese inn. Actually, according to Otto Erich Deutsch, Braunthal’s ‘Recollections’ are dubious at best and most probably the scene as described never took place.3 Such are the vicissitudes of Beethoven reception. But given this state of affairs, which is typical, what is the frustrated critic to do when searching for the truth? Are there no verifiable facts at his disposal? Frankly, very few, hardly enough to yield a halfway plausible initial framework for meaningful critical assessment. I have tried to consult most of the available reliable sources which include, in addition to the actual scores, Beethoven’s sketchbooks, notebooks, conversation books, diaries, and letters, as well as selected items from the 2

See Julius Bahle: Eingebung und Tat im musikalischen Schaffen, Leipzig 1939, 182; and Ernest Newman: The Unconscious Beethoven – An Essay in Musical Psychology, New York 1927, 143f.

3

See Martin Cooper: Beethoven: The Last Decade 1817-1827, London 1970, 130.

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immense biographical and critical literature.4 That I still tread on shaky ground is, I hope, understandable. Fortunately, first-hand evidence of concrete, demonstrable points of tangency between words and music abounds in Beethoven’s extant oeuvre. The challenge of setting texts to music, often surprisingly inferior in literary worth, occupied him intensively all his creative life, as reflected in the numerous Lieder, cantatas, the oratorio Christus am Ölberg, the Egmont-music, his only opera, Fidelio, the Choral Fantasy, op. 80, the two masses (Mass in C major, op. 86, and Missa Solemnis, op. 123), and the final movement of the Ninth Symphony, op. 125, to mention only the most obvious examples. Even in the purely instrumental and chamber music there are traces of his preoccupation with verbal expression as an integral part of the overall communicative effect of the musical work of art; I am referring here to the familiar descriptive titles he has given the individual movements in the Sixth Symphony (Pastorale): I. Erwachen heiterer Gefühle bei der Ankunft auf dem Lande II. Szene am Bach III. Lustiges Zusammensein der Landleute IV. Gewitter, Sturm V. Hirtengesang. Frohe, dankbare Gefühle nach dem Sturm.

Also well known are the similarly programmatic directives employed in the late quartets, more specifically in op. 132 and 135: op. 132: – Heiliger Dankgesang an die Gottheit eines Genesenen in der lydischen Tonart – Neue Kraft fühlend , op. 135: – IV – Der schwergefaßte Entschluß (Grave: Muß es sein? Allegro: Es muß sein!)

This pronounced preoccupation with the word throughout Beethoven’s career, in nature and basic orientation so radically different from 4

For an up-to-date, highly selective and cogently annotated bibliography, see Maynard Solomon: Beethoven, New York 1977, 372-385.

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that of, say, Haydn, Mozart, or Schubert, or of other major composers before or after him – with the possible exception of Wagner and Mahler – continues to pose an intriguing problem which has been subject to enormous controversy and led to conjectures ranging from the sublime to the ludicrous, with little sober opinion between the extremes. The problem, however elusive, can be stated in simple terms: is there any meaning behind Beethoven’s music? If there is, what sort of meaning is it? And what is the connection, if there is any, between this meaning and Beethoven’s sustained interest in and use of the word to which he seems to have been irresistibly drawn in his relentless search for the ideal and most effective medium of artistic communication, even more effective than sheer music? As soon as we succumb to speculation along these lines, we find ourselves in the no-man’s-land of psychological theorizing about the mysteries of artistic creation – and that is a slippery territory best shied away from. Evidently not so for the many critics – with prominent ones among them – who have simply proceded to formulate preposterous theories while being naively unaware or willfully ignorant of the very real potential for fallacious argumentation based on unsubstantiated evidence. From none other than Richard Wagner stems the statement that “die Beethovenschen größeren Tonwerke nur in letzter Linie Musik, in erster Linie aber einen dichterischen Gegenstand enthalten”5. Paul Bekker, author of an influential early 20th-century biography, sincerely believed that “Beethoven ist in erster Linie Denker und Dichter, in zweiter Linie erst Musiker”6. Arnold Schering, the well-known Berlin musicologist who died in 1941, even wrote a 600page tome on Beethoven und die Dichtung7 in which he set out to prove definitively – and in tedious analytical detail – that Beethoven

5

Quoted in Hans Boettcher: Beethoven als Liederkomponist, Augsburg 1928, 25.

6

Ibid.

7

Berlin 1936.

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modeled certain symphonies, quartets, and sonatas on specific literary works; for example the Seventh Symphony on Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, the last three quartets (op. 132, 133, and 135) on Faust Part One, the Kreutzer Sonata (op. 47) on Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata, the Waldstein Sonata (op. 53) on the 23rd book of the Odyssee, and the Pathétique Sonata (op. 13) on Schiller’s poem Hero und Leander. And just in time to confirm my melancholy hunch that there is no end in sight to subjective vagaries in Beethoven research, the Hamburg musicologist and Mahler expert Constantin Floros recently published a book entitled Beethovens Eroica und Prometheus-Musik. Sujet-Studien8 in which he postulates that the young radical Beethoven definitely associated, nay identified, Napoleon with Prometheus. All this seems a far cry from Eduard Hanslick’s conviction, eloquently formulated as early as 1854 in his Vom Musikalisch-Schönen, a treatise which remains the bible of formalist aestheticians of music: “Es ist ästhetisch gleichgültig, ob sich Beethoven allenfalls bei seinen sämtlichen Kompositionen bestimmte Vorwürfe gewählt; wir kennen sie nicht, sie sind daher für das Werk nicht existierend.”9 And a hundred years later Igor Stravinsky, endearingly outspoken in these matters, still echoes Hanslick when he writes in his Autobiography: What does it matter whether the Third Symphony was inspired by the figure of Bonaparte the Republican or Napoleon the Emperor? It is only the music that matters. But to talk music is risky, and entails responsibility. Therefore some find it preferable to seize on side issues. It is easy, and enables you to pass as a deep thinker.

To illustrate his point, Stravinsky continues with the retelling of a conversation between Mallarmé and Degas, which he heard from Paul Valéry:

8

Wilhelmshaven 1979.

9

Ninth edition, Leipzig 1896, 98.

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Degas, who, as is well known, liked to dabble in poetry, one day said to Mallarmé “I cannot manage the end of my sonnet, and it is not that I am wanting in ideas.” Mallarmé, softly: “It is not with ideas that one makes sonnets, but with words.”

“So it is with Beethoven.” – Stravinsky concludes – “It is in the quality of his musical material and not in the nature of his ideas that his true greatness lies.”10 With all due respect for the formalists’ pragmatic logic, it would be insincere to deny that, for whatever reason, the very nature of what we know about Beethoven’s literariness does tend to encourage unbridled flights of fancy. On the other hand, there must also be a kernel of truth in the categorical opinions of informed critics such as Debussy, who was convinced that “there was not an ounce of literature in Beethoven, not at any rate in the accepted sense of the word”11, or Ernest Newman, who believed that “Beethoven was a man of only moderate intelligence”12. Before we give in to the temptation to endorse any of these views, let us consider briefly some of the evidence we do have. Most important of all are Beethoven’s own relevant remarks, scattered about in various sources. In 1809, in his fortieth year, he asked his publishers Breitkopf and Härtel for copies of the collected works of Goethe and Schiller, declaring that “Die zwei Dichter sind meine Lieblingsdichter, sowie Ossian, Homer, welchen letzteren ich leider nur in Übersetzungen lesen kann”13. And later that year he writes to them:

10

Igor Stravinsky: Stravinsky: An Autobiography, New York 1936, 184.

11

Quoted in Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune, eds.: The Beethoven Companion, London 1971, 521.

12

Ernest Newman: Müssen Komponisten k1uge Leute sein?, in: Musica 13 (1959), 132.

13

Emmerich Kastner and Julius Kappen, eds.: Ludwig van Beethovens sämtliche Briefe, Leipzig 1923, 145, [August 8, 1809]. Hereafter this edition will be cited as Briefe.

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Es gibt keine Abhandlung, die sobald zu gelehrt für mich wäre; ohne auch im mindesten Anspruch auf eigentliche Gelehrsamkeit zu machen, habe ich mich doch bestrebt von Kindheit an, den Sinn der Besseren und Weisen jedes Zeitalters zu fassen. Schande für einen Künstler, der es nicht für Schuldigkeit hält, es hierin wenigstens soweit zu bringen.14

Behind the exaggerated pride of this last statement we clearly sense the lifelong predicament of a self-educated man: in spite of his tremendous determination and sustained efforts Beethoven could never make up fully for his lack of formal education in areas other than music. That he remained an atrocious speller and could not perform simple multiplication is well known. More often than not in his choice of literary readings he had to rely on instinct or chance – which explains the perennial inconsistency in his judgments concerning literary value. Nonetheless, the extent to which Beethoven overcame his disadvantaged cultural background and acquired a fairly broad literary knowledge deserves our admiration. Since he was seriously deficient in foreign languages, he had to read his favorite Greek authors – primarily Homer and Plutarch, but also Plato, Aristotle, and Euripides – as well as Ossian and Shakespeare in German translation. His familiarity with Horace, Ovid, Pliny, and Quintilian must have been rather superficial. As for the French, Italian, or Spanish literary traditions, there is virtually no trace of any real awareness on Beethoven’s part: he composed one song to a text by Rousseau, several to texts by Metastasio, and presumably knew Bouilly’s libretto Leonore ou l’amour conjugal, if one can regard the latter as literature.15 Nor should we 14 15

Ibid., 148 [December 2, 1809].

Scholarly attention devoted to Beethoven’s literary readings has been sporadic and inconclusive: Eleanor Selfridge-Field: Beethoven and Greek Classicism, in: JHI 33 (1972), 577-596; Günter Fleischhauer: Beethoven und die Antike, in: Brockhaus, Heinz Alfred and Konrad Niemann, eds.: Bericht über den internationalen Beethoven-Kongreß 10.-12. Dezember 1970 in Berlin, Berlin 1971, 465-482; Karl-Heinz Köhler: Beethovens literarische Kontakte – Ein Beitrag zum Weltbild des Komponisten, 483-488; Albrecht Leitzmann: Beethovens literarische Bildung, in: Deutsche Rundschau 154 (1913), 271-283; and Max Friedländer: Deutsche Dichtung in Beethovens Musik, in: Jahrbuch der Musikbibliothek Peters 19 (1912), 25-48.

150

assume any genuine acquaintance with English poetry on the basis of Beethoven’s curious, commissioned arrangements of some 150 Scottish, Irish, and Welsh tunes for voice, piano, violin, and cello. Though some of the lyrics were by poets like Robert Burns, Byron, and Walter Scott, the composer simply worked with the melodies, not really grasping the meaning of the underlying words, with often hilariously incongruous results.16 The picture significantly brightens when we come to Beethoven’s knowledge of German literature. Goethe and Schiller loom largest in his literary consciousness; and he seems to have known their major works intimately. Klopstock he learned to love in his early youth. His spontaneous account of this formative experience, as told in retrospect to Friedrich Rochlitz, the influential editor of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, reflects perhaps most accurately the highly subjective nature of his attitude toward literary matters in general, an attitude typical of the enthusiastic autodidact: Ich habe mich jahrelang mit ihm [Klopstock] getragen, wenn ich spazieren ging und sonst. Ei nun, verstanden hab’ ich ihn freilich nicht überall. Er springt so herum, er fängt auch immer gar zu weit von oben herunter an, immer Maestoso! Des-Dur! Nicht? Aber er ist doch groß und hebt die Seele. Wo ich ihn nicht verstand, da riet ich doch – so ungefähr.17

But Goethe and Schiller soon replaced Klopstock as Beethoven’s most revered literary idols and this time the admiration was lasting. A great deal has been said about Beethoven and Goethe, of course, a favorite topic of raconteurs and professional fictionalizers of various persuasions from Bettina Brentano through Romain Rolland to Arnold Schering and beyond. Since much of it is quite well known in ample speculative detail, particularly the circumstances of their infamous 1812 encounter in Teplitz, I shall not offer here yet another account. 16

For a detailed discussion, see Donald W. MacArdle: Beethoven and George Thomson, in: Music and Letters 37 (1956), 27-50. 17

Martin Hürlimann, ed.: Beethoven-Briefe und Gespräche, Zurich 1944, 196f.

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Let it suffice to quote only from Beethoven’s moving and most revealing last letter to Goethe, dated 1823, to which the poet never bothered to reply: Die Verehrung, Liebe und Hochachtung, welche ich für den einzigen unsterblichen Goethe von meinen Jünglingsjahren schon hatte, ist mir immer geblieben. So was läßt sich nicht wohl in Worte fassen, besonders von einem solchen Stümper wie ich, der nur immer gedacht hat, die Töne sich eigen zu machen. Allein ein eigenes Gefühl treibt mich immer, Ihnen soviel zu sagen, indem ich in Ihren Schriften lebe [...] Ich hoffe, Sie werden die Zueignung an E. E. von Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt in Töne gebracht von mir erhalten haben; beide schienen mir ihres Kontrastes wegen sehr geeignet, auch diesen durch Musik mitteilen zu können. Wie lieb würde es mir sein, zu wissen, ob ich passend meine Harmonie mit der Ihrigen verbunden [...].18

Compared to the extensive use he made of Goethe’s texts, Beethoven’s settings of Schiller are astonishingly few. It is true that his preoccupation with the ode An die Freude dates back to the early years in Bonn and comes to fruition only thirty years later in the exalted, orgiastic Finale of the Ninth Symphony. But it seems that he had compelling artistic reasons which explain his reluctance toward composing Schiller’s texts. As he confided to Karl Czerny on one occasion: “Schillers Dichtungen sind für den Musiker äußerst schwierig. Der Tonsetzer muß sich weit über den Dichter zu erheben wissen; wer kann das bei Schiller? Da ist Goethe viel leichter.”19 Most commentators have interpreted this opaque remark as an indirect value judgment on Beethoven’s part, meaning that ultimately perhaps he thought more highly of Schiller than of Goethe. But there is more to it than that, I believe, especially in the context of our topic. We have here a revelatory instance – and by no means the only one – of Beethoven’s profound theoretical insight into the complex problem of composing vocal music in general, the aesthetics of combining word and tone; an insight into the composition of literary material, formulated with an 18

Briefe (cf. note 13) 640f. [February 8, 1823].

19

Quoted in Boettcher (cf. note 5) 45.

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eye to his own special needs. What these special requirements were can be deduced only from a circumspect, close scrutiny of his total output of vocal music, and only when that is regarded as an integral part of his entire œuvre. Beethoven’s Lieder, though admittedly uneven in quality and seemingly lacking in generic homogeneity, prove to be particularly instructive in this respect: they are transparent enough individually or in small groupings to exhibit characteristic compositional strategies. Analysis of the sketchbooks shows conclusively that throughout his career Beethoven continuously experimented with, and struggled to find optimal solutions for, song composition (as well as other types of vocal music). He knew very well what he was talking about whenever he commented on setting texts to music. Clearly crucial to him was the correct choice of texts most suitable for his musical realization. Among the literary superstars of the time it was in Goethe – and not in Schiller or Klopstock – that Beethoven found the right kind of text, charged with just the right type and amount of emotional and ideational content which he could cast into music so unmistakably his own. What, then, made Goethe texts so ideally composable for him? This time Bettina’s empathizing reconstruction of Beethoven’s words sounds plausibly genuine: Goethes Gedichte behaupten nicht allein durch ihren Inhalt, sondern auch durch den Rhythmus eine große Gewalt über mich, ich werde gestimmt und aufgeregt zum Komponieren durch diese Sprache, die wie durch Geister zu höherer Ordnung sich aufbaut und das Geheimnis der Harmonien schon in sich trägt.20

In other words, Beethoven looked for poetic texts which in a vague, general sense already contained some potential rhythmic and declamatory ingredients but which could still be artistically enhanced and ‘elevated’ through his musical treatment. Gems such as Neue Liebe, neues Leben, Mailied, Wonne der Wehmut, Sehnsucht (“Was zieht mir das

20

Hürlimann (cf. note 17) 145.

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Herz so?”) and Mit einem gemalten Band readily come to mind as supreme examples among the Lieder. Is it possible, then, that Beethoven perceived Schiller’s poetry as being so much more ‘musically’ endowed and thus already so ‘elevated’ that as a composer he felt incapable of rising above the poet? The parlando-like simplicity of the melody he invented for “Freude, schöner Götterfunken” would substantiate this sentiment. It is certainly a curious coincidence that what in the process of poetic creation Schiller himself seems to have experienced, Beethoven’ instinctively sensed in his poetry. In 1792 Schiller wrote to Körner: Das Musikalische eines Gedichtes schwebt mir weit öfter vor der Seele, wenn ich mich hinsetze, es zu machen, als der klare Begriff vom Inhalt, über den ich oft kaum mit mir einig bin.21

The question of what exactly the adjective ‘musical’ means when applied to things literary has vexed critics for centuries. Schiller, in a famous passage of his Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, called Klopstock a ‘musical’ poet and also tried to define the term, causing only more confusion in the process. Later on he even consulted Zelter, whose honesty on the matter is still today as amusing as it is characteristic: Sie könnten mich wohl fragen, was ich unter musikalisch verstehe und so will ich Ihnen nun gleich sagen, daß ich es selbst nicht recht weiß, daß ich aber von andern Musikern weiß, daß sie es auch nicht wissen; und daß die meisten unter ihnen so unwissend sind nicht zu wissen, daß sie es nicht wissen [...]. Wir Musiker [haben] gar keinen bestimmten Begriff für das was wir musikalisch nennen.22

Though it may not have been conscious on his part either, the meaning of Beethoven’s general usage of the term is more straightforward and

21

Karl Goedeke, ed.: Schillers Briefwechsel mit Körner, 2 vols., Leipzig 1879, vol. 2. 452f. [April 22. 1792].

22

Eduard Castle, ed.: Carl Künzels ‘Schilleriana’, Vienna 1955, 72 (February 20, 1798).

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has to do with his daily compositional practice, I believe. He considered a text ‘musical’ only if it possessed just the right poetic constituents for him to set it to music. And he would call a poet ‘musical’ if this poet could provide him with what he as a musician considered a composable text. Averdonk, Breuning, Collin, Gellert, Gleim, Goebel, Haugwitz, Herrossee, Hölty, Jeitteles, Kotzebue, Kuffner, Matthisson, Pfeffel, Reßlig, Sauter, Seume, Sonnleithner, Stoll, Tiedge, Treitschke, Ueltzen, Werner. The longer we contemplate this motley sampling of second and third rate poets whose words (and not whose names) Beethoven also immortalized through his music, the clearer it becomes that the real question for him was not the choice between Goethe or Schiller but rather the highly subjective selection of texts commensurate with his conception of their potential for his musical setting: in every poet he turned to, however minor, he must have identified some striking sentiment or idea appropriate enough to inspire in him a corresponding compositional impulse. Whether this impulse was more the result of literary affinity or artistic necessity, that would have to be judged in each individual instance; and I would tend to say that more often than not it was a combination of both. At any rate, here are two of many statements which confirm that in choosing texts for composition Beethoven was well aware of the presence or absence of intrinsic literary merit: Christus am Ölberg ward von mir mit dem Dichter [Franz Xaver Huber] in [der] Zeit von 14 Tagen geschrieben. Allein der Dichter war musikalisch und hatte schon mehreres für Musik geschrieben; ich konnte mich jeden Augenblick mit ihm besprechen. Lassen wir den Wert dergleichen Dichtungen ununtersucht. Wir wissen alle, wie wir das hiermit nehmen können; das Gute liegt hier in der Mitte. Was mich aber angeht, so will ich lieber selbst Homer, Klopstock, Schiller in Musik setzen; wenigstens, wenn man auch Schwierigkeiten zu besiegen hat, so verdienen dies diese unsterblichen Dichter.23

And likewise about the oratorio, op. 85: 23

Briefe (cf. note 13) 703 [January 23, 1824].

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Ich weiß, der Text ist äußerst schlecht, aber hat man sich einmal aus einem auch schlechten Text ein Ganzes gedacht, so ist es schwer, durch einzelne Änderungen zu vermeiden, daß eben dieses nicht gestört werde, und ist nun gar ein Wort allein, worin manchmal große Bedeutung gelegt, so muß es schon bleiben, und ein schlechter Autor ist dieses, der nicht soviel Gutes als möglich auch aus einem schlechten Text zu machen weiß oder sucht [...].24

As we can tell from these keen observations, Beethoven’s meticulous concern for the practical exigencies of vocal composition encompassed the overall conception of the work as well as the most minute contextual details of its execution. In his outstanding study which after fifty years still remains unsurpassed as the standard monograph on Beethoven’s Lieder, Hans Boettcher concludes that “nach einem primären Reden, nach einer der Prosa angenäherten dichterischen Sprache verlangt der Liederkomponist Beethoven”.25 Boettcher convincingly demonstrates that this need for a “poetic language that approaches the quality of prose” explains why Beethoven often chooses texts which contain declamatory or interrogative clauses and phrases or recitative-like passages. And it is this same longing that necessitates certain identifiable, almost manneristic compositional strategies such as frequent textual alterations and repetitions, the insertion of additional “Ja”s for emphasis, or Beethoven’s pronounced preference for particular stanzas or lines to be set while neglecting the rest of the poem. The end effect of these strategies becomes especially meaningful in the light of an elliptical, otherwise enigmatic diary entry: “Also gesungen auch vortreffliche Worte ausdrücken”26; in the process of composition Beethoven assimilates the chosen text to such an extent that in the finished work even the words cannot be regarded as anything but his very own. The resulting fusion of text and music is Beethoven through and through. 24

Briefe (cf. note 13) 198 [August 23, 1811].

25

Boettcher (cf. note 5) 49.

26

Ibid., 36.

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These analytical considerations, based primarily on the Lieder, illustrate clearly Beethoven’s everpresent concern for the word and its necessary function in the musical realization of his artistic goals. But, with appropriate generic modifications, they could be applied profitably also to Beethoven’s other vocal compositions and even to some of the instrumental and symphonic music, I believe; a worthwile critical task which ought to receive expert attention and which promises illuminating results. What I mean is simply the fundamental interdependence of Beethoven’s vocal and instrumental works. For example, we can find certain structures and techniques in the Lieder which derive from the instrumental compositions, like the subtle use of the sonata form in the Goethe songs Neue Liebe, neues Leben and Mit einem gemalten Band or traces of variational, improvisational, and cyclic writing as reflected, say, in An die ferne Geliebte, the first song cycle in music history. And likewise we can discover musical semblances of what Boettcher termed “poetic language that approaches the quality of prose” in instrumental works such as the well-known recitative-like passages in the first movement of the d-minor piano sonata op. 31, 2 (Les Adieux), and in the final movement of the Ninth Symphony intoned by the lower strings and leading over to the baritone recitative set to Beethoven’s own words “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! sondern laßt uns angenehmere anstimmen, und freudenvollere” or the “peculiarly lyrical, declamatory style”27 so pronounced in the last quartets. My necessarily incomplete discussion of Beethoven and the word would be even more sketchy without at least mentioning, by way of conclusion, another significant aspect of his literariness: opera. To ponder his abortive operatic ventures is just as instructive as studying the various versions of Fidelio. It would be fascinating, for example, to speculate about operas seriously planned and invariably abandoned by Beethoven on lofty subjects like Vestas Feuer (Schikaneder), Romulus (Treitschke), Macbeth and Armida (Collin), The Return of 27

Ibid., 35.

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Ulysses (Körner), Libussa and Melusine (Grillparzer), Bacchus (Geitteles), Attila (Kotzebue), and Faust, of course, the composition of which remained Beethoven’s greatest unfulfilled desire. Was it a carefully veiled sense of despair and longing for a good opera text or his sincere belief in Kotzebue’s literary stature that induced him to write so admiringly to Kotzebue in January 1812, just six months before he met his true literary idol Goethe in Teplitz? Indem ich für die Ungarn Ihr [Kotzebue’s] Vor- und Nachspiel mit Musik begleitete [the music to King Stephen and The Ruins of Athens], konnte ich mich des lebhaften Wunsches nicht enthalten, eine Oper von Ihrem einzig dramatischen Genie zu besitzen, möge sie romantisch, ganz ernsthaft, heroisch, komisch, sentimental sein, kurzum, wie es Ihnen gefalle, werde ich sie mit Vergnügen annehmen. Freilich würde mir am liebsten ein großer Gegenstand aus der Geschichte sein und besonders aus den dunkleren Zeiten, z.b.des Attila usw. Doch werde ich mit Dank annehmen, wie der Gegenstand auch immer sei, wenn etwas mir von Ihnen kommt, von Ihrem poetischen Geiste, das ich in meinen musikalischen übertragen kann.28

Obviously, Beethoven would have given anything for a suitable libretto – and we know that he actively searched for one, in vain, throughout his creative life. No wonder, therefore, that much of his vocal music bears the imprint of the frustrated opera composer. One could argue, of course, as G. B. Shaw persuasively did, that even Fidelio hardly qualifies as a true opera, for it “resolves opera into cantata or allegorical oratorio”.29 But then, conversely, it is only a small and plausible step along the same route to conceive of the long stretch of solo and choral singing which concludes the Ninth Symphony as inherently operatic, especially since it unmistakably echoes in musical and ideational content the jubilant Finale of Fidelio. The truth, most probably, lies somewhere in the middle. But where does all this leave Adrian Leverkühn, for whom it was “sehr natürlich, daß die Musik am Wort entbrenne, das Wort aus der 28

Briefe (cf. note 13) 208 [January 28, 1812].

29

Peter Conrad: Romantic Opera and Literary Form, Berkeley 1977, 82.

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Musik hervorbräche, wie es sich gegen Ende der Neunten Symphonie ereigne”? Leverkühn opts here for Wagnerian mystification which beclouds the real issue: the complex and ultimately creative necessity of the word for Beethoven the man and artist. As I hope to have suggested, for Beethoven this necessity of the word as artistic resource was inseparable from an innate though by far not infallible literary affinity unique among musicians of any age.

Comparing Literature and Music Current Trends and Prospects in Critical Theory and Methodology (1981) Apart from a personal privilege, it is also an unprecedented opportunity to address – at a truly international meeting such as ours – a sizable group of comparatists with a pronounced interest in literature and the arts as a subject for serious study. My use of the word “serious” is deliberate, for the state, status, and prospects of scholarship concerned with comparing literature and the other arts have not always been as encouraging as they appear to us today. Not long ago indeed, in 1968, Ulrich Weisstein’s sober assessment of this comparatistic no-man’sland sounded appropriately bleak, that is, thoroughly realistic: Until very recently [...] the study of the arts in their mutual interpenetration was a sort of academic twilight zone that was either annexed to aesthetics or, for lack of interest on the part of literary critics and historians, claimed by art history and musicology.1

I hasten to add, however, that at the same time Professor Weisstein – coolly confident of a brighter future for this type of inquiry – did not hesitate to predict what we no longer find astonishing, that sooner or later, the study of literature’s share in the mutual illumination of the arts “will, along with the sociology of literature and the revived genology and thematology, find a prominent place in the next phase of the history of Comparative Literature.”2 It is surely no coincidence that the relevant chapter in the original 1968 German version of Weis1

Ulrich Weisstein, Comparative Literature and Literary Theory: Survey and Introduction. Tr. W. Riggan (Bloomington, Ind., 1973), p. 151.

2

Ibid., p. 152.

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stein’s comprehensive Einführung in die Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, then still hesitatingly entitled “Exkurs: Wechselseitige Erhellung der Künste”, became only five years later, in the English version, a full-fledged chapter simply called “The Mutual Illumination of the Arts”. Weisstein is not alone, of course, with his firm endorsement of literarily based interart criticism as legitimate comparatist activity. Particularly in the last decade or so, there has been a gratifyingly significant shift in attitude among comparatists on an international scale with regard to interart parallels drawn from literature and the visual arts, literature and music, and literature and film. Even as prominent a representative of Eastern European comparatist methodology as György Vajda can be quoted as conceding that Auf nationaler und geschichtlicher Grundlage halten wir es für möglich, daß die vergleichende Literaturforschung ihr Augenmerk auch auf parallele Erscheinungen aus anderen Bereichen der Kunst richtet. Sind doch Literatur und Kunst, Theater und Musik Produkte desselben geschichtlichen Prozesses. Und sie bestehen nicht nur nebeneinander, sie wirken auch gegenseitig aufeinander.3

More and more of us by now share the conviction that the “interart borderland”, to borrow Breon Mitchell’s felicitous designation (YCGL 27 [1978], p. 5), does indeed constitute a potentially profitable area of comparative investigation. We might even look forward to a little more recognition and trust on the part of our hitherto rather skeptical colleagues who have been working mostly in the safer, traditional confines of the discipline, comparing only literary works “beyond national boundaries.”4

3

In G. Ziegengeist, ed., Aktuelle Probleme der Vergleichenden Literaturforschung (Berlin-Ost, 1968), p. 96.

4

Henry H. H. Remak, “Comparative Literature, Its Definition and Function”, in: Newton P. Stallknecht and Horst Frenz, eds., Comparative Literature: Method and Perspective (Carbondale, Ill., 1961), p. 4.

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Before I turn specifically to the fates and fortunes of comparing literature and music, it may be worthwhile to ponder for a moment the reasons for this timely attention to our pursuits. The password here, I suspect, is also the most fashionable term in humanistic studies today, “currently [...] so overused as to be abused”5: interdisciplinary. As Michael Messmer recently observed, “the frequent use of hybrid terms – psychohistory, sociolinguistics, cliometrics, etc. – clearly indicates recognition by practitioners of the intellectual endeavors to which such terms are affixed that what they are doing no longer falls (or seems to fall) comfortably within the boundaries of recognized academic disciplines”6. Messmer views the latest preoccupations of interdisciplinarians such as Hayden White, Raymond Williams, and Edward Said as “exemplary instances of boundary-violating critiques of conventional knowledge”7 and concludes – correctly, I believe – that “substantive interdisciplinary work will always cause [...] nervousness in a contemporary academic world in which inviolable boundaries and sacred taboos hedge the departmentalized disciplines one from another”8. The relatively recent emergence of semiotics is likewise a case in point. Being a “new and aggressive discipline”9, as Jonathan Culler in his discussion on the pursuit of signs eloquently argues, it effects perceptible changes and adjustments in a host of implicated disciplines from among the humanities and social sciences. Obviously, in terms of their scope, ambition, and eventual multi-disciplinary impact, semiotic and musico-literary inquiry bear no comparison. But on a more 5

See Michael W. Messmer, “The Vogue of the Interdisciplinary,” CentR, 22 (1978), 467-77.

6

Ibid., p. 467.

7

Ibid.

8

Ibid., p. 469.

9

Jonathan Culler, “In Pursuit of Signs,” Daedalus, No. 106 (Fall, 1977), p. 96.

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modest scale, in terms of Fachgeschichte, for example, I do sense some similarities. According to Culler (who has semiotics in mind), “as a discipline makes a place for itself it makes a past for itself, claiming certain scholars as precursors, interpreting their work in a new light, identifying and redefining forces previously at work in older disciplines”10. A mere glance at the history of esthetic theorizing about the correspondences between literature and music, starting with the mid-eighteenth century, suffices to substantiate that practitioners in our field have been engaged in establishing similar objectives and claims. The line of development is well known. Early theorists like Charles Avison, Daniel Webb, John Brown, James Beattie, and Thomas Twining11 in England and J. G. Sulzer, J. N. Forkel, and J. G. Herder12 in Germany laid the groundwork for nineteenth-century estheticians such as Eduard Hanslick, W. A. Ambros, and Jules Combarieu13. Influential twentieth-century directions in the field have been associated chiefly with theoretical and methodological studies by Oskar Walzel, Kurt Wais, René Wellek14, and Calvin S. Brown (who

10

Ibid.

11

Charles Avison, An Essay on Musical Expression (London, 1752); Daniel Webb, Observations on the Correspondence between Poetry and Musick (London, 1762); John Brown, A Dissertation on the Rise, Union, and Power, the Progressions, Separations, and Corruptions of Poetry and Music (London, 1763); James Beattie, Essays on Poetry and Music, as they Affect the Mind (London, 1770); and Thomas Twining, ed., Aristotle’s Treatise on Poetry Translated: ... and Two Dissertations, on Poetical, and Musical, Imitation (London, 1789). 12

J. G. Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste (Leipzig, 1771-74); J. N. Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (2 vols. Leipzig, 1788, 1801); and J. G. Herder, Kritische Wälder (Riga, 1769).

13

Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (Leipzig, 1854); W. A. Ambros, Die Grenzen der Musik und Poesie (Prag, 1856); and Jules Combarieu, Les Rapports de la musique et de la poésie (Paris, 1894). 14

Oskar Walzel, Wechselseitige Erhellung der Künste (Berlin, 1917), and Gehalt und Gestalt im Kunstwerk des Dichters (Berlin-Neubabelsberg, 1923); Kurt Wais, Symbiose der Künste. Forschungsgrundlagen zur Wechselberührung zwischen Dich-

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retired last year as Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Georgia). Brown’s book entitled Music and Literature: A Comparison of the Arts15 clearly constitutes the most comprehensive modern scholarly assessment of the interrelationship. Brown’s carefully conceived subsequent contributions to the field over the last thirty years have made him its central, most influential figure. His circumspect and highly informative Forschungsbericht, for example, published in 1970 remains indispensable for anyone interested in the state and prospects of musico-literary research during the preceding two decades16. This truly international survey is particularly relevant for our purposes here because in it Brown provides not only capsule characterizations of significant and/or representative studies that appeared roughly between 1950 and 1970, but he also describes and critically evaluates – with admirable clarity and sound judgment – the various theoretical, methodological, and interpretive trends, preoccupations, emphases, directions, and perspectives he discerns in this largely heterogeneous and undisciplined discipline. His general characterization of the field is still valid today: There is no organization of the work or the workers in the field of musico-literary relationships. Many a scholar publishes a single article in the field, usually involving a writer or aspect of literature in which he regularly works, and never returns to the relationship of the arts. A small number of scholars have a primary interest in the field and work in it intensively, but they do not form anything that could be called a group or coterie. Similarly, there are no organized or conflicting schools of thought, as there is no official point of view and no standard methodology. The entire field of study remains essentially individual and unorganized.17

tung, Bild- und Tonkunst (Stuttgart, 1936); and René Wellek, “The Parallelism between Literature and the Arts,” English Institute Annual 1941 (N. Y., 1942), pp. 2963. 15

Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1948.

16

Calvin S. Brown, “Musico-Literary Research in the Last Two Decades,” YCGL, 19 (1970), 5-27.

17

Ibid., pp. 5-6.

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Brown’s initiative is also responsible for another important contribution dating from the same year, with longer-range theoretical and practical consequences for our field: the special, Spring 1970, issue of the journal Comparative Literature, which is devoted to topics of music and literature, with Brown as guest editor and feature articles by Ulrich Weisstein, Jack M. Stein, Nan C. Carpenter, Frederick W. Sternfeld, Mary Chan, and myself.’18 In his introductory essay to this compilation, Brown arrived at an ingenious definition of Comparative Literature which should be better known. According to Brown, “If we define comparative literature as any study of literature involving at least two different media of expression, a good many difficulties in classification will disappear”19. I regard this concise definition as the most successful and persuasive plea so far for the legitimacy of literarily based comparisons of literature with the other arts, including literature and music, as an integral branch of Comparative Literature. The diverse attempts at a practicable and widely acceptable definition for Comparative Literature have long been a favorite target of attack within the discipline. It is, of course, ultimately impossible to find a formulation that would satisfactorily accommodate every individual interest; and a great deal of creative energy has been expended on frequently abortive scholarly debates concerning exclusions and inclusions according to disciplinary, national, and/or linguistic boundaries – or, with specific relevance to our area of study, concerning the credibility of the “music as language” theory. How appropriately broad yet cogently restrictive Calvin Brown’s formulation is can perhaps best be appreciated when it is contrasted with Henry H. H. Remak’s well-known definition which has been criticized for its overly permissive interdisciplinary bias:

18

“Special Number on Music and Literature,” CL, 22 (1970), number 2.

19

Ibid., p. 102.

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Comparative literature is the study of literature beyond the confines of one particular country, and the study of the relationships between literature on the one hand and other areas of knowledge and belief, such as the arts (e. g., painting, sculpture, architecture, music), philosophy, history, the social sciences (e. g., politics, economics, sociology), the sciences, religion, etc., on the other. In brief, it is the comparison of one literature with another or others, and the comparison of literature with other spheres of human expression.20

Clearly, Brown has honed and refined Remak’s “other spheres of human expression” by suggesting that, being itself a medium of expression, literature can be meaningfully compared with other “media of expression” such as painting and music. The common link is, of course, that as esthetic constructs literature and the other arts inherently possess expressive content. It must be stressed, however, that Brown’s designation “media of expression” does not carry specific linguistic connotations. In other words, he would not regard the art of literature as mere language, just as he would disapprove of literaturebased interart comparisons operating with hackneyed metaphorical abstractions like “the language of music”, “music as language”, or “the language of painting”. Also, as a further tacit improvement, Brown’s definition simply disregards Remak’s ambiguous, allinclusive notion of “other areas of knowledge and belief.”21 Questions of definition and other theoretical issues of such magnitude involve the entire discipline of Comparative Literature and require a broader frame of reference. I shall now turn from this larger, general context back to the narrower confines of comparing literature and music and shall reflect briefly on some recent trends, preoccupations, and future tasks. To start with the positive side: during the last decades, active interest in the serious study of musico-literary phenomena has been steadily growing also among musicologists and

20 21

Remak, op. cit., p. 3.

I have raised this question along with other related ones in a paper given at the 1974 ACLA symposium devoted to “The Place of Comparative Literature in Interdisciplinary Studies”. See YCGL, 24 (1975), 37-40.

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composers with a solid literary background. It is encouraging indeed that lately some of the ablest minds in the field of music have been attracted to our pursuits: along with Thrasybulos Georgiades, Joseph Müller-Blattau, Walter Wiora, and Frederick Sternfeld (who belong to the older generation), the musicologists Joseph Kerman, Edward Cone, Denis Stevens, Carl Dahlhaus, and Leon Plantinga; and the composers Stockhausen, Cage, Boulez, Berio, and Dallapiccola. As more musicologists find it worthwhile to publish on musico-literary topics, certain basic methodological questions will surely arise. To what extent, for example, should we insist on thorough academic training and equal competence in both arts when contemplating the interrelation? Where, if at all, are we to draw the line separating the hunting ground of musico-literary comparatists from the domain of musicologists? Traditionally, musicologists interested in this area have been studying the combination of music and literature when they are simultaneously present in the same work of art, as exemplified in opera and the Lied, in other types of vocal music, like the oratorio and the cantata, and, to a lesser extent, in program music. Literary scholars, on the other hand, have been concentrating on attempts by poets and writers at “musicalization” of literature, thus dealing with music’s impact on literature as the primary medium of expression. Since the spectre of dilettantism looms large, no matter which side we come from, what ultimately matters is, I believe, that the degree of professional competence required for the particular comparison be commensurate with the individual scholar’s ability, critical rigor, and appropriate background in both arts. Of course, adequate familiarity with philosophical, literary, and musical esthetics is also a must. But it would be myopic and counterproductive to prescribe any further the nature and extent of specialized knowledge necessary for informed and illuminating contributions. After all, in interart comparisons it often proves to be a definite advantage if the critic remains unencumbered by overly technical vocabulary and analytical practices derived from one or the other art. As numerous recent, persuasive studies

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demonstrate, however, a reliable working knowledge of music in its historical, technical, and practical aspects can provide profitable new insights into literary works which exhibit “a substantial analogy to, and in many cases an actual influence from, the art of music.”22 To mention only one recent example by a historian of music: Hermann Danuser’s comprehensive treatment of the phenomenon of Musikalische Prosa (1975)23 succeeds precisely because throughout it rests on a solid musicological foundation which never overshadows the informed critical analyses of the topic’s literary aspects. Conversely, a number of potentially promising studies of the interrelation by literary scholars have been severely flawed by a partial, or even total, lack of sophistication in musical matters. This last observation already belongs to the negative side of our balance. In spite of the many recent encouraging signs of health and vigor in our field, certain problems continue to persist. I shall single out only one here, and that only in passing, for I have commented on it repeatedly and emphatically elsewhere: the age-old terminological confusion unfortunately still omnipresent in comparisons of literature and music. Perhaps this is a curse that will simply remain with us, forever impeding honest efforts to evolve a clearly defined set of critical terms designed to eliminate the distorting vagueness so often encountered in comparative criticism. Such a set of terms would do wonders! However Utopian it may sound, in place of rampant metaphorical impressionism – still happily fostered by the continuing abuse and misuse of terms like “musical”, “musicality”, “music of poetry”, “leitmotiv”, “melody”, “harmony”, and “counterpoint” – we would have terminologically sound and responsibly formulated comparative studies of interart parallels. But the sobering fact is that I can report no appreciable progress in this area at this time. After almost 22

Northrop Frye, “Introduction: Lexis and Melos,” in Frye, ed., Sound and Poetry. English Institute Annual for 1956 (New York, 1957), pp. X-XI. 23

Regensburg, 1975.

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two centuries, Friedrich Zelter’s notorious confession is still symptomatic of our terminological dilemma. Goethe’s composer friend wrote to Schiller on February 20, 1798: Sie könnten mich wohl fragen, was ich unter musikalisch verstehe und so will ich Ihnen nun gleich sagen, daß ich es selbst nicht recht weiß; daß ich aber von andern Musikern weiß, daß sie es auch nicht wissen; und daß die meisten unter ihnen so unwissend sind nicht zu wissen, daß sie es nicht wissen [...] Wir Musiker [haben] gar keinen Begriff für das was wir musikalisch nennen.24

Obviously, then, one of the urgent tasks of musico-literary comparatists ought to be a rigorous self-examination with the aim of overcoming the persistent “trend towards the loose metaphorical use of technical terms”25. But we have to be practical, after all, and also identify more immediate, as well as concrete and manageable needs in the field. Given the steady growth, in volume as well as in quality, of pertinent scholarship, a circumspect and detailed Forschungsbericht covering the last ten years – along the lines of Calvin Brown’s 1970 contribution – would be most welcome. Such a project could be based on the only regularly appearing publication entirely devoted to the interrelations of literature and the arts, now also including literature and film. The twenty-seven-year old annual Bibliography on the Relations of Literature and the Other Arts – which I have been editing since 1973 and which is being produced at Dartmouth College – continues to serve the rising number of interart comparatists. While the Bibliography cannot possibly claim to be exhaustive, it is generally regarded as a more than adequate overview of the international scene; and more specifically, as a helpful tool that provides a reliable and upto-date source for assessing the diverse contributions published year after year. Looking at the work on musico-literary topics published in the last decade, the scarcity of theoretically oriented items becomes immedi24

Eduard Castle, ed., Carl Kunzels ‘Schilleriana’ (Vienna, 1955), p. 72.

25

Brown, op. cit., p. 6.

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ately apparent. Instead, scholars have concentrated on musical connections demonstrable in individual authors or specific literary works, with certain authors receiving a great deal more critical attention than others. Rousseau, Wackenroder, Kleist, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Heine, Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal, Thomas Mann, Brecht, and T. S. Eliot have been most frequently treated, with Mann’s Doktor Faustus being the one single work most often studied. Important new work has also been done on the literary connections of composers such as Haydn, Berlioz, Debussy, Hindemith, Kurt Weill, and Hanns Eisler. Only the Lied and opera have been subjected to considerable theoretical scrutiny. Joseph Kerman’s recent comment on the appearance of new studies in operatic critical theory is characteristic of the whimsicality of critical fads: Five such volumes came out in 1977, almost the first to arrive since my own Opera as Drama in 1956; and I may perhaps be allowed to express some bemusement both at the dearth of sustained work in this area in the last twenty years or so, and also at this sudden new deluge.26

Still, the observed trends are not likely to change overnight. Musicoliterary scholarship will surely need, therefore, more solid studies of the synchronic, systematic relations between the two arts, as well as inquiries into diachronic, historical correlations such as periodization, reception, dissemination, and influence. Also, the time has come, I believe, for a more ambitious and formidable project: the writing of a comprehensive, book-length historical survey of the theory and practice of musico-literary criticism – a task that has been attempted so far only in bits and pieces, in the form of individual articles or book chapters. In conclusion, I come to the most problematic desideratum: the need for informed studies on the feasibility and potential usefulness of the semiotic approach for comparing literature and music. I must confess that at this early stage of semiotic inquiry into the various arts I 26

Joseph Kerman, “Opera, Novel, Drama: The Case of La Traviata,” YCGL, 27 (1978), 44.

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am rather skeptical about eventual results. Not that I doubt that in some way future work in musical, linguistic, and literary semiology and extensive research into the exact nature of possible reciprocal contact between semiotics and esthetics will prove helpful in exploring certain aspects of the interrelation. Indeed, much provocative comparative work has already been done on the semiotic aspects of music and language by scholars like Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, Nicolas Ruwet, Roland Harweg, and Jean-Jacques Nattiez, primarily linguists.27 It is just that, so far, I have not come across any illuminating semiotic treatment of literature and music. Only the musicologist Rose Subotnik’s persuasively argued recent essay in Critical Inquiry entitled “The Cultural Message of Musical Semiology: Some Thoughts on Music, Language, and Criticism since the Enlightenment”28 provided me with a few passing flashes of semiotic insight linking the two arts; but then Subotnik herself ends up doubting the basic premise of musical semiology. “Musik und Zeichen. Aspekte einer nicht vorhandenen musikalischen Semiotik” is the suggestive title of another recent musicological contribution.29 There seem to be more incorrigible optimists among literary critics (or are they prophets?) who – like Professor Vajda – anticipate farreaching results from the impact of semiotics on interart comparisons: [An] area to which semiotics can perhaps direct us is the elaboration of the shared language of meaning-overlaps between literature and the other arts. This would be one of the most attractive and rewarding fields of comparative studies, as it would further the establishment of a solid foundation for the unified study of literature

27

E. g., Roman Jakobson, “Musikwissenschaft und Linguistik,” Prager Presse (December 7, 1932); Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris, 1957); Nicolas Ruwet, Langage, musique, poésie (Paris, 1972); Roland Harweg, “Sprache und Musik,” Poetica, 1 (1967), 390-414 and 556-566; and Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Fondements d’une sémiologie de la musique (Paris, 1975). 28

Critical Inquiry, 4 (1978), 741-768.

29

By Tibor Kneif in Musica, 27 (1973), 9-12.

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and the other arts, the objectification of such unified investigations, and the exploration of deeper inner relations among the arts.30

Without some comforting evidence, however, this is perhaps too optimistic a prognosis for me to endorse fully at this time. But, as I hope my remarks on the nature and range of current critical activity have shown, comparing literature and music is a dynamic and resilient field of study, ready for the challenge of solving old problems and able to face promising new tasks, including the challenge of semiotics.

30

György M. Vajda, “Present Perspectives of Comparative Literature”, Neohelicon 5 (1977), p. 279.

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Literature and Music (1982) Poets and musicians are members of one church, related in the most intimate way: for the secret of word and tone is one and the same. E. T. A. Hoffmann What demon pushes the composer so inexorably to literature? What is the power that compels him in emergency to become a poet himself? Is it merely the longing for the lost Paradise, for that original unity which can never be regained? Pierre Boulez To find a true word in music is as lucky as to find true music in words. William W. Austin

That music and literature share their origin is a notion as old as the first stirrings of aesthetic consciousness. Even a cursory glance at the evolution of the arts confirms that “histories of both have remained in many ways mutually contingent.”1 As the two arts developed, diverse theories were advanced about their comparability as basic media of artistic expression. From early on, juxtapositions now all too familiar, like “music and poetry”, “word and tone”, and “sound and poetry”, recur with formulaic frequency in critical discourse. Though rarely substantiated by a precise definition, such commonplace juxtapositions lend a deceptively axiomatic aura of legitimacy to comparisons of the two arts. Indeed, by their cumulative presence alone, these cli1

John Hollander, “Music and Poetry”, in Alex Preminger, ed., Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1965), p. 533.

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chés seem to authenticate what has been traditionally viewed in aesthetic speculation as a relation of mutual dependency. But as scrutiny of critical theory and practice reveals, the relation is precarious and beset with interpretive pitfalls: while in many instances the two arts are virtually inseparable, there are also apparent correlations that ultimately prove to be illusory or at best metaphorical. It may seem odd to begin a discussion of the manifold alliance of literature and music on a skeptical note. Yet it is necessary here as a preventive measure, for the study of this correspondence – perhaps more than any other study of interart parallels – holds “a fatal attraction for the dilettante, the faddist and the crackpot”2. One reason for this attraction may be the tacit endorsement in aesthetics and art criticism of the cliché that music is the art most closely allied with literature. A generalization of this sort, however true, often fosters the illusion that scholars in the field require little if any specialized background. To be sure, the spectrum of possible parallels between the two arts is vast. But that most of these parallels are also enormously complex is not readily evident even to musically sophisticated students of literature or, for that matter, to musicologists with considerable literary erudition. Precisely here lies the difficulty for prospective practitioners of musico-literary study: namely, that more often than not they make the decisive initial contact with this “interarts borderland”3 of literary and musical aesthetics on too high a level of generalization. Uninitiated parallel seekers thus enter the happy hunting ground of musico-literary relations with insufficient ammunition, yet expect to emerge with a handsome booty. What awaits them behind the unassuming conjunction “and” is an infinite variety of affinities, interplays, and analogies as well as divergencies; to master the complexi-

2 3

Calvin S. Brown, “Comparative Literature”, Georgia Review, 13 (1959), 175.

Breon Mitchell’s felicitous designation in Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, 27 (1978), 5.

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ties, they need a knowledge of the fundamental principles, creative potentialities, and interpretive possibilities of both arts. No matter how similar literature and music may appear on occasion, they are only analogous, never identical. In addressing some of the basic issues and preoccupations of musico-literary criticism, an attempt will be made to maintain a reasonable balance between the literary and the musical perspectives. A systematic and a historical overview of the interrelation will be included as well as consideration of more general questions concerning the boundaries between the two arts: where and how do they overlap or transgress their individual confines; what are the typical, concrete manifestations of the interaction, based on specific affinities; which are the major areas and commonly practiced types of comparative investigation; and to what extent can legitimate comparisons succeed and be fruitful for the literary scholar? To facilitate orientation, the parallels between the two arts will be divided into three categories: music and literature, literature in music, and music in literature.4 Manifestations of what we generally call “vocal music” fall under the heading “music and literature”. In vocal music, literary text and musical composition are inextricably bound. Together they constitute a symbiotic construct that qualifies as a full-fledged work of art only if components of both are simultaneously present. Most common among such combinations of text and music in a single work are operas and lieder (art songs), along with a host of other forms familiar from past centuries of European musical and theatrical history, such as oratorios, cantatas, masses, motets, madrigals, a cappella choruses, ballads, the English masque, and the German singspiel. From its early seventeenth-century beginnings, opera has been a unique and indestructible form of artistic expression fusing poetry and music into a theatrical 4

The following presentation draws extensively on my publications treating musico-literary topics (see bibliography). Whenever possible, an attempt has been made to improve upon earlier definitions and formulations. Direct quotations from previous material are acknowledged in the text.

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spectacle, and it has generated memorable partnerships between poets and composers of stature; in the twentieth century, for example, Richard Strauss collaborated with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Igor Stravinsky with Jean Cocteau and W. H. Auden. Perhaps even better known are those cases in which composers drew inspiration from existing literary works to create operatic masterpieces or outstanding examples of the lied: Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth, Otello, and Falstaff; Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov; Alban Berg’s Wozzeck; Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd; Franz Peter Schubert’s settings of Goethe poems; and Robert Schumann’s Eichendorff songs readily come to mind. In the interaction between text and music, poets and musicians no doubt recognized an opportunity to transcend the communicative limitations of the individual art forms. The manifold aspects of where and how word interacts and intersects with tone have proved most rewarding for musico-literary study. Traditionally, in spite of the obvious points of reciprocal contact between the two arts, vocal music has been regarded as a primarily musical genre. No one would seriously think of, say, Verdi’s operas based on Shakespeare plays or Schubert’s Goethe lieder as first and foremost literary creations. Yet interpreters of such works cannot dispense with the literary aspect of the relation. After all, it is almost always a given text that inspires the composer’s musical realization, even if it undergoes alteration in the creative process. For a long time, opera criticism and lied scholarship have been practiced almost exclusively by musicologists. As a result, the poetic elements in the wordtone synthesis have rarely received due attention.5 In recent years, however, remarkable progress has been made by musically informed literary critics toward a correction of this imbalance, notably by Ulrich Weisstein, Gary Schmidgall, Peter Conrad, and Jack M. Stein. Analysis of the complex artistic conditions conducive to a realization of 5

Prominent exceptions are studies by such musicologists as Joseph Kerman, Thrasybulos Georgiades, and Walter Wiora.

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optimal musical settings of poetic texts; discussion of matters of priority, such as the recurring dilemma of collaborating composers, poets, and librettists about the relative merit of the text or the music – “prima le parole e dopo la musica” or “prima la musica e poi le parole”; speculation about the particular choice, nature, and aesthetic value of the text to be set to music; and inquiry into specific theoretical and interpretive problems generated by the diverse attempts to achieve an ideal word-tone synthesis: these are only a sampling of the most frequently treated topics concerning composite instances of music and literature. ”Literature in music” conveniently designates works customarily referred to as “program music”. Though, like vocal music, a primarily musical genre, program music invites the scrutiny of the literary scholar inasmuch as it often exhibits an impact of literature on music. Particularly in nineteenth and early twentieth-century music, this impact has been so considerable that we may say that most examples of program music represent attempts on the part of their composers at “literarization” of music. In contradistinction to “absolute” or “abstract” music that possesses no extramusical connotations, program music is defined as instrumental music inspired by or based on “a nonmusical idea, which is usually indicated in the title and sometimes described in explanatory remarks or a preface.”6 In 1854 Franz Liszt coined the term “symphonic poem” (later also known as “tone poem”) for what has since become the most common type of such expressive instrumental music. Liszt’s own pioneering symphonic poems like Tasso or Hamlet and his Dante and Faust symphonies were followed by a host of others similarly inspired by specific literary works, as for example Hector Berlioz’ Harold en Italie (based on Lord Byron’s Childe Harold), Hugo Wolf’s Penthesilea (after Heinrich von Kleist’s tragedy), Richard Strauss’s Don Juan (after Nikolaus Lenau), Paul 6

Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music, comp. Don M. Randel (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1978), p. 402.

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Dukas’s L’Apprenti sorcier (after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s ballad “Der Zauberlehrling”) and Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (after Stephane Mallarmé’s eclogue). Some of the best-known pieces of program music, however, were inspired by nonliterary sources such as impressions of landscape and events in nature (Ludwig van Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony), nationalistic themes (Bedřich Smetana’s Má Vlast), specific paintings (Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition) and quasi-philosophical writings (Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, after Friedrich Nietzsche). Critical consideration of the theoretical and interpretive ramifications of program music is contingent on a grasp of the history and aesthetics of music. Particularly relevant in this context is the controversy that arose in response to Eduard Hanslick’s 1854 treatise Vom Musikalisch-Schönen [The Beautiful in Music] between “formalist” and “expressionist” aestheticians about the meaning of music.7 This ongoing controversy harbors implications for the correlation of music and literature: the issue intimated here is the incomparability of the two arts. Clearly, “since any literary work is composed of words conveying some sort of definite conceptual meaning, through proper combination of words literature can communicate, express, or evoke a wide range of possibilities beyond itself. Music, on the other hand, is not composed of words and therefore lacks conceptual meaning” (Scher, Verbal Music, p. 163). Directed at the time against the overtly dramatic, illustrative tendency in Richard Wagner’s and Liszt’s compositional approach, Hanslick’s definition “Moving patterns of sound are the sole content and object of music” (p. 32) confirms the essential difference in expressivity between the two arts. This difference continues to separate the formalists or absolutists (champions of absolute music) from the expressionists or programmatists (champions of program music). Two contrasting statements illustrate the irrecon7

John Hospers’ Meaning and Truth in the Arts (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1946) is still the most informative account of this controversy. See esp. pp. 78-98. See also Scher, Verbal Music, p. 163.

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cilability in basic outlook. Almost a century later the convinced formalist Igor Stravinsky still echoes Hanslick: “I consider that music is, by its very nature, powerless to express anything at all, [...] if, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion, and not reality.”8 The British musicologist Deryck Cooke, in his polemical The Language of Music, espouses the opposite extreme: “The ‘literary’ aspect of music is to be found, to a greater or lesser extent, in most Western music written between 1400 and the present day, since music is, properly speaking, a language of the emotions, akin to speech [...]. Music is, in fact, ‘extra-musical’ in the sense that poetry is ‘extra-verbal’, since notes, like words, have emotional connotations […].“ (p. 33) So far, few literary critics have ventured beyond source study into the aesthetics of program music and grappled with the implications of the problematic presence, nature, and effectiveness of the literary model as reflected in the musical realization.9 The best treatment of these and related aspects can be found in Calvin S. Brown’s Music and Literature: A Comparison of the Arts (1948). In several chapters devoted to what he terms “literary types in music”, Brown offers comprehensive analytical surveys of the kinds of program music, evaluates their literariness, and makes distinctions between descriptive and narrative types of program music. “Music in literature” is the only one of the three areas of the interrelation that encompasses exclusively literary works of art. While unalterably bound to the literary medium of expression, in one way or another all these works represent attempts at “musicalization” of lit8

Igor Stravinsky, Stravinsky: An Autobiography (New York: Norton, 1936), pp. 83-84. 9

See, for example, W. H. Hadow, The Place of Music Among the Arts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1933); John Hospers, Meaning and Truth in the Arts; M. P. T. Leahy, “The Vacuity of Musical Expressionism”, British Journal of Aesthetics, 16 (1976), 144-56; and Luigi Ronga, The Meeting of Poetry and Music, trans. Elio Gianturco and Cara Rusanti (New York: Merlin, 1956).

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erature or verbalization of music. No matter how similar to music purely verbal constructs may be, in the nature of their material they remain fundamentally different from works whose medium is primarily musical, such as absolute, vocal, or program music. Literary texts cannot transcend the confines of literary texture and become musical texture. Literature lacks the unique acoustic quality of music; only through ingenious linguistic means or special literary techniques can it imply, evoke, imitate, or otherwise indirectly approximate actual music and thus create what amounts at best to a verbal semblance of music. Firmly anchored in the literary realm, manifestations of music in literature promise to be most rewarding for literary study. But the possibilities of literary treatment of music are so numerous and diverse that only the three basic kinds can be discussed and illustrated here in some detail: “word music”, musical structures and techniques in literary works, and “verbal music”. They will be reviewed as part of a larger framework of the major methodological strategies practiced by critics who deal with musico-literary parallels: the synchronic approach concerning the systematic relations and the diachronic approach concerning the historical relations between the two arts. The essential distinction between affinity in material and affinity in structure determines the nature and extent of systematic analogies between literature and music. Organized sound serves as basic material for both arts, a shared feature that immediately suggests the idea of comparability. But caution is in order, for the literary sound unit differs substantially from the musical sound unit: the individual word can (and usually does) carry semantic connotations, whereas the individual tone cannot. Word music, for example, is a rather common type of poetic practice that aims primarily at imitation in words of the acoustic quality of music (frequently also of non-musical sound) and that is realizable because of affinities in basic material (Yoshida, “Word-Music”). “Experimenters with such ‘pure’ poetry or prose of intense sound attempt to evoke the auditory sensation of music by composing verbal structures consisting predominantly of onomato-

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poeic words or word clusters” (Scher, Verbal Music, p. 3). Onomatopoeia is, of course, the technique most often used to approximate in words the effect of sound. Particular constituents superimposed on organized sound structures and patterns in both music and language likewise substantiate affinity in material: rhythm, stress, pitch (intonation), and timbre (tone color) are all applicable in literature, more or less effectively, to create musiclike textures. Selected strategies of versification such as alliteration, assonance, consonance, and rhyme schemes are purely literary and have also been successfully utilized for this purpose. A sampling of characteristic examples from the last two centuries shows that poetic preoccupation with the phenomenon of word music is by no means confined to any one national literature: we often encounter it in allusive poems by Clemens Brentano, Joseph von Eichendorff, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Mallarmé (and other French symbolists); in Edith Sitwell’s “poésie pure”; in the nonsense Iyrics of the Dadaists Hugo Ball, Hans Arp, and Kurt Schwitters; in the imaginative sound poems (Lautgedichte) of the Austrian Ernst Jandl; and in virtuoso prose passages of James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The first stanza of Verlaine’s poem “Chanson d’automne” illustrates word music at its suggestive best: Les sanglots longs Des violons De l’automne Blessent mon cœur D’une langueur Monotone.10

But even here the successful imitation of musical timbre – through transparent interplay of appropriate diction, assonances, and rhymes – depends on the poet’s naming of the violin, whose timbre is being

10

Paul Verlaine, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Jacques Robichez (Paris: Garnier, 1969), p. 39.

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imitated. Without this suggestive aid (comparable to the function of suggestive literary titles in program music) even a reader endowed with the most fertile imagination would find it difficult to identify the instrument in question, supposing that he or she could associate the imitative verbal timbre with a musical instrument at all. In the traditional classification of the fine arts, music and literature are viewed as closely akin, because they both are auditory, temporal, and dynamic art forms. (Painting, sculpture, and architecture, on the other hand, resemble one another on account of their visual, spatial, and static nature.) Without the auditory quality inherent in both music and literature, for example, imitative experiments with word music would be inconceivable. That by nature both arts are also temporal and dynamic becomes particularly relevant when we consider their affinities in structure. Since in an abstract sense receptive comprehension of both arts requires attentive tracing of a certain movement to be completed in time, both “music and literature are activities to be realized; they [...] create [...] ‘things to be done’ (a score to be performed or a book to be read), i.e. processes which still need to be decoded” (Scher, “Literature and Music”, p. 38). In terms of musico-literary critical practice, decoding here means recognition and interpretation of certain corresponding formal designs and organizing strategies in literature that create the impression of comparable progressive movement. Clearly, imitation of standard musical forms and features based on concrete structural affinities deserves special critical attention when the “musiclike” organization is integrated as unobtrusively and fully as possible into the literary work. In such rare instances analysis can advance beyond mere recognition to a critical evaluation of the contours similar to music. The demonstrable correspondences occasioned by the interart transfer constitute an additional interpretive dimension within the musically inspired literary work. In spite of the difficulties involved, many authors susceptible to music’s formative impact have found the borrowing of musical strategies for literary purposes an irresistible challenge. Two major types of

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such borrowing are the adaptation of larger musical structures and patterns and the application of certain musical techniques and devices common to both arts. Aldous Huxley, an avid and not inept practitioner of music in literature, provides an illuminating theoretical digression in his novel Point Counter Point on how some musical techniques might be translated into novelistic practice: The musicalization of fiction. Not in the symbolist way, by subordinating sense to sound [...]: But on a large scale, in the construction. Meditate on Beethoven. The changes of moods, the abrupt transitions. [...] More interesting still, the modulations, not merely from one key to another, but from mood to mood. A theme is stated, then developed, pushed out of shape, imperceptibly deformed, until, though still recognizably the same, it has become quite different. In sets of variations the process is carried a step further. Those incredible Diabelli variations, for example. The whole range of thought and feeling, yet all in organic relation to a ridiculous waltz tune. Get this into a novel. How? The abrupt transitions are easy enough. All you need is a sufficiency of characters and parallel, contrapuntal plots. [...] More interesting, the modulations and variations are also more difficult. A novelist modulates by repudiating situation and characters. He shows several people falling in love, or dying, or praying in different ways – dissimilars solving the same problem. [...] In this way you can modulate through all the aspects of your theme, you can write variations in any number of different moods.11

From a musical point of view, Huxley’s methodological musings verge on dilettantism. But as a writer of fiction Huxley is entitled to a laxer usage of terms like theme, modulation, or variation; as a precondition for creative reflection, he must be allowed to contemplate the other medium from a distance and interpret its ground rules with flexibility. Among the larger structures, the theme and variations, the sonata, the fugue, and the rondo form have been attempted most frequently – and at times quite successfully – in literature. Based on the principles of repetition and variation indispensable to both music and literature, the literary set of variations comes perhaps closest to approximating its musical counterpart. In a recent article, “Theme and Variations as a 11

Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1928), pp. 349-50.

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Literary Form”, Calvin S. Brown has examined some effective uses, found as early as in Eve’s morning song to Adam in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (IV.641-56). Later examples include Ludwig Tieck’s romantic comedy Die verkehrte Welt, Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book, and Raymond Queneau’s Exercises de style. Interpretive insights have been derived from the sonata form as an inconspicuous but demonstrable overall design in prose works such as Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kröger and Hermann Hesse’s Der Steppenwolf.12 Thomas De Quincey’s “Dream Fugue” and Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” are considered the most convincing literary realizations of the fugue. As for the literary rondo, here is a compact passage from the “sirens” section of Joyce’s Ulysses: From the saloon a call came, long in dying. That was a tuning fork the tuner had that he forgot that he now struck. A call again. That he now poised that it now throbbed. You hear? It throbbed, pure, purer, softly and softlier, its buzzing prongs. Longer in dying call.13

In music the rondo is essentially an extended A-B-A form that resembles the tripartite (exposition-development-recapitulation) sonata form. The usual scheme for the musical rondo is A-B-A-C-A-D-A... In this passage Joyce succeeds in approximating the musical scheme in miniature. A “call” constitutes the regularly recurring basic theme or refrain (A). In between its recurrences, distinctly different contrasting themes or episodes (B and C) appear and linger on a while before they are finally abandoned so that the refrain (A) can once again return.14 12

Harold A. Basilius, “Thomas Mann’s Use of Musical Structure and Techniques in Tonio Kröger”, Germanic Review, 19 (1944), 284-308, and Theodore Ziolkowski, “Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf: A Sonata in Prose”, Modern Language Quarterly, 19 (1958), 115-40. 13 14

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922; rpt. New York: Random, 1961), p. 264.

Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s novel Tynset has been convincingly analyzed as the latest example of the literary rondo. See Patricia H. Stanley, “The Structure of Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s Tynset”, Monatshefte, 71 (1979), 29-40.

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Organizing principles such as repetition, variation, balance, and contrast pervade both musical and literary textures; and the straightforward way they usually function in the respective arts yields many points of contact for legitimate comparison. Only the leitmotiv – a unique, more sophisticated repetition technique of truly mixed origin – needs special comment. The term itself was coined by the Wagnerite critic Hans von Wolzogen to denote the recurring musical themes (Grundthema was Wagner’s own designation) attached to characters, objects, situations, and ideas that together form the associative network underlying the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk. But the technique in literature can be traced back to the principle of formulaic repetition evident in the Homeric epitheton ornans and has been refined and employed in epic tradition ever since: “a verbal formula which is deliberately repeated, which is easily recognized at each recurrence, and which serves, by means of this recognition, to link the context in which the repetition occurs with earlier contexts in which the motive has appeared” (Brown, Music and Literature, p. 211). Indiscriminate use of the leitmotiv as a catchword for any kind of literary repetition has resulted in horrendous misinterpretations familiar to readers of modern and contemporary criticism. However disconcerting these critical blunders may be, they should not deter us from realizing that the literary leitmotiv – responsibly defined – provides a rare instance of genuinely reciprocal impact of music and literature: an associative technique that, as an overall structural principle, can be analogously employed in dramatic vocal music, in instrumental music, and in epic (less frequently also in dramatic) literature. As Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu and Thomas Mann’s œuvre clearly demonstrate, the impact of the Wagnerian leitmotiv on modern literature can hardly be overestimated. More specifically, documentary evidence confirms that there is a direct line from the musical leitmotiv – from Wagner through Eduard Dujardin and Italo Svevo to Joyce – to the stream-of-consciousness technique.

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Transplantation of other standard musical devices and features into literature has also been tried, though with disappointing results. Not even the favorably disposed reader’s total suspension of disbelief can help the author to suggest the actual impression of a musical phrase that is attempted in a text only through punctuation or syntax; resemblance to tonality in music cannot be conveyed specifically enough by a main theme, idea, or topic that permeates a literary work; and modulation from one key to another in a composition is something very different from what Huxley calls modulation “from mood to mood” in a novel. The outcome of such interart transfers is usually so vague that even the endeavor itself seems hardly worthwhile. Yet we cannot dismiss these attempts as fascinating aberrations, for no matter how hopeless, they represent an aesthetic impulse on the part of their authors to transcend the limitations of their own medium of expression (in this case literature) and cross over into another medium (in this case music), while still remaining necessarily confined to the original medium. Given the impossibility of the task and the fascination that it has elicited, the improbable notion of a literary equivalent to counterpoint warrants a closer look. Counterpoint denotes “music consisting of two or more lines that sound simultaneously”15. In order to achieve a semblance of polyphonic construction, literature would have to be able to present and sustain two or more ideas or narrative strains simultaneously – which, by the nature of its medium, it cannot do. That the notion of literary counterpoint continues nevertheless to be entertained by authors and critics is a telling example of the aesthetic intent to overcome a fundamental difference between the two arts, namely, that the idea of fusing sequentiality and simultaneity is achievable in music but only conceivable in literature. Interestingly enough, even in a mixed medium like vocal music, which is not primarily literary, quasicontrapuntal simultaneity has a restricting effect: the simultaneous 15

Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music, p. 121.

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presentation of words and music may retard or impede full comprehension of the text. In the lied, for example, the musical dimension represents a continuous distraction for the listener who wants to understand the words. Or in operatic ensemble singing, say, in a quartet where the four characters sing different lines simultaneously, total comprehension of the individual lines is severely limited, if not impossible. According to Calvin S. Brown, in literature proper the genuine pun comes closest to contrapuntal simultaneity, though still not close enough (Music and Literature, p. 42). For in a pun, only one idea can actually be told, which, during its telling, simultaneously implies another idea; that idea, if the pun is understood, can be simultaneously perceived but has not actually been told. Theodore Ziolkowski takes Brown’s cue one step further when he claims that in Hermann Hesse’s Der Steppenwolf “double perception achieves the effect of a sustained pun, and the interplay of the two levels of reality produces a genuine contrapuntal effect”16. Prominent modern experimenters with counterpoint in literature include Aldous Huxley (Point Counter Point), André Gide (Les Faux-Monnayeurs), and, of course, James Joyce, who invented words like bespectable and even “had a special theory about what he called the ‘polyphonic’ word which would emit two meanings just as a chord emits several notes in one sound”17. In a recent book on Laurence Sterne and the Origins of the Musical Novel, William Freedman has tried to make a case for polyphonic construction as the predominant narrative technique in Tristram Shandy, but Erwin Rotermund’s discussion of the sustained effort of quasi-contrapuntal simultaneity created by the two alternating, continually converging narrative strains in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s remarkably modern romantic novel Kater Murr seems more convinc-

16 17

Ziolkowski, “Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf,” p. 124.

Stephen Ullmann, Style in the French Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1957), p. 12.

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ing.18 It should be clear, however, that any parallel between musical and literary counterpoint can only be metaphorical; and the term itself, as used widely in literary criticism, translates in plain language to mean various forms of contrast. “Verbal music” as a general designation has been gaining wide currency in recent musico-literary criticism; it refers to the third basic kind of imitative approach to music in literature, which may draw on any, all, or none of the affinities discussed above. In critical usage verbal music must not be confused with seemingly similar terms such as word music, vocal music, or literary music (sometimes used for program music) that, as we have seen, mean something different. I have defined verbal music as “any literary presentation (whether in poetry or prose) of existing or fictitious musical compositions: any poetic texture which has a piece of music as its ‘theme.’ In addition to approximating in words an actual or fictitious score, such poems or passages often suggest characterization of a musical performance or of subjective response to music” (Scher, Verbal Music, p. 8). In many ways verbal music is the most genuinely literary among musicoliterary phenomena, perhaps because successful attempts to render poetically the intellectual and emotional import and intimated symbolic content of music tend to be less specific and restricting in mimetic aim and thus less obtrusive than direct imitations of particular sound effects or elements of musical form. Prominent poets like Brentano, Franz Grillparzer, Verlaine, and Algernon Charles Swinburne (as well as all too many less prominent ones) have experimented with verbal music in lyric poetry, on the whole with unconvincing results. Calvin S. Brown, who has studied these attempts exhaustively in his Tones into Words, assesses them as “distinctly minor verse” (p. 2), containing little more than vague, dilettantish effusions about the intoxicating beauty and power of music. Verbal music in prose, how18

See William Freedman, Laurence Sterne and the Origins of the Musical Novel (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1978), and Erwin Rotermund, “Musikalische und erzählerische ‘Arabeske’ bei E. T. A. Hoffmann”, Poetica, 2 (1968), 48-69.

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ever, possesses greater aesthetic potential. As a versatile combination of rhetorical, syntactical, and stylistic strategies, it can create plausible literary semblances of actual or fictitious music as well as integrate musiclike verbal textures unobtrusively into a larger epic context, which is normally sustained by a network of anticipatory and retrospective allusions. Diverse examples of verbal music in prose abound in German literature since 1800 (notably, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Kleist, Grillparzer, Heinrich Heine, Eduard Mörike, Thomas Mann, Hesse, and more recently Wolfgang Hildesheimer) but can also be found frequently in French, Russian, and English works.19 The following excerpt from Chapter xv of Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus, a veritable “verbal score” of the Prelude to Act III of Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, demonstrates the connotative quality and far-reaching interpretive possibilities inherent in the phenomenon of verbal music. In a candid letter to his musical mentor, the hero, Adrian Leverkühn, an avant-garde composer, offers an ironically tinged illustration to justify his rejection of the traditional concept of the beautiful as it culminates in cadence-conscious Wagnerian music: It goes like this when it is beautiful: the cellos by themselves intone a melancholy, pensive theme, which, in a manner both highly expressive and decorously philosophical, questions the world’s folly, the wherefore of all the struggle and striving, pursuing and plaguing. The cellos, head-shaking and deploring, enlarge upon this riddle for a while, and at a certain point in their remarks, a well-chosen point, the choir of wind instruments enters with a deep, full breath that makes your shoulders rise and fall, in a choral hymn, movingly solemn, richly harmonized, and produced with all the muted dignity and mildly restrained power of the brass. Thus the sonorous melody presses on up to nearly the height of a climax, which, in accordance with the laws of economy, it at first avoids, yielding, leaving open, holding in reserve, remaining very beautiful even so, then withdrawing and giving way to another subject, a songlike, simple one, now jesting, now grave, now popular, apparently robust by nature, but sly as can be, and, for someone seasoned in the arts of analysis and transformation, astoundingly full of possibilities of significance and refinement. This little song is managed and deployed for a while, cleverly and charmingly. It is taken apart, looked at in detail and var19

To mention only a few prominent authors: Balzac, Proust, Gide, and Romain Rolland; Turgenev and Tolstoy; and E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Joyce, and Huxley.

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ied. Out of it, a delightful figure in the middle register is led up into the most enchanting heights of fiddles and flutes, lulls itself there a little, and then, when it is at its most artful, the mild brass again takes up the word with the earlier choral hymn and moves into the foreground – not, however, starting with a deep breath from the beginning as it did the first time, but as though its melody had already been going all along – and it continues, solemnly, to that climax from which it had so wisely refrained the first time, in order that the surging feeling, the Ah-h effect, might be the greater, now, that, mounting unchecked and with weighty support from the passing notes of the bass tuba, it can gloriously bestride the theme, looking back, as it were, with dignified satisfaction on the finished achievement, singing its way modestly to the end.20

An ingenious blend of imitation, description, analysis, and interpretation, this single, self-contained paragraph reflects the musical essence 20

Michael Steinberg’s unpublished translation of Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus (Stockholm: Fischer, 1947), pp. 207-08: So geht es zu, wenn es schön ist: Die Celli intonieren allein, ein schwermütig sinnendes Thema, das nach dem Unsinn der Welt, dem Wozu all des Hetzens und Treibens und Jagens und einander Plagens bieder-philosophisch und höchst ausdrucksvoll fragt. Die Celli verbreiten sich eine Weile kopfschüttelnd und bedauernd über dieses Rätsel, und an einem bestimmten Punkt ihrer Rede, einem wohl erwogenen, setzt ausholend, mit einem tiefen Eratmen, das die Schultern emporzieht und sinken läßt, der Bläserchor ein zu einer Choralhymne, ergreifend feierlich, prächtig harmonisiert und vorgetragen mit aller gestopften Würde und mild gebändigten Kraft des Blechs. So dringt die sonore Melodie bis in die Nähe eines Höhepunktes vor, den sie aber, dem Gesetz der Ökonomie gemäß, fürs erste noch vermeidet; sie weicht aus vor ihm, spart ihn auf, sinkt ab, bleibt sehr schön auch so, tritt aber zurück und macht einem anderen Gegenstande Platz, einem liedhaftsimplen, scherzhaft-gravitätisch-volkstümlichen, scheinbar derb von Natur, der’s aber hinter den Ohren hat und sich, bei einiger Ausgepichtheit in den Künsten der orchestralen Analyse und Umfärbung, als erstaunlich deutungs- und sublimierungsfähig erweist. Mit dem Liedchen wird nun eine Weile klug und lieblich gewirtschaftet, es wird zerlegt, im Einzelnen betrachtet und abgewandelt, eine reizende Figur daraus wird aus mittleren Klanglagen in die zauberischsten Höhen der Geigen und Flötensphäre hinaufgeführt, wiegt sich dort oben ein wenig noch, und wie es am schmeichelhaftesten darum steht, nun, da nimmt wieder das milde Blech, die Choralhymne von vorhin das Wort an sich, tritt in den Vordergrund, fängt nicht gerade, ausholend wie das erste Mal, von vorne an, sondern tut, als sei ihre Melodie schon eine Weile wieder dabei gewesen und setzt sich weihesam fort gegen jenen Höhepunkt hin, dessen sie sich das erste Mal weislich enthielt, damit die ‘Ah!’-Wirkung, die Gefühlsschwellung desto größer sei, jetzt, wo sie in rückhaltlosem, von harmonischen Durchgangstönen der Baßtuba wuchtig gestütztem Aufsteigen ihn glorreich beschreitet, um sich dann, gleichsam mit würdiger Genugtuung auf das Vollbrachte zurückblickend, ehrsam zu Ende zu singen.

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and suggests the metaphorical dimensions of Wagner’s Prelude. But beneath the descriptive surface texture that allows initiated readers to re-create in their reading experience the effect of listening to this orchestral composition, other contextual and structural levels of meaning crucial to the interpretation of the entire novel may be discerned. For instance, the exegesis of the Prelude can be read as a camouflaged confession in which the evoked musical outlines and events symbolically correspond to certain formative influences and major events in Leverkühn’s life: allusions to his early years as well as anticipations of his extraordinary musical career made possible by his encounter with the mysterious Hetaera Esmeralda, who embodies the diabolical.21 Verbal music is a literary phenomenon and as such must be distinguished from the nonliterary verbalization of music that is practiced by music critics and musicologists, usually in the form of program notes accompanying a musical performance, reviews of performed music, or technical descriptions of music. G. B. Shaw’s parody of the nonliterary style and diction of contemporary music reviewing accentuates the difference: Here the composer, by one of those licences which are, perhaps, permissible under exceptional circumstances to men of genius, but which cannot be too carefully avoided by students desirous of forming a legitimate style, has abruptly introduced the dominant seventh of the key of C major into the key of A flat, in order to recover, by a forced modulation, the key relationship proper to the second subject of a movement in F – an awkward device which he might have spared himself by simply introducing his second subject in its true key of C.22

The following diagram presents the relations of literature and music in a systematic typology and shows how the major areas of mu-

21 22

For a detailed interpretation of this passage, see Scher, Verbal Music, pp. 106-42.

G. B. Shaw, “Sir George Grove”, in Shaw, Pen Portraits and Reviews (London: Constable, 1931), p. 106.

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sico-literary study and the basic kinds of musico-literary phenomena are interconnected: MUSIC

LITERATURE

(musicology)

(literary study) poetry or prose

absolute music

musico-literary study

literature in mu-

music and literatu-

program music

vocal music

music in literatu-

word musical structures verbal music and techniques music

A few other topics do not fit into our categorization as basic approaches to music in literature but have generated significant critical response. Ever since the advent of European Romanticism, for example, experimentation with music’s role in literary synesthesia – “poetic interpretation of musical experiences in terms of specific colors or visual images” (Scher, Verbal Music, p. 166) – has been a trend, from the German and English Romantics to the French symbolists and beyond (more recently in the poetry of Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens). Doppelbegabung is a phenomenon that has been studied for its effect on the artistic physiognomy of extraordinary multiple talents like E. T. A. Hoffmann, Wagner, and Nietzsche.23 Both musicologists and literary critics have found it rewarding to investigate the music criticism of 23

See esp. Herbert Günther, Künstlerische Doppelbegabungen, 2nd ed. (Munich: Heimeran, 1960).

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such authors as Hoffmann, Stendhal, G. B. Shaw, and Ezra Pound from the point of view that they also excelled as competent music critics (see Braun and Graf). But most common are studies that treat musician figures in fiction (Schoolfield) like Hoffmann’s Johannes Kreisler (Kater Murr), Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe (Sices), and Thomas Mann’s Leverkühn and analyze the creative influence of music on literary periods and individual writers. The latter topic – music’s influence on periods and authors – suggests that the synchronic, systematic relations between music and literature must be viewed together with diachronic, historical correlations such as periodization, reception, dissemination, and influence. Take for instance the highly problematic area of periodization.24 To what extent are we justified in assuming a parallel development in music and literature during a given cultural period, for example, that of the so-called Romantic era? Is the period term “impressionism” more or less equally applicable to a certain identifiable style in both arts? Is there an expressionistic style in twentieth-century music comparable to the stylistic traits we commonly associate with literary expressionism? Since scholarly opinion on these questions differs widely (and wildly), do we side with Kurt Wais, who believes in what he called the “parallel development of the arts”? Or do we espouse René Wellek and Austin Warren’s conviction that “‘classicism’ in music must mean something very different from its use in literature for the simple reason that no real classical music (with the exception of a few fragments) was known and could thus shape the evolution of music as literature was actually shaped by the precepts and practice of antiquity” (Theory of Literature, pp. 127-28)? Until we develop a solid theoretical and methodological foundation for period comparisons, no 24

See Hubert P. H. Teesing, Das Problem der Perioden in der Literaturgeschichte (Groningen: Wolters, 1949); Lawrence Lipking, “Periods in the Arts: Sketches and Speculations”, New Literary History, 1 (1970), 181-200; and Jost Hermand, “Musikalischer Expressionismus”, in Hermand, Stile, Ismen, Etiketten: Zur Periodisierung der modernen Kunst (Wiesbaden: Athenaion, 1978), pp. 65-79.

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definitive answers can be provided; and diachronic interart analogies will remain limited, both in scope and in interpretive validity. A historical overview of the development of aesthetics, however, is necessary at this point, for “the system of aesthetics is its history: a history which is permeated with ideas and experiences of heterogeneous origin”25. As reflected in the theories and methodologies that have shaped musico-literary scholarship, such an overview will complement the foregoing systematic consideration of the parallels and differences between the two arts. Although philosophers of classical antiquity like Plato and Aristotle engaged in speculation concerning the nature, relative merits, and comparability of literature and the other arts, including literature and music, scholarly activity in the modern sense, focusing specifically on interart relations, is of more recent origin: it evolved during the eighteenth century as part of general aesthetics, which by then had established itself as a more or less independent discipline. The first comparative treatments regard music and literature as separate but parallel “sister arts”. Appropriately, Hildebrande Jacob’s early attempt to determine the fundamental affinities and correspondences between the two arts and their relative ranking within the contemporary hierarchy of the arts bears the title Of the Sister Arts (London, 1734). In this hierarchy, still based on the Aristotelian mimetic principle, poetry occupied first place, with painting second and music only an inferior third. But around mid-century, expressive theories of music – derived from the influential Affektenlehre ‘doctrine of affections’ of the baroque period – began to undermine the reigning concept of imitation in the arts.26 Charles Avison was the first critic to stress, in his An Essay on Musical Expression (London, 1752), the emotive aspect of music and convincingly challenge the primacy of the traditional mimetic principle, still firmly up25 26

Carl Dahlhaus, Musikästhetik, p. 10.

René Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism, 1750-1950, I (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1955), p. 115.

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held by French aestheticians like Charles Batteux and Jean-Baptiste Du Bos.27 Avison’s treatise inspired the first specific scholarly comparisons of poetry and music as “sister” arts by fellow British aestheticians John Brown, Daniel Webb, James Beattie, and Thomas Twining.28 Clearly, for these critics poetry and music, rather than poetry and painting, were the true “sister” arts. This British trend of specific comparisons was sympathetically received and further refined in German by aestheticians like Johann Georg Sulzer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, and Johann Gottfried von Herder.29 And it is this very trend that culminated a few decades later in the emotion-oriented aesthetics of “melomaniac” Romanticists like Wilhelm Wackenroder, Ludwig Tieck, Novalis, and E. T. A. Hoffmann, who proclaimed the supremacy of music among the arts: in the new hierarchy, music, and not poetry, was “the art most immediately expressive of spirit and emotion”30. Ever since 1800, Romantic aesthetics, openly advocating the elimination of boundaries between literature and music in theory and poetic practice, has had a major impact on the development of the interrelation. Musicalization of litera27

Charles Batteux, Les Beaux Arts reduits à un même principe (Paris, 1747), and Jean Baptiste Du Bos, Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture (Paris, 1719). 28

The titles of these contributions are revealing: John Brown, A Dissertation on the Rise, Union, and Power, the Progressions, Separations, and Corruptions of Poetry and Music (London, 1763); Daniel Webb, Observations on the Correspondence between Poetry and Music (London, 1769); James Beattie, Essays on Poetry and Music, as They Affect the Mind (London, 1770); and Thomas Twining, Aristotle’s Treatise on Poetry Translated: ... and Two Dissertations on Poetical, and Musical Imitation (London, 1789). For a summary of aesthetic developments in this period, see James S. Malek, The Arts Compared: An Aspect of Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1974). 29

J G. Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste (Leipzig, 1771-74); J. N. Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1788, 1801); and J. G. von Herder, Kritische Wälder (Riga, 1769).

30

M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1953), p. 50.

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ture is a quintessentially Romantic notion, after all: it was first attempted in earnest by Romantic authors whose works inspired all later musico-literary experimenters, including the French symbolists, Joyce, and Thomas Mann. Also part of the Romantic legacy, throughout the nineteenth century and beyond, is the radical impulse toward literarization of music in the form of program music (Beethoven, Berlioz, Liszt), the lied (Schubert, Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf), and the literary opera (Wagner’s music dramas). And without the lingering climate of Romantic aesthetics, even Eduard Hanslick’s formalist manifesto Vom Musikalisch-Schönen of 1854 – categorically rejecting the expressive principle in music – could not have been written. Jules Combarieu’s Les Rapports de la musique et de la poésie, considérées au point de vue de l’expression of 1894 marks a new departure for musico-literary scholarship. Of clearly antiformalist persuasion, Combarieu presents for the first time a philologically as well as musicologically reliable comparative study of the correspondences. The next landmark is Oskar Walzel’s pioneering treatise of 1917, Wechselseitige Erhellung der Künste, along with his comprehensive Gehalt und Gestalt im Kunstwerk des Dichters of 1923, which contains several analytical chapters on the interrelations of “Dichtkunst und Musik” in the light of his concept of “reciprocal illumination of the arts”. Also in 1923, though independent of Walzel, André Cœuroy published his traditional, more musicologically oriented Musique et littérature: Etudes de musique et de littérature comparées. Until today, René Wellek’s historical survey of 1942, “The Parallelism between Literature and the Arts”, constitutes the most informative critical assessment of twentieth-century international research concerning interart analogies; and in retrospect his timely skepticism toward vague analogizing in the arts remains justified. The period since World War II shows definite signs of a renewed scholarly interest in the exploration of the parallels between literature and the other arts. The rekindling of this interest in musico-literary

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studies is due chiefly to the efforts of Calvin S. Brown, whose contributions to the field over the last thirty years have made him its central, most influential figure. In his Music and Literature: A Comparison of the Arts of 1948, the only comprehensive modern scholarly treatment of the interrelation to date, Brown systematically surveys, analyzes, and evaluates virtually all musicoliterary phenomena with sound judgment, common sense, and admirable terminological rigor. Similarly exemplary is the article “Musico-Literary Research in the Last Two Decades”, the only recent review of scholarship in the field that is of truly international scope, in which Brown surveys significant or representative studies published between 1950 and 1970 and assesses the emerging theoretical, methodological, and interpretive trends and perspectives. His description of this undisciplined discipline is still apt today: There is no organization of the work or the workers in the field of musico-literary relationships. Many a scholar publishes a single article in the field, usually involving a writer or aspect of literature in which he regularly works, and never returns to the relationship of the arts. A small number of scholars have a primary interest in the field and work in it intensively, but they do not form anything that could be called a group or coterie. Similarly, there are no organized or conflicting schools of thought, as there is no official point of view and no standard methodology. The entire field of study remains essentially individual and unorganized. (pp. 5-6)

Brown also served as guest editor of the special issue of Comparative Literature (Spring 1970) devoted to music and literature. The definition of comparative literature he offers in his introductory essay to this issue – “any study of literature involving at least two different media of expression” (p. 102) – strikes me as the most persuasive plea so far for the legitimacy of literature-based interart comparisons, including that of literature with music, as an integral branch of comparative literature. During the last decades, then, active interest in the serious study of musico-literary relations has increased considerably, not only among literary scholars. Many of the ablest minds in music have been at-

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tracted by the field: along with Thrasybulos Georgiades, Joseph Müller-Blattau, Walter Wiora, and Frederick Sternfeld of the older generation, the musicologists Joseph Kerman, Leonard B. Meyer, Edward Cone, Carl Dahlhaus and the composers Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, and Luigi Dallapiccola. As more musicologists contribute to musico-literary research, certain methodological questions will continue to be raised. To what extent, for example, should we insist on thorough academic training and equal competence in both arts when contemplating the interrelation? Aware of the unavoidable overlaps, where, if at all, are we to draw the line separating the hunting ground of musico-literary comparatists from the domain of musicologists? Is there a definable minimum of musical knowledge necessary for fruitful musico-literary study? Above all, we must beware of the potential danger of dilettantism and set our standards accordingly: the individual scholar’s ability, critical rigor, and background in both arts must be commensurate with the degree of competence required for a particular comparison. But beyond this general standard, there is no need for specific prescriptions. After all, in interart comparisons it often proves to be a definite advantage if the critic remains unencumbered by overlytechnical vocabulary and analytical practices borrowed from one or the other art. As a recent contribution by a historian of music demonstrates, however, a reliable working knowledge of music can provide profitable new insights into literary works that exhibit “a substantial analogy to, and in many cases an actual influence from, the art of music” (Frye, Sound and Poetry, pp. x-xi): Hermann Danuser’s 1975 study of the phenomenon of ‘Musikalische Prosa’ succeeds because it rests on a solid musicological foundation that complements but never overshadows the informed analyses of the topic’s literary aspects. All too many potentially promising interart comparisons by literary scholars, however, have been severely flawed by a lack of sophistication in musical matters. A case in point is the frequently inexact and inconsistent usage in literary criticism of specific terms undiscriminat-

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ingly borrowed from the vocabulary of musical analysis, such as melody, harmony, counterpoint, cadence, tonality, modulation, and orchestration. Perhaps even more crucial and frustrating is the terminological confusion that results from the notorious abuse and misuse of designations like “musical”, “musicality”, and “the music of poetry”. The following sample of the vacuous and most deplorable kind of pseudocritical discourse is cited here as a warning example: Everybody who can sense the difference between “Ruh ist über allen Gipfeln” and “Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh” is aware of what is involved. The ‘meaning’ is the same, but the meaning is different, because in the true form there is contrapuntal correspondence between ‘meaning’ and melody and sound quality and rhythm, since here the words are used musically, not analogous to music.31

In my “How Meaningful Is ‘Musical’ in Literary Criticism?” I discerned three types of critical usage of the term: the acoustic, the evocative, and the structural. Only the third type of usage, “alluding to [...] artistic arrangement in musiclike sequence” in literary works, seems potentially meaningful. Ideally, the adjective “musical” should be left to poets. If used at all in criticism, it should denote only literary phenomena that relate specifically to some aspect of actual music. Whenever this is not the case, instead of “musical” or “musicality” in the impressionistic sense, reference to the acoustic or phonetic quality of poetry or prose is most appropriate: and within this broader acoustic context it might be practicable to distinguish between the euphonious and the cacophonous. In view of the continuing terminological dilemma, one of the tasks for serious musico-literary scholars ought to be to evolve a set of clearly defined critical terms that would put an end to the persisting “trend towards the loose metaphorical use of technical terms” (Brown, “Musico-Literary Research”, p. 6), clearly a remnant of Romantic aesthetics bent on amalgamation and confusion of the arts. There is also an immediate need to assess the numerous contributions since 31

Heinrich Meyer in Books Abroad, 43 (1969), 602.

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1970, following the model of Calvin Brown’s review of scholarship and based on the musico-literary sections of the annual Bibliography on the Relations of Literature and the Other Arts, covering the international scene since 1953. Rather than contemplate the many still unsolved theoretical issues of the interrelation, during the last decade scholars have concentrated on musical connections demonstrable in individual authors or specific literary works, with authors like JeanJacques Rousseau, Diderot, Wackenroder, Kleist, Hoffmann, Heine, Honoré de Balzac, Giuseppe Mazzini, Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal, Thomas Mann, Brecht, and T. S. Eliot receiving a great deal more critical attention than others. Important new work has also been done on the literary connections of composers such as Franz Joseph Haydn, Berlioz, Liszt, Debussy, Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill, and Hanns Eisler. Appreciable theoretical advances were made only in lied and opera research (Kerman). Literature and music today is a vigorous and steadily growing field of comparative inquiry. But for some time to come it will remain a pioneering field that could accommodate more terminologically and methodologically solid interpretive studies of the diverse systematic relations – especially of structural parallels based on demonstrable points of tangency – and innovative, informed analyses of the historical correlations between the two arts. The time is also ripe for a critical and comprehensive historical survey of the theory and practice of musico-literary scholarship. Such a survey would also have to account for the feasibility and potential usefulness of the semiotic approach in comparing literature and music. To date only the semiotic features of music and language – not of literature – have been explored in depth by scholars like Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, Nicolas Ruwet, Roland Harweg, and Jean Jacques Nattiez.32 Perhaps it is too early to

32

Roman Jakobson, “Musikwissenschaft und Linguistik”, Prager Presse, 7 Dec. 1932; Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Seuil, 1957); Nicolas Ruwet, Langage, musique, poésie (Paris: Seuil, 1972); Roland Harweg, “Sprache und Musik”, Poetica,

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tell, but it seems probable that future work in musical, linguistic, and literary semiology will help to illuminate certain aspects of the interrelation between music and literature.33

1 (1967), 390-414 and 556-66; and Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Fondements d’une sémiologie de la musique (Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1976). 33

For preliminary considerations, see esp. Rose Subotnik, “The Cultural Message of Musical Semiology: Some Thoughts on Music, Language, and Criticism since the Enlightenment”, Critical Inquiry, 4 (1978), 741-68.

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Theory in Literature, Analysis in Music: What Next? (1983) During the last decade there has been a significant shift in attitude among comparatists with regard to studies concerning interart parallels. Surely not unaffected by Calvin S. Brown’s innovative and practicable definition of 1970, according to which Comparative Literature is “any study of literature involving at least two different media of expression”1, more and more colleagues today view scholarly investigations of literature and the other arts – when firmly based in the literary realm – as legitimate comparatist activity. It is an eloquent testimony to the continuing health and vigor of these endeavors that they were selected for discussion at this conference. In an essay on “Literature and Music”, included in the recently published Interrelations of Literature2, I presented a systematic and comprehensive overview of the field. Here I shall focus on two broader theoretical and methodological concerns that appear to be topical enough to remain with us for some time, namely, (1) consideration of the tenuous but potentially fruitful correlation between musicology and literary study. To what extent, if at all, do they reflect the contemporary debate about aesthetics and critical theory? In what way do they affect today’s state and status of musicoliterary criticism? Are there analogous or comparable tendencies, directions, and points of contact between the two disciplines and their 1

Calvin S. Brown, “The Relations Between Music and Literature as a Field of Study,” Comparative Literature, 22 (1970), 102.

2

Steven P. Scher, “Literature and Music,” in Jean-Pierre Barricelli and Joseph Gibaldi, eds., Interrelations of Literature (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1982), 225-50.

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methodologies? Are there real possibilities of contact and cooperation; and, if so, are they profitable or even desirable? And (2) closer scrutiny of some recent post-structuralist, particularly semiotic, attempts at interdisciplinary theorizing that pertain to musicoliterary relations. Ernst Behler’s timely reflections in a recent study on the “Origins of Romantic Aesthetics in Friedrich Schlegel”3 seem to me to suggest the overall aesthetic context indispensable for any current interdisciplinary inquiry. Circumspectly, Behler raises “some of the questions stimulating today’s debate about aesthetics [...] when the occupation with the timeless value of a work of art in its classical sense of perfection has been all but replaced by the consideration of its function within society and when the classical model of the predominance of the work of art over its contemplator has been substituted [sic] by the pre-eminence of its experience through the recipient”. Continuing in this vein, Behler asks: [...] are we experiencing new collective encounters with art, not only in forms of a traditionally collective reception such as architecture, theatre, and painting, but also in the realms of commercial literature and music which have become increasingly accessible through electronic technology? Has the reception of art changed from its classical model of empathy and emulation to that of distraction and casual perception [...]? Is it the goal of art to be a luxurious and relaxing element within industrial society, or is art still the reservoir of freedom [...]? (p. 52)

The sociological implications here are obvious. But Behler’s questions also point to the prominent issue that lies at the core of modern thinking in both musical and literary theory and interpretation: the changed status of the work of art in relation to its critical reception. Not surprisingly, this notion can be traced back to Friedrich Schlegel, who first contended that a work of criticism was itself a work of art and thus accorded the critical act the privileged position many distin-

3

Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 7 (1980), 47-66.

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guished critics, particularly literary critics, claim it occupies today. As Charles Rosen puts it in a review article on Walter Benjamin: Placing criticism at the heart of literature (or, for that matter, music and the visual arts) was an inevitable step for the early Romantic generation in Germany, those poets and writers whose youth had coincided with the French Revolution. Their exaltation of the critical process was necessary to their rejection of earlier stan4 dards, to their invention of ‘modernism’ .

It would be attractive to contemplate further Rosen’s insight that Schlegel’s placing “the critical act at the center of the work of art [...] was, with one stroke, to turn criticism from an act of judgement into an act of understanding” (p. 32) and to assess its implications for what Jonathan Culler terms “the threat of recent critical theory”5. Suffice it to say that Rosen’s article – like most of his writings, including his brilliant study of The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (1971) – exemplifies how, on the level of general aesthetics, concerns of a musicologist can fruitfully intersect with, and illuminate, fundamental issues of literary theory. Obviously, Rosen’s expertise, which extends well beyond music history, theory, and criticism, is rare among musicians. But is erudition that encompasses more than the narrow confines of specialized knowledge more common, or even indispensable, among musical than among literary scholars? According to Claude V. Palisca, “the study of music, of all the arts, is the most difficult to circumscribe as a discipline. As soon as scholars probe its problems with any depth, it spills into neighboring fields – social and physical sciences, philosophy, literature, and history. It is easier to identify musicologists than

4

Charles Rosen, “The Ruins of Walter Benjamin,” New York Review of Books, October 27, 1977, 32.

5

Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 10.

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to define musicology.”6 Clearly, true competence in musicology requires a great deal. Conversely, may we assume a diversity of interests and an expertise similar to musical competence on the part of the literary scholar? If we listen to Jonathan Culler’s heart-warming characterization of the supposedly open-minded contemporary literary theorist, the answer is an emphatic yes: Literary theorists may be particularly receptive to new theoretical developments in other fields because they lack the particular disciplinary commitments of workers in those fields. Though they have commitments of their own that will produce resistance to certain types of unusual thinking, they are able to welcome theories that challenge the assumptions of orthodox contemporary psychology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, sociology, or historiography, and this makes theory – or literary theory – an arena of lively debate.7

Culler conspicuously omits any mention of receptivity to theoretical developments in the other arts. Except for rare individual instances, the same lack of curiosity (or outright indifference) prevails in the silent majority of non-theorist literary scholars. But Palisca’s qualifier “with any depth” should console us that evidently the general situation in musicology is not all that different. As students of literature, we are no doubt familiar with the current debates that characterize the chaotic state of affairs in literary theory and have precipitated what has been termed the crisis of “professing literature”8. At issue is, of course, the unprecedented proliferation of critical directions and approaches that have emerged in the wake of the publicly acclaimed demise of New Criticism and continue to 6

Claude V. Palisca, “Reflections on Musical Scholarship in the 1960s,” in D. Kern Holoman and Claude V. Palisca, eds., Musicology in the 1980s: Methods, Goals, Opportunities (New York: Da Capo Press, 1982), 15. 7 8

Culler, 11.

See, for example, W. Jackson Bate’s much debated “The Crisis in English Studies,” Harvard Magazine, September-October 1982, 46-53, and the recent symposium on “Professing Literature,” Times Literary Supplement, December 10, 1982, 1355-63, with statements by Paul de Man, René Wellek, Anthony Burgess, Iain McGilchrist, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Ian Donaldson, George Watson, Raymond Williams, and Stanley Fish.

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clamor for attention and applause: structuralism, Rezeptionsästhetik, hermeneutics, semiotics, deconstructionism, Marxist criticism, and psychoanalytic criticism, to mention only a few. How do we explain the recently attained primacy of ‘criticism of criticism’ in literary study, the triumph of theory over the practice of criticism as value judgment and interpretation? Is it that Schlegel’s dictum about the critical act being itself a work of art has finally come true? Is the proliferation of critical approaches simply a faint reflection of the phenomenon of rapidly changing styles and fads masquerading as innovations familiar from, say, the fashion industry and electronic technology? Or, in Geoffrey Hartman’s words, is it “that criticism has been affected, like everything else, by a market economy, and so is less intellectual than it is entrepreneurial: academic critics want a piece of the action or a method to increase their ‘rate of production’”9? Obviously, there are no neat answers to these questions. It may be helpful to know, however, that excessive preoccupation with theory is not exclusively the favorite pastime of literati10; with notable differences, it has also been a clearly discernible trend in the field of music. “How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out” is the suggestive title of Joseph Kerman’s recent diagnosis of the current crisis in Critical Inquiry11. Author of Opera as Drama (1956) and The Beethoven Quartets (1967) and thoroughly at home in literature and the arts, Kerman proved to be an invaluable guide for my foray into the 9

Geoffrey Hartman, “How Creative Should Literary Criticism Be?,” The New York Times Book Review, April 5, 1981, 11. 10

As G. S. Rousseau correctly observes, “the same development is occurring in all other fields as well: history, the social sciences, the natural sciences,” and “satisfactory explanation of the development will require sociologists and anthropologists, rather than literary critics, who will eventually explain why academics went crazy over theory in late twentieth-century America.” Times Literary Supplement, January 28, 1983, 85. 11

Critical lnquiry, 7 (1980-81), 311-31. Page references to Kerman’s article appear in the text.

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maze of musicology, especially since in his writings he is ever attentive to parallel developments in the neighboring disciplines. Quirky nomenclature, a perennial predicament also in musicoliterary studies, makes initial orientation in musical scholarship particularly difficult. It is hard to grasp, for example, why more academic prestige is accorded to those scholars who do musical analysis than to those who do criticism. Why are the ‘analysts’ so reluctant to call themselves critics? An explanation for this seemingly unbridgeable schism that divides today’s musicologists may be that the term ‘criticism’ in music commonly connotes music reviewing: When people say ‘music criticism’, they almost invariably mean daily or weekly journalistic writing, writing which is prohibited from extended, detailed, and complex mulling over the matter at hand that is taken for granted in criticism of art and especially of literature. [...] The music critic’s stock-in-trade consists of the aesthetic question begged, the critical aphorism undeveloped, the snap judgement. (p. 311)

No wonder, then, that those ‘serious’ academics who do mostly analysis do not want to be caught practicing this kind of criticism. But is the ‘analysts’’ aversion to criticism as such really justifiable? According to Edward T. Cone, “when description evolves into interpretation, when summary judgement gives way to reasoned evaluation, reviewing becomes criticism”12. And how does this broader, more traditional perception of the concept of criticism differ from Kerman’s understanding of analysis as “a body of less ephemeral, more accountable professional criticism” (p. 311)? What, in fact, is what musicians today call analysis? Can analysis be subsumed under criticism? Is it in any way analogous to the increasingly esoteric preoccupation with theory in literary study? In retrospect, Kerman’s 1965 conspectus of critical trends in musicology certainly sounds prophetic:

12

Journal of the American Musicological Society, 34 (1981), 1.

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Criticism does not exist yet on the American music-academic scene, but something does exist which may feel rather like it, theory and analysis [...] Analysis seems too occupied with its own inner techniques, too fascinated by its own “logic,” and too sorely tempted by its own private pedantries, to confront the work of art in its proper aesthetic terms. Theory and analysis are not equivalent to criticism, then, but they are pursuing techniques of vital importance to criticism. They represent a force and a positive one in the academic climate of music.13

Fifteen years later, Kerman feels compelled to admit, though not without a touch of caustic wit, that things seem to be getting out of hand: It is only in more recent times that analysts have avoided value judgements and adapted their work to a format of strictly corrigible propositions, mathematical equations, set-theory formulations, and the like – all this, apparently, in an effort to achieve the objective status and hence the authority of scientific inquiry. Articles on music composed after 1950, in particular, appear sometimes to mimic scientific papers in the way that South American bugs and flies will mimic the dreaded carpenter wasp. (p. 313)

How Kerman concludes, after a fascinating historical detour, that “the true intellectual milieu of analysis is not science but ideology” (p. 314) cannot be rehearsed here in all its persuasive detail. Of more immediate interest to us is the parallel he draws between musical analysis and the New Criticism that arose in the 1930s. Analysis seems to have emerged as a more intellectually charged critical alternative to positivistic musicology, comprised chiefly of historiography and quasi-scientific scholarly research in music. “It is precisely because and only because analysis is a kind of criticism”, Kerman maintains, “that it has gained its considerable force and authority on the American academic scene” (p. 319). The crucial question, then, could not be clearer: What kind of criticism is musical analysis and whence its appeal? To put it succinctly, it is a seductive mode of criticism, perhaps because it is reductionist and formalist in the extreme: 13

Kerman, 312. He is quoting from his “A Profile for American Musicology,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 18 (Spring 1965), 65.

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“Its methods are so straightforward, its results so automatic, and its conclusions so easily tested and communicated that every important American critic at the present time has involved himself or implicated himself centrally with analysis” (p. 321).

Leo Treitler sees five typical features of musical analysis as it is practiced today: (l) “the work must be explicable in terms of a single principle, and every detail must be derivable from the idea of the whole”; (2) “the focus is mainly on pitch structures”; (3) “music is apprehended as synchronic structure”; (4) “analysis tends to be of an a priori, rationalist nature [and] seeks to discover how music works”; and (5) “prevailing modes of structural analysis are anti-historical”14. Treitler is quite explicit on the “blind spots”: Formenlehre in abundance, but little attention to time-process and time-sense; sophisticated theories of tonality, but little interest in the qualitative side of key relations [...] [which] have a sequential, narrative order that has to be played out in real time, even conceptually. That means that what is a gain in theoretical understanding is a loss in historical understanding. (p. 75)

Responsible for developing the methodological principles of this analytical system is the Viennese music theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935), whose ideas – rooted in Hegelian metaphysics – have dominated twentieth-century academic criticism to such an extent that musical analysis today is virtually synonymous with “Schenkerism”, for, as Kerman puts it, Schenker, in his “famous series of formalized reductions, [...] analysed music on ‘foreground’, ‘middleground’, and ‘background’ levels – the latter comprising the Urlinie and the Ursatz, a drastically simple horizontalization of the vertical sonority of the tonic triad” (p. 317). Astonishingly enough, until recently Schenker’s organicist theory had not been subjected to rigorous critical scrutiny and attack. Rigidly exclusive analytical focus on the great masters of tonal music (Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and espe14

Leo Treitler, “Structural and Critical Analysis,” in Holoman and Palisca, 73. Page references to Treitler’s article appear in the text.

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cially Beethoven) has been recognized as one of Schenker’s severest limitations. Music outside of this traditional canon, such as Gregorian chant or Wagner and beyond, he simply dismissed as incoherent. Despite Schenker’s oppressive shadow, there have been other systematic attempts to account for the phenomenon of modern music and what we call ‘New Music’, notably Rudolph Réti’s thematic process analysis and Milton Babbitt’s serial analysis. At its most extreme, musical analysis can even become a nonverbal exercise, a reductio ad absurdum. According to Hans Keller, the enfant terrible of British musicology who invented what he called “Wordless Functional Analysis” (FA), “the act of music criticism [...] does not, in fact, exist. (The art of literary criticism does, because it is words about words.)”15 Consequently, Keller claims that FA, “in which nothing is said or read, everything is played, is the one ideal way of writing about music. It is notes about notes, as literary criticism is words about words” (p. 1150). More seriously, the growing sense of urgency, prevalent today among musicologists, to go beyond Schenkerism is best expressed in Eugene Narmour’s recent book Beyond Schenkerism: The Need for Alternatives in Musical Analysis16. A scathing and persuasive attack, it offers a new alternative called the “implication-realization model”. Narmour’s provocative study waxes highly technical at times, but its scope is broad and carries implications far beyond the field of music. Arguing against the view popular today among Schenkerians that music theory and linguistics are analogous as disciplines (and that a synchronic theory of tonal music may be fashioned on the model of Chomsky’s theory of transformational grammar), Narmour avers that “the nature of music demands that all theorists involve themselves 15

Hans Keller, “Problems in Writing About Music,” Times Literary Supplement, September 10, 1969, 1150.

16

Eugene Narmour, Beyond Schenkerism: The Need for Alternatives in Musical Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).

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with diachrony in a real sense. A Hegelian (or Marxist) attitude toward history will not do. The temporal aspect within a piece of music has to be treated as a virtual characteristic, untrammeled by rationalism” (p. x). Narmour devotes several chapters of his essentially analytical study to substantiating his bold prefatory claim that “Hegelianism in history, Gestaltism in psychology, Lamarckism in evolutionary theory, Chomskyism in linguistics, and Schenkerism in music theory are all similarly defective” (p. x). The implications for our topic of the hegemony of theory and analysis in musical studies are by now obvious. “Who would really want to write a long book of what current jargon might well call metameta-meta-criticism?” asks Wayne Booth in a 1979 book that itself qualifies as meta-criticism17. In view of such recent titles as Beyond Formalism (Hartman), Beyond Genre (Paul Hernadi), Beyond Modern Sculpture (Jack Burnham), and Metahistory (Hayden White), Booth’s question strikes one as rhetorical and apologetic. Yet another analytical work, David Epstein’s Beyond Orpheus: Studies in Musical Structure (1979), was published only two years after Narmour’s Beyond Schenkerism. Evidently, Kerman’s wistful suggestion that “where we should be looking is not only Beyond Schenkerism but also Beyond Narmourism” – in other words, his plea for “a broader alternative to analysis itself” (Kerman, p. 323), for a “more comprehensive, ‘humane’, and [...] practical criticism” (p. 331) – is yet to be heeded. Viewing the alternatives in perspective and from a healthy distance would certainly be helpful at this point. Significantly, constructive insight comes from neutral critical territory. It is Stanley Cavell, a philosopher with a profound understanding of aesthetics and art criticism, who laments the conspicuous lack of humane, that is, more universally accessible and down-to-earth, criticism of music:

17

Wayne Booth, Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), xii.

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While the history of literary criticism is a part of the history of literature, and while the history of visual art is written by theorists and connoisseurs of art for whom an effort at accurate phenomenology can be as natural as the deciphering of iconography, histories of music contain virtually no criticism or assessment of their objects, but concentrate on details of its notation or its instruments or the occasion of its performance. The serious attempt to articulate a response to a piece of music, where more than reverie, has characteristically stimulated mathematics or metaphysics – as though music has never quite become one of the facts of life, but shunts between an overwhelming directness and an overweening mystery. Is this because music, as we know it, is the newest of the great arts and just has not had the time to learn how to criticise itself; or because it inherently resists verbal transcriptions? [...] Whatever the cause, the absence of humane music criticism (of course there are isolated instances) seems particularly striking against the fact that music has, among the arts, the most, perhaps the only, systematic and precise vocabulary for the description and analysis of its objects. Somehow that possession must itself be a liability; as though one now undertook to criticise a poem or a novel armed with complete control of medieval rhetoric but ignorant of the modes of criticism developed in the past two centuries.18

Clearly, Cavell recognizes the esoteric nature and origin as well as the powerful spell and potential of analysis as a critical enterprise. But implicit in his insight is also the mediating notion that the great potential for precision inherent in musical vocabulary, if prudently realized, could foster a meaningful integration of analysis and criticism. (Incidentally, Cavell’s remark about the precise nature of musical vocabulary might explain the irresistible temptation on the part of literary critics to resort to musical terms on occasion, even if what they apply them to has nothing, or precious little, to do with actual music.) Marshall Brown’s recent interdisciplinary study “Mozart and After: The Revolution in Musical Consciousness”19 may be cited as exemplary for paving the way toward what Cavell envisions as humane criticism of music (or, for that matter, literature). Brown, a literary critic well versed in music, bases his daring and ultimately persuasive contribution “toward laying bare the emotional and psychological foundations of the Romantic consciousness” (p. 706) on a close tech18

Stanley Cavell, “Music Discomposed,” in his Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 185-86.

19

Critical lnquiry, 7 (l980-81), 689-706.

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nical analysis of the introduction to Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet in C Major (K. 465). Methodologically, he maintains a sober balance between philosophical and historical discourse, literary criticism, and musical analysis. Brown’s general conclusion offers important hints for the possibility of bridging the gap between understanding nonverbal and verbal media: The special challenge of analyzing a nonverbal medium [...] is to recognize that no special challenge is involved. All explanation is transference or metaphor (nothing much different is meant when certain literary critics contend that all reading is misreading), for understanding depends on finding a convincing mediation between what is actually present in the text and something which, in an important sense, is not so present. Explanation never remains within the charmed circle of what is to be explained; the essential thing is to find mediations which are sufficiently precise and well articulated. (p. 706)

When it comes to contemplating viable alternatives to the dangerously narrow confines of musical analysis, whether Schenkerian or postSchenkerian, Kerman sees definite potential in circumspect musicoliterary inquiry treating opera, the lied, and other musical genres connected with words and programs: “Musico-poetic analysis is not necessarily less insightful than strictly musical analysis” (p. 327). After all, it is Kerman’s model analysis of a song from Schumann’s Dichterliebe along more comprehensive, humane lines that demonstrates the possibility of “dealing responsibly with other kinds of aesthetic value in music besides organicism” and allows him to end his stimulating essay on an optimistic note: “I do not really think we need to get out of analysis, then, only out from under” (p. 331). Can Kerman’s positive attitude be taken as representative? Can it eventually lead to active cooperation between literary scholars and musicologists, and to a fruitful, regular exchange of ideas and methodologies, perhaps even in the form of conferences that would bring together scholars with equal or near-equal competence in both disciplines? Is there enough real interest among musicologists, be they analysts or critics or both, to meet us literary critics half-way? I definitely think so. Treitler, for example, sounds encouragingly open-

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minded when he advises musical analysts to derive “methodologies as needed from the coordinated study of music, music theory and criticism, reception and transmission, performance practices, aesthetics, and semiotics” (p. 77); and he might just as well have included the not-so-remote border area of musico-literary relations. Semiotics, in fact, may be one of the pressing concerns common to both disciplines that could provide an impulse for collaborative exploration. This brings me to my second point. As far as I know, the waves of deconstruction have not yet hit the shores of musico-literary relations. But there have been some recent attempts to apply semiotic principles to the combined study of music and literature that deserve closer scrutiny. When, at the 1979 ICLA meeting in Innsbruck, I once again expressed my skepticism concerning the usefulness of the semiotic approach for comparing literature and music, I nevertheless quoted Professor György Vajda’s optimistic prognosis: [An] area to which semiotics can perhaps direct us is the elaboration of the shared language of meaning-overlaps between literature and the other arts. This would be one of the most attractive and rewarding fields of comparative studies, as it would further the establishment of a solid foundation for the unified study of literature and the other arts, the objectification of such unified investigations, and the exploration of deeper inner relations among the arts.20

But I must confess that without further elaboration I still do not quite understand what Vajda means by “the shared language of meaningoverlaps”. Seeking more concrete illumination, I turned to the 1981 volume The Sign in Music and Literature, edited by Wendy Steiner, a collection of papers delivered at the International Conference on the Semiotics of Art held in May, 1978, at the University of Michigan21. Despite

20

György M. Vajda, “Present Perspectives on Comparative Literature,” Neohelicon, 5 (1977), 279.

21

Wendy Steiner, ed., The Sign in Music and Literature (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). Page references to this volume appear in the text.

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the promising title, the collection disappoints the musico-literary comparatist in several respects. While the essays do treat semiotic aspects of either music or literature (or, more accurately, language), the contributors do not even attempt, except for occasional remarks, to consider possible semiotic implications of music and literature combined. Nor are there any items concerning music and literature to be found in the bibliography. The individual contributions are either too general, basic, and vague, or they wax much too technical and analytical, musicologically as well as linguistically. Those on musical semiology, after the obligatory analytical excursions, only echo Nicholas Ruwet’s skepticism: “[...] I don’t really see what one gains by considering music as a system of signs or of communication, by speaking of musical signifiers and signifieds or of musical semantics” (p. 139). Thus the musicologist Henry Orlov concludes: Relying on particular metadescriptions, which themselves should have to be critically examined, and developing its theory on the basis of other theories, musical semiotics runs the risk of replacing its object, getting lost in sheer speculation, and diverging from its proper course – which is to proceed from and rely fully on only the primary reality of the text, that is, music as sound. (p. 137)

Ultimately, Steiner’s axiomatic introductory formulations, fraught with a diction of orphic significance, remain unsubstantiated: The essence of music is in its structure; the essence of music is in its performance. [...] The essence of literary aesthesis is pan-structural oscillations; the essence of literary aesthesis is the oscillation between each level’s functioning as a signifier and as a signified. Literature is like language and music in the imperfect ‘fit’ of its notational system; literature is oral in essence because typography renders it imperfectly. (p. 9)

Perhaps Mihály Szegedy-Maszák’s balanced assessment of the nonviability of linguistically based sign systems for interart comparisons accounts most clearly for the persisting aporia in matters of a semiotics of art: The basic units of the sign system are not perceptible directly, the addressee must construct them. Since sound as the smallest unit can be considered to be relatively

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equivalent to the phoneme; indeed, the function of the musical sound can be equated with the signifié, we might think that the structure of the artistic sign system could be conceived as analogous to language. In reality, only most elements of the sign system of literature coincide with language; the rules of the combination of elements differ essentially from the syntactic laws of language. Drama, opera or film differ from language to an even greater extent due to the fact that they employ a multiple sign system. Drama is the combined effect of text and theatre; opera is text, theatre and music; film is text, image, music and noise. In an easily understandable way, language is a role-model only in literature. For this reason, we consider the comparative study of the sign systems of various artistic forms based on a linguistic foundation to be unworkable because the divergence even in terms of duration is fundamental even in music and literature which are most closely related to each other. Connotative meaning is much more basic to the sign system of music however, polyphony is lacking in literature.22

This statement may be unequivocal, but it should not deter us from welcoming new propositions for critical consideration. Claudia S. Stanger’s “Literary and Musical Structuralism: An Approach to Interdisciplinary Criticism” – a paper also delivered at the Innsbruck congress – stands out as one of the most interesting recent attempts to inquire into the potential usefulness of a structuralist perspective for musico-literary study23. Stanger feels that modern musicoliterary criticism has been unduly narrow chiefly because of a traditional bias of critical negativism shared by its practitioners. She blames the proliferation of influence studies for the self-limiting, apologetic nature of most of the work done in this field. To remedy the situation, Stanger proposes to “explore the ways music and literature as sign systems interact” and to “work toward the conceptualization of an interdisciplinary sign which combines music and literature” (p. 224). She arrives at such a conceptualization by ingeniously com-

22

Mihály Szegedy-Maszák, “One of the Basic Concepts of Research in Historical Poetics in Hungary: Repetition,” in John Odmark, ed., Language, Literature & Meaning II: Current Trends in Literary Research (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1979-80), 374. 23

In Zoran Konstantinović, Steven P. Scher, and Ulrich Weisstein, eds., Proceedings of the IXth Congress of the ICLA, Innsbruck, 1979. Vol. III: Literature and the Other Arts (Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag, 1981), 223-27. Page references to Stanger’s paper appear in the text.

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bining terminology and concepts derived from the work of Jakobson, Saussure, Leonard B. Meyer, Derrida, and Barthes. Stanger finds that it is along Jakobson’s horizontal or metonymic axis of combination that “truly musical elements can find their way into the literary text” and that a real “association and combination of music and literature” can be accomplished (p. 224). While her argumentation seems plausible, the loose, undefined, and logically inconsistent use of basic terminology must not go undetected. What, for example, is meant by the “truly musical elements” that “can find their way into the literary text”? Indeed, what kind of text is this “literary text”? For if it is a truly literary text, how can it embody a hidden code that contains “truly musical elements”? We must also question what Stanger means by “musicoliterary text” and how this text differs from the “literary” or “written” text she refers to earlier. Is she making a distinction between a metonymic musico-literary text that is one homogeneous aesthetic construct and a metaphorical musico-literary text in which we would have musical texture and literary text side by side? Here is how Stanger perceives the nature of the metonymic use of music in literature: “The literary text becomes infused with, rather than a referent for, music, so that at each moment the possibility exists that the text could perhaps become more musical than it is literary” (p. 225). Particularly the latter part of this contention strikes me as paradoxical, if not altogether untenable. Perhaps when one embarks on such elevated flights of speculative fancy, one must resort to paradox. Still it is astonishing to find support for Stanger’s paradoxical formulation in a most unlikely source: New Criticism. Back in 1950 addressing himself to the question “Is a General Theory of the Arts of Any Practical Value in the Study of Literature?”, W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., used a similar formulation but arrived at a more convincing conclusion: It is necessary to expose oneself to the charge of being paradoxical. For poetry approximates the intuitive sensuous condition of paint and music not by being less verbal, less characteristic of verbal expression, but actually by being more

219

than usually verbal, by being hyperverbal [...], the interrelational density of words taken in their fullest, most inclusive and symbolic character.24

Next Stanger enlists Saussure’s aid (p. 225): Signified Music –––––––– = –––––––– Signifier Literature

=

Interdisciplinary Sign

She identifies the top half of the equation (music = signified) as Leonard B. Meyer’s “concept that music is a signified without a strict signifier” and, with the help of Derrida’s “sliding signifier”, combines the two entities of the bottom half of the equation (literature = signifier) to infer that “literature is equivalent to pure signification without the necessity of a specific referent” (p. 225). Stanger claims that in her scheme “the musico-literary sign can shift emphasis from moment to moment, depending on whether the presence of the musical element in the text outweighs the presence of the literary one” (pp. 225-26). Now all of a sudden, though we do not quite know how, “the musicoliterary text is neither music nor literature, but rather their combination” (p. 226). Once again, we have to ask: what is the nature of this text? But Stanger continues: “This conceptualization of a musicoliterary sign allows for the study of relationships in all musical literature, including song, ballad, and opera” (p. 226). One wonders what she means by “all musical literature” or, a little further on, by “the musical piece of literature”. As a final twist, Stanger introduces Barthes’s familiar distinction between readerly and writerly text. Predictably, it is the concept behind the writerly text that she finds useful. Though her reasoning gets progressively more opaque, somehow it does make sense: In Barthesian terms, the operation of the musico-literary text uses the signified of literature to point outward. But rather than extending outward in an endless chain of rewriting or sliding signification, the literary text is caught in the web of pure

24

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 8 (1950), 220.

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signification that is music. Just as it begins to realize the potential of infinite meaning, the musico-literary text is caught in the presence of absent music. (p. 226).

As John Bayley sensibly surmises, “semiotics is hardly likely to catch on as a spectator sport. Its higher flights still remain both arduous and abstract; it is still committed ultimately not to the appreciation of literature but to the epistemologization of criticism”25. When in the last sentence of her paper Stanger states that she is dealing with a “complexity that traditional interdisciplinary criticism has failed to realize, and a complexity that warrants further study” (p. 227), I can only agree. I seriously doubt, however, that one could refine or improve upon such a strained theoretical construct, even if one re-wrote it several times over. Despite some useful implications, the entire exercise in its speculative details is so devoid of concrete examples (musical or literary) that it seems to be of little value for future musico-literary critical practice. Still, l find it symptomatic of the honest and promising but as yet abortive attempts at post-structuralist interart theorizing. Potentially more promising for practical application seem to me the methodological speculations Nicholas Zurbrugg presented, also at the 1979 Innsbruck congress, in a paper entitled “Quantitative or Qualitative? Toward a Definition of Interdisciplinary Problems”26. Endorsing David H. Malone’s plea for “new interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary, methodologies” that might reveal “new kinds of relationships”27, Zurbrugg calls attention to the undeniable fact that “the apparently unchangeable materials of the arts have changed and have at times combined to create new dimensions of artistic language” (p. 341). What he means is that new technology has created new possi25

Times Literary Supplement, January 1, 1982, 3.

26

1nnsbruck Proceedings, Vol. III, 339-43. Page references to Zurbrugg’s paper appear in the text. 27

David H. Malone, “Comparative Literature and Interdisciplinary Research,” Synthesis, I (1974), 22 and 24.

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bilities for combining media of expression that László Moholy-Nagy predicted in 1969 would permit “man to experience and express ‘new relationships’ in a ‘new dimension’”28, notably photographic printing of verbal-visual compositions, tape-recorded text-sound compositions, and the diverse manifestations of contemporary cinema. As a result of what Claudio Guillén calls “multi-dimensional” creativity29, we have witnessed a breakdown of traditional genres: radically new media of expression were formed that Renée Riese Hubert (with reference to literature and the visual arts) termed “undefinable art forms combining literariness with plasticity”30. Consequently, Zurbrugg believes that future methods of interdisciplinary inquiry must be commensurate with and must evolve along with the diverse novel manifestations of multidimensional creativity: “the task of the interdisciplinary comparatist seems precisely that of extending his conception of the relationships between the arts so as to formulate ‘extended’ analytical methodologies commensurate with qualitatively interdisciplinary creativity” (p. 342). This is where Zurbrugg stops; but there is every reason to believe that he will continue to develop and substantiate his premise. Beside the two larger topics I have been able to consider in some detail, there are, of course, many other major and minor aspects of the interrelation that await the attention of literary and musical scholars. For example, important and fascinating work is being done in opera and lied theory31 that will provide the much-needed impetus for fur28

László Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 351. 29

Claudio Guillén, Literature as System: Essays Toward the Theory of Literary History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 365. 30

Renée Riese Hubert, “Literature and the Fine Arts,” Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, 24 (1975), 43. 31

See for example: Joseph Kerman, “Opera, Novel, Drama: The Case of La Traviata,” Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, 27 (1978), 44-53; Herbert Lindenberger, “Towards a Theory of Musical Drama,” Yearbook of Comparative

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ther, more sophisticated study of word-tone relations and performance practices concerning the Literaturoper (old or new, contemporary or avant-garde), the latest experiments with various forms of musical theater, and the complex interplay of text and music when employed simultaneously as constituents of the multidimensional medium of film. Especially in view of unprecedented developments in technology, the possibilities for creating new musico-literary media appear to be endless. Clearly, academic criticism, in both music and literature, has a great deal of catching up to do; and some of it can and ought to be done in collaboration32. Ultimately it is on the common ground of aesthetics, I believe, that musicologists and literary critics may enter into and sustain mutually rewarding scholarly exchange. To conclude with a pseudo-Schenkerian organicist metaphor, general aesthetics is the most congenial ground for selected seeds of literary and musical theory, criticism, and analysis, and of the semiotics of both arts, to grow, commingle, and prosper.

and General Literature, 29 (1980), 5-9; Carolyn R. Finlay, “Literary Analysis of Opera: Three Recent Publications”, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 8 (1981), 523-33; Derrick Puffett, “Some Reflections on ‘Literaturoper,’” German Life and Letters, 35 (1981-82), 238-40; Edward T. Cone, The Composer’s Voice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); and J. W. Smeed, “The Composer as Interpreter,” German Life and Letters, 35 (1981-82), 221-28. 32

According to Rose R. Subotnik, it is in musicology where more groundwork needs to be done: [...] just as the critical works of even such leading American musical scholars as Rosen, Kerman, Meyer, Cone, Treitler, and Lippman, not to mention those of such non-musicologists as E. D. Hirsch, Roland Barthes, or Harold Bloom, have individually exerted far less influence than it seems to me they should, so too, collectively they have had relatively little impact on the character and direction of American musicology as an institutional whole. Unlike its counterparts in literature and the visual arts, American musicology has yet to devote substantial energy or support either to the intellectual issues of criticism or to the definition and study of any extant body of critical investigation or theory. Rose R. Subotnik, “Musicology and Criticism,” in Holoman and Palisca, 146-7.

Comparing Poetry and Music Beethoven’s Goethe Lieder as Composed Reading* (1986) Kommen Sie an die alten Ruinen, so denken sie, daß dort Beethoven oft verweilt, durchirren Sie die heimlichen Tannenwälder, so denken sie, daß da Beethoven oft gedichtet, oder wie man sagt componirt... (Beethoven to Nanette Streicher, July 20, 1817)

If a musical setting is able to vitalize and vivify one among the many aspects of the total form of a poem, by so doing it presents a unique interpretation of the poem’s meaning […]. Ultimately there can be only one justification for the serious composition of a song: it must be an attempt to increase our understanding of the poem.

This poignant view of lied composition comes from Princeton musicologist Edward T. Cone, who has written with authority and rare literary sensitivity on the theoretical and practical aspects of this elusive topic1. That Cone sees as the aim of songwriting a unique interpretation and increased understanding of the poem may appear startling at first. But in fact what he infers here ought to be of considerable interest as we inquire into the complex and intricate process of setting poetic texts to music, especially in this day and age of the Reader and reader-response criticism. * The three words “as Composed Reading” in the title of this essay were inadvertently omitted from the published version. Here they are reinstated as they should have appeared in the original printing. 1

Edward T. Cone, “Words into Music: The Composer’s Approach to the Text,” in: Sound and Poetry, ed. Northrop Frye, New York 1957, p. 15.

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Recognizing certain parallels in interpretive perception between the act of reading texts on the one hand and beholding painting or sculpture, viewing film, and listening to music on the other, critics in recent years have begun to examine similarities and divergences in the aesthetic and psychological responses of the reader, beholder, viewer, and listener concerning their particular reception of works of art. My focus here will be on the composer as reader: I am interested specifically in the so far largely unexplored nature of the song composer’s interpretive activity and response. The composer engaged in the process of setting poetic texts operates not unlike the linguistically and literarily competent reader engaged in the art of reading poetry. Yet I would argue that the composer’s reading performance is also significantly different: the composer as reader commands a special ‘musical competence’ that is over and above the literary competence ordinary readers bring to the reading process. Since he aims at ‘translating’ his reading of the poem of his choice into song, the composer becomes a special kind of reader whose interpretive perception of the text is charged with an additional creative-artistic dimension. As musicologist Gary Tomlinson observes: Which particular textual characteristics the composer chooses to emphasize will depend on much beyond the text itself: on his view of the nature and capabilities of musical discourse, shaped internally by musical procedures developed from the canon of his predecessors, externally by general expectations and aspirations of his culture; and on his equally rich conception of tradition behind his text.2

It is this musical competence – here broadly defined – that enables the composer to perceive in his reading certain structural, semantic, and emotive features and properties which possess for him signifying potential well beyond the text’s inherent literariness. Recognition and internalization of these features and properties engender compositional 2

Gary Tomlinson, “Music and the Claims of the Text: Monteverdi, Rinuccini, and Marino,” in: Critical Inquiry, 8, 1982, p. 565.

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strategies that make the musical realization of the reading experience possible. The musical setting is thus the direct result of a specially charged reading process. By placing the poetic text into a musical context, the composer-reader performs a generic transformation. The poem as set to music is no longer the poet’s alone; appropriated by the composer it becomes but a part, however integral, of the newly fashioned, predominantly musical work of art. In this new, symbiotic construct that comprises both verbal and musical components, the words of the poem merge with and are shaped into the vocal line which, together with the instrumental (predominantly piano) accompaniment, constitutes the larger musical framework. To attempt a working definition: song composition may be viewed as the act of the composer’s assimilative reading of the original poem, as a “compenetration” (to borrow Louise Rosenblatt’s term)3 of the composing reader and his text, as the cumulative process of a series of interpretive insights and operations and particularized compositional strategies called forth by the composer’s reading; it is this process I call ‘composed reading’. In a recent study on music and poetry, Lawrence Kramer arrives at a definition of song that seems to endorse such a notion of ‘composed reading’: “A song, we might say, does not use a reading; it is a reading, in the critical as well as the performative sense of the term: an activity of interpretation that works through a text without being bound by authorial intentions.”4 When we think of the major figures in the history of the lied, Beethoven’s name does not readily come to mind. Only specialists and lied enthusiasts know that this is a serious omission: leaving behind the eighteenth-century ideal (which was also Goethe’s) that the musical setting must be subservient to the poem and pointing the way to a 3

Quoted by Jane P. Tompkins in Tompkins, ed., Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, Baltimore 1980, p. 259. 4

Lawrence Kramer, Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After, Berkeley 1984, p. 127.

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more independent piano accompaniment that came into prominence in full splendor with Schumann and Hugo Wolf, “in the world of Lieder Beethoven rather than Schubert was the pioneer, groping towards a satisfactory solution with few precedents to build on”5. Justifiably, it is above all for his genius in the instrumental field, for his symphonies, chamber works, and piano compositions, that posterity regards Beethoven as one of the all-time greats in Western music. But such an assessment, however valid in general, leaves unfocused a decisive trait that pervades virtually all of his works: the fundamental interdependence of his instrumental and vocal music which is perhaps most transparent and best accessible for analysis in the some eighty songs he wrote for voice and piano6. From his early, modest experiments in song-writing still in the eighteenth-century manner through An die ferne Geliebte, the first song cycle in lied history, to the exalted version of Schiller’s “Ode an die Freude” for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra in the finale of the Ninth Symphony, the formidable challenge of text-setting accompanied Beethoven in his compositional practice throughout his creative life. Beethoven was no ordinary reader of poetry. Though he “was not a composer who knew his Sophocles better than harmony”7, he certainly knew his Goethe whose poetry he adored and considered ideally suited to his own, rather exacting requirements of song composition. As Beethoven is said to have confided to Bettina Brentano: Goethes Gedichte behaupten nicht allein durch den Inhalt, auch durch den Rhythmus eine große Gewalt über mich. Ich werde gestimmt und aufgeregt zum 5

Leslie Orrey, “The Songs,” in: The Beethoven Companion, eds. Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune, London 1971, p. 411. 6

Cf. Steven P. Scher, “Beethoven and the Word: Literary Affinity or Artistic Necessity?,” in: Jahrbuch des Wiener Goethe-Vereins, 84/85, l980/81, p. 130 [reprinted in this volume].

7

A. W. Ambros, Die Grenzen der Musik und Poesie: eine Studie zur Ästhetik der Tonkunst, Leipzig 1855, p. ii, referred to in Giorgio Pestelli, The Age of Mozart and Beethoven, Cambridge 1984, p. 223.

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Komponieren durch diese Sprache, die wie durch Geister zu höherer Ordnung sich aufbaut und das Geheimnis der Harmonien schon in sich trägt.8

Clearly, Beethoven looked for and found in Goethe poetic texts which in a vague, general sense already contained some potential rhythmic contours and declamatory ingredients but which could still be enhanced through his musical treatment. Not only was Beethoven ever mindful of the practical exigencies of lied composition; in each text he subjected to his ‘composed reading’ he also had to find some correspondence with his own mood or existential situation to which he could respond emotionally. Beethoven set about a dozen of Goethe’s lyrics, among them some of the best-known ones9. It is typical of his indefatigable experimental spirit and perennial dissatisfaction with the products of his interpretive intelligence that he made four different settings of the famous Mignon poem “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” and published them under the same cover. On the autograph he wrote: “Ich hatte nicht Zeit genug, um ein Gutes hervorzubringen, daher mehrere Versuche.”10 As a representative example for closer scrutiny, I have chosen Beethoven’s 1809 setting of Goethe’s “Neue Liebe, neues Leben”, an effervescent love poem which captures the young poet’s passionate yet self-consciously restrained involvement in 1775 with Frankfurt society beauty Lili Schönemann. In the dilemma of the poem’s ambitious young man in love trying to set himself free, Beethoven must have perceived a parallel to his own predicament: at the time of composition he was about to terminate his hopeless affair with Therese 8

Martin Hürlimann, ed., Beethoven. Briefe und Gespräche, Zürich 1944, p. 145.

9

For example, “Mailied” (op. 52, Nr. 4), “Marmotte” (op. 52, Nr. 7), “Mignon” (op. 75, No. 1), “Neue Liebe, neues Leben” (op. 75, No. 2), “Flohlied” (op. 75, No. 3), “Wonne der Wehmut” (op. 83, No. 1), “Sehnsucht” (op. 83, No. 2), “Mit einem gemalten Band” (op. 83, No. 3).

10

Quoted in Joseph Müller-Blattau, Goethe und die Meister der Musik, Stuttgart 1959, p. 50.

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Malfatti who rejected his marriage proposal. What interests us here is how the musician Beethoven integrated his perception of the poem’s emotional content into his approximation of the form and meaning of Goethe’s text. More crucial is the composer’s choice of a single organizing principle that governs his entire process of composed reading. In the case of “Neue Liebe, neues Leben” Beethoven’s choice was unique: he opted to experiment with the classical sonata form11 so familiar from his instrumental music because in it he recognized the ideal musical design that would unobtrusively accentuate the poem’s inherent structure and would also allow him to give shape to his own self-reflective interpretation. A juxtaposition of Goethe’s original poem with the strikingly expanded version of Goethe’s text Beethoven fashioned for his musical setting, followed by the resulting fusion of poetry and music in the actual song composition, should prove illuminating for purposes of comparison: NEUE LIEBE, NEUES LEBEN 1

5

Herz, mein Herz, was soll das geben, Was bedränget dich so sehr? Welch ein fremdes neues Leben – Ich erkenne dich nicht mehr. Weg ist alles, was du liebtest, Weg, worum du dich betrübtest, Weg dein Fleiss und deine Ruh – Ach, wie kamst du nur dazu?

Fesselt dich die Jugendblüte, 10 Diese liebliche Gestalt, Dieser Blick voll Treu und Güte Mit unendlicher Gewalt? Will ich rasch mich ihr entziehen, Mich ermannen, ihr entfliehen, 11

The sonata form structure in this song was first recognized by Ernst Bücken in his “Die Lieder Beethovens. Eine stilkritische Studie,” in: Neues Beethoven-Jahrbuch, 2, 1925, pp. 33-42. Hans Boettcher, in his definitive study Beethoven als Liederkomponist, Augsburg 1928, treats the song as simply through-composed, with a structure “a b a ˘b˘ c” (p. 60).

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15 Führet mich im Augenblick – Ach – mein Weg zu ihr zurück. Und an diesem Zauberfädchen, das sich nicht zerreissen lässt, Hält das liebe lose Mädchen 20 Mich so wider Willen fest. Muss in ihrem Zauberkreise Leben nun auf ihre Weise; Die Veränderung, ach, wie gross! 24 Liebe, Liebe, lass mich los. Goethe (1775)

NEUE LIEBE, NEUES LEBEN 1

5

Herz, mein Herz, was soll das geben? was bedränget dich so sehr? welch ein fremdes neues Leben! ich erkenne dich nicht mehr. Weg ist alles, was du liebtest, weg warum du dich betrübtest, weg dein Fleiss und deine Ruh’. Ach, wie kamst du nur dazu! wie kamst du nur dazu!

10 Fesselt dich die Jugendblüthe, diese liebliche Gestalt, dieser Blick voll Treu’ und Güte mit unendlicher Gewalt? Will ich rasch mich ihr entziehen, 15 mich ermannen, ihr entfliehen, führet mich im Augenblick, ach, mein Weg zu ihr zurück, zu ihr, zu ihr mein Weg zurück. Herz, mein Herz, was soll das geben? 20 Herz, mein Herz, was soll das geben? was bedränget dich so sehr? welch ein fremdes neues Leben! ich erkenne dich nicht mehr. Weg ist alles, was du liebtest, 25 weg warum du dich betrübtest, weg dein Fleiss und deine Ruh’. Ach, wie kamst du nur dazu! wie kamst du nur dazu!

Exposition – first theme

– second theme

– third theme

Development Recapitulation – first theme

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Fesselt dich die Jugendblüthe 30 diese liebliche Gestalt, dieser Blick voll Treu’ und Güte mit unendlicher Gewalt? Will ich rasch mich ihr entziehen, mich ermannen, ihr entfliehen, 35 führet mich im Augenblick, ach, mein Weg zu ihr zurück, führet mich im Augenblick zu ihr, zu ihr mein Weg zurück.

– second theme

– third theme

Und an diesem Zauberfädchen, Coda 40 das sich nicht zerreissen lässt, hält das liebe lose Mädchen mich so wider Willen fest; muss in ihrem Zauberkreise leben nun auf ihre Weise. 45 Die Veränd’rung, ach, wie gross! Liebe! Liebe! lass mich los! lass, lass, lass mich los! 48 lass, lass mich los! Beethoven (1809) Op. 75, No. 2

231

232

233

234

235

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Beethoven’s through-composed reading shows his keen awareness of the principle of polarity underlying the poem’s structure, of the pronounced contrast, for example, between the young man’s ‘heart condition’ in the first stanza and the lovely appearance of his beloved in the second. It is this insight that must have prompted Beethoven to turn to the sonata form, the exposition section of which requires precisely this kind of compositional strategy, namely the contrasting of the distinctly different melodic material introduced in the various themes. Goethe’s treatment of the third stanza as a more or less separate entity, a summing up of the preceding two stanzas in the form of a moral, also lends itself effortlessly to a musical parallel in the coda section concluding the sonata movement. Substantial deviation from the customary sonata form was necessary only for the development section which had to be drastically shortened. Here Beethoven’s solution is genuinely interpretive. In a mere five measures set to the very first line of the poem (line 19), he not only provides the obligatory harmonic transition from the exposition to the recapitulation but also manages to intimate the poem’s emotional and ideational content – not, however, without a touch of tonal irony in the piano part suggesting the agitated heartbeat of the perplexed young man. For the rest, the repeated first two stanzas form a perfect alliance with the standard recapitulation section. I think that even on the basis of this brief exercise in comparing poetry and music we can concur with Edward T. Cone when he urges that “once in a while we should try to derive from the structural analysis of a composition an account of its expressive content”12. Couched unobtrusively in sonata form, Beethoven’s musical setting of “Neue Liebe, neues Leben” gives us a unique interpretation that does indeed enhance the expressive content of Goethe’s poem. That the text Beethoven set contains twice as many lines as the original poem seems 12

Edward T. Cone, “Schubert’s Promissory Note: An Exercise in Musical Hermeneutics,” in: Nineteenth-Century Music, 5, Spring 1982, p. 235.

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excessive and idiosyncratic only if we look at the words without the music. But if we consider it as a verbal score to be realized in song, as documentary record of a hermeneutic activity that generates a new, composite work of art fusing poetry and music, then the special nature of the composer’s reading response becomes evident. For Beethoven’s considerable expansion and structural revamping of Goethe’s poem through well-contemplated repetition of certain words, phrases, lines, or entire stanzas closely parallels what may transpire in the mind of the reader engaged in interpreting the poem. The crucial difference is, of course, that the ordinary reader will simply not emerge from the reading process with a gem like Beethoven’s “Neue Liebe, neues Leben” which, with each performance, reflects anew the song composer’s interpretive operation as composed reading.

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The Strauss-Hofmannsthal Operatic Experiment Tradition, Modernity, or Avant-Garde?1 (1987) Collaboration between creative individuals to fashion joint works of art has rarely been free of misunderstandings, personal antagonisms, and crippling crises; the case of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal was no exception. As reflected in the published correspondence2, the celebrated Strauss-Hofmannsthal partnership – even in its most harmonious moments – was far indeed from congenial serenity and meek concord. Still it is unfortunate that the antagonism between poet and composer has been magnified out of proportion. As a result, from early on critical reception of this unique collaboration has been colored (if not altogether dominated) by the notion that the two men were patently mismatched.3 There is, of course, some truth in this notion. Apocryphal or not, Alma Mahler’s so typically Viennese reminiscence, if understood in the proper context, manages to convey indirectly more of the aura of this strained relationship than hundreds of pages of learned commentary: Wir nahmen einst in Wien Hugo von Hofmannsthal mit uns zum “Libellentanz” von Franz Léhar. Hofmannsthal war so angetan von der Musik, dass er sagte: “Gott, wie schön wäre es, wenn Léhar doch die Musik zum ‘Rosenkavalier’ ge-

1

N.D.L.R.: Conformément à la politique de la R.L.C., les citations allemandes de plus de deux ou trois lignes ont été traduites dans la langue de redaction de l’article.

2

Richard Strauss – Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Briefwechsel: Gesamtausgabe, ed. Willi Schuh, fourth edition (Zurich: Atlantis, 1970).

3

For a good recent selected bibliography on this topic, see Karen Forsyth, “Ariadne auf Naxos” by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss: Its Genesis and Meaning (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1982), pp. 282-87. See also the bibliography in Alan Jefferson’s Richard Strauss “Der Rosenkavalier” (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1985), pp. 142-45.

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macht hätte statt Richard Strauss.” Ich erzählte diesen Ausspruch meinem Freund Egon Friedell, und er sagte: “Und wenn dann noch ein anderer das Libretto geschrieben hätte – wie schön wäre dann die Oper erst geworden!”4

It is obviously unfair to judge Hofmannsthal’s comprehension of musical matters in general and of Strauss’s music in particular on the basis of such anecdotal evidence, as even responsible scholars have repeatedly done. But it is equally misleading to overestimate the critical validity of, say, Thomas Mann’s highly subjective (and on several counts simply mistaken) perception of the oppressive effect of Strauss’s musical idiom on Hofmannsthal’s text to Der Rosenkavalier. In a little known and unusually outspoken letter (dated February 5, 1911, shortly after he saw the Munich première of the opera), Mann wrote to Hofmannsthal: Aber wie, um Gottes Willen, verhalten denn Sie sich nun eigentlich zu der Art, in der Richard Strauss Ihr leichtes Gebilde belastet und in die Länge gezogen hat?! Vier Stunden Getöse um einen reizenden Scherz! Und wenn dieses Missverständnis die einzige Stilwidrigkeit bei der Sache wäre! Wo ist Wien, wo ist achtzehntes Jarhundert in dieser Musik? Doch nicht in den Walzern? Sie sind anachronistisch und stempeln also das Ganze zur Operette. Wäre es nur eine. Aber es ist Musikdrama anspruchsvollsten Kalibers. Dabei ist, da Strauss von Wagners Kunst, die Deklamation mit dem Riesenorchester nicht zuzudecken, garnichts versteht, kein Wort verständlich. Aber die tausend sprachlichen Delikatessen und Kuriositäten des Buches werden erdrückt und verschlungen, und das ist am Ende gut, denn sie stehen in schreiendem stilistischen Widerspruch zu dem raffinierten Lärm, in dem sie untergehen, und wo noch zweimal so raffiniert, aber viel weniger Lärm hätte sein dürfen. Kurz, ich war recht verstimmt und finde, dass Strauss nicht wie ein Künstler an Ihrem Werk gehandelt hat.5 4

“One day, in Vienna, we took Hugo von Hofmannsthal with us to Franz Lehár’s Libellentanz. Hofmannsthal was so taken with the music that he said: ‘My God, how beautiful it would be if only the Rosenkavalier music had been done by Léhar instead of Richard Strauss’. I reported this pronouncement to my friend Egon Friedell, and he said: ‘And if yet another had written the libretto – then how fine the opera would have been!’” – Alma Mahler-Werfel, Mein Leben (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1969). Quoted here from the paperback edition, p. 299. 5

“But how, for God’s sake, do you react to the way in which Richard Strauss loaded your light sketch and drew it into length?! Four hours of din about a charming piece of fun! And if this misunderstanding was the only sin against style in the affair! Where is Vienna, where is the eighteenth century in this music? Surely not in the waltzes? They are anachronic, and put the stamp of operetta upon the whole. If there

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However extreme in formulation, in substance Thomas Mann’s reaction is typical of the pro-Hofmannsthal critics. In his recent, controversial book on Romantic Opera and Literary Form, Peter Conrad still echoes this view: “The correspondence between Strauss and Hofmannsthal reveals the poet manœuvring to preserve his texts from violation by uncomprehending music”6. Representing the other side of the debate are those critics who maintain – with T.S. Eliot – that “‘distinction as a poet’ is not necessarily an asset in a librettist”7: they bestow unconditional praise on the musician Strauss as the practical partner in the affair with an infallible dramatic instinct and condemn the poet Hofmannsthal for his uncompromising idealism and lack of sound theatrical sense. Recently published evidence, even if taken with a grain of salt, seems to substantiate the latter view. Harry Graf Kessler, Hofmannsthal’s acknowledged co-author for the original Rosenkavalier-scenario, wrote to Eberhard von Bodenhausen in a letter dated March 24, 1912: Du wunderst Dich, dass ich überhaupt auf diese Form der Mitarbeit mit Hofmannsthal eingegangen sei und nicht lieber allein Stücke oder Ballets verfasst habe. Die Erklärung liegt in einer durchaus klaren Erkenntnis der Grenzen sowohl von Hofmannsthal wie von meiner dichterischen Begabung. Hofmannsthal fehlt was just one. But it is highfaluting music drama. And with that, Strauss having simply no idea of the art proper to Wagner of not covering the declamation under a gigantic orchestra – one does not understand a word. The thousand delicate and curious verbal touches of the book are crushed and swamped, which in the end is a good thing, since they stand in crying stylistic contradiction with the refined noise in which they perish – and where we could have twice the refinement, but much less noise. In short, I was properly peeved, and find that Strauss has not handled your work as an artist should.” – Quoted in Andreas Razumovsky, “Über den Text des Rosenkavalier”, in Zeugnisse. Theodor W. Adorno zum sechzigsten Geburtstag, ed. Max Horkheimer (Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1963), p. 238. 6

Peter Conrad, Romantic Opera and Literary Form (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1977), p. 5. 7

Quoted in Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents (New York, 1978), pp. 539-40. See also Steven Paul Scher, “Hofmannsthal as Librettist to Richard Strauss: Some Aspects of Their Collaboration”, J.I.A.S.R.A. (Journal of the International Arthur Schnitzler Research Association), 5, No. 2 (Summer 1966), 29-35.

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ganz genau das zu einem dramatischen Dichter, was ich besitze, und umgekehrt. Hofmannsthal hat gar kein konstruktives Talent, er hat nur ein sehr geringes Talent sogar zur Auswicklung und dramatisch wirksamen Ordnung eines schon gegebenen Stoffes; deshalb hat er sich immer, ausser in bloss lyrischen Dramen, an vorhandene Szenarien angelehnt. Ist aber ein wirksames Scenario da, so kann er es in wunderbarer Weise lyrisch beleben, den Figuren und Situationen auf dem Umwege über die Lyrik Leben einhauchen.8

Even without such explicit confirmation there is enough evidence, I think, that in the last analysis the composer was a better operadramatist than the aloof poet-librettist. Surely, it would be tempting to probe further along these lines and collect and evaluate new as well as old evidence about the respective merits and flaws of the two partners. But today, at a safe distance of well over half a century after the poet’s death and after several decades of intensive and impressive Hofmannsthal research, we ought to turn to more central issues. The time has come, I believe, to ask larger questions; to attempt a critical overview of the collaboration in a broader historical framework. After all, our methods of diachronic and synchronic critical inquiry in musicoliterary scholarship have become discriminating enough9 so that instead of viewing the Strauss-Hofmannsthal co-productions onesidedly, with either a literary or a musicological bias (as has been predominantly the case so far), we can now assess them comprehensively 8

“You are surprised that in the first place I engaged in this sort of collaboration with Hofmannsthal, and did not rather compose pieces of ballets alone. The explanation lies in a perfectly clear knowledge of the limits both of Hofmannsthal’s and of my own poetic gifts. Hofmannsthal lacks precisely, to be a dramatic composer, just what I possess, and vice versa. Hofmannsthal has no constructive talent whatsoever, he has only a very meagre talent for developing and organizing into cogent drama a given subject-matter; for this reason he has always, except in the case of actual lyrical drama, relied on pre-existing scenarios. But once you have a powerful scenario, he is wonderful at giving it life as a lyric, and at breathing life into the characters and situations on the way.” – Eberhard von Bodenhausen, Harry Graf Kessler, Ein Briefwechsel, 1894-1918, ed. Hans Ulrich Simon. Marbacher Schriften, No. 16 (Marbach am Neckar, 1978), p. 93. See also Dirk Hoffmann, “Zu Harry Graf Kesslers Mitarbeit am ‘Rosenkavalier’,” Hofmannsthal-Blätter, 21-22 (1979), 153-60.

9

Cf. Steven Paul Scher, “Literature and Music,” in Interrelations of Literature, eds. Jean-Pierre Barricelli and Joseph Gibaldi (New York: M.L.A., 1982), pp. 225-50.

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as exemplary instances of operatic word-tone synthesis, of “Dichtungcum-Musik” (to use Hofmannsthal’s own designation). In his “Ungeschriebenes Nachwort zum ‘Rosenkavalier’” (1911), the poet himself endorsed this approach as the only appropriate one: Ein Werk ist ein Ganzes und auch zweier Menschen Werk kann ein Ganzes werden. Vieles ist den Gleichzeitig-Lebenden gemeinsam, auch vom Eigensten. Fäden laufen hin und wider, verwandte Elemente laufen zusammen. Wer sondert, wird unrecht tun. Wer eines heraushebt, vergisst, dass unbemerkt immer das Ganze mitklingt. Die Musik soll nicht vom Text gerissen werden, das Wort nicht vom belebten Bild. Für die Bühne ist dies gemacht, nicht für das Buch oder für den einzelnen an seinem Klavier.10

When we attempt to reconsider this remarkable and singularly productive collaboration in a broader context, the crucial question arises: to what extent are we justified in claiming that Strauss and Hofmannsthal created a new operatic genre superior in artistic quality and musico-poetic integrity to what had been attained before in the history of opera? Or, to phrase the complex question somewhat more modestly, what were the decisive factors that brought the two men together and held them together in a tempestuous, yet on the whole successful, working relationship that lasted over twenty years, despite frequent disagreements and undercurrents of personal antagonism? Contemplating the artistic physiognomies of the two partners, the answer seems surprisingly transparent: we must remember that both Strauss and Hofmannsthal started out as sensational innovators in their respective fields and turned increasingly conservative later on; that both were sincerely and passionately preoccupied throughout their careers 10 “A work is a whole, and the work of two men can also become a whole. People living in the same age have much in common, even much of what is their own. Threads run in and out, related elements run together. Who severs, will do wrong. Who takes out one item, forgets, that, unnoticed, the whole always rings in tune. Music must not be wrenched from the text, nor the word from the animated picture. This was made for the stage, not for the book or for a man sitting at his piano.” – Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke in zehn Einzelbänden, eds. Bernd Schoeller und Rudolf Hirsch (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Tachenbuch Verlag, 1979), Vol. 5 (Dramen V – Operndichtungen), p. 146.

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with the elusive problem of word-tone synthesis in theory and practice; and last but not least, that they openly shared a sense of acute awareness of their own stature as first-rate artists and of the prominent place their collaborative efforts were to occupy in operatic history. These, I believe, are the major factors that provided a common ground upon which these otherwise so dissimilar artists could sustain what W.H. Auden – himself a prominent librettist – called a “marriage of true minds”.11 Characteristically, there was never any disagreement between Strauss and Hofmannsthal concerning their mutually conscious readiness to respond to the formidable challenge represented by past operatic peaks like Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and the desire to eclipse them through the creation of a new, higher standard for contemporary opera, especially through their joint effort to achieve what they regarded as the ideal, productive tension between text and musical setting. They instinctively realized that words and music can be felicitously united by creative antagonism – which was precisely the case in Der Rosenkavalier. Strauss knew well that in Hofmannsthal he was fortunate to have a poet with an established reputation who was willing and able to write libretti of quality and who could elevate the much maligned operatic form to a new level of literary integrity and perhaps even break the ground for a new operatic genre altogether. Also, Strauss was generally sensitive to the poetic value of Hofmannsthal’s texts, though he could not always translate the poetry into his music. Paradoxically, none of the texts Hofmannsthal wrote specifically as libretti ever approached the dramatic idiom of Elektra, which first attracted Strauss and met his compositional needs so well. Nor would Hofmannsthal ever really consider writing a “second” Rosenkavalier: for all its surface similarities to Rosenkavalier, the world of Arabella is much more

11

W.H. Auden, “A Marriage of True Minds”, T.L.S. (Times Literary Supplement), No. 3115, November 10, 1961, pp. 797-98.

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closely related to that of Der Schwierige. It was no doubt the lasting success of Rosenkavalier which gave the poet confidence that he could continue to tread new ground as a librettist. This conscious realization, however, was also the primary cause of the divergence which ensued in the partnership for a good many years after World War I: Hofmannsthal’s well-meant ambition to revolutionize the concept of the libretto led him far beyond the successful forms he had less selfconsciously created. From a historical perspective, Strauss’s decline as a composer also inhibited the further development of the collaboration. This “decline” should not be exaggerated; it is relative to the extremely rapid evolution of modern music during the latter part of Strauss’s lifetime. Amusing as it may be to read Ernest Newman’s 1908 biography of Strauss, which portrays him as the foremost musical revolutionary and leader of the avantgarde, it also serves to remind us of the extraordinary advances he made as a composer before even turning to opera. With the major exception of Wagner, opera has rarely been the harbinger of musical revolution, perhaps due to its economic dependence on some kind of public success. At any rate, Strauss virtually ceased to alter his compositional style after Rosenkavalier, not so much out of a desire to pander to public taste, but simply because he had arrived at an idiom which was “comfortable” for him: he felt that this harmonic vocabulary was sufficient for everything he wished to express. At this point he had unofficially allied himself with the passing generation: Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (1913) received its premiere while be began to work on Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919). Strauss became relatively immune to the new kinds of musical theater that were emerging even during his collaboration with Hofmannsthal: Hindemith’s Cardillac (1926), Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf (1927), and the Brecht-Weill Dreigroschenoper (1928) were first staged in the twenties, while Schönberg’s avantgardistic works, Erwartung and Die glückliche Hand, though first performed in 1924, were composed in 1909 and 1913 respectively and were thus almost exactly contempo-

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rary with Rosenkavalier and Ariadne. British critic Cecil Gray’s assessment of 1924 rings true indeed: Hailed on his appearance as the successor of Wagner – Richard the Second – only some ten years ago still, for most people the most commanding figure in modern music, he [Strauss] is today, apart from Germany and Austria, almost ignored by the leaders of progressive musical opinion.12

Strauss’s position as an opera composer, then, may be defined as a summing up of a long tradition from Mozart to Wagner and beyond: in his own way he achieved a certain reconciliation of these two diverse giants of “German” art (in the broadest sense). His work with Hofmannsthal, a first-rate literary figure, points forward to a modern, twentieth-century approach to literature-in-music, as manifest in such dissimilar partnerships as Brecht and Weill or Dessau, Stravinsky and Cocteau or W. H. Auden. The British composers, Benjamin Britten, Vaughan Williams, and Michael Tippett, also typify a similar “literary” approach, coming as they do from a country more famous for its men of letters than its composers. In this respect, the StraussHofmannsthal collaboration is surely more “transitional” than it is generally regarded. When asked late in life why opera was his medium of expression, Hofmannsthal answered: – in der Oper, das heisst natürlich besonders in meiner Oper, kann ich das Bedeutende, das worauf es ankommt, das Eigentliche, nicht aus einem Brauch, sondern aus dem rein gefühlten, tieferen Zustand der Dinge hervorgehen lassen –13 ...

12

Quoted in Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama (New York: Random House, 1956), p. 261.

13

“– in opera, that is to say of course, particularly in my opera, I can call forth the significant, what it is all about, the distinctive, bringing it out, not of any practice, but of the deeper condition of things, felt in all its purity.” Walther Brecht, “Gespräch über ‘Die Ägyptische Helena’,” in Hugo von Hofmannsthal, ed. Helmut Fiechtner (Vienna, 1949), p. 339.

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Because Der Rosenkavalier deals with themes immediate and universal through the “purely emotional” experiences of its characters, more so than any other of Hofmannsthal’s libretti, it is qualified to achieve this ideal. With some of his most inspired and perceptive music, Strauss was able to mold the comic and noble elements of the poet’s vision into a persuasive whole: a world in which purpose and necessity govern the fates of the characters and at some point reflect our own. The dissonances which carry the plot are ultimately resolved in the harmony of the configuration. Music intensifies the transcendent concept of reality as it is presented on stage. It fills the space between the characters with an additional dimension of meaning and creates a fuller sense of the dramatic moment. The words provide space for music and the music defines this space with its emotional content, thus defining the essence of the words themselves in a still more complete and satisfying way. Or, as Hofmannsthal put it in his “Ungeschriebenes Nachtwort zum ‘Rosenkavalier’”: So stehen Gruppen gegen Gruppen, die Verbundenen sind getrennt, die Getrennten verbunden. Sie gehören alle zueinander, und was das Beste ist, liegt zwischen ihnen: es ist augenblicklich und ewig, und hier ist Raum für Musik.14

In that it was uniquely literary, the Strauss-Hofmannsthal operatic experiment was modern perhaps, indeed even innovative. But it was certainly not avant-gardistic.

14

“So stand groups against groups, those who were linked are separated, those separated are linked. They all belong to each other, and what is best is there between them: it is momentary and eternal, and this is where music has its place.” – Hofmannsthal (see note 2), p. 146.

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E. T. A. Hoffmann: Der Dichter als Komponist (1987) E. T. A. Hoffmanns schöpferische Jahre waren von der unnachgiebigen Suche nach künstlerischer Identität bestimmt. Es war eines der zahlreichen Paradoxe dieser gefährdeten Künstlerexistenz, dass er sich sein ganzes Leben lang als Komponist und Musiker einen Namen zu machen hoffte. Als ihm in seinen letzten Jahren endlich doch breite Anerkennung zuteil wurde, feierte sein Publikum in ihm nicht den Musiker und Musikkritiker, sondern den vielseitigen und fruchtbaren humoristischen Prosaautor. Hoffmanns Wendung von der Musik zur Literatur kam aber keineswegs unerwartet oder zufällig. Von frühester Jugend an hatte er auch die dichterische Laufbahn erwogen, obwohl er diese Neigung lange Zeit sogar vor sich selbst verbarg. Außer den beiden Romanen, die er veröffentlichte – Die Elixiere des Teufels (1815-1816) und Kater Murr (1820-1822) – hatte er sieben weitere geplant und teilweise auch geschrieben; erhalten sind allerdings nur Bruchstücke oder Skizzen. Bereits im Alter von 18 Jahren arbeitete er gewissenhaft an seinem ersten Roman Cornaro, und ein Jahr später begann er seinen zweiten. Es ist dieses früh bewusstgewordene, grundsätzlich zur Prosa neigende Dichtertemperament, das mir der entscheidende Zug in Hoffmanns Entwicklung zum großen Erzähler zu sein scheint; es durchdringt all seine literarischen Arbeiten, einschließlich seiner Briefe, Tagebucheintragungen und Musikkritiken. Im besonderen lassen viele seiner Dichtungen – auch wenn er sie als „Märchen“, „Erzählungen“ oder ähnlich bezeichnete – die Haltung eines Romanschriftstellers erkennen, der bewusst Erzählstrategien verwendet, die aus der großen europäischen Tradition der Linie Rabelais, Cervantes, Grimmelshausen, Sterne, Wieland, Rousseau und

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Goethe abzuleiten sind. Hoffmanns Erzählkunst ist außerdem von romantheoretischer Bedeutung als die vielleicht überzeugendste – wenn auch nicht unbedingt bewusste – Verwirklichung charakteristischer Auffassungen des Romans und des Romanhaften, wie sie in den kritischen Schriften von Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Schelling und Jean-Paul entwickelt wurden. Ich will mich aber nicht mit der literarischen Bedeutung Hoffmanns befassen und auch nicht mit der Tradition, die er in vielen Ländern und Literaturen (insbesondere in Frankreich) prägte und die noch heute eine überraschende Lebendigkeit hat. Vielmehr möchte ich auf einige Aspekte seiner sicherlich nicht geringen Leistungen auf musikalischem Gebiet etwas näher eingehen; ein Gebiet seiner vielfältigen schöpferischen Tätigkeit, welches am wenigsten bekannt ist, aber gerade daher vielleicht die größte Möglichkeit zu neuen Einblicken auch in sein Gesamtschaffen bietet. Besonders nach der 1984 erschienenen grundlegenden – und meines Erachtens bisher einzig wirklich ertragreichen und interpretatorisches Neuland eröffnenden – musikliterarischen Studie von Klaus-Dieter Dobat1 bleibt heute kein Zweifel mehr, dass eine kritische Betrachtung Hoffmanns als Musiker, Komponist und Musikkritiker ohne Bezug auf sein literarisches Werk (und umgekehrt) einfach nicht zu denken ist. Der Dichter als Komponist also; das klingt beinahe wie der Titel „Der Dichter und der Komponist“. Zwar sind in Hoffmanns berühmtem Dialog von 1813 – eine brilliant entworfene Ästhetik der romantischen Oper en miniature, die auf Weber und Wagner vorausweist und der Opernpraxis dieser Meister nachweisbar Modell gestanden hat – Ludwig, der Komponist, und Ferdinand, der Dichter, klar unterscheidbare Künstlerpersönlichkeiten mit eigenen ästhetischen Ansichten, welche ihren verschiedenen Medien entsprechen. Sie sind jedoch beide gleichzeitig Projektionen des Dichter-Komponisten Hoffmann. Ihre 1

Klaus-Dieter Dobat. Musik als romantische Illusion. Eine Untersuchung zur Bedeutung der Musikvorstellung E. T. A. Hoffmanns für sein literarisches Werk. Tübingen 1984.

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Nebeneinanderstellung im fiktiven Rahmen bezeugt beispielhaft, dass bei dem doppelbegabten Hoffmann kunsttheoretische Überlegung und künstlerische Praxis ständig von der schöpferischen Dialektik seines dichterischen und musikalischen Temperaments bestimmt sind. Nun aber zu Hoffmanns Musik! „His [Hoffmann’s] work as a composer, which he himself regarded highly, has been neglected but shows a certain verve and originality“. So lapidar urteilt Gerhard Allroggen, der heute vielleicht beste Kenner Hoffmannscher Musik, im New Grove Dictionary of Music2. Schon eine flüchtige Betrachtung ausgewählter Hoffmannscher Kompositionen genügt, um mit Sicherheit feststellen zu dürfen, glaube ich, dass sie nicht Werke eines bloßen Dilettanten sind. Er braucht also keine Ehrenrettung. Eines ist jedoch klar: Es ist wenig charakteristisch Hoffmannsches oder ‚Hoffmanneskes’ in dieser Musik, wie es für fast eine jede Seite seiner Prosa typisch wäre. Hoffmanns Musik ist eine merkwürdige Mischung verschiedener Anklänge, hauptsächlich der Wiener Klassik, und weist keinen eigenständigen musikalischen Stil auf. Diese Unzulänglichkeit ist genau das, was man als das lebenslange Dilemma des Komponisten Hoffmann bezeichnen kann. Doch eine ähnliche Unzulänglichkeit belastete auch andere zeitgenössische Komponisten wie z. B. Cherubini, Paer, Spohr, Mehul, Stamitz, Spontini, Salieri, Hummel, Clementi und viele sogar mindere Talente, die, wie Hoffmann, im Schatten Haydns, Mozarts und Beethovens lebten und wirkten; doch sie haben wenigstens eine gewisse Anerkennung für ihre Leistungen gefunden. Nicht aber Hoffmann: als Komponist ist er bis heute im Grunde unbekannt. Ist die fast völlige Vernachlässigung, die die Nachwelt seinen Kompositionen angedeihen lässt, gerechtfertigt? Ich glaube kaum, wenn von einem Künstler von Hoffmanns Format die Rede ist. Ein solcher Mangel an Ansehen für einen Bereich, der für sein Schöpfer2

Stanley Sadie, Hg. New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London 1980. Bd. 8, S. 618.

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tum so wichtig war, ist besonders bemerkenswert, wenn man bedenkt, dass Hoffmanns künstlerisches Werk bis 1809, als er 33 Jahre alt war, fast ausschließlich aus musikalischen Kompositionen bestand, und dass er selbst vor allem nicht als Dichter, sondern als Komponist anerkannt werden wollte. Noch im Jahre 1813 bat er seinen Freund, Weinhändler und Verleger Kunz, die Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier anonym zu drucken: „Ich mag mich nicht nennen, indem mein Name nicht anders als durch eine gelungene musikalische Composition der Welt bekannt werden soll“3. Hoffmann hielt an diesem Vorsatz mit bewundernswerter Zähigkeit fest: Sogar als er schon ein Bestseller-Autor geworden war, erschien keines seiner literarischen Werke unter seinem eigenen Namen bis 1816, als sein bedeutendstes musikalisches Werk, die Oper Undine, erfolgreich in Berlin aufgeführt worden war und ihm die lang ersehnte öffentliche Anerkennung als Komponist brachte. Trotz der Tatsache, dass er sich nach der Vollendung der Undine im Jahre 1814 immer mehr dem Dichten zuwandte, gab Hoffmann das Komponieren nicht gänzlich auf. Noch 1820, zwei Jahre vor seinem Tod, begann er u.a. die Komposition einer neuen Oper, einer Bearbeitung von Calderons El Galan Fantasma, die das komische Gegenstück zu seiner Undine werden sollte, aber nie über das Planungsstadium hinauswuchs. Im Grunde umspannt die intensive Komponistentätigkeit nicht viel mehr als ein Jahrzehnt in Hoffmanns Leben, von ca. 1800 bis 1814. Es ist ein Zeugnis für seine erstaunliche Vielseitigkeit und sein vorzügliches technisches Können, dass er sich während dieser Zeit in nahezu allen musikalischen Genres versuchte: Instrumental- und Kammermusik und diverse Vokalmusik. Mit der Veröffentlichung seiner Musik hatte er wenig Glück. Nur vier seiner kleineren Kompositionen erschienen zu seinen Lebzeiten in Druck, darunter die Klaviersonate in A-Dur (1805). Eine andere, betitelt Trois canzonettes à 2 et à 3 voix, 3

Brief an C.F. Kunz vom 20. Juli 1813 in E. T. A. Hoffmann. Briefwechsel. Hg. Friedrich Schnapp. Bd 1. München 1967, S. 399.

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paroles italiennes et allemandes avec accompagnement de pianoforte (1808), wurde sogar von Friedrich Rochlitz, dem einflussreichen Redakteur der Allgemeinen musikalischen Zeitung, besprochen. Da diese kurze Besprechung treffend den Ton der zeitgenössischen Musikkritik vermittelt, verdient sie es, hier vollständig zitiert zu werden: Männer, die daher, wie Hr. Hoffmann Musikdirektor in Bamberg, außerdem, dass sie gute Komponisten überhaupt sind, auch die Singkunst gründlich verstehen, erwerben sich durch Werkchen, wie das angezeigte, womit sie diesen Geschmack nähren und leiten, den Dank aller Verständigen. Es beweiset unverkennbar, dass der Verf. der eben genannten Vorzüge sich in nicht gewöhnlichem Grade zu erfreuen hat. Alle drey Stücke, vorzüglich aber das zweyte und dritte, haben leichte, fließende, angenehme Melodieen, die aber auch darum nicht verbraucht, flach, und nichts sagend sind; diese Melodieen sind mit Sorgfalt verschlungen, ohne dadurch schwer, gesucht oder unnatürlich zu werden; und das dritte Stück hat in seinem naiven, etwas komischen Tone noch einen besonderen Reiz. Das Accompagnement ist weder leer, noch überladen; es unterstützt, gerade wie es in dieser Gattung am besten ist, zugleich die Sänger und den Effekt des Ganzen; und die deutsche Unterlegung, neben dem italienischen Texte, ist artig und gut angepasst. Was will man mehr von solchen kleinen Blumen am Wege?4

Wir würden Hoffmann sicherlich ein Unrecht tun, wenn wir ihn als Komponisten nur auf Grund dieser hübschen kleinen Lieder und anderer ähnlicher Gelegenheitswerke zu rehabilitieren suchten. Seltsamerweise schuf er selbst, obwohl er in seinen kritischen Schriften konsequent den unbedingten Vorrang der Instrumentalmusik verkündete, seine beste Musik in den dramatischen Gattungen, in Opern, Singspielen, Balletten und Bühnenmusik. Selbst wenn er nichts Anderes komponiert hätte, würde ihm seine Oper Undine allein einen achtbaren Platz in der Musikgeschichte gesichert haben; unter Musikologen herrscht heute im allgemeinen die Meinung, dass Undine die erste wahrhaft romantische Oper sei und unbestritten ein Vorläufer von Webers Der Freischütz, dem sie um fünf Jahre vorausgeht. Doch die Tatsache ist, dass Hoffmann noch mehrere andere Werke komponierte, 4

Friedrich Rochlitz in der AMZ (Leipzig), 23. Juni 1808. Zitiert in E. T. A. Hoffmann in Aufzeichnungen seiner Freunde und Bekannten. Eine Sammlung von Friedrich Schnapp. München 1974, S. 125.

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die ebenfalls nähere Betrachtung und gebührende Anerkennung verdienen. Ich halte z. B. unter Hoffmanns Bühnenmusiken seine Ballettsuite Arléquin, die er 1808 in Bamberg zu einer typischen commedia dell’arte-Textvorlage von einem gewissen Carl Macco komponierte, für eine seiner einfallsreichsten und gelungensten – sicherlich reizvoll genug, um eine Neubelebung auf der Bühne zu erfahren5. Die Prägnanz und der Erfindungsreichtum musikalischer Charakterisierung der skurrilen Typenfiguren und der aus ihren Groteskerien entstehenden Situationskomik mutet manchmal sogar echt hoffmannesk an. Bezeichnenderweise wird Arléquin in der Hoffmann-Forschung kaum zur Kenntnis genommen. Wenn überhaupt erwähnt, wird das faszinierende kleine Werk bloß registriert, wie z. B. zuletzt 1979 von Friedrich Schnapp: Die meisten Bamberger Gelegenheitskompositionen – d.h. der Schauspielmusiken – sind verschollen. Was sich davon erhalten hat, wie z.B. die Ballettmusik Arléquin, verrät die große Gewandtheit, mit der Hoffmann solche Aufträge zu erledi6 gen wusste [...]

Einen treffenden Eindruck vom musikalisch-szenischen Geschehen vermittelt dagegen Franz Bertholds zeitgenössische Minirezension der einzigen Neuaufführung (oder Uraufführung?) des Balletts am 21. Mai 1927 in Bamberg: Nach einem wild daherwirbelnden Einleitungssatz, Furien genannt, offenbar dem böhmischen Schnelltanz „Furiant“ nachgebildet, muten einige ganz kurz abgerissene, thematisch scharf kontrastierend gezeichnete Sätzchen wie ein musikalisches Programm der im Ballett auftretenden Personen, des Arlequin, des Pierrot, und der Colombine an, die dann der Reihe nach in fein charakterisierender Entfaltung des melodischen und rhythmischen Ausdruckes ihre Tänze einzeln ausfüh5

Vgl. Gerhard Allroggen. E. T. A. Hoffmanns Kompositionen. Ein chronologischthematisches Verzeichnis seiner musikalischen Werke mit einer Einführung. Regensburg 1970, S. 60-64.

6

Friedrich Schnapp. „Der Musiker E. T. A. Hoffmann“. Mitteilungen der E. T. A. Hoffmann-Gesellschaft 25, 1979, S. 12.

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ren, um sich am Schluß in den hämmernden Rhythmen und von wechselnder Taktart getragenen scharfen Akzenten eines „Pantalon“ in wilder Ekstase zusammenzufinden. Die reizvolle Musik vereinigt markante Rhythmik, formale Geschlossenheit und melodische Stimmungskraft und entbehrt vor allem jenes Mangels an konzentriertem Gestaltungsvermögen, der sonst der Hoffmannschen Mu7 sik gerne anhaftet.

Allein die Tatsache, dass Hoffmanns geniale, obwohl für den Rest seiner Kompositionen kaum typische, Arléquin-Musik existiert, ist Grund genug, der Frage, warum der Komponist Hoffmann nicht besser bekannt ist, weiter nachzugehen. Eine halbwegs einleuchtende Antwort, wenn es sie überhaupt gibt, muss aus einem einfühlenden Verständnis der komplexen Gründe für die traditionsgebundenen stilistischen Züge seiner eigenen Kompositionen abgeleitet werden, die deutlich von seiner einzigartigen Musikauffassung geprägt sind. Nur wenn man sich ernstlich bemüht nachzuempfinden, was Hoffmann unter „romantisch“ eigentlich verstanden haben mochte, ist es vielleicht möglich, die Bedeutung seiner eigentümlichen Tonsprache zu erkennen, nur dann wird sich der eigenartige Reiz, oder besser gesagt, die besondere Originalität seiner Musik offenbaren. Die Beziehung zwischen den Begriffen „klassisch“ und „romantisch“ in Hoffmanns Sprache ist zwiespältig und verwickelt. Die Termini stehen einerseits zusammenhanglos nebeneinander und bilden andererseits eine Antithese.8

Trotz dieser von Carl Dahlhaus schlicht formulierten Tatsache haben sich bekanntlich unzählige Interpreten mit Hoffmanns Romantikbegriff auseinandergesetzt. Ich kann hier auf die verschiedenen Deutungsversuche nicht näher eingehen, neige aber dazu, den Schlüssel zu Hoffmanns verwirrender Terminologie vor allem darin zu sehen, dass für ihn „romantisch“ und „klassisch“ auf keinen Fall ausgesprochen 7

Franz Berthold. „E. T. A. Hoffmanns «Arlequino». Uraufführung im Kaisersaal der Residenz zu Bamberg“. Neue Musik-Zeitung 48, 1927, S. 452-53.

8

Carl Dahlhaus. „Romantische Musikästhetik und Wiener Klassik“. Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 29, 1972, S. 178.

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antithetische Begriffe sind, wenn auch – wie Klaus-Dieter Dobat plausibel argumentiert – für Hoffmann „die bruchlose Übereinstimmung beider Vorstellungsbereiche eher eine Wunschvorstellung ist“9. Ich stimme also mit Dobats Behauptung überein, daß die „Romantik“ der Musik, soll ihre Intention adäquat ausgedrückt werden, darauf angewiesen ist, in formvollendeter „klassischer“ Gestalt zu erscheinen. Beide Komponenten sind in Hoffmanns Kunstanschauung wechselseitig voneinander abhängig.10

Trotzdem bin ich überzeugt, dass wir eine eindeutige Auslegung von „klassisch“ und „romantisch“ in Hoffmanns Wortgebrauch ebensowenig werden finden können, wie eine vollkommen befriedigende Entschlüsselung der Identitätsfrage im absichtlich enigmatisch konzipierten Schlusssatz, „Ich bin der Ritter Gluck“. Es ist eben das charakteristisch Fesselnde an Hoffmanns künstlerischer Strategie, dass er – gleichviel ob als Erzähler oder Musikkritiker – seinen Lesern nicht widerspruchslose Deutungen oder allgemeingültige Formulierungen liefert, sondern eher Texte für Kontemplation, Anregungen zum ständigen Weiterdenken seiner dichterischen und kritischen Ausführungen. Wichtiger erscheint mir deshalb in unserem Kontext zu erfassen – auf eine einfache Formel gebracht –, dass das, was wir aus heutiger Sicht in der Musikgeschichte als ‚klassisch’ bezeichnen, Hoffmann als ‚romantisch’ empfand und interpretierte. Das echt ‚Romantische’ fand Hoffmann in der Musik, die er – wie Dobat treffend formuliert – als „künstliche Gegensphäre zur Wirklichkeit“11 auffasste. Für Hoffmann war alles Dämonische, Geisterhafte und Unaussprechliche bereits in den Werken Mozarts und Beethovens enthalten. Nur wenn wir diese seine Auffassung von ‚romantisch’ gelten lassen und willig mit ihm

9

Klaus-Dieter Dobat [Anm. 1], S. 91.

10

Ebd, S. 90.

11

Ebd, S. 96.

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darin übereinstimmen, gewinnt seine oft zitierte Definition der Musik Bedeutung: [Musik] ist die romantischste aller Künste, beinahe möchte man sagen, allein echt romantisch, denn nur das Unendliche ist ihr Vorwurf. – [...] Die Musik schließt dem Menschen ein unbekanntes Reich auf, eine Welt, die nichts gemein hat mit der äußern Sinnenwelt, die ihn umgibt, und in der er alle bestimmten Gefühle zu12 rückläßt, um sich einer unaussprechlichen Sehnsucht hinzugeben.

Und nur mit dieser Definition im Sinne ist Hoffmanns differenzierende Charakterisierung der großen Trias der Wiener Klassik als Romantiker par excellence unserem modernen Empfinden zugänglich: Haydn faßt das Menschliche im menschlichen Leben romantisch auf; er ist kommensurabler, faßlicher für die Mehrzahl. Mozart nimmt mehr das Übermenschliche, das wunderbare, welches im innern Geiste wohnt in Anspruch. Beethovens Musik bewegt die Hebel der Furcht, des Schauers, des Entsetzens, des Schmerzes, und erweckt eben jene unendliche Sehnsucht, welche das Wesen der Romantik ist. Er ist daher ein rein romantischer Komponist.13 Tief im Gemüte trägt Beethoven die Romantik der Musik, die er mit hoher Genialität und Besonnenheit in seinen Werken ausspricht.14

„Besonnenheit“ ist hier das Schlüsselwort; es bedeutet Gelassenheit, Kontrolle, selbstsichere Übersicht über das Ganze, und die künstlerische Kraft, der chaotischen Formlosigkeit Ordnung aufzuzwingen. Hoffmann erkannte und bewunderte diese unnachahmliche „Besonnenheit“ in Mozart und Beethoven; nämlich die Fähigkeit, das musikalische Material, das ihrer ungezügelten Einbildungskraft entsprang, in eine geordnete Totalität von innerer Struktur zu formen. In diesem Wortgebrauch ist für Hoffmann „romantisch“ auch ein Wertungsbegriff, eine Bezeichnung für unübertreffliche Qualität. Wie fremd uns auch immer diese Auffassung des ‚Romantischen’ zuerst anmuten 12

E. T. A. Hoffmann. „Beethovens Instrumental-Musik“. E. T. A. Hoffmann. Fantasie- und Nachtstücke. Hg. Walter Müller-Seidel. München 1960, S. 41. 13 14

Ebd, S. 43.

E. T. A. Hoffmann. „Ludwig van Beethoven, 5. Sinfonie“. E. T. A. Hoffmann, 4 Schriften zur Musik. Nachlese. Hg. Friedrich Schapp. München 1963, S. 35.

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mag, stellt sie sich doch als verwandt mit Friedrich Schlegels bekanntem Ausspruch heraus, dass eine perfekte Balance zwischen Selbstvergessen (bei Schlegel „Selbstschöpfung“) und Selbstbeschränkung das Zeichen eines großen – d.h. echt romantischen – literarischen Kunstwerkes ist15. Es ist nicht lange her, dass Hoffmanns Platz in der Musikgeschichte noch sehr bescheiden war. In letzter Zeit mehren sich jedoch die Meinungen, die dem Komponisten Hoffmann eine Sonderstellung als Übergangsfigur par excellence zugestehen; eine schöpferische Gestalt von beträchtlichem musikalischen Talent, dessen Kompositionen die Unterschiede zwischen zwei großen Kunstepochen spiegeln. Tatsächlich war er Überlieferer und Erneuerer zugleich – und darin seiner eigenen unvergesslichen literarischen Musikergestalt Ritter Gluck nicht unähnlich. Denn wie Ritter Gluck ist der Komponist Hoffmann ein glühender, aber auch sachlich kompetenter Verehrer Glucks, Mozarts und der alten Meister. Und er teilt Ritter Glucks tragisches Schicksal, seinen musikalischen Vorbildern allzu treu geblieben zu sein: Da es keine würdigen neuen Vorbilder gibt, für die er sich einsetzen könnte, gelangt er beim besten Willen nicht zum eigentlichen schöpferischen Durchbruch, zu einem wahrhaft eindeutigen Kompositionsstil eigener Signatur. Das ist der Grund, meine ich, weshalb wir, wenn wir Hoffmanns Musik hören, hin und wieder glauben, Anklänge an u.a. Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Cherubini und Spontini und auch an frühere Meister wie Bach, Händel, Palästrina und andere geringere Vertreter der Kirchenmusik des italienischen Barock wie Durante, Lotti und Leo wahrzunehmen. Hoffmanns Bewunderung, die er für diese italienischen Meister der Vokalmusik hegte, enthüllt sich besonders deutlich in den 1808 komponierten und wenig bekannten sechs weltlich-religiösen Chorliedern a cappella (6 Canzoni per 4 voci alla Capella). Nr. 1 „Ave maris stella!“ und Nr. 5 „O sanctissima, O 15

„Kritische Fragmente“, Nr. 37. In Friedrich Schlegel, Schriften zur Literatur. Hg. Wolfdietrich Rasch. München 1972, S. 10-11.

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piissima“ sind die beiden Chöre, welche in Kater Murr als Kreislers Kompositionen erwähnt und geschickt so in das Romangeschehen integriert sind, dass sie – der romantischen Vorstellung entsprechend – als musikalische Anregung unmittelbar „den Anstoß zur dichterischen Szene“ 16 geben. Das zukunftweisend Eigentümliche an diesen Canzoni ist die ausgesprochen lyrische Grundstimmung: Hoffmanns eigene Hand ist in dem harmonisch erfassten und emotionsgeladenen melodischen Rahmen bemerkbar17. Ich habe zuvor, mit gutem Grund, wie ich glaube, das Wort Anklang gebraucht. Denn in Hoffmanns Fall bedeutet Anklang Bewunderung und das Eingeständnis einer echten Affinität, aber keineswegs direkte Imitation. Daher ist also das, was in seiner Musik hin und wieder als deutliches Echo der großen Meister erscheint, niemals das Werk eines stümperhaften, ungeschickten Nachahmers. Hoffmanns künstlerische Redlichkeit und solides, selbstkritisches Musikertum sind Versicherung genug, um sogar die Möglichkeit, dass er bloße Imitation auch je nur erwog, auszuschließen. Er blieb besonders in seiner oft originellen Melodik seiner eigenen Musikästhetik treu. Er glaubte nämlich, dass die Melodie schlicht und ungekünstelt dem tiefsten Gemüt des Komponisten entströmen müsse, denn nur ohne jede grelle Ausweichungen vermag sie die Kraft zu besitzen, ihre übersinnliche Schönheit zu entfalten, um somit den Zuhörer zu entrücken.18

16

Jürgen Kindermann. „Romantische Aspekte in E. T. A. Hoffmanns Musikanschauung“. In Beiträge zur Geschichte der Musikanschauung im 19. Jahrhundert. Hg. Walter Salmen. Regensburg 1965, S. 54. 17

E. T. A. Hoffmann. Musikalische Werke. Hg. Gustav Becking. Bd. IV No 1. Sechs geistliche Chöre a cappella für gemischten Chor. Partitur und Stimmen. Leipzig 1927, S. 5 und S. 9. 18

Solche und ähnliche Formulierungen findet man überall in Hoffmanns musikalischen Schriften, insbesondere aber in den beiden „Kreisleriana“-Zyklen.

260

261

Es überrascht wenig, dass sich Parallelen zu solchen „romantischen“ Überlegungen zur Theorie und Praxis der Melodiebildung gerade in Hoffmanns Opernästhetik finden lassen. Einen der aufschlussreichsten opernästhetischen Grundsätze formuliert der Komponist Ludwig im Dialog „Der Dichter und der Komponist“ folgendermaßen: „Also mein Freund, in der Oper soll die Einwirkung höherer Naturen auf uns sichtbarlich geschehen und so vor unsern Augen sich ein romantisches Sein erschließen, in dem auch die Sprache höher potenziert, oder vielmehr jenem fernen Reiche entnommen, d.h. Musik, Gesang ist, ja wo selbst Handlung und Situation in mächtigen Tönen und Klängen schwebend, uns gewaltiger ergreift und hinreißt. Auf diese Art soll [...] die Musik unmittelbar und notwendig aus der Dichtung entspringen.“19

Was Hoffmann 1813, während seiner Arbeit an Undine, in diesem Postulat fixiert, fußt zweifelsohne auf seiner eigenen, langjährigen kompositorischen Praxis und bezeugt, wie entscheidend die Stoffwahl und wie wichtig die Funktion der gewählten Dichtung für seine Musik eigentlich waren. Die geglückte Vertonung von Brentanos von vornherein als Singspiel konzipiertem Text Die lustigen Musikanten – komponiert „von einem hiesigen Dilettanten“, wie es so schön auf dem Theaterzettel von 1805 heißt – ist nicht zuletzt das Ergebnis der besonderen Affinität Hoffmanns mit Brentanos kleiner Dichtung: eine merkwürdige Mischung aus commedia dell’arte-Maskenspiel, ritterlichem Pathos, Rührstück-Atmosphäre, Mystik und Phantastik. Für mein letztes Musikbeispiel habe ich ein echt musikliterarisches Kuriosum gewählt, welches – Dank Herrn Carl de Nys – jetzt auf einer neuen Platteneinspielung zu hören ist: das Duett Fabiola-Piast, betitelt „Fantasia e Duetto“, aus den Lustigen Musikanten. Hoffmann vertont hier nämlich das berühmte Brentanosche Gedicht „Abendständchen“, ein Paradebeispiel romantischer Synästhesie, das in der Singspiel-Fassung auf 19

E. T. A. Hoffmann. „Der Dichter und der Komponist“. E. T. A. Hoffmann. Die Serapions-Brüder. Hg. Walter Müller-Seidel. München 1963, S. 84.

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zwei Rollen verteilt ist. Mit Recht wurde dieses Duett als zukunftsträchtiges Beispiel für romantische Elemente in Hoffmanns Musik interpretiert20. Was Hoffmanns Vertonung dieser kleinen Szene u.a. auszeichnet ist, dass es ihm gelingt – um den Komponisten Ludwig noch einmal zu zitieren – „die Musik unmittelbar aus der Dichtung“ entspringen zu lassen. Mit Ramiros von Brentano vorgeschriebenen Flötensoli ergibt sich der musikalische Rahmen von selbst: Ramiros Liebeserklärung an Fabiola durch sein Flötenspiel allein ist für das Publikum auch ohne sprachliche Aussage unmittelbar verständlich. Die zuerst abwechselnd von Fabiola und Piast gesungenen Zeilen vereinigen sich in einem Duett, das sich mit Ramiros hinzukommender Flötenstimme spontan zu einem Terzett ausweitet. Zusammen mit dem durchgehaltenen, klangmalerischen Streichertremolo, das Rauschen der Brunnen nachahmend, evoziert Hoffmann eine dem Brentanoschen Gedicht durchaus ebenbürtige, schwärmerisch-melancholisch-romantische musikalische Nachtstimmung21. Zum Schluss noch einmal kurz die Frage: Gibt es für den Komponisten Hoffmann Hoffnung und eine günstigere Zukunft? Solange wir uns darüber einigen können, dass sein umfangreiches musikalisches Werk zwar beachtenswert – d.h. in mancher Hinsicht interessant, weil rückwärtig gebunden und zugleich experimentell zukunftsweisend –, aber letzten Endes doch nicht erstrangig einzuschätzen ist, würde ich die Frage bejahend beantworten. Schließlich scheint unsere heutige musikalische Sensibilität geneigter denn je zuvor zu sein, im Tausch für Neuartiges und Abwechslungsreiches die bescheideneren Beiträge unbekannter Meister zu würdigen, sogar wenn der Preis dafür ist, derivative Stile und den Mangel eines individuellen Einschlags in ihren 20

Vgl. Günter Wöllner. „Romantische Züge in der Partitur der Lustigen Musikannten“. Mitteilungen der E. T. A. Hoffmann-Gesellschaft 12, 1966, S. 20-30, und Günter Wöllner. „Romantik in statu nascendi: E. T. A. Hoffmanns Singspiel Die lustigen Musikanten“. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 128, 1967, S. 208-212. 21

E. T. A. Hoffmann. Die lustigen Musikanten. Singspiel in zwei Akten von Clemens Brentano. Hg. Gerhard Allroggen. Mainz 1975, S. 57-71.

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Kompositionen zu erdulden. In einem Zeitalter gedeihender Schallplattenklubs und -firmen mit esoterischen Interessen wie die amerikanische Musical Heritage Society oder Schwanns „Musica mundi“Serie mit den „Unbekannten Kostbarkeiten“, neigen wir dazu, uns immer mehr an der Entdeckung und Würdigung talentierter, aber geringerer Komponisten zu erfreuen, die, weil sie Zeitgenossen der Großen der Musikgeschichte waren, nie auch nur die Gelegenheit hatten, ihre künstlerische Präsenz zu behaupten. Zu spät geboren, um sich zu einem wahren Klassiker zu entwickeln (diesmal als gängiger Epochenbegriff gemeint!) und zu früh, um sich die stilistische Prägung eines ausgewachsenen Romantikers anzueignen, ist der Musiker Hoffmann ein besonders aufschlussreicher Fall. Rilkes zeitlose Zeilen aus den Sonetten an Orpheus fassen vielleicht am bündigsten das allzu zeitbedingte Dilemma des Komponisten Hoffmann zusammen: „wir zu Jungen manchmal für das Alte und zu alt für das, was niemals war.“

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Mignon in Music (1988) Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn, Im dunkeln Laub die Goldorangen glühn, Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht, Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht, Kennst du es wohl? Dahin! Dahin Möcht’ ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn! Kennst du das Haus, auf Säulen ruht sein Dach, Es glänzt der Saal, es schimmert das Gemach, Und Marmorbilder stehn und sehn mich an: Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, getan? Kennst du es wohl? Dahin! Dahin Möcht’ ich mit dir, o mein Beschützer, ziehn! Kennst du den Berg und seinen Wolkensteg? Das Maultier sucht im Nebel seinen Weg, In Höhlen wohnt der Drachen alte Brut, Es stürzt der Fels und über ihn die Flut: Kennst du ihn wohl? Dahin! Dahin Geht unser Weg; o Vater, laß uns ziehn!1

Musical compositions inspired by Goethe’s Mignon have been so numerous and generically varied that any systematic attempt to discuss them requires making choices from the outset. No wonder, therefore, that there has been no comprehensive scholarly treatment of Mignon in music. In the context of our symposium on “Goethe in Italy”, my choice was obvious: Goethe’s congenial encounter with a harper and his eleven-year-old daughter at the Italian border, which he relates early on in his Italienische Reise (September 7, 1786), might well have provided the original inspiration for his Mignon figure. I have 1

HA 7, p. 145.

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decided to focus on musical realizations based on or inspired by the most famous of the four Mignon poems from the novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre: “Kennst du das Land”. Rather than reviewing the well-known settings by Schubert, Schumann, and Hugo Wolf, to illustrate the diversity of Mignon’s musical physiognomy I examined a selection of less familiar works by prominent as well as little-known composers. It may be appropriate to recall briefly the original narrative context of Mignon’s song. The strategic placement of “Kennst du das Land” at the head of Book Three in Wilhelm Meister is prominent enough. But the truly unique feature of this placement is that the poem does not stand there alone: Goethe includes two paragraphs of explanatory commentary by the narrator that describe in revealing detail how Mignon actually performed her song. The intentional ambiguity of the diction in this only seemingly transparent analytical description helps to establish the general aura of mystery and caprice that surrounds Mignon’s episodic appearances in the novel: Melodie und Ausdruck gefielen unserm Freunde besonders, ob er gleich die Worte nicht alle verstehen konnte. Er ließ sich die Strophen wiederholen und erklären, schrieb sie auf und übersetzte sie ins Deutsche. Aber die Originalität der Wendungen konnte er nur von ferne nachahmen; die kindliche Unschuld des Ausdrucks verschwand, indem die gebrochene Sprache übereinstimmend und das Unzusammenhängende verbunden ward. Auch konnte der Reiz der Melodie mit nichts verglichen werden. Sie fing jeden Vers feierlich und prächtig an, als ob sie auf etwas Sonderbares aufmerksam machen. als ob sie etwas Wichtiges vortragen wollte. Bei der dritten Zeile ward der Gesang dumpfer und düsterer; das “Kennst du es wohl?” drückte sie geheimnisvoll und bedächtig aus; in dem “Dahin! Dahin!” lag eine unwiderstehliche Sehnsucht, und ihr “Laß uns ziehn” wußte sie bei jeder Wiederholung dergestalt zu modifizieren, daß es bald bittend und dringend, bald treibend und vielversprechend war.2

To be sure, these analytical comments are carefully embedded in the ongoing narrative that situates the song in the immediate context of the plot and are, therefore, part of the overall fiction. But they also 2

Ibid, pp. 145-146.

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function as specific instructions for an “authentic” performance à la Mignon and thus comprise important hints for composer-readers who might be inclined to set this poem to music. None of the other Mignon songs are introduced in the text in this unusual manner. What we have here, then, is significantly more than just another instance of the common practice of introducing an occasional lyric into the epic flow of prose fiction: we are invited by the author to regard poem and interpretive comments together, as one narrative unit, however episodic. Whether in his poetry, plays, or prose fiction, Goethe had a real talent for creating memorable characters whose larger-than-life image immediately captured his readers’ imagination and shaped subsequent reception of the particular works from which they arose. Friedrich Schlegel was the first among Wilhelm Meister critics to perceive this aspect of Goethe’s poetic genius when in his 1798 review of the novel he wrote admiringly of the Harfner and Mignon: Alles was die Erinnerung und die Schwermut und die Reue nur Rührendes hat, atmet und klagt der Alte, wie aus einer unbekannten bodenlosen Tiefe von Gram und ergreift uns mit wilder Wehmut. Noch süßere Schauer und gleichsam ein schönes Grausen erregt das heilige Kind, mit dessen Erscheinung die innerste Springfeder des sonderbaren Werks plötzlich frei zu werden scheint.3

It was above all Mignon’s “Kennst du das Land”, her first song in the novel, that made an indelible impression on the reading public – first in the German-speaking countries, of course, and then also, throughout the nineteenth century, in the rest of Europe, especially in France and England and even in America. To give just one example of genuinely comparative reception: Byron knew the poem through Madame de Staël’s French redaction in her Corinne of 1807 and he clearly echoes it in the opening lines of his epic poem The Bride of Abydos. A Turkish Tale of 1813:

3

Friedrich Schlegel, “Über Goethes Meister”, quoted in Erläuterungen und Dokumente: Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982), p. 307.

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Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime, Where the rage of the vulture – the love of the turtle – Now melt into sorrow – now madden to crime? Know ye the land of the cedar and vine? Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine, Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume, Wax faint o’er the gardens of Gúl in her bloom; Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, And the voice of the nightingale never is mute; [...]4

Madame de Staël, in her influential book De 1’Allemagne of 1810, had nothing but praise for Mignon; perhaps not uninfluenced by Friedrich Schlegel’s opinion, she regarded this exquisite character as the major attraction in Goethe’s novel. Her sympathetic interpretation of Mignon’s song “Connais-tu cette terre où les citronniers fleurissent” ushered in the massive Mignon-cult that swept over France and prompted many translations and imitations of both poem and novel and that culminated in the operatic adaptation of the Mignon-story by Ambroise Thomas. Since its premiere in 1866, Thomas’ opera Mignon, a veritable masterpiece of sentimental trivialization, has enjoyed unabated popularity worldwide. According to a recent count, it has received well over 3000 performances in Paris alone. This is a staggering figure and it confirms that, along with Gounod’s Faust and Bizet’s Carmen, Thomas’ Mignon remains one of the three most popular French operas of the nineteenth century. The manner in which the truly poetic Mignon of Goethe has been reduced to a ludicrous caricature in Thomas’ opera has always so outraged my aesthetic sensibilities that I could not achieve sufficient objectivity to separate the virtues of the interpreter from the ghastly distortion offered us in the opera.5

4

Lord Byron, The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), III, pp. 107-108.

5

Henry Pleasants, ed., The Music Criticism of Hugo Wolf (New York: Holmes and Meyer, 1978), p. 141.

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This scathing sentence comes from Hugo Wolf who was reviewing the opera in his capacity as music critic for the Wiener Salonblatt in 1855, three years before he composed his own magnificent Mignon settings. Wolf’s condemnation is certainly justified. Thanks in large measure to Thomas’ librettists Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, the opera possesses precious little resemblance to the plot, tone, and atmosphere of Goethe’s novel. The final act, for example, takes place in an Italian villa that Mignon recognizes as her long lost home. Wilhelm and Mignon have become lovers, the Harper, Mignon’s father, is with them sane and alive, and – needless to say – the end is a happy one. (Incidentally, it was the same Barbier-Carré team that proceeded to distort E.T.A. Hoffmann’s image beyond recognition in Offenbach’s opera Les contes d’Hoffmann [1881], another perennial musical favorite that became a universal success at the expense of literary authenticity). Thomas’ version, Mignon’s famous aria “Connais-tu le pays”, contains only two stanzas, with identical music for both, and features the solo flute for birdsong imitation. The melancholy first part gives way to the passionate outburst of the refrain, beginning with “C’est là”, the “Dahin” of the original poem. Except for the first line, the operatic text is wholly different. Small wonder that Hugo Wolf was prompted to characterize this aria as “eine triviale ChansonettenMelodie im parfümierten Salonkleide”. Goethe himself would have rejected such operatic representations of his Mignon outright and would have been even more outraged at the results than Hugo Wolf. On one occasion the poet even stated in no uncertain terms: “Mignon kann wohl ihrem Wesen nach ein Lied, aber keine Arie singen.”6 Not that Goethe was particularly receptive to musical settings of his poems as such, and that with good reason. The lamentable stories about his notorious indifference toward Beethoven’s and Schubert’s settings of his poetry are all too well known. Much has also been conjectured pro and contra Goethe’s “musicality” 6

Wilhelm Bode, Die Tonkunst in Goethes Leben (Berlin, 1912), II, p. 182.

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and the soundness of his critical judgement in matters concerning music. One thing is sure: Goethe had very definite ideas about the kind of music he expected of composers who drew on his texts. He instinctively realized that in the “contest between musical and poetic meanings”7 that ensues during the compositional process of texted music – elsewhere I have called this process the act of composed reading8 – a freer, more expressive musical component will inevitably overpower both poetic form and content. Goethe, therefore, tolerated only unobtrusive strophic settings of his poetry which merely couched the privileged text in a harmless and usually uninspired melodic and harmonic frame – just the kind of settings that Reichardt and Zelter, his loyal composer friends, provided for him. In other words, whether consciously or unconsciously, it was literally in self-defense that Goethe clung to his arch-conservative stance in musical matters and felt compelled to dismiss lieder of progressive and original composers who regarded themselves as musical interpreters of poetry rather than mere text enhancers. Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814) was the first to set “Kennst du das Land”; and he certainly followed Goethe’s exacting prescription to the letter. The result is respectable but devoid of the musically creative tension so characteristic of the great later settings: Reichardt offers folklike simplicity, expressiveness, meticulously accurate declamation, and an eminently singable melody – all in the best tradition of eighteenth-century lied composition. In comparison with subsequent versions, two compositional features are particularly significant. First, in compliance with Goethe’s conception of the lied and also most appropriate to the poem’s inherent parallelisms (“Kennst du das Land”, “das Haus”, “den Berg” and the refrains), 7

Lawrence Kramer, Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 130.

8

Steven Paul Scher, “Comparing Poetry and Music: Beethoven’s Goethe-Lieder as Composed Reading”, in Sensus communis. Festschrift for Henry Remak (Tübingen: Narr, 1986), p. 155 f.

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Reichardt’s setting is strictly strophic; he uses the same melody for all three stanzas. Secondly, the piano accompaniment is wholly subservient to the vocal line which is composed faithfully along the text: there is no repetition of words or phrases whatsoever. As acknowledged musical collaborator, Reichardt enjoyed of course the rare privilege of Goethe’s full approval of his efforts. Eight of his Wilhelm Meister songs – more exactly, only the melodies for the vocal line – were physically part of the novel’s first edition in 1795; they “were printed on special oversize paper which was folded into the edition at the appropriate places in the text”9. Inexplicably, except for a 1914 reprint of the first edition, no subsequent editions of Wilhelm Meister included Reichardt’s melodies.10 Reichardt published the full version of “Kennst du das Land” with piano accompaniment, under the title “Italien” in 1809, by which time his song was most popular. Friedrich Rochlitz, the influential editor of the Leipzig Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, even called it “ein kleines Meisterstück”. Carl Friedrich Zelter’s (1758-1832) impact on Goethe’s musical thinking was even greater than Reichardt’s. Zelter’s conservative personality and compositional style suited Goethe better and, consequently, their association was more congenial and enduring. Nevertheless, on balance, Zelter’s Goethe settings are decidedly more pedestrian than Reichardt’s. Between 1795 and 1818, Zelter set “Kennst du das Land” no less than six times and the results are not particularly memorable. In his first version, Zelter, too, stays very close to Goethe’s words and original performance hints, which he tries to approximate in the score through his frequent directions to the singer, adopting at times even the poet’s descriptive adverbs such as “bedächtig”. Musically, the overall effect of the song is lessened by 9

Jack M. Stein, “Musical Settings of the Songs from Wilhelm Meister”, Comparative Literature, 22 (1970), p. 125. 10

Ibid.

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the lackluster and overworked melody and a certain general awkwardness and monotony in declamation. Nevertheless, Zelter shows some future-oriented inventiveness in compositional strategy and independence in musical characterization of textual details: his setting is strophic but slightly varied, with an amount of word repetition that is astonishing for 1795. For example, he suggests the soft breeze (“der sanfte Wind”) through triplet figures in the accompaniment; he includes a recognizable Italian operatic coloratura phrase toward the end of each stanza that is quite apt for Mignon’s Southern origin; and he takes the liberty of composing several concluding measures with additional text of his own that climactically recapitulates Mignon’s designations “Geliebter”, “Beschützer”, and “Vater” in a summarizing fashion. “Die Beethovensche Composition ausgenommen, kenne ich keine einzige dieses Liedes, die nur im Mindesten der Wirkung, die es ohne Musik macht, gleichkäme”11, commented Robert Schumann in 1836 on Beethoven’s setting of “Kennst du das Land”, composed in 1809 and simply entitled “Mignon”. Schumann was right, of course, though even today, 150 years later, only a few initiates would be able to share his enthusiasm and confirm his judgement. Ironically enough, as a lied composer Beethoven remains little known. Eloquent proof of this is the fact that I could only find a 1944 recording of his “Mignon”, which is perhaps the best among his some eighty lieder. In many ways, above all because of its transitional nature, Beethoven’s version constitutes a true landmark in musical Mignon reception as well as in the history of the lied in general: it represents a radical departure from eighteenth-century lied composition practices and clearly anticipates Schubert and after. Beethoven idolized Goethe and knew his works intimately. In his composed reading of “Kennst du das Land,” he seems to have followed the poet’s interpretive hints in the novel quite closely and yet was also able to transcend them sui 11

Ibid, p. 132.

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generis. Bettina Brentano recalls Beethoven as stating in a conversation that I might say it with Goethe, if he would understand me, melody is the sensuous life of poetry. Is not the intellectual meaning of a poem represented in sensuous feeling by melody – is not the sensuous element in the song of Mignon realized through the melody? and does not such emotion call forth new creations?12

The first stanza of Beethoven’s setting reveals features that point backward to eighteenth-century lied conventions, or at least they do not yet point ahead: the straightforward, almost folksonglike simplicity of the initial melody and the consistent doubling of the vocal line as part of the unobtrusive harmonic support provided by the piano accompaniment. But the two-measure solo piano interlude that anticipates the rising pitch of the question “Kennst du es wohl?” prepares the way for the subsequent abrupt changes in tempo, tone, mood, and melody; and with the exuberant “Dahin, dahin” refrain the music begins to eclipse the words, very much in nineteenth-century, emphatically pianistic, fashion. Also, Beethoven conspicuously deviates from earlier practice by employing excessive word repetition: in order to convey Mignon’s “irresistible longing” for her Southern homeland, he repeats the word “Dahin” six times while Goethe repeated it only once in the poem. Contrary to appearances, Beethoven’s composition is also strophic, though with some important variations, especially in approximating the lines “In Höhlen wohnt der Drachen alte Brut,/Es stürzt der Fels und über ihn die Flut” in the final stanza through an effectively dramatic musical build-up. But while on the whole Beethoven adheres to the strophic principle, his fundamental compositional innovation is nevertheless a structural one: within each stanza he introduces a two-part division which he accomplishes by differentiating in tempo, rhythm, harmonic progression, and melody between the first part 12

Bettina von Arnim, “A Letter to Goethe”, in Great Composers Through the Eyes of Their Contemporaries, ed. Otti Zoff (New York: Dutton, 1951), pp. 146-147.

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(lines 1-5, “Ziemlich langsam”, 2/4 time) and the second part (lines 6 and 7, “Geschwinder”, 6/8 time). Typically, Beethoven also uses much more music than his predecessors – fifteen measures for the first five lines and seventeen measures for the last two lines of each stanza. The Coda that concludes the song contains additional text repetition and serves to compensate for this structural imbalance. Franz Liszt belonged to that small group of initiates who could fully appreciate Schumann’s unconditional praise for Beethoven’s setting. Unquestionably the greatest nineteenth-century arranger of original compositions for solo piano by earlier masters and contemporaries like Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn, in 1840 Liszt also made piano transcriptions of a number of Beethoven’s Goethe lieder. His arrangement of “Kennst du das Land” is a true transcription in the literal sense of the word. With utmost fidelity to the song, Liszt merely incorporated the vocal line into the piano part, so that his version displays all the more the inherently pianistic character of Beethoven’s original. That Goethe himself disapproved of Beethoven’s “Mignon” we know from Czech composer Václav Jan Tomaschek (1774-1850) who also made a setting, apparently more to the poet’s liking. Goethe said to him in 1822: Sie haben das Gedicht verstanden. Ich kann nicht begreifen, wie Beethoven und Spohr das Lied gänzlich mißverstehen konnten, als sie es durchkomponierten; die in jeder Strophe auf derselben Stelle vorkommenden gleichen Unterscheidungszeichen wären, sollte ich glauben, für den Tondichter hinreichend, ihm anzuzeigen, daß ich von ihm bloß ein Lied erwarte. Mignon kann wohl ihrem Wesen nach ein Lied, aber keine Arie singen.13

This is one of those instances when we are justified in invoking the proverbial “Hier irrt Goethe”, for – as we have seen – Beethoven’s composition is not through-composed but strophic. There has been much inconclusive speculation about Goethe’s error, of course. Most 13

Bode (see note 6 above), p. 182.

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probably he was misled by the shift from 2/4 to the faster 6/8 time for the refrain in each stanza. Both Louis Spohr’s and Gasparo Spontini’s settings of “Kennst du das Land” are virtually unknown historical curiosities. Spohr (17841859) was “one of the leading composers of instrumental music of the early Romantic period, and in his operas (e.g. Faust, 1813) be made a stylistic development that anticipated Wagner’s music dramas”14. But as a lied composer he made no appreciable impact. Like most of his no fewer than 99 solo songs, his Mignon version is an occasional work, one of the Six German Songs, op. 37, that he composed in 1815 (also the year of Schubert’s “Mignon”). A unique feature of Spohr’s varied strophic setting is that he composed it originally for guitar accompaniment (not a zither, but close enough!), a typically romantic touch that lends a quaint, improvisational quality to the song. Otherwise, Spohr’s effort clearly shows how trying to convey Goethe’s novelistic context too faithfully can lead to serious loss in musical value. The accumulation of all too frequent rhythmic and harmonic shifts results in an uneven and meandering overall impression. And what above all seems to be missing here is the essence of the poem: Mignon’s passionate, “irresistible longing”. Spontini’s “Mignons Lied” of 1830 is even more esoteric than Spohr’s. The Italian-born Spontini (1774-1851) was an important but controversial opera composer and conductor who dominated the French operatic scene in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. In 1820 he was lured away from Paris by the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm III and appointed Generalmusikdirektor in Berlin. Recommended warmly by Zelter, Spontini visited Goethe in Weimar in 1830 and subsequently composed “Mignon” as a token of his admiration for the “Dichterfürst”, as he put it in his dedication. The fact that he set the original German text and not a translation is most un14

New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), XVIII, p. 9.

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usual; it shows his great reverence for Goethe, for Spontini never really bothered to learn German. Even in the piano version (there exists a later orchestrated version), the setting is so thickly textured and operatic – and thus incompatible with the poem – that it could easily be passed off as a parody. In his review of the song for the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung in 1832, editor Friedrich Rochlitz was perhaps a bit generous when he called Spontini’s melody “äußerst trefflich”. But he went on to say: “Alles recht schön, nur keine Mignon. Selbst im Sonntagsstaate schmückt sich Mignon nicht so; immer ist sie einfach und tief und seltsam. Sie spielt das Gefühl nicht her, sie hat es und ist es.”15 It is true, in Spontini’s setting Goethe’s Mignon is hardly recognizable; by the end of the song, the incessant repetition of “Kennst du es wohl?” and the refrain becomes embarrassing, if not ludicrous. The malicious remark that Berlioz recalled from his student days about Spontini’s music seems to fit here too: Spontini’s “melody lay on the accompaniment like a handful of hair on a soup”16. As Jack Stein keenly observed in his 1970 essay on “Musical Settings of the Songs from Wilhelm Meister”, after Beethoven (and Spohr, we must add) “the connection with the novel is no longer as close. All the nineteenth-century composers used the poems as they appeared later in the section ‘Aus Wilhelm Meister’ of Goethe’s collected lyrics”17, rather than basing their settings on the original narrative context. This holds especially true for as popular a poem as “Kennst du das Land”: particularly since its independent publication and rapid dissemination in many languages, the poem has been synonymous with – or should we say, emblematic of – the quintessentially Northern European (and not just German) sentiment of “Italiensehnsucht”. 15

Quoted in Hedwig M. von Asow, “Gasparo Spontinis Briefwechsel mit Wolfgang von Goethe”, Chronik des Wiener Goethe-Vereins, 61 (1957), p. 48. 16

New Grove (see note 14 above), XVIII, p. 17.

17

Stein (see note 9 above), p. 135.

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Franz Liszt, for example, though not exactly a Northern European by birth, was so captivated by Italy’s magnetic spell that in 1860 he actually moved from Weimar to Rome. The challenge of composing his own setting of Goethe’s poem, however, he took on earlier, shortly after he made his piano transcription of Beethoven’s “Mignon”. His two versions entitled “Mignons Lied” and “Mignons Gesang” date from 1841 and 1860. The second one – being a thorough revision of the first – also exists in orchestrated form. Typically, Liszt’s Mignon possesses but superficial resemblance to Goethe’s: it points the way to the richly embroidered representations by Thomas, Tchaikovsky, Gounod, Anton Rubinstein, and others. Liszt was his own observant critic when he remarked about his early songs that they were “mostly too inflated and sentimental, and usually over-padded with accompaniment”18. His “Kennst du das Land” is a case in point. Liszt used Goethe’s lyric chiefly as a springboard for his own compositional purposes; he appropriated the celebrated text in order to fashion for himself yet another pianistic showpiece – with the voice declaiming the lines, as if it were the accompaniment. Ultimately, the song fails to convince as a balanced composition of words and music, because the poem is steeped in a tonebath of oversweet, gushing nostalgia that strikes us as disingenuous. While working on the 1860 version, Liszt considered at one point setting it to an Italian translation of the poem: “Sai tu la terra?” My last example was not based on an Italian text, however. It was another rarity: Stanislaw Moniuszko’s song entitled “Znasz-li ten kraj?”, composed in 1846 to Adam Mickiewicz’s Polish translation of “Kennst du das Land”. Moniuszko (1819-1872) is known in music history as the father of Polish national opera, the composer of the opera Halka (1848). But as a lied composer – he wrote between 600 and 1000 songs – he is yet to be discovered. I do not hesitate to place his finely 18

Quoted in Christopher Headington, “The Songs”, in Franz Liszt. The Man and His Music, ed. Alan Walker (London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 226.

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wrought, text-sensitive, genuinely lyrical, and melodically beautiful Mignon right next to the versions by Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann as one of the most successful settings of Goethe’s poem. It is an attractively unassuming strophic setting with an undeniably Schubertian flavor, especially in the brief prelude and postlude and in the sustained accompaniment figuration. But the composition also displays Moniuszko’s own, recognizably Polish-Slavic idiom. In conclusion I will present a song by Fanny (Mendelssohn) Hensel (1805-1847) called “Italien,” several times removed from Goethe’s original context. It was composed sometime between 1824 and 1828 to a poem Grillparzer wrote at the beginning of his Italian journey in 1819. Grillparzer’s original title was “Zwischen Gaeta and Kapua”. Until 1965 this song was attributed to Felix Mendelssohn who published it as op. 8,2 in his Sämtliche Lieder without any mention that it was actually a work by his sister. Franz Grillparzer “Italien” Schöner und schöner schmückt sich der Plan, schmeichelnde Lüfte wehen mich an, fort aus der Prosa Lasten und Müh’ zieh’ ich zum Lande der Poesie; gold’ner die Sonne, blauer die Luft, grüner die Grüne, würz’ger der Duft! Dort an dem Maishalm, schwellend von Saft, sträubt sich der Aloe störrische Kraft! Oelbaum, Cypresse, blond du, du braun, nicht ihr wie zierliche, grüßende Frau’n? Was glänzt im Laube, funkelnd wie Gold? Ha! Pomeranze, birgst du dich hold? Trotz’ger Poseidon, warest du dies, der unten scherzt und murmelt so süß? Und dies, halb Wiese, halb Äther zu schau’n, es war des Meeres furchtbares Grau’n? Hier will ich wohnen, Göttliche du! Bringst du, Parthenope, Wogen, zur Ruh?

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Nun dann versuch’ es, Eden der Lust, ebne die Wogen auch dieser Brust!19

19

Song text printed in program notes to the recording Komponistinnen der Romantik, Musica Viva, MV 30-1104.

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The German Lied A Genre and Its European Reception (1990) It is a thing half tune, half text, That passes through my heart, I know not where, what for, what next, It is a song, in short. Joseph von Eichendorff, “Das Lied”1

As the end of the twentieth century draws near, historians who assess European music in a broad cultural context tend more and more to view the entire nineteenth century as the romantic century. For his monumental study of Hector Berlioz, Jacques Barzun chose the title Berlioz and the Romantic Century (1969), and Carl Dahlhaus’s magisterial survey Die Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts [The Music of the 19th Century, 1980] covers the period roughly between 1814 and 1914 as the essential span of musical romanticism. Dahlhaus’s choice of the year 1814 to begin his survey is hardly arbitrary. He concurs with Oskar Bie who in 1926 was the first critic to pinpoint October 16, 1814 as the birthday of the lied,2 the day on which seventeen-year-old Franz Schubert composed his celebrated “Gretchen am Spinnrade” [Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel] to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s lyric monologue from Faust I. Dahlhaus argues persuasively that what in retrospect seems to have been the glorious age of opera and instru-

1

Halb Worte sind’s, halb Melodie, Was mir durch’s Herze zieht, Weiß nicht, woher, wozu und wie, Mit einem Wort: ein Lied. (English translation by Walter Arndt)

2

Oskar Bie, Das deutsche Lied (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1926), p. 18.

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mental music was in fact to an even greater extent the heyday of nontheatrical vocal music such as the lied, along with the cantata and the oratorio;3 and he credits Schubert with “the founding of the lied with an emphatic claim to artistic value as the genre central to musical romanticism”4. In this essay I shall not only be concerned with the musical implications of the genre but also with the notion of the German lied as a cultural current within a larger European context. Given this predominantly genre-oriented focus, it cannot be my aim to provide a systematic account of the history, typology, or aesthetic theory of lied composition, not even in miniature. Nor can I offer detailed interpretations of individual lieder or discussions of the varieties of performance practice or of the important reciprocal contacts between the lied and the theater (opera and singspiel). These and other basic aspects of the lied have already been studied in considerable depth, though not often with illuminating results.5 The bulk of the vast critical literature on the art song – with a few notable exceptions6 – amounts to little more than descriptive chronological surveys of individual song composers’ out3

Carl Dahlhaus, Die Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: Athenaion, 1980), p. 4.

4

Ibid., p. 44.

5

For the best up-to-date selected bibliography, see the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), entries “Lied” (vol. 10, pp. 846-47) and “Song” (vol. 17, pp. 510-21). 6

Prominent recent exceptions are Thrasybulos G. Georgiades, Schubert: Musik und Lyrik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1967); Frits R. Noske, French Song from Berlioz to Duparc: The Origin and Development of the Mélodie (New York: Dover, 1970); Walter Wiora, Das deutsche Lied. Zur Geschichte und Ästhetik einer musikalischen Gattung (Wolfenbüttel and Zurich: Möseler, 1971); Walther Dürr, Das deutsche Sololied im 19. Jahrhundert. Untersuchungen zu Sprache und Musik (Wilhelmshafen: Heinrichshofen, 1984); Lawrence Kramer, Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1984); Stephen Banfield, Sensibility and English Song. Critical Studies of the Early 20th Century, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1985); and Margaret M. Stoljar, Poetry and Song in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany: A Study in the Musical Sturm und Drang (London: Croom Helm, 1985).

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puts according to nationality, mainly in the form of general introductions, concert guides to the lied repertory, or monographs exclusively devoted to the German lied or the French song or to specific major song composers. There must be compelling reasons why a comprehensive scholarly assessment of the genre still remains to be written. In the context of modern European cultural history, the German word Lied transcends linguistic boundaries and rings familiar; it signifies specifically “the German art song of the 19th century as represented in the works of composers such as Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Wolf”7. Both ‘the lied’ in English and le lied in French signify an art form that is as quintessentially German as it is quintessentially nineteenth-century: a particular kind of vocal composition, usually for solo voice with piano accompaniment, that combines poem and music to create a new, integral work of art which is no longer just poem plus music. Clearly, then, the lied as a generic term must not be equated with the English ‘song’ or the French chanson; and even to speak of ‘the German lied’ or le lied allemand borders on the tautological8. More appropriate, though by no means unequivocal, is the designation that the authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980) employs for nineteenth-century German vernacular song: “the Romantic lied”9. Its chief usefulness lies in helping to establish clear-cut chronological and typological distinctions when describing the evolution of lied composition before, during, and after the romantic century, from the polyphonic lied of the Renaissance through the Generalbasslied of the Baroque (the continuo lied), the lieder of the two Berlin Schools of the late 18th century, and the Romantic lied to the orchestral lied of the late 19th and the early 20th century. Already this brief exercise in semantics indicates that the terminological 7

Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music, ed. Don M. Randel (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1978), p. 275.

8

Wiora (see note 6 above), p. 64.

9

New Grove (see note 5 above), vol. 10, p. 838.

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pitfalls surrounding the concept of the lied are difficult to avoid. That in German the word Lied can also mean poem (Gedicht) only complicates matters. Heinrich Heine, for example, called one of his collections of poems Buch der Lieder [Book of Songs, 1827]. Felix Mendelssohn, on the other hand, composed several groups of solo piano pieces that he collectively termed Lieder ohne Worte [Songs Without Words, 1832-1845]. Such a variety of elusive meanings neatly corroborates Friedrich Nietzsche’s wistful dictum that “only what does not have a history can be defined”10. That countless attempts have failed to define satisfactorily the lied as a genre (fraught with plenty of history) ought not to deter us, however, from asking more central questions. Is it justifiable, for example, to single out one type of lied like Schubert’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” and declare it to be the ideal lied type? Obviously not, for this would deny generic legitimacy to the host of other lied types that coexist, such as the ballad, the aria, the cavatina, or the ode. Rather than elevate one particular lied type to model status, it seems appropriate, especially in a European context, to acknowledge the existence of a plurality of lied traditions that together constitute the genre.11 Given this very multiplicity of lied types, the question whether a certain work is a genuine lied becomes at best moot. The really crucial questions arise from the unique symbiosis that determines the very nature of the genre itself: “compenetration”12 of two otherwise distinct media of artistic expression. Where and how does the verbal component intersect and interact with the musical component? How do the formerly independent parts relate to the integral

10

Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke in drei Bänden, ed. Karl Schlechta (Munich: Hanser, 1966), vol. 2, p. 820.

11 12

Dahlhaus (see note 3 above), p. 79.

Louise Rosenblatt’s term, quoted by Jane P. Tompkins in Tompkins, ed., ReaderResponse Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1980), p. 259.

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whole? And how does the act of conjoining word and tone affect the subsequent fate of poetry and music as independent art forms? At the risk of stressing the obvious, it must be kept in mind from the outset that like opera and other kinds of vocal music such as oratorios, cantatas, masses, and madrigals, the lied is considered a primarily musical genre. To be sure, without the original poem that inspired the composer to set it to music, there would be no lied. Yet it is also true that unlike a poetry reading, a lieder recital is first and foremost a musical event; we go to hear Schubert’s Goethe lieder and Hugo Wolf’s Mörike lieder, not just a recitation of poems by Goethe and Eduard Mörike. This perception of the lied does not mean, of course, that we are entitled to slight its literary component. But it may well account for the fact that in the past lied scholars have been almost exclusively musicologists who as a rule have given less than due (i.e. equal) attention to the poetic side of the relationship. While the word-tone problem has always been at the center of lied aesthetics, musical settings of poetry tended to be assessed according to the extent to which they succeeded or failed to achieve an ideal synthesis of poem and music, whatever that criterion may mean.13 Only recently have scholars more securely at home in both literature and music begun to realize that it is precisely the inherent and persistent creative tension between the lied’s verbal and musical components that has propelled this symbiotic construct into prominence as the representative genre of nineteenth-century music, making it an influential catalyst and artistic manifestation of the Romantic Movement. Lawrence Kramer’s 1984 study Music and Poetry: the Nineteenth Century and After, with its brilliant and radically new readings of selected lieder, is symptomatic of this innovative view of song interpretation. Kramer, a literary critic and musical analyst who is also a practicing composer, emphatically maintains that 13

See Jack M. Stein, Poem and Music in the German Lied from Gluck to Hugo Wolf (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1971).

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the primary fact about song is what might be called a topological distortion of utterance under the rhythmic and harmonic stress of music: a pulling, stretching, and twisting that deforms the current of speech without negating its basic linguistic shape. The art song as a genre is the exploitation of this expressive topology – its shaping both as a primary musical experience and as a reflection of the contest between musical and poetic meanings.14

This “contest between musical and poetic meanings” must be seen in an evolutionary perspective to be properly understood as the fundamental driving force in the art song which shaped the course and stages of the genre’s transformation throughout the nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, pre-Schubert song exhibits virtually none of the “pulling, stretching, and twisting” that Kramer finds so energizing in the lieder of the “nineteenth century and after”. But the emergence of innovative forms and techniques in the late eighteenth-century lied did foreshadow some of the radical compositional changes that resulted in the unprecedented flowering of the genre. More importantly, these novel practices did not evolve in splendid isolation, but rather parallel to, and as an integral part of, the great social, political, and economic changes that swept over Europe and had a lasting effect on the aesthetic speculation and artistic creation that constituted the Romantic Movement. Conforming to the established hierarchy of the arts in eighteenthcentury aesthetics, which regarded poetry as the highest form of art followed at a considerable distance by painting and then music, German song composers during the second half of that century abided by the premise that the musical setting was to be subservient to the poem. Song was simply not a significant genre and its chief practitioners were lesser composers like Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), Christian Gottlob Neefe (1748-1798), Johann Abraham Peter Schulz (1747-1800), Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814), and Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758-1832), whose works have not perdured. Opinions such as Johann Christoph Gottsched’s of 1730 that “singing is nothing 14

Kramer (see note 6 above), p. 130.

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more than a pleasant and emphatic reading of a poem” 15 reverberated well into the century and were still discernible in later definitions of the lied, such as the one given in Johann Friedrich Campe’s Wörterbuch [Dictionary, 1809]: “a poem which is intended to be sung”16. In his influential treatise Von der musikalischen Poesie [Of Musical Poesy, 1752], Christian Gottfried Krause insisted unambiguously that the lied required strophic setting and was expected to be “folklike (volkstümlich), easily singable even by the non-professional, should express the mood and meaning of the text, and should have an accompaniment simple and independent enough for the lied to be singable without it”17. Aiming for such folklike simplicity, expressiveness, and singability, the art song was to aspire to the condition of the folk song. Typically, for J. A. P. Schulz – compiler of the best-selling collection Lieder im Volkston [Songs in the Popular Style, 1782] – composing in the “popular style” meant to capture “the appearance of not being sought out, of artlessness, of familiarity, in a word the Volkston”18. And he succeeded so well that several of his songs, including his memorable setting of Matthias Claudius’s poem “Der Mond ist aufgegangen” [“The Moon has Risen”], have actually become folk songs. The strong commitment in lied composition to the folk-song model did not go unnoticed by contemporary poets and poetic theorists: “toward the end of the eighteenth century composers began to look longingly in the direction of the great poets, and the poets themselves, inspired by the growing interest in folk song and balladry, thought

15

Johann Christoph Gottsched, Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst, Fourth edition (Leipzig: 1751), p. 725. 16

Quoted in Walter Salmen, Haus- und Kammermusik. Privates Musizieren im gesellschaftlichen Wandel zwischen 1600 und 1900 (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1969), p. 32. 17 18

New Grove (see note 5 above), vol. 10, p. 836.

Quoted in Raymond Monelle, “Word-Setting in the Strophic Lied”, Music and Letters, 65 (1984), p. 230.

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once more of music”19. Poets and composers alike realized that there was much to be gained from collaboration on the common ground of the lied. Johann Gottfried Herder’s pioneering collections of international Volkslieder [Folk Songs, 1778-79] marked the beginning of the exceptionally close association and cross fertilization between the lied and the folk song which – reinforced by Achim von Arnim’s and Clemens Brentano’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn [The Youth’s Magic Horn, 1806-08] and later compilations – persisted throughout the nineteenth century and beyond in the lieder and ballads not only of Schubert and Carl Loewe (1796-1869) but also of Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler. Sustained interest in the folk song was one among several major factors that paved the way toward the great epoch of the lied that commenced in the early 1800s. The decisive impetus came in the guise of a veritable poetic revolution, without which the lied as we know it today would be inconceivable. Beginning in the early 1770s, the stagnating German lyric – its language, form, tone, and expressive content – underwent an unprecedented rejuvenation, initiated by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) and best exemplified by the poetry of his Storm and Stress disciples Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty (1748-1776), Johann Heinrich Voss (1751-1826), and Gottfried August Bürger (1747-1794), and above all, by the poetry of the young Goethe. Radically new in this poetry was its primary emphasis on the self, on personally experienced emotion, expressed in a language of fresh immediacy, youthful impetuosity, and lyrical exuberance. For long, lied composers had had to make do with setting texts of inferior quality. Was this the kind of poetry they had been waiting for? Did their compositional practice reflect the vastly improved state of contemporary poetry?

19

Edward T. Cone, “Words into Music: The Composer’s Approach to the Text”, In Sound and Poetry, ed. Northrop Frye (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1957), p. 5.

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However steeped they were in self-conscious emulation of the folk song, most composers greeted the new lyric with great enthusiasm and formed lasting and mutually profitable alliances with the poets. But for the time being it was the poet who benefited more from the alliance. Goethe’s close associations with Reichardt and Zelter provide an illuminating case in point. For Goethe, an arch-conservative in musical matters, the desirable balance between poem and music in the lied still meant the primacy of word over tone; and Reichardt and Zelter, his loyal composer friends, supplied him with just the kind of unobtrusive strophic settings he envisioned. But their approach was ideal only for the poet and the poem. They merely couched the privileged text in a harmless and usually uninspired melodic and harmonic frame and in the process simply had to suppress (whether consciously or not) much of their own artistic personality and compositional imprint. Here is Zelter’s own account of his text-setting procedure, dated as late as 1824 and written no doubt with Goethe’s convictions in mind: Above all I respect the form of the poem and try to perceive my poet therein, since I imagine that he, in his capacity as poet, conceived a melody hovering before him. If I can enter into rapport with him, and divine his melody so well that he himself feels at home with it, then our melody will indeed be satisfying. That his melody should fit all strophes is a condition that is not clear even to better composers [...] I am not in favor of the through-composed method of setting strophic poems [...] a melody which one doesn’t enjoy hearing several times is probably not the best.20

Zelter’s view is helpful when we try to explain Goethe’s musical judgment. In an effort to preserve as much as possible the original effect of his poetry, Goethe consistently preferred Reichardt’s and Zelter’s inconsequential musical treatment of his poems and disapproved of, or outright dismissed, truly inspired settings by Ludwig van Beethoven and Schubert. Goethe had good reason to resist anything but the simplest strophic settings for his poetry. He knew very well that more adventurous ex20

Quoted ibid.

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ploration of the musical potentialities of the genre would lead to a freer, more expressive musical component which would eventually outshine the poetic component and even claim independence. In fact, lied composers – including, ironically enough, Zelter and Reichardt – had been searching for alternatives to the confining strophic principle and experimented with modified strophic and through-composed settings long before Schubert. With the growing body of fine contemporary poetry at their disposal, these composers were no longer content in their role as mere text enhancers. They began to pay closer attention to poetic meaning and structure and proper text declamation and devised new compositional techniques that enabled them to function as musical interpreters of the poetry. Consequently, there was indeed a mounting “tension within the Lieder of the eighteenth century which eventually led to the abandonment of strophic form and can be seen in the collision of simplicity and sophistication, of the accidental and the contrived”21. Already in the 1790s the lied as a genre was well on its way to becoming what Goethe feared it would: an act of composed reading, comprised decidedly more of music than of poetry22. To say that the nineteenth-century lied owes its existence to late eighteenth-century social changes and technological progress is certainly no exaggeration. The rising German middle class provided the new, educated reading public which could fully appreciate and identify with the emotionally charged new lyric. Musically literate as well, the same reading public eagerly welcomed the lied as the genre ideally suited for performance within, as Jürgen Habermas put it, the “private sphere of small-family intimacy”23. Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breit21

Monelle (see note 18 above), p. 230.

22

See Steven P. Scher, “Comparing Poetry and Music: Beethoven’s GoetheLieder”, in Sensus communis. Contemporary Trends in Comparative Literature. Festschrift für Henry Remak, eds. János Riesz, Peter Boerner, and Bernhard Scholz (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1986), pp. 155-65.

23

Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (Darmstadt: 1962), p. 63. [“Sphäre kleinfamilialer Intimität”]

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kopf’s invention of the system of movable musical type in the 1750s revolutionized music printing and made wide dissemination of sheet music, including lieder, a reality. But it was another technological marvel becoming ubiquitous that was to be central to nineteenthcentury music-making: the newly improved fortepiano (or pianoforte). This direct precursor of the modern piano represented a vast advance over the infirm, delicate, and subdued clavichord and harpsichord; it was robust and assertive, capable of producing an expressive, singing tone, and was endowed with an expanded dynamic range and remarkably agile mechanics. Responding to the enormous popular demand, manufacture of the new instrument reached mass-production levels in Paris, London, and Vienna, so that by the early 1800s virtually no self-respecting middle-class family was without one. Throughout the century, the private Liederabend remained the bourgeoisie’s preferred form of drawing-room entertainment. No wonder that “the lied was the last of the musical genres to be received in the concert hall”;24 the first public lieder recitals had to wait until the 1860s. It is surely no coincidence that the great nineteenth-century composers of piano music such as Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, and Brahms were pianistic geniuses as well as prominent practitioners of the lied for voice and piano accompaniment. Their lifelong preoccupation with the limitless expressive, illustrative, and technical possibilities of the new keyboard instrument resulted in an enormously diverse piano literature which, in turn, had a direct, formative impact on the increasingly complex and sophisticated piano part in the lied. There are indeed many parallels between wellknown solo piano works and lieder concerning, say, structure, basic type, expressive content, mood, or characteristic tone. For example, among the smaller “liedlike” forms are Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Schubert’s Impromptus and Moments musicales [sic!], Mendelssohn’s 24

Edward F. Kravitt, “The Lied in 19th-Century Concert Life”, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 18 (1965), p. 207.

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Lieder ohne Worte, Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturnes and Préludes, and Schumann’s Kinderscenen [“Scenes from Childhood”]; among the larger structures are Beethoven’s successful integration of the sonata form in his Goethe-lied “Neue Liebe, neues Leben” or the common traits of cyclical works like Schumann’s Kreisleriana and his Eichendorff-Liederkreis, op. 39; and there is the unique epic-dramatic tone in Chopin’s and Brahms’s piano ballads, pretending to be ballads without words. It is hardly surprising in this context that Schumann even seems to have “thought of the Lied as a form of lyric piano piece – a ‘song without words’ but with words – and his habit of doubling the vocal melody of his lieder on the piano bears this definition out”25. As a matter of fact, quite a few of Schumann’s lieder are chiefly remembered for their beautiful, quasi-independent piano preludes, interludes, and postludes. We have come a long way indeed from Zelter’s expressly poetry-minded text-setting practice. The momentous shift toward a radical ‘musicalization’ of the genre first appeared in Beethoven’s decidedly pianistic approach to lied composition. His some eighty lieder – including An die ferne Geliebte [“To the Distant Beloved”, 1816], the first song cycle in music history – exhibit virtually all of the inventive compositional devices and techniques that are usually attributed to Schubert and Schumann. They also confirm beyond doubt that “in the world of Lieder Beethoven rather than Schubert was the pioneer, groping towards a satisfactory solution with few precedents to build on”26. That the lied rose to be a significant, even representative genre of the romantic century was, however, wholly the result of Schubert’s own innovative accomplishment. His was a privileged historical position in that he had a simply inexhaustible reserve of inspiring poetry; he could (and did) draw on the new romantic lyric of his contemporaries such as Novalis, the 25 26

Kramer (see note 6 above), p. 131.

Leslie Orrey, “The Songs”, in The Beethoven Companion, eds. Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune (London: Faber & Faber, 1971), p. 411.

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brothers August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich Rückert, Wilhelm Müller, and Heine as well as on Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and the older poets. His greatness as a lied composer may be said to lie in his incomparable adaptability and ability to synthesize. He possessed an infallible instinct for selecting from a full spectrum of compositional strategies the perfect combination of appropriate musical equivalents – be it a particularly apt melodic line, a rhythmic structure, a harmonic frame, a sequence of modulations or accompaniment figures conveying movement or repose, mood or gesture – to match his spontaneous perception of a poem’s basic meaning and form. Consequently, from Schubert on, the typical pattern of musical foreground versus poetic background constitutes the irreversible norm for the nineteenth-century lied. The musical shape and mood of the lied became so vivid and primary that the recollection of the poem itself, however memorable as great poetry, pales in comparison, as, for example, in Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s “Erlkönig” or Schumann’s setting of Eichendorff’s “Mondnacht”. Further into the century, lied composers yielded more and more to the genuinely romantic impulse toward transforming the lied into pure instrumental music, as reflected in Liszt’s famous piano transcriptions of Schubert songs or in the tendency on the part of composers like Wolf, Mahler, and Richard Strauss to score lieder for voice and symphonic orchestra. Just how unique and influential the German lied really was becomes evident when we consider its impact on song composition in other European countries. The initial impression is anticlimactic. Nowhere outside of Germany do we find anything comparable to the significance and privileged position that the lied attained and sustained as the representative musical genre of the romantic century. But on closer scrutiny there are definite parallels and points of tangency that deserve serious attention, especially in France. It was first and foremost the Schubertian model of the lied – with its infinite variety of lied types, compositional innovations in form, melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic patterns, illustrative accompaniment

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writing, and text declamation – that captured the imagination of nineteenth-century song composers as well as the musically literate general public all over Europe. The French in particular, with their rich and distinguished song heritage, were most receptive to the novel attractions of the German genre. In fact, when in the early 1830s the first Schubert lieder were introduced in Paris, they stirred up a revolution in drawing-rooms where the French romance still dominated, even though this genre was by that time very much on the decline. Traditionalists like the critic Henri Blanchard could express only melancholy bafflement over the new development: What is happening to the romance? What will become of it? Will it be transformed into a Lied? Will it grow longer, acquire more modulations? Or will it remain simple, naive, and as characteristic as it has always been of our national taste, just as the bolero is the expression of Spanish music?27

During the two decades following the 1833 publication of the first Six mélodies célèbres avec paroles françaises par M. Bélanger de Fr. Schubert [Six Famous Mélodies with French Words by M. Belanger de Fr. Schubert], literally hundreds of further translations appeared and the immense popularity of Schubert’s lieder continued unabated. It is obvious, however, that the French were at best marginally interested in the poetic merit of the lieder texts; what mattered was Schubert’s musical setting. Here is a telling example of what happened, in Bélanger’s “translation” (entitled “Toujours”), to the exquisite Goethe lines that inspired Schubert’s lied “Rastlose Liebe” [Restless Love]: Dem Schnee, dem Regen, Dem Wind entgegen, Im Dampf der Klüfte Durch Nebeldüfte, Immer zu! Immer zu! Ohne Rast und ohne Ruh!

27

Charmante amie, A toi ma vie, Ma foi chérie, Jamais trahie; Tu seras mes amours, Mes amours toujours!

Henri Blanchard, “Les deux romances”, Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 6, no. 21 (1839), p. 170, quoted in Noske (see note 6 above), p. 34.

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[Against the snow, the rain, the wind, through steamy gorges, through fragrant fog, ever on, ever on, without rest or peace.]

[Charming friend, my life belongs to you. So does my treasured faith, never betrayed. You shall be my love, my love forever more.]28

In 1834 Bélanger also translated “Erlkönig”. Nevertheless, this perhaps most universally familiar of all of Schubert’s lieder first became known in France in Liszt’s flamboyant piano transcription, without initial recourse to Goethe’s memorable ballad text29. As these questionable practices suggest, French lied reception was far from unproblematic; it was naive and intuitive rather than critically and philologically sound. But its enthusiastic espousal of the Schubertian model was certainly indispensable as a catalyst for the new category of French song that emerged in the 1840s: the mélodie. Although commonly regarded as the French counterpart to the lied, the mélodie did not directly derive from the German genre but from the late eighteenth-century French romance. According to Frits Noske, the popularity of Schubert’s lieder was only one of three factors that together contributed decisively to the rise of the mélodie, the other two being “the decline in the artistic level of the romance, with the resultant need for a substitute vocal genre” and “the impact of the new Romantic poetry, supplying composers with inspiration and with literary texts that forced a renunciation of earlier compositional styles and techniques.”30 The parallels between the evolution of the lied and the mélodie are striking. For example, the eighteenth-century German folk-song model which required folklike simplicity, expressiveness, and singa-

28

Texts and translations quoted in Noske (see note 6 above), p. 30 and p. 320.

29

See Alan Walker, “Liszt and the Schubert Song Transcriptions,” Musical Quarterly, 67 (1981), pp. 50-63. 30

Noske (see note 6 above), p. 1.

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bility (as outlined by Krause in 1752), closely corresponds to JeanJacques Rousseau’s 1767 definition of the romance: As the romance is written in a simple, touching style, [...] the tune should be in keeping with the words: no ornaments, nothing mannered [...] For the singing of romances one needs no more than a clear, carefully-tuned voice, which pronounces the words well, and sings simply.31

Thus the importance of the romance for nineteenth-century French song composers is comparable to the function of the folk song as an inexhaustible resource for nineteenth-century lied composers. Similarly, as Schubert and his successors drew inspiration from the poetry of Goethe and the Storm and Stress poets and from the new infusion of great German romantic poetry, so did French song writers benefit from the romantic poetry of poets such as Théophile Gautier (18111872), Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), Alphonse de Lamartine (17901869), and Victor Hugo (1802-1885). Summing up the pioneering achievement of Swiss-born composer Louis Niedermeyer (1802-1861) – whose sole claim to fame consists in his setting of Lamartine’s poem “Le Lac” [The Lake] – Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) characterized the interplay of factors contributing to the rise of the mélodie succinctly: Niedermeyer was above all a forerunner; the first to break the mold of the ancient and faded French romance, and inspired by the fine poems of Lamartine and Victor Hugo, he created a new and superior type of art, analogous to the German Lied. The resounding success of Le Lac opened up the way for Gounod and all the others who have followed that path.32

Lack of terminological clarity is just as typical of the mélodie as it is of the lied. The generic term mélodie acquired wide currency from the start as the French translation for the Schubert-type lied in particu-

31

Quoted in Denis Stevens, ed., A History of Song (New York: Norton, 1970), p. 200.

32

Quoted in Stevens (see note 31 above), p. 400.

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lar, and later, when Schumann, Brahms, and Wolf became better known in France, for the nineteenth-century German lied in general. It would be misleading to assume, however, that the two terms are identical in meaning; after all, French song represents a world quite unlike the German lied. Hector Berlioz – in his Mélodies irlandaises (1829), inspired by Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies (1807-1834) – was the first French composer to call his songs mélodies, chiefly to differentiate them from the qualitatively inferior new products of the romance. But Berlioz was careful to stress that his mélodies had precious little in common with Schubert’s lieder. Creative affinity with the German genre is demonstrable, though never predominant, in the mélodies of prolific song composers like Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864), Charles Gounod (1818-1893), and Jules Massenet (1842-1912). Both Gounod and Massenet were great champions of Schumann’s songs. Consequently, their mélodies are still much indebted to the intimate lyricism and pronounced pianistic orientation of the mid-nineteenth-century German lied. By the 1870s, however, emancipation of the mélodie from the lied had been fully accomplished and French song composers had finally come into their own. There is virtually no trace of German influence left in the quintessentially French songs of Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), Henri Duparc (1848-1933), and Claude Debussy (1862-1918). The designation mélodie still persists, but only in contradistinction to le lied, which is now used exclusively to signify the exemplars of the German genre. By the middle of the nineteenth century, serious song-writing in most European countries showed a certain basic awareness, if not always actual resonance, of the German lied. Outside of France, creative assimilation of the German tradition remained on the whole sporadic; it was restricted to individual composers who were striving to rise above the stifling confines of musical nationalism so that they could become part of the European mainstream. In England, for example, home of the popular Victorian drawing-room ballad, there was before 1900 a particularly conspicuous lack of any serious art-song

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tradition: “a vast and facile productivity is amply evident, and, by comparison with the Lieder of Schumann, Brahms and Wolf, the mélodies of Bizet, Fauré, Duparc and Debussy, and the songs of Grieg, the overall impression is one of worthlessness”33. How could the British know and understand the German lied when – as Stephen Banfield argues – “England, until about 1880, had lacked a musical response to almost the entire Romantic movement”?34 Charles W. Stanford’s 1877 setting of John Keats’s famous romantic poem “La belle dame sans merci”, with echoes of Schubert’s “Erlkönig”, was a rare exception. Reception of the lied by Russian and Scandinavian composers, on the other hand, despite their strong roots in indigenous folk-song traditions, proved to be productive and lasting. Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) and Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), to mention only the two most prominent ones, were markedly influenced by the German genre and even set dozens of their songs to poems by Goethe, Heine and others in the original German. At the other extreme, it is understandable that a country like nineteenth-century Italy, so utterly dominated by opera, would have little affinity with the tradition represented by the German lied. Even so, Giuseppe Verdi’s curious but effective setting of Goethe’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” in Italian translation [“Perduta ho la pace”, 1838] affords an instructive stylistic comparison between the Schubertian model and the Italian approach to songwriting as operatic by-product. On balance, Europe responded to the lied in diverse ways. In France the German genre profoundly permeated song composition, while it scarcely touched England. Interestingly enough, it is in the songs of Franz Liszt – the supranational, quintessentially European cult figure of the romantic century, who was not primarily a song composer – that we find perhaps best exemplified the kind of cosmopolitanism that the lied,which embraced a plurality of lied tradi33

Banfield (see note 6 above), p. 3.

34

Ibid., p. 12.

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tions, was capable of achieving. Liszt composed more than seventy songs in five languages: there are fifty-seven settings of German texts (mainly by Goethe and Heine) and eleven mélodies (most of them to texts by Victor Hugo), as well as five songs in Italian, three in Hungarian, and one each in English and Russian. Typically, his nonGerman songs exhibit a sovereign command of the various national idioms. In stylistic orientation, however, his song-writing was predominantly German. “The lied is, poetically as well as musically, an intrinsic product of the Germanic Muse”, he wrote in an 1855 essay on lied composer Robert Franz35. It was in no small measure through Liszt that the lied became an important artistic current in the mainstream of nineteenth-century European culture. As a virtuoso performer of his piano transcriptions and arrangements of lieder by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn (as well as his own), as a frequent accompanist in lieder recitals all over Europe, and later as a celebrated conductor of orchestral lieder, Liszt was no doubt the chief propagator of the genre. Due to his relentless efforts, the lied remained no longer confined to the drawing room but was channelled into the concert hall. Ironically, as it gained unprecedented public acceptance, the genre seems to have lost precisely that appeal of intimacy and lyrical expressiveness which made it initially so central to the evolution of musical romanticism. Not surprisingly, in the twentieth century serious song has been a decidedly marginal form of artistic expression. Today the lied as a genre is merely remembered and preserved as one of the glorious manifestations of European romanticism.

35

Franz Liszt, Schriften zur Tonkunst (Leipzig: Reclam, 1981), p. 253.

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“Tutto nel mondo è burla”* Humor in Music? (1991) Musical humor? There is no such thing, of course. What an outlandish proposition, especially when we encounter it unawares, in its bald immediacy: an anomaly at best. In literature and the visual arts, painting and sculpture, we need not strain our imagination. There is much that strikes us as comic or humorous, though not without qualification.1 But humor in music? Precious little comes readily to mind, except perhaps a few fleeting instances here and there. That is, if we believe the professional ‘comicologists’ who – when not altogether silent on the topic, which is most of the time – virtually deny music’s ability to convey humor intelligibly, without enlisting the aid of other media, particularly verbal and visual ones. In fact, theoreticians of the comic, of wit, humor, and laughter – among them noted philosophers, aestheticians, and psychologists – have been, on the whole, conspicuously uninterested and noncommittal in matters musical.2 Most disap* The phrase “Tutto nel mondo è burla” in my title is the opening line of the final fugue ensemble concluding Verdi’s opera Falstaff; the Shakespeare-inspired text is by librettist Arrigo Boito. 1

The finest recent critical treatment of this topic is Paul Barolsky’s Infinite Jest: Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art (Columbia, Mo., 1978). According to Barolsky, “from the art of antiquity to the satire of Dada, surrealism, and more recently, pop art, there is an extensive history of humor and wit in Western art.” But he also confirms the “curious fact that while scores of books have been written about the history of criticism of humorous or comic literature, considerably less attention has been paid to wit and humor in art” (p. 1). For the handful of relevant titles, see Barolsky’s bibliography, pp. 217-22.

2

The literature exploring the phenomenon of comicality is vast and cuts across disciplinary boundaries. Traditionally, it seems, theorists of the comic – from Aristotle through Kant, Flögel, Jean Paul, Meredith, Theodor Lipps, Bergson, Freud, and Johannes Volkelt to Heinrich Lützeler, Elder Olson, Wolfgang Preisendanz, and

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pointing of all, musicologists, who perhaps ought to know better, have also failed to overwhelm us with illuminating insights on the subject.3 Admittedly, we are dealing here with a gray area of aesthetics: the notion of musical humor not only sounds but is elusive. Yet it is a notion that deserves a hearing. It may be useful to begin exploring the potential richness of this notion with a motley assortment of brief il-

Norman N. Holland, to mention only a prominent several – either omit consideration of the realm of music altogether or register serious doubts concerning the plausibility of musical comicality, broadly defined. For a characteristic sampling of general disregard as well as negative opinions, see Zofia Lissa, “Über das Komische in der Musik,” in her Aufsätze zur Musikästhetik: Eine Auswahl (Berlin, 1969), pp. 93-137. A rare exception is Werner R. Schweizer, who in his comprehensive psychological study Der Witz (Bern, 1964) devotes a separate section to “Der musikalische Witz”, pp. 87-99. For initial orientation on comic theory, see Paul Lauter, ed., Theories of Comedy (New York, 1964); E. H. Mikhail, Comedy and Tragedy: A Bibliography of Critical Studies (Troy, N.Y., 1972); Reinhold Grimm and Klaus L. Berghahn, eds., Wesen und Formen des Komischen im Drama (Darmstadt, 1975); Wolfgang Preisendanz and Rainer Warning, eds., Das Komische (Munich, 1976); and Reinhold Grimm, “Kapriolen des Komischen: Zur Rezeptionsgeschichte seiner Theorie seit Hegel, Marx und Vischer”, in Reinhold Grimm and Walter Hinck, eds., Zwischen Satire und Utopie: Zur Komiktheorie und zur Geschichte der europäischen Komödie (Frankfurt/Main, 1982), pp. 20-125. 3

Specific treatments by musicologists and musicians of the diverse aspects of musical comicality have been few indeed. The following is a representative selection: K. Stein, “Versuch über das Komische in der Musik”, Caecilia 10 (1833): 221-67; Robert Schumann, “On the Comic Spirit in Music” (1835), in On Music and Musicians: Robert Schumann, ed. Konrad Wolff (New York, 1946), pp. 57-59; Paul Dukas, “Comedy in Music” (1894), in Composers on Music: An Anthology of Composers’ Writings, ed. Sam Morgenstern (London, 1956), pp. 344-47; Karl Storck, Musik und Musiker in Karikatur und Satire (Oldenburg, 1913); Anton Penkert, “Die musikalische Forschung von Witz und Humor”, in Kongreß für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 1913 (Stuttgart, 1914), pp. 482-89; Richard Hohenemser, “Über Komik und Humor in der Musik”, Jahrbuch Peters (1917): 65-83; Henry F. Gilbert, “Humor in Music”, Musical Quarterly 12 (1926): 40-55; Theodor Veidl, Der musikalische Humor bei Beethoven (Leipzig, 1929); Wolfgang Steinecke, Die Parodie in der Musik (Wolfenbüttel, 1934); Hans H. Eggebrecht, “Der Begriff des Komischen in der Musikästhetik des 18. Jahrhunderts”, Die Musikforschung 4 (1951): 144-52; Norman Cazden, “Humor in the Music of Stravinsky and Prokofiev”, Science and Society 18 (1954): 52-74; Ferruccio Busoni, “Beethoven and Musical Humor”, in his The Essence of Music and Other Papers, trans. Rosamond Ley (New York, 1957), pp. 13437; John Kucaba, “Beethoven as Buffoon”, Musical Review 41 (1980): 103-20; and Hubert Daschner, Humor in der Musik (Wiesbaden, 1986).

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lustrations while keeping theoretical reflection to a minimum. As a classic example of harmless musical fun, the unadulterated banal humor that emanates from the celebrated “Duetto buffo di due gatti”, attributed to Rossini,4 is easily identifiable. Composed for two meowing operatic singers (usually sopranos) with piano accompaniment, this amusing trifle is so memorable because it is so unsubtle. And its intended parodistic effect is unmistakable.5 To be sure, Rossini was an inimitable master of skillfully crafted scenic situations imbued with genuine humor, a lone monument of sustained comicality in 19th-century music. Indeed, none of his ensembles is better suited to provide musical justification for the title of the present volume than the zany, effervescent septet concluding act 1 of his comic opera L’Italiana in Algeri (1813), which never fails to bring down the house in ‘laughter unlimited’. In this final tableau, the characters are so utterly confused about the newest plot developments that they can no longer sing a coherent text. Spellbound, they start singing nonsense syllables that imitate the various noises they imagine hearing. The ladies hear bells ringing in their ears and the men hear a cock crowing, hammer strokes, cannon shots, and the like: din-din, cra-cra, tac-tac, bum-bum. ISABELLA, ZULMA, ELVIRA: Nella testa ho un campanello In my head a bell is ringing, Che suonando fa din din. [...] Ding, ding, ding, ding! Nella testa ho un gran martello Mi percuote e fa tac tac

LINDORO: In my head a clock is ticking, ever going tock tick tock!

4

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980) 16:249 lists this duet under Rossini’s works “of uncertain authenticity.” 5

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach must have had something like this duet in mind when she quipped: “Die Katzen halten keinen für eloquent, der nicht miauen kann.” (“Cats consider no one eloquent who cannot meow.”). Quoted in Heinrich Lützeler, Über den Humor (Zurich, 1966) p. 13.

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Sono come una cornacchia Che spennata fa cra cra Nella testa ho un gran martello Mi percuote e fa tac tac. Come scoppio di cannone La mia testa fa bum bum.

TADDEO: I am like a dizzy raven Crowing, cawing, caw caw caw! HALY: In my head I have a hammer Ever pounding knock, knock, knock! MUSTAFA: Like a mighty cannon roaring, So my head goes boom, boom, boom!6

Perhaps Joseph Addison hit upon the truth when he claimed in the Spectator that “nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.”7 Leroy Anderson’s The Typewriter, a single-movement miniconcerto scored for typewriter and orchestra and assisted by a triangle and a ratchet to signal carriage returns, exemplifies an altogether different species of musical humor. Though intriguing, the kind of acoustic mimesis in this typical product of mid-20th-century American popular music is likely to induce mild amusement at best. John Cage’s 1942 composition entitled CREDO IN US, decidedly more serious in intention, is likewise at a safe distance from ‘laughter unlimited’: that Cage spells the title in capital letters points to the inherent ambiguity of the word ‘US’. The score calls for muted gongs, tin cans, an electric buzzer, tom-toms, piano, hands on wood, and radio or phonograph; in his performance instructions, Cage even specifies that “(if radio is used, avoid news programs during national or international emergencies, if phonograph, use some classic: e.g. Dvořák, Beethoven, Sibelius or Shostakovich).”8 The recorded per-

6

Gioacchino Rossini, L’Italiana in Algeri, libretto by Angelo Anelli (New York, 1966), p. 11.

7

Quoted in Wim Tigges, ed., Explorations in the Field of Nonsense (Amsterdam, 1987), p. 6. 8

John Cage, CREDO IN US (score) (New York, 1962) p. 1.

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formance, for example, uses excerpts from Dvořák’s New World Symphony. As we shall soon see in more analytical detail, Cage’s unusually scored piece demonstrates the mechanics of a rather transparent strategy composers favor when they intend to produce a comic effect – in this case, primarily satirical – fraught with sociopolitical implications. Just before the anticipated arrival of a concluding cadence, the original quote played on the phonograph from the well-known Dvořák symphony suddenly fades out and gives way to a startling cacophony that would be any percussionist’s delight; and the listener’s justifiable expectation is so severely thwarted that the result is some sort of laughter, however guarded, embarrassed, or angry. The presence of intentional comicality in venerable canonic works of the classical repertory is rarely acknowledged unequivocally. How do we react in this context, for example, to the interminable concluding bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (fig. 5)?9 No intimate knowledge of Beethoven’s compositional habits is necessary to recognize that excessive repetition is employed here as a comic device of musical rhetoric. Beethoven certainly knows how to assure his listeners over and over and over again about the definite finality of his Finale’s final C-Major chords. Similarly exaggerated closures abound in his symphonic writing, and one might wonder why he resorts to this type of deliberate overstatement to make his point. The answer is simple and well documented, even if ardent worshipers of the Beethoven mystique10 and of the composer’s familiar, larger-thanlife image as the brooding titan may well refuse to accept it: forever a practical joker and punster in life, Beethoven also took every musical opportunity to express his effervescent humor, often through blunt

9

Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, ed. Elliot Forbes (New York, 1971), pp. 115-16.

10

See William S. Newman, “The Beethoven Mystique in Romantic Art, Literature, and Music”, Musical Quarterly 69 (1983): 354-87.

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Fig. 5. Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, op. 67 (movement 4: mm. 415-44)

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Fig. 6: Beethoven, “An Mälzel”, WoO 162.

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self-parody.11 However hard to believe, he did compose dozens of occasional musical gags like the choral canon entitled “An Mälzel” (1812) (fig. 6),12 a classical companion piece to Leroy Anderson’s typewriter music, poking fun at his friend Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, the inventor of the metronome. The melody of this trifle became the first theme of Beethoven’s later, more poignantly humorous tribute to Mälzel: the second, “Allegretto scherzando,” movement of the Eighth Symphony. But accumulating diverse examples, however entertaining and instructive, is a temptation that must be resisted if we want to get a firmer grasp on a subject as elusive and indeterminate as humor, especially musical humor. So let us suspend the flow of examples for example’s sake and embark on a bit of aesthetic speculation, hoping that a little theory, taken with a grain of salt, will not detract from proper appreciation of the illustrations still to come. The crucial question is, of course, whether it is possible to find some guiding principles that may light our way through the complex labyrinth of musical comicality. It is for good reason that competent scholarly attempts to do just that have been scarce indeed; the occasional relevant dissertations and individual treatises tend to focus on aspects too specialized and narrow to yield more than modest illumination.13 11

For detailed documentation, cf. Kucaba, “Beethoven as Buffoon.”

12

WoO 162, in L. van Beethovens Werke: Vollständige kritisch durchgesehene überall berechtigte Ausgabe (Leipzig, 1862-65), xxiii/256/2.

13

For the handful of recent dissertations, see Linda R. Lowry, Humor in Instrumental Music: A Discussion of Musical Affect, Psychological Concepts of Humor and Identification of Musical Humor (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1974); David Weintraub, Humor in Song (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1974); Charles E. Troy, The Comic Intermezzo: A Study in the History of Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1979); Steven E. Paul, Wit, Comedy, and Humour in the Instrumental Music of Franz Joseph Haydn (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1980); Günter Lafenthaler, Gedanken zum Begriff musikalischer Komik in den sinfonischen Dichtungen von Richard Strauss (Ph.D. diss., University of Vienna, 1980); and Cassandra I. Carr, Wit and Humor as Dramatic Force in the Beethoven Piano Sonatas (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1985). For further titles, see n. 3 above.

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As far as I could ascertain, only the Polish Marxist musicologist Zofia Lissa, a devout disciple of Roman Ingarden, has taken on the considerable multidisciplinary challenge of devoting a large-scale investigation entirely to the theoretical underpinnings of this intriguing phenomenon. Her 1938 Krakow Habilitationsschrift entitled O istocie komizmu muzycznego (“The Essence of Musical Humor”)14 is still the only serious study of musical humor – pun intended – that attempts to provide a comprehensive and systematic overview informed by the relevant philosophical, aesthetic, psychological, and musical issues. Lissa’s pioneering work has gone virtually unnoticed in the West. Under the title “Über das Komische in der Musik,” she included what seems to be a streamlined version of her 1938 study (unfortunately, without bringing it up to date) in a 1969 collection of her selected essays, Aufsätze zur Musikästhetik, published in East Berlin.15 It tells us something about the persistently elusive nature of our topic that Lissa’s opening statement of 1969 still holds today: “Eine Theorie der Komik, die sich ausschließlich auf das Komische in der Musik stützt, gibt es bisher nicht” (“A theory of the comic that is based exclusively on what is comic in music does not yet exist.”)16 In much of what follows, I benefited from Zofia Lissa’s thoughtful outline of the possibilities and limitations of the field and from her sober – sometimes all too sober – analytical remarks, though I hope that my own approach will prove to be less cumbersome and timebound. Also, I intend to avoid at least some of the pitfalls that loom large before anyone who dares to enter the slippery terrain of comic theory. First of all, I shall heed Samuel Johnson’s wise observation that “comedy has been particularly unpropitious to definers”17, and 14

Listed in the New Grove Dictionary 11:27.

15

Lissa, Aufsätze, pp. 93ff.

16

Ibid., p. 93.

17

Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, no. 125. Quoted in Lauter, ed., Theories of Comedy, p. 254.

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devote only a minimum of space to terminological distinctions and definitions. Many past comicologists have fallen victim to this understandable and most common of methodological errors: they start by devising their own definitions of terms such as humor, wit, and laughter and proceed to base their speculations on these preconceived notions, frozen into axiomatic formulas, which they then foist on their empirical evidence.18 Second, I shall try to keep in mind that “we cannot talk about what is funny, but rather what people find funny.”19 Clearly, the real problem for critics seems to be the frustratingly elusive element inherent in comicality: namely, that the comic is always subjective and highly dependent on personal taste. Critics concur only in the obvious, characterizing the comic as “some sort of subjectively realized contrast.”20 And third, I shall keep reminding myself that whenever we inquire about what is comic in music, we must sharpen our critical awareness and for each given context consider our norms and expectations anew; we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that musical humor – at least most of the time – turns out to be more subtle and harder to detect than other kinds of humor. In fact, we are apt to encounter a type of humor in music that does not strike us as funny at all in the conventional sense, but possesses a capricious, mercurial, or whimsical quality that will be perceived only under certain circumstances and by certain individuals as humorous. In such cases, the effect can be humorous even if it does not elicit actual laughter. Given the infinite variety of comic possibilities, I can identify, discuss, and illustrate only some salient types of specifically musical humor. That in the course of this desultory process I shall have to gloss over or leave unexplored many fascinating types and details 18

For a circumspect and informative critical discussion of some influential definitions of the comic, see chapter I in Bruce Duncan, Dark Comedy in EighteenthCentury Germany: Lessing and Lenz (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1969). 19

Ibid., p. 5.

20

Ibid., p. 4.

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needs no apology. Probing the nature and mechanics of the phenomenon itself, I shall focus on three leading questions: (1) Why is it that certain passages or, sometimes, even longer stretches of music strike us as funny, amusing, droll, or comical: in other words, as humorous? (2) What exactly is it that we find humorous in these instances? (3) How are these musical instances constructed so that they bring about a comic or humorous effect? Huizinga’s brilliant interpretation of the age-old clicheé that “the essential nature of all musical activity is play”21 alerts us to how important it is to realize at the outset that playful, light-hearted, joyous music – like so much of, say, Haydn, Mozart, Weber, or Mendelssohn – is usually just that, and not necessarily humorous. To be sure, it may make us understand better why we perceive certain pieces or passages of music as ‘happy’, if we regard specific features in such music like the tone and register of the instruments employed, how their roles are balanced in relation to one another, and the musical intervals used. These features somehow remind us of the way we feel when we feel happy, they make us imagine feeling happy, or indeed they may arouse actual emotions of happiness. But ‘the way we feel when we feel happy’ is not readily described and it is difficult to analyse in general terms just what features of music regularly correspond to that feeling.22

What makes music ‘happy’ may not be easy to articulate. But to account for what constitutes humorous music proves to be even more of a challenge. A few generic distinctions may be helpful at this point. It is customary to think of music broadly in two basic categories: absolute music, also called abstract music, which is nonreferential since it possesses no 21

Johan Huizinga, Homo ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Boston, 1955), p. 162. 22

Anne Sheppard, Aesthetics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art (Oxford, 1988), p. 36. Curiously enough, in spite of the fact that since Aristotle the tragic has been considered the other side of the comic, we virtually never speak of ‘tragic’ music. True, there is Brahms’s Tragic Overture. However, what is really tragic about this piece of orchestral music other than the vague associations prompted by its title?

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extramusical connotations, and texted or vocal music, which is referential since its overall effect depends on the extramusical connotations of its text. But there is also a third, hybrid category: namely, program music, which is neither just absolute music nor full-fledged texted music and which becomes particularly relevant when we consider humor in music. It is a type of purely instrumental music inspired by, or based on, “a nonmusical idea, which is usually indicated in the title and sometimes described in explanatory remarks or a preface.”23 Where do we locate in our scheme program music such as Liszt’s Faust Symphony, Berlioz’s Harold en Italie, Dukas’s L’Apprenti sorcier, Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel, or Ravel’s La Valse? Since both texted and program music possess semantic connotations and absolute music is essentially asemantic because nonreferential, it might be appropriate to distinguish between semantic and asemantic music.24 It is in semantic music, of course, that we find the most obvious instances of musical humor: in opera, singspiel, oratorios, cantatas, lieder, and operettas, as well as in titled instrumental music such as tone poems and even in film music. When we come to asemantic music – purely instrumental music for individual instruments, chamber ensemble, or symphonic orchestra – the hermeneutic challenge becomes significantly more complex and intriguing. For this reason, although the problems concerning the nature of the comic in texted music and program music are by no means uninteresting, I shall focus primarily on the phenomenon of asemantic, or autonomous, musical humor. What are some of the characteristic preconditions that determine the nature of the comic experience in the diverse manifestations of musical humor, to some extent in both asemantic and semantic music? First of all, the comic effect must be intended, consciously devised by the composer to elicit a specifically comic reaction from the listener. 23

Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music, comp. Don M. Randel (Cambridge, 1978), p. 402. 24

Lissa, Aufsätze, pp. 108-14.

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Take, for example, Mozart’s wonderful buffo character Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail (fig. 7). Whenever he is on stage, no matter how threateningly he may rave about his awful instruments of torture and plot revenge, his musical presence exudes nothing but sheer comic relief. Mozart exaggerates Osmin’s character traits so delightfully that we never take him for the avenging menace he is supposed to be – but isn’t, of course, due largely to Mozart’s music.25 Contextual incongruity or contrast, whether in the form of an unpredictable occurrence or a sudden deviation from the expected norm, is a common element of musical humor. Psychologists tell us that our sense of the comic is aroused by unexpected, incongruous happenings; by unusual and sudden interruptions of the natural or customary order of things. The resulting shock to our sense of what might naturally have been expected, if not too severe, causes us to smile or to give more boisterous evidence of our amusement.26

The beginning of the “Andante” movement of Haydn’s well-known Symphony No. 94 in G Major (fig. 8), composed with the narcoleptic London audience in mind and dubbed “Surprise” for good reason, still provides the most transparent illustration and hardly requires further commentary.27 Haydn’s œuvre in particular is an inexhaustible resource for autonomous musical humor of this sort, including the more sustained type.

25

Mozart, Die Entführung aus dem Serail (piano score) (Leipzig, n.d.), p. 29.

26

Gilbert, “Humor in Music”, p. 41.

27

Quoted in Daschner, Humor in der Musik, p. 147.

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Fig. 7: Mozart, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, from act 1, no. 3 (Osmin’s aria)

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Fig. 8: Haydn, Symphony No. 94 in G Major (movement 2: mm. 1-19)

Let us now turn from the rather obvious example, based simply on a contrast in musical dynamics, to a more esoteric and subtle case of musical wit, the rondo-finale movement marked “Presto” of Haydn’s String Quartet No. 30 in E Flat Major op. 33/2 (fig. 9), which earned this work the nickname “The Joke”. Though the real jest comes only in the coda section, we can best appreciate the humorous ingredients by listening to the entire movement, all of which lasts barely over two minutes. If we then focus on the coda itself and observe closely how Haydn constructs this last sequence of musical events, we can easily discern the underlying pattern of contextual incongruities that produces a sustained comic effect by purely musical means. After the last episode section of the rondo, the trifling main theme recurs once more, leading us to expect that this final repetition will conclude the movement. But no! All of a sudden, out of nowhere, after a pregnant pause,

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Fig. 9: Haydn, String Quartet No. 30 in E Flat Major, op. 33/2 (movement 4: mm. 97-172)

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two totally unexpected, pathetic adagio snippets appear, as if things were grinding to a halt, however implausibly. Is the piece finally over? No, we are in for yet another surprise. After a two-bar pause, the main theme reappears, except that this time it is broken down into four two-bar clauses, with two-bar pauses in between clauses. And just when we finally decide that this must be the end, the first two-bar fragment of the theme sounds again and the movement ends, suspended in midair. Or is it going to start all over again?28 No question, this is sophisticated asemantic musical wit, the comic Haydn at his best. Though utilizing essentially the same basic pattern, the Cage example described earlier seems crude and simplistic in comparison. The degree to which the comic incongruity is perceived depends heavily, of course, on the degree of musical competence the listener brings to the experience: familiarity with musical periods, styles, conventions, genres, and forms will facilitate recognition of those instances in which composers, for whatever reason, deviate from the norm. If, for example, the listener of Cage’s CREDO IN US is not familiar with Dvořák’s New World Symphony, most if not all of what Cage intended with his composition will prove elusive. Nevertheless, the technique itself of inducing a comic effect in music, always adjusted to the respective individual context, has remained standard practice until today. As we have seen, it is essentially a basic pattern of tension-relaxation that may be sketched out as follows. It usually starts with the listener’s suddenly heightened expectation of the unexpected, actually with the expectation (or secret hope) that the unexpected will turn out to be something expected after all. But this expectation is thwarted by the fact that what follows is indeed something unexpected. In other words, the original expectation of the unexpected is fulfilled all the more effectively, since it was not expected as such. As a result, the initially heightened awareness, after a momentary 28

Haydn, String Quartet No. 30 in E Flat Major, op. 33/2, Edition Eulenburg miniature score, pp. 17-18.

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sensation of surprise or mild shock, dissolves into physical confirmation of relief which may signify pleasure, perplexity, or indignation, usually in the form of a smile or laughter. It seems quite a jump from a Haydn string quartet of 1781 to Béla Bartók’s Divertimento for String Orchestra (fig. 10), composed in 1939. But the Bartók work is thoroughly classical in its comic spirit, very much a musical ‘diversion’ in the 18th-century sense of the rich connotations of the Italian verb divertire that Da Ponte was so fond of employing in his libretti for Don Giovanni, Figaro, and Così fan tutte. Lo and behold, Bartók’s Finale is also in rondo form and, toward the end of the movement, the turbulent flow of a “vivacissimo” section is unexpectedly arrested by a caustically humorous episode (“Grazioso, scherzando, poco rubato”) which draws on the contextual incongruity technique for parodistic purposes: It is signalised here by the introduction of a schmaltzy pseudo-Viennese polka, quite slow, clearly related to the main theme, with the violins playing pizzicato, the cellos and basses plucking their polka accompaniment, and the violas commenting with a couple of wry glissandi.29

I invoke yet another, even more typical, Bartók work in this connection, especially since it also features strategies of autonomous musical humor that I can mention here only in passing, such as the exploitation of the potential incongruity in certain harmonic and rhythmic designs and instrumental and orchestral colors. The infamous passage occurs in the fourth movement of the Concerto for Orchestra (1943), entitled “Intermezzo interrotto” (fig. 11). While composing the concerto in New York, Bartók heard a broadcast of Shostakovich’s then brand-new Seventh (Leningrad) Symphony. He was so appalled by the insipid triviality of the theme representing the Nazi invaders – so unworthy of Shostakovich’s stature as a composer – that he decided

29

John McCabe, Bartók’s Orchestral Music (London, 1974), p. 56. The parodistic allusion to Johann Strauss’s famous “Pizzicato Polka” is unmistakable.

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Fig. 10: Bartók, Divertimento for String Orchestra (movement 4: mm. 449-539)

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to incorporate a mini-travesty of it in his own work in progress, possibly without equal as a vitriolic and irreverent instance of sophisticated musical wit. This is not humor that is funny; the effect, verging on the burlesque, is rather shocking. Besides juxtaposing blatantly antithetical moods, Bartók achieves his parodistic intent chiefly through brilliantly orchestrated incongruities in instrumental sound and imitative timbre or tone color: Howls of laughter from the woodwind, rude noises from the lower brass, and then a viciously swirling circus background throw the violins’ attempt to make the theme respectable into a contemptuous light; it does not sound distinguished even when put upside down – indeed it sounds even more ludicrous.30

Fig. 11: Bartók, Concerto for Orchestra (movement 4: mm. 61-136)

30

Ibid., p. 60.

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Even when the interruption is over and the earlier nostalgic, serene mood returns, Bartók’s disturbing episode lingers on in our consciousness and recalls fictitious twelve-tone composer Adrian Leverkühn’s memorable comment, prompted by his own verbal Wagner parody, in Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus (published in 1947 but written contemporaneously with the concerto, also in American exile): Und ich Verworfener muß lachen, namentlich bei den grunzenden Stütztönen des Bombardons – Wum, wum, wum – Pang! – ich habe vielleicht zugleich Tränen in den Augen, aber der Lachreiz ist übermächtig – ich [...] bin von diesem übertriebenen Sinn fur das Komische [bei Wagner] in die Theologie geflohen [...] um dann eine Menge entsetzlicher Komik in ihr zu finden. Warum müssen fast alle Dinge mir als ihre eigene Parodie erscheinen? Warum muß es mir vorkommen, als ob fast alle, nein, alle Mittel und Konvenienzen der Kunst heute nur noch zur Parodie taugten?31 (And I, abandoned wretch, I have to laugh, particularly in the grunting supporting notes of the bombardone, Bum, bum, bum, bang! I may have tears in my eyes at the same time, but the desire to laugh is irrestible [...] I fled from this exaggerated sense of the comic [in Wagner] into theology [...] only to find there too a perfect legion of ludicrous absurdities. Why does almost everything seem to me like its

31

Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus (Stockholm, 1947), pp. 208-9.

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own parody? Why must I think that almost all, no, all the methods and conventions of art today are good for parody only?32)

Musical quotation – that is, composers quoting from other composers in their own compositions, whether in the original form or strategically distorted – has also been a common source of humor in music. A celebrated example of this musical version of intertextuality is Mozart’s quotation of his own Figaro’s famous aria “Non più andrai farfallone amoroso”, along with two other operatic hits of the day, in the supper scene of Don Giovanni. The Shostakovich episode in Bartók’s concerto is only one of many instances of the type of subtle musical humor that may also be regarded as the composer’s private joke, shared only by the initiated few who are familiar with the context. But a private joke can also be innocent and accessible, just fun for fun’s sake, as in Jacques Ibert’s delightful divertissement of 1930, which employs compositional devices similar to Bartók’s for comic effect, though not without a satirical sting: acoustic mimesis of nonmusical sound like a horse laugh and the absurdly incongruous quotation of Mendelssohn’s hackneyed “Wedding March”, which suddenly turns into a grotesquely distorted military march. At the other extreme, a private musical joke can be even more esoteric than Bartók’s, as in the case of the parodistic Wagner reference buried in Debussy’s famous piano piece “Golliwog’s Cake-Walk” from the Children’s Corner collection (fig. 12). It is an ingenious satirical hint of the Tristan chord (the performance instruction reads: “avec une grande émotion”), inconspicuously embedded in the compositional texture.33 That in the latter part of this essay I have been talking more about musical parody, and have used the designation ‘humor’ less frequently, is no coincidence. Instances of parody are simply more common and more accessible in music (especially, if one is in the know!) 32

Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus (New York, 1948), pp. 133-34.

33

Claude Debussy, “Golliwog’s Cake-Walk” (London, 1969), pp. 3-5.

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than those of pure humor (whatever that may be). In fact, humor in music seems virtually inconceivable without some element of parody or self-parody. Both humor and parody – along with satire, irony, and caricature as well as the burlesque and the grotesque – are subspecies of the comic, of course. But in music the notion of parody seems to be more encompassing; for optimal effect, it usually draws on many or all of the basic ingredients simultaneously. This is the reason, I assume, why we look in vain for distinct treatments of humor in music, even in the relevant musical literature. The authoritative New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, for example, has no separate entry for humor in music, which means – for all practical purposes – that the notion does not exist. Instead, the entire spectrum of the comic in music is covered – with memorable British brevity – under the heading “Parody” in a double entry of barely three pages that distinguishes between a narrow and a broader meaning of the term. In the narrower sense, parody is “a technique of composition, primarily associated with the 16th century, involving the use of preexistent material”34. So far so good. But the New Grove’s broader definition of

Fig. 12: From Debussy, “Golliwog’s Cake-Walk” 34

New Grove Dictionary 14:238.

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parody is too much of a catchall; its broadness renders it ultimately useless for meaningful discrimination: A composition generally of humorous or satirical intent in which turns of phrase or other features characteristic of another composer or type of composition are employed and made to appear ridiculous, especially through their application to ludicrously inappropriate subjects. Parody, in the non-technical sense of the word, has been a frequent source of humor in music, often aimed at the correction of stylistic idiosyncrasies or exaggeration. Some composers have even been prepared to parody their own work.35 35

Ibid., p. 239.

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I started out by claiming that there was no such thing as musical humor. That was a rhetorical straw man, of course, a contextual incongruity only to be knocked down later – with some relief, I trust. I only hope that my attempt at focusing on the nature and mechanics of autonomous musical humor as a distinctive, not always expressly parodistic manifestation of the comic has given more of a sense of humor in music than mere generalizations can suggest. I shall conclude with a reminder of what I regard as the ultimate knockdown in music and what by itself could be the subject of another essay: the outrageously dissonant and therefore hilariously funny final cadence from Mozart’s Ein musikalischer Spaß (“A Musical Joke”), K. 522, the most often invoked but perhaps least well-known compendium of sophisticated musical humor (fig. 13).36

Fig. 13: Mozart, Ein musikalischer Spaß, K. 522 (movement 4: mm. 450-58)

36

W. A. Mozart, Ein musikalischer Spaß, K. 522, in W. A. Mozart: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke (Kassel, 1955), Serie 7, Werkgruppe 18, pp. 253-54. See also Irving Godt, “Mozart’s Real Joke”, College Music Symposium 26 (1986): 27-41.

Liszt and Literature (1991) Dear Liszt, through the mists and beyond the rivers, in distant cities where pianos sing your glory, and where printing presses translate your wisdom, wherever you may be, whether surrounded by the splendors of the eternal city, or in the mists of those dreamy countries Gambrinus consoles, improvising songs of joy and of ineffable sorrow, or confiding to paper your abstruse meditations, singer of pleasure and of eternal anguish, philosopher, poet, artist, I salute you in immortality!

Is this exuberant apostrophe typical of how his contemporaries viewed Franz Liszt? Who could have written such a hyperbolic glorification (in a single, breathless sentence, no less!), the grandiloquence of which strikes our sensibility today, a good hundred years later, as bordering on the grotesque? The author of this effusive passage is none other than Charles Baudelaire, one of Liszt’s countless literary acquaintances.1 Obviously, Baudelaire admired Liszt ardently and unconditionally, just as he did Wagner. In those days, Baudelaire’s idolatrous kind of rhetoric was anything but unique, especially in French Wagnerian circles. “Hail to you, Richard Wagner [...] who accomplished what only a few dreamed of, the true POEM,”2 wrote the poet Paul Va1éry, articulating the sentiment of the many prominent literati who also happened to be convinced Wagnerites. To Va1éry, as to his Symbolist predecessors, “the true POEM” meant specifically the Gesamtkunstwerk, of course, Wagner’s single-minded realization of the idea of the ‘total work of art’ that encompassed drama, poetry, myth, philosophy, and music. 1

In section XXXII, entitled “Le Thyrse” and addressed to Liszt, of the prose poem Le Spleen de Paris (1869). English translation by Louise Varèse, published in Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen (London: Peter Owen, 1951).

2

Quoted in Dorothy Kauffman, “Les Wagnériens,” Opera News 50, No. 15 (April 12,1986), p. 18.

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Not surprisingly, we encounter similarly exalted tone and diction in the discourse of critic and cultural historian Theophile Gautier. Writing in 1874 of the intellectual climate of the 1830s and 40s, Gautier aptly conveys the sense of excitement over “things poetic” that characterized the advent and also the heyday of French Romanticism: Today’s generation have difficulty imagining the effervescence of spirits in that epoch; it was a movement like the Renaissance. The sap of life circulated. Everything germinated, burgeoned, burst out at once. Dizzying scents came from the flowers; the air intoxicated, and one was mad with lyricism and art. One felt one was about to rediscover the lost secret, and it was true, one had rediscovered poetry.3

Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was very much a part and product of the epoch that Gautier describes; and from early on his intellectual orientation reflects precisely what musicologist Louise Cuyler has called “the nineteenth-century predilection for ‘the word’.”4 Still, Baudelaire’s accolade should give us pause; after all, he hails Liszt not only as a supreme artist (the musician, piano virtuoso, and composer that he indeed was), but also as a philosopher and a poet. Was he really a profound thinker and gifted writer as well? For balance, let us call to witness another close-range observer of the contemporary Parisian intellectual scene – keen and inimitably witty, but clearly of a somewhat different persuasion. Here is how the self-exiled German poet Heinrich Heine – whose memorable coinage “Lisztomania”5 is still very much with us today – assessed Liszt in 1837: 3

Quoted in Eleanor Perényi, Liszt: The Artist as Romantic Hero (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1974), p. 28. 4

Louise Cuyler, The Symphony (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), p. 173. 5

The coinage ‘Lisztomanie’ first appeared in Heine’s “Musikalische Saison in Paris l,” published in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung no. 129, supplement (May 8, 1844). Reprinted in Heinrich Heine, Zeitungsberichte über Musik und Malerei, ed. Michael Mann (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1964): 159-68, see especially p. 163. British film director Ken Russell entitled his 1975 biographical pop-shocker extravaganza Lisztomania.

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He [Liszt] has an eccentric [mal assis] but noble character, unselfish and guileless. His intellectual tendencies are most remarkable. He is strongly inclined toward speculation, and the concerns of his art interest him less than do the searchings of the different schools which are preoccupied with finding the solution to the great question which embraces heaven and earth. For a long time he was a fervid supporter of the lovely world view of the Saint-Simonians; later he became fogged in by the spiritualism, or perhaps I should call it vaporism, of Ballanche. Now he is raving about the Catholic-Republican doctrines of Lamennais, who has planted the Jacobin cap on top of the Cross ... Heaven knows in what philosophical stable he will find his next hobbyhorse! But, still and all, this tireless thirst for enlightenment and the divine is praiseworthy; it testifies to his leanings toward the sacred and the religious. It goes without saying that such a restless mind, which is torn in all directions by all the doctrines and miseries of the day, which feels the need to worry itself about all the concerns of humanity, which likes to poke its nose in all the kettles in which the good Lord cooks the future of the world – it goes without saying that Franz Liszt, in short, is no docile piano-player for peaceable burghers and good-natured sleepyheads.6

It would be tempting indeed to continue in this vein, citing from the many revealing pronouncements made by eminent contemporaries pro and contra Liszt the man and artist. But the foregoing testimonies will have to suffice here for an initial glimpse, however indirect, into the range of difficulties that impede sober critical evaluation of the intellectual stature of this complex and influential personality, of whom his latest biographer, Alan Walker, has written – persuasively, I believe – that he “was the central figure of the Romantic century (Berlioz and Wagner notwithstanding).”7 Considering any aspect of Liszt, be it musical, literary, philosophical, social, or political, we are dealing with a supranational, cosmopolitan, European phenomenon. Liszt and literature: this topic 6

Quoted in Ralph P. Locke, “Liszt’s Saint-Simonian Adventure,” 19th Century Music 4 (1981), p. 222. Published as “Lettres Confidentielles,” no. 2 in Revue et gazette musicale 5, no. 5 (February 4, 1838), p. 42. Locke’s English translation is based on Heine’s German original, published as “Bürgerliche Oper” in Allgemeine Theater-Revue (1837): 235-48.

7

Alan Walker, Franz Liszt. Volume I. The Virtuoso Years. 1811-1847 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983; revised edition 1987), p. 29. Walker’s pronouncement unmistakably echoes Bé1a Bartók’s firm conviction that Liszt’s significance for the future of music would prove to be greater than that of Wagner.

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alone is as vast as it is crucial to an understanding of nineteenthcentury European culture in general and of Liszt’s special contribution to it in particular. Clearly, my approach here will have to be selective and representative rather than exhaustive. For not only was Liszt the legendary pianistic genius and, like Paganini on the violin, a traveling superstar in our late twentieth-century sense of the word; he was also the composer of some thirteen hundred musical works, the author or partial author of six volumes of musico-literary writings, and an often dazzling correspondent, of whose letters some six thousand have survived. It is hardly surprising that by now, a century after his death, he has been the object of well over ten thousand books, monographs, essays, and articles. Eclecticism in the guise of a system is the paradox that perhaps best characterizes Liszt’s lifelong fascination and preoccupation with the world of ideas; and it is this eclecticism that permeated his life and his art, as well as his thinking about the arts. Discussing an unsystematic system systematically is difficult, if not impossible. To maintain at least a semblance of order, I shall proceed with my assessment under two broader, however inextricably intertwined, headings: Liszt and literature and literature in Liszt. By Liszt and literature I mean his literariness in the widest sense: his awareness of and attitude toward literature, the nature and extent of his literary knowledge, his genuine literary connections, and his predilection for certain authors and specific literary works, past and contemporary. By literature in Liszt I mean the demonstrable impact of literature and literary ideas on his music, instrumental as well as vocal music, including song. It is under this heading that I shall also consider Liszt the writer, musical essayist and critic, the theoretician of`his own, epoch-making programmatic approach to composition. In this context I shall touch briefly on the aim, representatives, and critical practice of the so-called New German School: Liszt’s circle of intimates during his crucial Weimar years (1848-1861). Liszt in literature, enticing at first as a possible third heading, proved to be less promising than expected and will not

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be discussed at all. Critical scrutiny of the many literary (and even more semi-literary) representations and echoes of Franz Liszt as an enigmatic, controversial artist figure revealed that reviewing them would have amounted to little more than a descriptive account of thinly veiled verbal caricatures prompted largely by jealousy or scandalous intrigue and of vacuous veneration frozen into fiction or occasional poetry of inferior quality.8 Young Liszt started his intellectual journey with a severe handicap: he had no formal schooling to speak of. Consequently, from early on his literary knowledge was totally self-acquired. This is understandable for a musical Wunderkind who, not unlike Mozart, already at a tender age had to endure the arduous life of a traveling virtuoso. Accompanied by his father, who acted as his impresario à la Leopold Mozart, Liszt roamed Europe in his early teens, conquering one aristocratic salon after another with his spectacular piano-playing. No wonder that he had little time left for reading and reflection. As a further disadvantage, he was also linguistically handicapped from the start. Although Hungarian-born, he could not speak Hungarian. As a child he spoke only German; but after he moved to Paris at age 12, for the rest of his life he preferred to speak, read, and write in French. Even after spending more than a decade in Weimar, he never managed to write proper, sophisticated German. Here the parallel with Beethoven’s disadvantaged cultural background suggests itself. Beethoven, too, was burdened with the lifelong predicament of the self-educated man: in spite of his tremendous determination and sustained efforts, he remained seriously deficient in languages other than his native German and could never make up fully for his lack of formal education in areas other than music. That he was an atrocious speller and could not perform simple multiplication is well known. More often than not, in his choice of literary readings 8

For a telling survey, see Karl Theodor Bayer, “Franz Liszt in der Dichtung,” Deutsche Musikkultur 1 (1936/1937): 226-32 and 285-96.

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Beethoven had to rely on instinct or chance which explains the perennial inconsistency in his judgments concerning literary value.9 By being in the right place at the right time, however, young Liszt had a much better chance to improve upon his cultural deficiencies than young Beethoven. Paris in the late 1820s and early 1830s was the undisputed capital of the art world, full of intellectual ferment. It was the ideal, sophisticated urban setting where poets, composers, painters, philosophers, and political activists congregated from all over Europe to work and mingle in bohemian conviviality and heated debate; they felt privileged to be able to witness and participate in what they sensed was artistic progress in the making: the unfolding of French Romanticism with a vengeance. This effervescent intellectual scene must have been overwhelming at first for the celebrated and ambitious but as yet virtually illiterate young piano virtuoso. He took advantage of it nonetheless and transformed himself with admirable determination and rapidity into the well-connected and broadly cultured cosmopolitan artist-musician posterity remembers. He read voraciously and indiscriminately, devouring the great Greek and Latin authors and philosophers, Dante, Shakespeare, and, of course, above all the classic canon of French literature, including Racine, Montaigne, Voltaire, and Rousseau. Already profoundly touched by the allure of Catholicism as a youngster, in Paris Liszt sought out the Christian philosopher-poet Félicité-Robert de Lamennais who became a kind of spiritual mentor and father confessor to him and introduced him to the earlier generation of Romantic writers such as Byron, Chateaubriand, Benjamin Constant, and Étienne Pivert de Senancourt and to religious writings. Before long, he was personally acquainted with many members of the literary elite of his time; and he could count among his more or less intimate friends Victor Hugo, Balzac, Alexandre Dumas père, Lamartine, Musset, George Sand, de Vigny, Mérimée, Gérard de Nerval, and 9

See Steven Paul Scher, “Beethoven and the Word: Literary Affinity or Artistic Necessity?,” Jahrbuch des Wiener Goethe-Vereins 84/85 (1980/8l): 121-31.

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Eugène Sue, as well as Heine and the Polish poet Mickiewicz, and the reigning critics Saint-Beuve and Gautier, to mention only the most prominent figures, many of whom also directly or indirectly inspired Liszt’s piano music and orchestral compositions. Hearing Paganini for the first time in concert in 1832 was one of Liszt’s most formative experiences. The way he described, in a letter to his pupil Pierre Wolff, the profound effect Paganini’s playing had on him reflects how inseparable musical and literary pursuits were to the 2l-year-old musician: For a whole fortnight my mind and my fingers have been working like two lost souls. Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Byron, Hugo, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber, are all around me. I study them, meditate on them, devour them with fury; besides this, I practice four to five hours of exercises .... Ah! provided I don’t go mad you will find in me an artist!10

The reading habits and literary tastes Liszt acquired during his years in Paris stayed with him for the rest of his life. In intellectual orientation he remained quintessentially French and he retained a strong preference for his favorite French authors: Hugo, Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Senancourt, and Lamartine. He particularly admired Hugo’s poetry, Senancourt’s melancholy, Romantic novel Obermann, and Lamartine’s poem cycles Harmonies poétiques et religieuses and Méditations, direct echoes of which we encounter in many of his compositions.11 In spite of Liszt’s predilection for French writing, the two works that loomed largest in his literary consciousness and inspired him to compose his perhaps greatest music did not belong to the French tradition: they were Goethe’s Faust and Dante’s Divine Comedy. Even if one is only casually acquainted with Liszt’s music, these two titles ring familiar; the Faust and Dante symphonies and the Dante Sonata 10 11

Quoted in Walker, pp. 173-74.

Cf. Léon Guichard, “Liszt et la littérature française,” Revue de musicologie 56 (1970): 3-34.

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are among Liszt’s best known works. The lasting impact of these two masterpieces of world literature on his creative production must be stressed above all, for it best exemplifies the paramount importance and perceptible presence of literature and literary ideas in Liszt’s music. It was Hector Berlioz who, upon their first meeting in 1830, the day before the premiere of his Symphonie fantastique, introduced Liszt to Goethe’s Faust. As Berlioz relates in his Mémoires: “I spoke to him of Goethe’s Faust, which he was obliged to confess he had not read, but about which he soon became as enthusiastic as myself.”12 Liszt proceeded to read Faust in Nerval’s French translation; and for the next half century he remained preoccupied, in some form or other, with the Faust idea. He first sketched out a plan for the Faust Symphony in the mid-1840s and worked on it intermittently and somewhat hesitantly in the early 1850s, for, as he remarked, “anything having to do with Goethe is dangerous for me to handle.”13 When in 1852 Berlioz dedicated his own La Damnation de Faust to him, Liszt took up the composition again and completed the score for the Weimar premiere in 1857, but was still improving upon it in 1880. According to recent musicological research, Liszt even contemplated writing an opera on the Faust theme, in collaboration with Nerval and Dumas as librettists.14 Eventually the project was abandoned and Liszt completed instead Eine Faust-Symphonie in Drei Charakterbildern (nach Goethe), for orchestra, tenor solo, and male chorus. As the full title of the symphony suggests, Liszt was primarily interested in capturing in music the essence of the personalities of the three protagonists –

12

Hector Berlioz, Mémoires (Paris, 1870). Translated by David Cairns (London: Gollancz, 1969), p. 139.

13

Quoted in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1980), vol. 11, p. 43.

14

See Eric Frederick Jensen, "Liszt, Nerval, and Faust. " 19th Century Music, 6 (1982): 151-58.

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Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles – to each of whom he devoted one of the three individual movements.15 Among his other Faust compositions are the Zwei Episoden aus Lenaus Faust for orchestra (1860), the second episode of which, entitled “Dance in the Village Inn,” is well known as the Mephisto Waltz. He also composed several more versions of the Mephisto Waltz in the 1880s and a piano transcription of Schubert’s Goethe lied “Gretchen am Spinnrade” that dates from the late 1830s. Just as the Faust theme, the monumental Dante projects also occupied Liszt for many decades. The continuous challenge they represented was ultimately in no small measure responsible for the gradual evolution of his theory of program music and for its more and more sophisticated realization in his daily compositional practice. According to music historian Donald Jay Grout, “nearly everything Liszt wrote either has an explicit programmatic title or can easily be imagined to have one.”16 As it happens, Liszt’s Dante Sonata for solo piano has not just one but two titles: “Après une lecture du Dante” and “Fantasia quasi sonata.” Consciously linking these two titles, Liszt was expressing emblematically his uncompromising, lifelong commitment to the grand idea of imbuing music with literature; an idea which he described as “a renewal of music through its intimate connection with poetry.”17 Indeed, the title “After a Reading of Dante” constitutes a double tribute to poetry, to Dante’s Divina commedia and to Hugo’s poem of the same title, while the second title beckons to the sphere of music; it pays homage specifically to Beethoven’s two piano 15

For the two best exhaustive treatments, see László Somfai, “Die musikalischen Gestaltwandlungen der Faust-Symphonie von Liszt,” Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 2 (1962): 87-137 and Constantin Floros, “Die FaustSymphonie von Franz Liszt. Eine semantische Analyse,” Musik-Konzepte 12 (1980): 42-87. 16 17

Grout, A History of Western Music (New York: Norton, 1973), p. 567.

Quoted in Gerald Abraham, A Hundred Years of Music (London: Duckworth, 1974), pp. 45-46.

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sonatas op. 27, both subtitled “Sonata quasi una fantasia”, and to Schumann’s Fantasie op. 17 for piano which Schumann dedicated to Liszt.18 Like the Faust project, the Dante Symphony also took a long time to mature: the first sketches date back to 1837 and the work was completed in 1856 in Weimar. Though Liszt called it a symphony, generically it is more like a symphonic poem. In addition to the title Eine Symphonie zu Dantes Divina commedia, the work’s programmatic character is underscored by the Dante quotations written in the score under the principal themes; a practice which encouraged contemporary critics to describe in detail what “happens” in the symphony. Skepticism may be fully justified when it comes to attempting to endow any piece of non-texted music with specific narrative content. Nevertheless, as reflected in the opening movement “Inferno,” for example, it must be conceded that Liszt was quite adept at conjuring up in musical images the despairing din of hell’s fearful whirlwind and the condemned souls.19 Even a century after his death, confusion and misunderstanding abound when critics try to assess Liszt’s contribution to nineteenthcentury musical aesthetics. This is all the more astonishing since the facts are well-known; along with Berlioz and other composers before and after him like Beethoven and Richard Strauss, Liszt was deeply concerned with exploring the possibilities of poetic expressiveness in music. He became a pioneering champion of program music, a designation he introduced into the critical literature. Distilled largely from his extensive theoretical writings, the meaning of program music is defined today – in contradistinction to “absolute” music, which possesses no extra-musical connotations – as instrumental music inspired 18

See Ronald Taylor, Robert Schumann: His Life and Work (London: Granada, 1982), pp. 142-44. 19

See Jean-Pierre Barricelli’s essay “Liszt’s Journey through Dante’s Hereafter,” in Barricelli, Melopoiesis. Approaches to the Study of Literature and Music (New York: New York University Press, 1988): 273-88 and 324-25.

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by or based on “a nonmusical idea, which is usually indicated in the title and sometimes described in explanatory remarks or a preface.”20 In 1854 Liszt coined the term “symphonic poem” (later also known as “tone poem”) for what has since become the most common type of such expressive instrumental music. Thus he can be credited with the invention of a new genre which he also exemplified by composing no less than thirteen symphonic poems, some of which he originally conceived as traditional symphonic overtures. Tasso (after Goethe), Les Préludes (after Lamartine), Mazeppa (after Hugo), Hamlet (after Shakespeare), and Die Ideale (after Schiller) are among Liszt’s better known symphonic poems inspired by specific literary works; and generically speaking we might as well include the Faust and Dante symphonies in this list. In his seminal essay entitled “Berlioz and His ‘Harold’ Symphony” (1855), Liszt formulated many of his influential thoughts on the nature and function of program music and on its significance for the music of his time, namely its modernity. He did not believe that music with a program had to be descriptive or illustrative of the poetic model; nor did he intend that the music narrate the poetic or dramatic action. He simply defined a program as a “preface added to a piece of instrumental music by means of which the composer intends to guard the listener against a wrong poetical interpretation, and to direct his attention to the poetical idea of the whole or to a particular part of it.”21 By no means was Liszt anxious or willing to divest music of its claim to the privilege of transcendental immediacy, as his adversaries, champions of absolute music like Eduard Hanslick, Brahms, Joseph Joachim and others, mistakenly believed:

20

Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music, comp. Don M. Randel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 402. 21

Franz Liszt, “Berlioz und seine ‘Harold-Symphonie’,” in Liszt, Schriften zur Tonkunst, ed. Wolfgang Marggraf (Leipzig: Reclam, 1981), p. 188. Translation quoted from New Grove Dictionary of Music, vol.15, p. 283.

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Heaven forbid that anyone, in holding forth on the utility, validity, and advantage of the program, should forswear the old faith and assert that the heavenly art [i.e. music] does not exist for its own sake, is not self-sufficient, does not kindle of itself the divine spark, and has value only as the representative of an idea or as an exaltation of language.22

Behind Liszt’s indefatigable efforts to introduce the poetic idea into his compositional practice there lurks the fundamental insight – which he never managed to articulate precisely enough and which, therefore, is still inadequately understood – namely, that music as an auditory, dynamic, and temporal medium of artistic expression (like literature) forever strives to overcome the ontological restrictions of its own nonreferential mode and aspires toward the aesthetic condition of poetry. This is perhaps what Liszt meant to convey in his often cited axiomatic statement: “Music in its masterpieces tends more and more to appropriate the masterpieces of literature.”23 Admittedly, Liszt’s critical prose is far from felicitous, though it is still more readable than Wagner’s: it is turgid and flowery in style, circuitous and often self-contradictory in logic, and opaque in diction. Also, since virtually none of Liszt’s writings survive in manuscript, we are not even certain that he authored any of them himself.24 But we do know that Liszt employed and exploited his two longterm mistresses, Countess Marie d’Agoult and Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, as ghost writers. Bertolt Brecht had the same idea a hundred years later, except on a grander scale; he had at least a dozen of his blindly devoted woman friends and lovers working for him.

22

Ibid., p. 191. English translation in Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in Music History. The Romantic Era (New York: Norton, 1965), p. 108.

23 24

Strunk, Source Readings, p. 128.

See Alexander Main, “Franz Liszt the Author, 1834-47: An Old Question Answered Anew,” in La Musique et le rite sacré et profane, vol. 2, eds. Marc Honegger and Paul Prevost (Strasbourg: Association des Publications près les Universités de Strasbourg, 1986): 637-56.

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At any rate, Liszt’s ideas must have appeared crystal-clear to his close associates and faithful disciples who chose to call their circle the ‘New German School’: talented young musicians such as Hans von Bülow, Joachim Raff, Carl Tausig, and Peter Cornelius (who also had poetic aspirations). They, along with a few other hangers-on, formed Liszt’s entourage in Weimar and worshipped him as a demigod. The ‘New Germans’ – or ‘musicians of the future,’ as they were dubbed by the enemy camp around Brahms, whom they dismissed as conservative – even found their theoretical spokesman in Franz Brendel who helped them proclaim Liszt’s program music and music drama à la Wagner to be the essence of musical progress. Brendel, Schumann’s successor as the influential editor of the leading music journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, was also the first critic to conjoin Wagner, Liszt and Berlioz as the great nineteenth-century musical trinity that still perdures.25 On balance, the exaggerated proselytizing efforts of the New German School produced simply too much rhetoric of veneration and not much else. The following, pricelessly abominable lines of occasional poetry, written by Peter Cornelius to celebrate the Master’s birthday, are typical of the grotesque, humorless atmosphere of adulation that must have prevailed around Liszt in Weimar: Liszt Ist Sporn Zur Tatentfaltung! Liszt Ist Seichten Zopftums Töter! Liszt Ist Seiner Zeiten Träger! Liszt Ist Seines Zeichens Titan! Liszt Ist Süßen Zaubers Trunken! Liszt Ist Schöpfer Zarter Töne! Hebt das Glas ihr Musensöhne! L – I – S – Z – T! Das ist Unser Wahlspruch. Vivat Liszt!

Liszt is spur to nascent deeds! Liszt is molding canons’ death! Liszt, his age’s pride and power! Liszt, with Titan strength endowed! Liszt, with sweet enchantment drunk! Graceful music’s fount and donor! Raise your glasses in his honor! Let that L – I – S – Z – T Our high pledge and maxim be!26

25

See Franz Brendel, Die Musik der Gegenwart und die Gesamtkunst der Zukunft (Leipzig: B. Hinze, 1852). 26

Quoted in Carl Maria Cornelius, Peter Cornelius. Der Wort- und Tondichter, (Regensburg: G. Bosse, 1925), vol. 1, p. 204. Matching English translation by Walter Arndt.

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No portrait of the literary Liszt, however selective, would be creditable without taking account of his activity as a composer of lieder; a significant aspect of literature in Liszt that until today has remained the least known, though undeservedly so. Throughout his career Liszt never tired of searching for the ideal way to combine words and music, in his songs as well as in his church music. He composed more than seventy songs in five languages, many of which exist in more than one version. There are 57 settings of German poems (mainly by Goethe and Heine) and eleven mélodies (most of them to poems by Victor Hugo), as well as five songs in Italian, three in Hungarian, and one each in English and Russian. Liszt’s songs, admittedly uneven in quality and seemingly lacking in generic homogeneity, are nevertheless particularly rewarding in that they are transparent enough individually or in small groupings to exhibit characteristic compositional strategies. The non-German songs display a fine sensitivity to the various national idioms. In stylistic orientation, however, his lied composition is predominantly German. “The lied is, poetically as well as musically, an intrinsic product of the Germanic Muse,” Liszt remarked in an essay on the song composer Robert Franz.27 Liszt had a special affinity for Heinrich Heine’s poetry and was at his best when setting poems of extreme brevity such as “Du bist wie eine Blume,” “Vergiftet sind meine Lieder,” and “Anfangs wollt ich fast verzagen.” The lieder inspired by these ingenious miniature love lyrics constitute a good case in point, for they exemplify the finest aspects of Liszt’s song-writing technique. Their range is impressive – from intimate, melancholy lyricism to violent, dramatic portrayal of emotional turmoil – and the musical treatment in them is subtle, spontaneous, direct, and disarmingly simple, matching the basic mood and form of the poems to virtual perfection. That such distinctive strategies are so consistently employed in compositions belonging to a genre not usually associated with Liszt’s 27

Franz Liszt, Schriften zur Tonkunst (Leipzig: Reclam, 1981), p. 253.

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genius confirms the need for a revaluation of Liszt’s contribution to song repertory as a sensitive musical interpreter of contemporary poetry.28 Also, it must be remembered that as virtuoso performer of his piano transcriptions and arrangements of lieder by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn (as well as his own), as frequent accompanist in lieder recitals all over Europe, and later as conductor of orchestral lieder (including his own orchestration of Schubert’s celebrated setting of Goethe’s ballad “Erlkönig”), Liszt was no doubt one of the chief propagators of the genre. Due in no small measure to his relentless efforts, the lied remained no longer confined to the drawing room but was channeled into the concert hall and became a prominent genre in nineteenth-century music.

28

A comprehensive and up-to-date critical assessment of Liszt’s song composition has been long overdue. For sporadic earlier studies, see J. Wenz, Franz Liszt als Liederkomponist (diss., Frankfurt am Main, 1921); Martin Cooper, “Liszt as a Song Writer,” Music and Letters 19 (1938): 171-81; and Christopher Headington, “The Songs,” in Franz Liszt: The Man and His Music, ed. Alan Walker (London: Barrie & Jenkins,1970): 221-47.

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Musicopoetics or Melomania Is There a Theory behind Music in German Literature? (1992) Committing sacrilege as a Germanist, but also hoping for instant absolution as a comparatist, I begin by calling attention to a recent work of literature that is decidedly non-German: But what about [his] music? It doesn’t get very good marks, because musicians don’t like dabblers, and literary men don’t like people who cross boundaries – especially musical boundaries. If you’re a writer, you’re a writer, and if you’re a composer, you’re a composer – and no scabbing.1

This allusive passage comes from Canadian novelist Robertson Davies’s delightful new book The Lyre of Orpheus (1988); and the dabbler whose music “doesn’t get very good marks” – and whose presence in a piece of contemporary Anglo-Saxon fiction comes as a pleasant surprise – is none other than the German romantic writer and composer E. T. A. Hoffmann! As a matter of fact, Davies’s novel abounds in true delights for the initiated; for example, his title The Lyre of Orpheus derives directly from Hoffmann’s celebrated 1810 critique of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony which, along with his other reviews of Beethoven’s music, was recast as fiction and, under the title “Beethoven’s Instrumentalmusik”, then became part of Hoffmann’s first published collection of narratives, the Fantasiestücke in Callot’s Manier (1814). To be sure, this essay will not trace the quaint details of Hoffmann’s late-twentieth-century reincarnation from limbo in Robertson 1

Robertson Davies, The Lyre of Orpheus (New York: Viking, 1988), p. 36.

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Davies’s novel, however tempting such a critical task might be. That I shall not be rehearsing here the many concrete instances where music and German literature intersect needs no apology, I think, especially in view of the panorama of the relevant authors, composers, and topics explored in considerable detail throughout the present volume. The fact alone that a splendid international conference could be organized on “Music and German Literature” confirms that there is no dearth of enduring musically inspired literary works and literarily inspired musical works. My concern here, as intimated in my quizzical title, is more comprehensive and general and thus more open to speculation: Is it possible to discern and articulate, however tentatively, certain currents and tendencies in aesthetic theorizing that underlie the evidently symbiotic relations between the two arts? In other words, I am interested in contemplating rather sweeping questions such as: What is the role of poetic and music theory, if any, in bringing about the reciprocal interaction that results in musico-literary practice? To what extent is the symbiotic relationship between music and literature something typically German? Is this latter question legitimate at all? To put it another way, how profitable – or even justifiable – would it have been to hold a symposium comparable to ours on “Music and French Literature” or “Music and English Literature”? What is it, then, that makes our topic a matter of course, a topic that needs no apology, nor elaborate explanation? Could it be perhaps the plain fact that music as an art form has traditionally been taken more seriously in the Germanspeaking lands than in other countries – especially by poets, writers, and critics, but also by the art-consuming public at large? Or would it be too simplistic to assert that since the German mind-set has always been more aesthetically inclined, the influential German philosophers like, say, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Adorno – or even Lukács – have all made a special, if not always felicitous effort to integrate closer scrutiny of the phenomenon of music into their aesthetic speculations, more so than thinkers of other nations?

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Clearly, there are no easy answers to such complex questions, but they do provide the larger philosophical and socio-political framework for our rather hermeneutically determined context. In the exploratory remarks that follow, inspired by the fine recent critical work on the subject, I shall try to be more specific. I am particularly indebted to the stimulating books and articles by the late Carl Dahlhaus, Lawrence Kramer, Norbert Miller, John Neubauer, and Ulrich Weisstein.2 Above all, I share with them – and intend to substantiate further – their conviction, stated succinctly by John Neubauer in the concluding paragraph of his 1986 study The Emancipation of Music from Language, that “reflections on literature and music are interdependent.”3 2

Each of these five scholars has written widely on musico-literary topics relevant to this essay, so I shall only mention here the studies that I found most directly useful. By Carl Dahlhaus: Musikästhetik (Cologne: Gerig, 1967); Die Idee der absoluten Musik (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1978); “Musik und Text”, in Dichtung und Musik: Kaleidoskop ihrer Beziehungen, ed. Günter Schnitzler (Stuttgart: Klett, 1979), pp. 11-28; “E. T. A. Hoffmanns Beethoven-Kritik und die Ästhetik des Erhabenen”, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 33 (1981): 79-92; Musikalischer Realismus: Zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Piper, 1982); “Kleists Wort uber den Generalbass”, Kleist Jahrbuch (1984): 13-24; and Klassische und romantische Musikästhetik (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1988). By Lawrence Kramer: Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1984) and “Expressive Doubling: Beethoven’s Two-Movement Piano Sonatas and Romantic Literature”, Studies in Romanticism 27 (1988): 175-201. By Norbert Miller: “Musik als Sprache: Zur Vorgeschichte von Liszts Symphonischen Dichtungen”, in Beiträge zur musikalischen Hermeneutik, ed. Carl Dahlhaus (Regensburg: Bosse, 1975), pp. 223-87; “Hoffmann und Spontini: Vorüberlegungen zu einer Ästhetik der romantischen opera seria”, in Wissen aus Erfahrungen: Werkbegriff und Interpretation heute. Festschrift für Herman Meyer zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Alexander von Bormann (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976), pp. 402-26 and “E. T. A. Hoffmann und die Musik”, Akzente 24 (1977): 114-35. By John Neubauer: The Emancipation of Music from Language: Departure from Mimesis in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1986) and “Die Sprache des Unaussprechlichen: Hoffmanns Rezension von Beethovens 5. Symphonie”, in E T. A. Hoffmann et la musique, ed. Alain Montandon (Bern: Lang, 1987), pp. 25-34. By Ulrich Weisstein: “Librettology: The Fine Art of Coping with a Chinese Twin”, Komparatistische Hefte 5/6 (1982): 23-42 and “Was ist die romantische Oper?: Versuch einer musiko-literarischen Begriffsbestimmung”, in Einheit in der Vielfalt: Festschrift für Peter Lang zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Gisela Quast (Bern: Lang, 1988), pp. 568-88. 3

Neubauer, Emancipation, p. 210.

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This notion is certainly not new. But it needs to be stressed and reasserted, particularly in literary circles, for many literary critics and theorists who are not actively involved in musico-literary scholarship are still skeptical (because insufficiently aware) of the substantial cross-disciplinary connections that exist – implicitly as well as explicitly – between musical and literary aesthetics. To demonstrate at least partially that there is indeed a theoretical dimension to our field, with considerable consequences also for literary theory, I would like to call special attention to one of these cross-literary connections which, as an influential theoretical construct, has been central to aesthetic debates for the last two centuries. The connection I mean is in fact a dichotomy; it is the perdurable conflict between absolute music (i.e., pure instrumental music) and vocal music (i.e., texted or textdependent music). More precisely I mean the radically polarized, mideighteenth century version of the age-old word-tone dichotomy that found an extraordinary poetological echo in romantic aesthetics. Critics generally agree that modern music theory is rooted in the literary and philosophical traditions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that it evolved together with the momentous changes in the longstanding hierarchy of the arts, and that it culminated around 1800 in the conceptualization of a poetically inspired “metaphysics of instrumental music” (to borrow Carl Dahlhaus’s phrase)4 – in the articulation of a new, romantic aesthetics of music which in expressive content was more literary than musical. Here is how Norbert Miller posits the essence of this development: Die Apotheose der reinen Musik (und damit die Ablösung der Oper durch die Symphonie als richtungweisender Gattung innerhalb der Musik) wird außerhalb

4

“Die ‘eigentliche’ romantische Musikästhetik ist eine Metaphysik der Instrumentalmusik.” (The “truly” romantic aesthetics of music is a metaphysics of instrumental music); Dahlhaus, Die Idee der absoluten Musik, p. 68.

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der Musikästhetik vorbereitet: in der Dichtung der Empfindsamkeit und der frühen Romantik.5

A new language was created to talk about music, and the inventors (as well as the avid first practitioners) of this new discourse were for the most part “melomaniacs”, writers such as Jean Paul, Wackenroder, Tieck Novalis, Kleist, and E. T. A. Hoffmann. The term “melomaniac” is not meant here pejoratively, even though it does have a ring of the amateurish about it. On the contrary! It is true that, except for Hoffmann (who was a professional musician) and possibly Wackenroder (who studied music and might have become one, had he lived longer), these writers were musical amateurs.6 But they were music lovers in the best sense of the word, for whom experiencing and contemplating a symphony bordered on religious devotion and who sincerely believed that music – and only music – could express the inexpressible.7 They were melomaniacs, because they were – each in his own, distinctively individual way, yet remarkably interdependent in their musico-poetic diction – “enamored with the expressive power of pure instrumental music and firmly convinced of the supremacy of

5

The apotheosis of pure music (which also meant that the symphony replaced opera as the leading musical genre) occurred outside of musical aesthetics: in the literature of the Age of Sensibility (“Empfindsamkeit”) and early romanticism; Miller, “Musik als Sprache”, 268-69.

6

Cf. Steven Paul Scher, “Temporality and Mediation: W. H. Wackenroder and E. T. A. Hoffmann as Literary Historicists of Music”, JEGP 75 (1976): 492-502.

7

“Die romantische Musikästhetik ist aus dem dichterischen Unsagbarkeits-Topos hervorgegangen: Musik drückt aus, was Worte nicht einmal zu stammeln vermögen [...] Die Entdeckung, daß die Musik, und zwar als gegenstands- und begriffslose Instrumentalmusik, eine Sprache ‘über’ der Sprache sei, ereignete sich, paradox genug, ‘in’ der Sprache: in der Dichtung” (Romantic aesthetics of music originated from the poetic topos of the unsayable: music expresses what words are not capable of expressing, not even when stammered [...] Paradoxically enough, the discovery that music – specifically instrumental music which cannot be objectified or conceptualized – was a language “above” language occurred “in” language itself: in literature); Dahlhaus, Die Idee der absoluten Musik, p. 66.

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music over the other arts, including poetry.”8 Their genuine, infectious enthusiasm for music enabled them to create a literature about music that corresponded to their conception of an ultimately unattainable literary semblance of music, of a literature as if it were music. As M. H. Abrams in his classic 1953 study The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition perceptively observes, “the attempt to make literature aspire to the condition of music motivated the description by German writers of sounding forms, musical fragrance, and the harmony of colors [...]”9 These melomaniacs’ predecessor was none other than Johann Gottfried Herder, the first in the long line of writer-cum-critic literati in the modern sense, who claimed, as early as 1769, that poetry, unlike painting and sculpture, is the music of the soul. A sequence of thoughts, pictures, words, tones is the essence of its expression; in this does it resemble music [...] Ode and idyll, fable and the speech of passion, are a melody of thoughts [...]10

Abrams concludes this seminal subchapter entitled “Expressive Theory in Germany: Ut Musica Poesis” by stating that literature was made to emulate music by substituting a symphonic form – a melody of ideas and images, a thematic organization, a harmony of moods – for the structural principles of plot, argument, or exposition.11

And Thomas Mann – musical connoisseur and Wagnerite par excellence, for whom music constituted “das reinste Paradigma” of his novelistic universe and who said about his own works in retrospect, “urteilt darüber wie ihr wollt und müßt, aber gute Partituren waren sie 8

Steven Paul Scher, Verbal Music in German Literature (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1968), p. 159.

9

M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Norton, 1958), p. 94. 10

Quoted by Abrams, ibid., p. 93.

11

Ibid., p. 94.

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immer”12 – is no doubt the most representative twentieth-century literary heir to this melomaniacal romantic disposition – whether or not we judge his pro domo sincerity to be genuine. Valid, historically substantiated critical insights of such a straightforward, descriptive nature abound in scholarly treatments of our topic. But to my mind the real challenge lies in contemplating the possibility of a coherent theoretical construct or unifying principle which would account for the mutually fruitful interplay of the inherently contradictory thought patterns and aesthetic utterances that comprise the realm of musicopoetics. Within the last decade, two important studies have taken up precisely this challenge, albeit in very different ways: Carl Dahlhaus’s Die Idee der absoluten Musik (1978) and John Neubauer’s The Emancipation of Music from Language (1986).13 As their titles intimate, both the musicologist Dahlhaus and the literary critic Neubauer are primarily concerned with the ideational background of instrumental music’s newly gained autonomy and its impact on subsequent aesthetic theorizing. Neubauer persuasively claims that it was above all the continuous tradition of mathematical and Pythagorean approaches to music that prepared the ground for the triumph of autonomous instrumental music in the eighteenth century and beyond and that, in turn, this “instrumental music aided the resurgence of certain mathematical and Pythagorean notions of music that formed the basis of a new aesthetics in Romanticism.’’14 Dahlhaus, in a magisterial anatomy of the idea of absolute music, traces the complex origins of what he calls the “metaphysical prestige” of absolute music15 back to specific late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century philosophical 12

The purest paradigm and however you may want to and must judge them, they were always good scores. Thomas Mann, Gesammelte Werke in 13 Bänden (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1974), 12:319.

13

See note 2 above.

14

Neubauer, Emancipation, p. 8.

15

Dahlhaus, Die Idee der absoluten Musik, p. 144.

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and poetological utterances. When it comes to literary sources to support his argument, Dahlhaus invariably invokes the melomaniacs named earlier: Jean Paul, Wackenroder, Tieck, Novalis, Kleist, and most often E. T. A. Hoffmann. For Neubauer’s mathematical orientation Novalis serves as chief German literary witness. I find these two studies to be complementary rather than mutually exclusive; and while I endorse their solid conceptual framework and convincing critical insights, I should like to venture a step beyond and propose that we entertain a related, and perhaps no less rewarding notion which requires only a slight shift in critical emphasis. I believe that the potential aesthetic relevance for musical and poetic theory and practice of the dichotomy between instrumental music and vocal music has yet to be fully assessed and appreciated. I suggest therefore, that instead of focusing more or less exclusively on the idea of absolute music as “das ästhetische Paradigma der deutschen Musikkultur des 19. Jahrhunderts”16 – as Dahlhaus has done with such inimitable aplomb – we now focus on both components of the dichotomy together as a dialectic entity: on wordless instrumental music together with its counterpart, which is never far away, word-dependent vocal music. For ultimately, the persistent creative tension in this dichotomy is always between music without and music with language, where language connotes referentiality and can mean, of course, both poetic language or literature in general (“Dichtung”). Once we begin to contemplate the meaning and nature of this dichotomy, we find it omnipresent in aesthetic theorizing from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present. In its capacity as an influential theoretical construct or paradigm, it also helps to explain and interpret the motivating forces behind the subtle changes in musical and literary genres around 1800 that signal the advent of modernism. Dahlhaus himself is surely

16

15.

The aesthetic paradigm of nineteenth-century German musical culture; ibid., p.

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aware of the far-reaching implications of the dichotomy for the history of aesthetics when he maintains: War die Instrumentalmusik zunächst, im 18. Jahrhundert, für die Common-senseÄsthetiker ein “angenehmes Geräusch” unter der Sprache gewesen, so wurde sie in der romantischen Metaphysik der Kunst zu einer Sprache über der Sprache erklärt. Der Drang aber, sie in die mittlere Sphäre der Sprache hineinzuziehen, ließ sich nicht unterdrücken.17

This model statement defines in bold strokes the three phases occasioned by the two crucial transformations that the dichotomy underwent until the end of the last century. It first changed from a mideighteenth-century instrumental music still subservient to textual dominance (as reflected in opera, oratorios, and early lied composition) to an instrumental music that – thanks largely to poetic mediation – shed its word-dependence and reigned supreme. This second phase is exemplified by the classical symphony. The third phase resulted from the irrepressible urge of nineteenth-century composers of symphonic music to reintegrate poetic content into instrumental music in the form of program music; an urge that is latently present even in Wagner’s through-composed music dramas, which Nietzsche still conceived of as symphonic music.18 For Nietzsche, Tristan und Isolde

17

If instrumental music had been a ‘pleasant noise’ beneath language to the common-sense aestheticians of the eighteenth century, then the romantic metaphysics of art declared it a language above language. The urge to draw it into the middle sphere of language could not be suppressed; ibid. 18

“Nietzsche hörte das Musikdrama als Symphonie; der Rest ist ‘Gaukelei’ oder Schutzwehr. Er übertrug also die – von Wackenroder, Tieck und E. T. A. Hoffmann über Schopenhauer tradierte – These, daß die Instrumentalmusik die ‘eigentliche’ Musik sei, auf Wagners Musikdrama (wie Schopenhauer sie auf Rossinis Opern übertragen hatte)” (Nietzsche heard the music drama as a symphony; the rest is ‘trickery,’ or defenses. Thus he applied the thesis that instrumental music was the true music – as transmitted by Wackenroder, Tieck, and E. T. A. Hoffmann via Schopenhauer – to Wagner’s music drama [as Schopenhauer had applied it to Rossini’s operas]); ibid., p. 38.

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constituted “das eigentliche opus metaphysicum aller Kunst.”19 Focusing on the continuous struggle between the two components of our dichotomy provides illumination for aesthetic problems where we least expect it. For example, it may put into question the hitherto obvious assumption that clearly mixed genres comprising music and literature like opera and other kinds of vocal music like oratorios, cantatas, masses, madrigals, and the lied are considered primarily musical. But in all honesty, will, say, librettology – a relatively recent branch of musico-literary study20 – eventually be able to correct this perceptual imbalance convincingly enough so that we will conceive of opera spontaneously as a musico-literary genre? I wouldn’t count on it; the original pull of autonomous instrumental music in the dichotomy remains just too strong. Also, most likely, a recital of, say, Hugo Wolf’s Mörike lieder will always be regarded first and foremost as a musical event. To take another example, even a cursory glance at the evolution of the lied – according to Liszt the most characteristically “intrinsic product of the Germanic Muse”21 – suffices to bear out the validity of focusing on the dichotomy as a dialectic entity. Only recently have scholars more securely at home in both literature and music begun to realize that it is precisely the inherent and persistent creative tension between the lied’s musical and verbal components – reflecting in miniature the relentless conflict within our dichotomy between absolute music and vocal music – that has propelled this symbiotic con19

The true opus metaphysicum of all art; Friedrich Nietzsche, “Richard Wagner in Bayreuth”, Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, Viertes Stück, in Nietzsche, Werke in drei Bänden, ed. Karl Schlechta (Munich: Hanser, 1966), 1:408. 20

For initial orientation, see Patrick J. Smith, The Tenth Muse: A Historical Study of the Opera Libretto (New York: Knopf, 1970); Klaus Günther Just, “Das deutsche Opernlibretto”, Poetica 7 (1975): 203-20; and Ulrich Weisstein, “Librettology”. 21

“Das Lied ist poetisch wie musikalisch ein der germanischen Muse angehöriges Erzeugnis” (The lied is, poetically as well as musically, an intrinsic product of the Germanic Muse); Franz Liszt, “Robert Franz” (1855), in Liszt, Schriften zur Tonkunst (Leipzig: Reclam, 1981), p. 253.

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struct into prominence as the representative German genre of nineteenth-century music (thus Dahlhaus),22 making it an influential catalyst and artistic manifestation of the Romantic movement. Lawrence Kramer’s 1984 study Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After is symptomatic of this innovative view of song interpretation. Kramer, a literary critic and musical analyst who is also a practicing composer, persuasively argues that the primary fact about song is what might be called a topological distortion of utterance under the rhythmic and harmonic stress of music: a pulling, stretching, and twisting that deforms the current of speech without negating its basic linguistic shape. The art song as a genre is the exploitation of this expressive topology – its shaping both as a primary musical experience and as a reflection of the contest between musical and poetic meaning.23

To be properly understood as the fundamental driving force in the lied which shaped the course and stages of the genre’s transformation throughout the nineteenth century, this “contest between musical and poetic meanings” must be seen in an evolutionary perspective.24 Not surprisingly, pre-Schubert song exhibits virtually none of the “pulling, stretching, and twisting” that Kramer finds so energizing in the lieder of the “nineteenth century and after”. Echoing Gottsched’s opinion of 1730 that “singing is nothing more than a pleasant and emphatic reading of a poem”25, Johann Friedrich Campe’s Wörterbuch of 1809 still

22

Cf. Carl Dahlhaus, Die Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: Athenaion, 1980), pp. 4, 44. 23

Kramer, Music and Poetry, p. 130.

24

For a more detailed critical treatment of this topic, see Steven Paul Scher, “The German Lied: A Genre and Its European Reception”, in European Romanticism: Literary Cross Currents, Modes, and Models, ed. Gerhart Hoffmeister (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 127-41. 25

Johann Christoph Gottsched, Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst, 4th ed. (Leipzig, 1751), p. 725.

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defined the lied as “a poem which is intended to be sung.”26 It is well known that for Goethe, an archconservative in musical matters, the desirable balance between poem and music in the lied still meant the primacy of word over tone; and Reichardt and Zelter, his loyal composer friends, supplied him with just the kind of unobtrusive strophic settings he envisioned. Goethe had good reason to resist, or outright dismiss, truly inspired settings of his poetry by Beethoven and Schubert. He realized instinctively that more adventurous exploration of the musical potentialities of the genre would lead to a freer, more expressive musical component which would eventually outshine the poetic component and even claim independence. By the end of the eighteenth century the lied as a genre was well on its way to becoming what Goethe feared it would: an act of “composed reading”, comprised decidedly more of music than of poetry.27 Indeed, from Schubert on, the typical pattern of musical foreground versus poetic background constituted the irreversible norm for the nineteenth-century lied. The musical shape and mood of the lied became so vivid and primary that the recollection of the poem itself, however memorable as great poetry, pales in comparison, as, for example, in Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s “Erlkönig” or Schumann’s setting of Eichendorff’s “Mondnacht”. Schumann even seems to have “thought of the Lied as a form of lyric piano piece – a ‘song without words’ but with words – and his habit of doubling the vocal melody of his lieder on the piano bears this definition out.”28 Further into the century, lied composers yielded more and more to the genuinely romantic impulse of trans26

Quoted in Walter Salmen, Haus- und Kammermusik: Privates Musizieren im gesellschaftlichen Wandel zwischen 1600 und 1900 (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1969), p. 32. 27

See Steven Paul Scher, “Comparing Poetry and Music: Beethoven’s GoetheLieder”, in Sensus communis: Contemporary Trends in Comparative Literature. Festschrift für Henry Remak, ed. János Riesz, Peter Boerner, and Bernhard Scholz (Tübingen: Gunther Narr, 1986), pp. 155-65. 28

Kramer, Music and Poetry, p. 131.

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forming the lied into pure instrumental music, as reflected in Liszt’s famous piano transcriptions of Schubert songs or in the tendency on the part of composers like Wolf, Mahler, and Richard Strauss to score lieder for voice and symphonic orchestra. The complexities of the theory and practice of nineteenth-century lied composition provide perhaps the most telling illustration for the presence of a creative tension between instrumental and vocal music, a notion central to musico-literary study which continues to be profitably explored by musicologists as well as literary critics. Another larger topic of related interest, which holds fascinating implications for genre theory in particular and late twentieth-century literary theory in general, also merits closer scrutiny: the elevation of the critical act by the melomaniac German romantic writers around 800 to a status comparable to the privileged status occupied by the creative act of producing works of art and Friedrich Schlegel’s pivotal mediating role in this privileging process. Specifically in this context, Schlegel’s few and scattered musings on music promise to yield important new insights: no matter how diffuse, dilettantish, and inconsequential they seem at first, they are very much in line with contemporary mainstream aesthetic theorizing and also cut to the core of his own, unsystematic philosophical system. The creative artist who emerges alongside Schlegel as the other prominent mediator in the privileging process is the multiply talented storyteller, composer, and music critic E. T. A. Hoffmann. His music criticism and music-inspired fiction possess a self-referential coherence that exemplifies the unifying theoretical foundation upon which interdependence of reflections on music and literature rests. Looking back to eighteenth-century and earlier musical and poetic theories as well as pointing forward to later (both nineteenth- and twentieth-century) ideas, Hoffmann’s musical writings occupy a seminal mediating position in the history of aesthetics: they successfully conjoin romantic musical and poetic theory and practice. Thus it is only fitting that Hoffmann was chosen as the model for the quintessential dabbler and conscious violator of the myopic, com-

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partmentalized thinking code that Robertson Davies’s succinct phrase “no scabbing” – in the passage quoted earlier from his novel The Lyre of Orpheus – so aptly captures. After all, more often than not, it is creative dabblers like Hoffmann – practicing artists and theorists in one – who function as prime catalysts of innovation and progress in the arts and art criticism and, as it happens, also in charting the course of musicopoetics and melomania that underlies modern German literature.

Hoffmann, Weber, Wagner The Birth of Romantic Opera from the Spirit of Literature? (1992) Musicians will be interested by the fullness with which the Author’s [Hoffmann’s] views on musical subjects – so much in advance of his age, and so just and accurate – are developed in many places, such as the dialogue called “The Poet and the Composer,” and the conversation which precedes the tale “Master Martin.” It would be of much interest could any of Hoffmann’s numerous musical compositions be brought to light at the present day; they appear to have been considerably in advance of their period, although Weber’s criticism on one of Hoffmann’s operas is full of high praise.1

This allusive comment comes from the translator’s Preface to the only complete English version so far of Die Serapions-Brüder (“The Serapion Brethren”), Hoffmann’s largest collection of narratives, originally published in 1819-21. Considering that he was writing in 1886, before serious Hoffmann research began with Georg Ellinger’s critical biography of 1894, British translator Major Alex Ewing appears to be remarkably well informed about Hoffmann’s merits as music critic and composer. Or is it, as I rather suspect, Major Ewing’s intelligent reader’s response that prompted him to alert the AngloSaxon public also to storyteller Hoffmann’s accomplishment in the field of music? Whatever the case may be, Ewing does single out two of Hoffmann’s most important critical treatises concerning musical aesthetics and history, both of which appeared first in the Leipzig music journal Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung: “Der Dichter und der Komponist” (“The Poet and the Composer”), 1813, and “Alte und

1

E. T. A. Hoffmann, The Serapion Brethren, trans. Major Alex Ewing. 2 vols. (London: George Bell and Sons, 1886 and 1892), I, iv.

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neue Kirchenmusik” (“Ancient and Modern Church Music”), 1814.2 The opera he refers to is obviously Undine, Hoffmann’s best musical opus, composed to Fouqué’s text in the years 1813-14 in Dresden and Leipzig and premiered in 1816 in Berlin.3 Weber’s enthusiastic 1817 review of Undine must also have been known in England as an important document of Romantic music criticism.4 But it is clear that Major Ewing and his contemporaries were unacquainted with any of Hoffmann’s music. The sad fact is that until today, even in musicological circles, Hoffmann’s music is not much better known than a hundred years ago. A few representative works like the Piano Trio, the Harp Quintet, his only symphony, the Miserere in B-flat minor, and excerpts from the singspiel Die lustigen Musikanten have been recorded in the last decade or so, on obscure labels.5 But there is still no recording of Undine, let alone any of his other operas or Singspiele. A curious state of affairs, to say the least – at a time when a commercial recording of eleven-year-old Mendelssohn’s accomplished but trifling singspiel Die beiden Pädagogen (1821) is readily available, with none other than Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the role of Dorfschullehrer Kinderschreck ... 2

Hoffmann later included both of these treatises in his Die Serapions-Brüder. See E. T. A. Hoffmann, Sämtliche Werke in fünf Einzelbänden, ed. Walter Müller-Seidel et al. (Munich: Winkler, 1960-65), III, 76-96 and 406-14, respectively. Hereafter quoted as Die Serapions-Brüder.

3

The piano score of Undine was published by Hans Pfitzner (Leipzig: Peters, 1906). The full orchestral score is available in E. T. A. Hoffmann, Ausgewählte musikalische Werke, vols. 1-3, ed. Jürgen Kindermann (Mainz: Schott, 1971-72).

4 Weber’s review was first published in the AMZ, 29 (1817), 201-208. Hereafter quoted as “Über die Oper Undine” from E. T. A. Hoffmann in Aufzeichnungen seiner Freunde und Bekannten, ed. Friedrich Schnapp (Munich: Winkler, 1974), pp. 382-88. An English translation is included in Carl Maria von Weber: Writings on Music, ed. John Warrack and trans. Martin Cooper (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 200-205, hereafter quoted as “On Undine.” 5

Cf. Gerhard Allroggen, “Vier Schallplatten mit Musik Hoffmanns,” der Mitteilungen E. T. A. Hoffmann-Gesellschaft, 21 (1975), 54-60 and “Eine neue HoffmannSchallplatte,” Mitteilungen der E.T.A. Hoffmann-Gesellschaft, 25 (1979), 60.

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Nor have Hoffmann’s views on music fared much better. Some of them, such as his memorable definition of music as the most Romantic of all the arts or his epoch-making interpretation of Beethoven as a Romantic composer – in the Kreisleriana piece “Beethovens Instrumentalmusik” – continue to be cited in both literary and music criticism, though often inaccurately and out of context. As for the selfcontained musical essays, the fate of “Der Dichter und der Komponist” is a case in point. The only detailed, though largely descriptive, analysis of this dialogue so far, by the American musicologist Aubrey S. Garlington,6 is based on a truncated English version from Oliver Strunk’s standard Source Readings in Music History.7 The fact remains that while there have been a few sporadic studies of selected musical essays and reviews, there exists no comprehensive critical assessment of Hoffmann’s music-oriented writings, not even in German.8 This is all the more astonishing, since no creditable interpretation of Hoffmann’s fictional universe can really do without an informed understanding of his original ideas as a critic and aesthetician of music and of his compositional activities. Since many of Hoffmann’s influential music-oriented writings have never even been translated, an annotated collection of them in English would be most welcome, executed perhaps along the lines of the recently published exemplary volume Carl Maria von Weber: Writings on Music, edited by John Warrack.9 If all this seems a roundabout way to get to my topic, I beg your indulgence. I first wanted to give some practical rea6

Aubrey S. Garlington, “E. T. A. Hoffmann’s ‘Der Dichter und der Komponist’ and the Creation of the German Romantic Opera,” Musical Quarterly, 65 (1979), 2247.

7

E. T. A. Hoffmann, “The Poet and the Composer,” in Source Readings in Music History: The Romantic Era, ed. Oliver Strunk (New York: Norton, 1965), pp. 42-57.

8

For example, Peter Schnaus’s circumspect E. T. A. Hoffmann als BeethovenRezensent der Allgemeinen Musikalischen Zeitung (Munich-Salzburg: Katzbichler, 1977) is so far the only monographic treatment of the music critic Hoffmann.

9

See note 4 supra.

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sons why Hoffmann’s all-important role – in initially formulating the concept of German Romantic opera and decisively influencing its subsequent development, which culminated in Wagner’s Lohengrin – has not been duly appreciated. Hoffmann, Weber, Wagner. Is it not presumptuous to link these three names, as if they suggested a particular line of tradition? The connection between Weber and Wagner hardly needs justification; as Jacques Barzun so delicately put it, “to indicate his indebtedness to Weber would be to catalogue some of Wagner’s most applauded innovations.”10 But Hoffmann – Weber and Wagner? What in particular made Hoffmann, of primarily literary fame, so significant for these two giants of nineteenth-century music? Certainly not the quality of his music; as a composer, Hoffmann would not survive comparison.11 But as a seminal literary figure who was an accomplished musician and also wrote inspired and original essays on music which felicitously combined aesthetic assessment and informed value judgements with expert technical analysis – in other words, as a unique blend of musician, music critic, and author of imaginative fiction – Hoffmann proved to be a major, indispensable source and model for both Weber and Wagner. There is an embarrassment of riches here that still awaits critical scrutiny and promises fascinating new insights, even about such an ‘underresearched’ artist as Wagner.12 All I hope to do in the 10

Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage (New York: Doubleday, 1958), p. 253.

11

For a reliable survey and characterization of Hoffmann’s musical oeuvre, see Gerhard Allroggen, E. T. A. Hoffmanns Kompositionen: Ein chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis seiner musikalischen Werke mit einer Einführung (Regensburg: Bosse, 1970).

12

The affinities linking Hoffmann, Weber, and Wagner had been noticed and described in detail long ago; see e. g. Hans von Wolzogen, E. T. A. Hoffmann und Richard Wagner: Harmonien und Parallelen (Berlin, 1906) and Hedwig Guggenheimer, “E. T. A. Hoffmann und Richard Wagner,” Richard Wagner-Jahrbuch, 2 (1907), 165206. It is disappointing to note that even recent, on the whole more analytical, scholarship continues to offer little more than uncritical descriptive enumeration of obvious thematic echoes and parallels. Cf. Linda Siegel, “Wagner and the Romanticism of E.

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following is to suggest some salient affinities and specific points of tangency that may be discerned in Weber’s and Wagner’s creative assimilation of Hoffmann’s ideas. My focus will be on the lasting literary, critical, and musical inspiration that Weber and Wagner derived, each in his own way, from Hoffmann’s dialogue “Der Dichter und der Komponist” and from their acquaintance, direct or indirect, with the opera Undine. But first a few facts, for the specter of biography still looms large, especially whenever Wagner is concerned. The year 1813 is momentous for our context. As it happens, Hoffmann – the newly appointed musical director of Joseph Seconda’s opera company, which alternately performed in Dresden and Leipzig amidst wartime peril – arrives in Leipzig the day after Wagner’s birth and befriends at once father Carl Friedrich and uncle Adolph Wagner. For Hoffmann, 1813 is a year of astounding productivity: he publishes “Der Dichter und der Komponist” in the AMZ and is simultaneously at work on Der goldene Topf and on the composition of Undine. Weber – like Hoffmann, a regular contributor of music criticism to the AMZ since 1809 – has just become opera director in Prague and is energetically engaged in fostering the cause of German opera. Two years earlier he had met Hoffmann briefly in Bamberg. So that we see the significance of Hoffmann’s dialogue and his opera Undine in the proper perspective, we must also recall the state of

T. A. Hoffmann,” Musical Quarterly, 51 (1965), 597-613; Klaus Gunzel, “Die verbrüderten Geister. E. T. A. Hoffmann und Richard Wagner,” in Bayreuther Festspiele 1970. Programmheft VII: Der fliegende Holländer, ed. Festspielleitung (Bayreuth, 1970), pp. 9-16; Hans E. Valentin, “E. T. A. Hoffmann und Carl Maria von Weber oder: Von Mozart zu Wagner,” Acta Mozartiana, 23 No. 2, (1976), 25-30; Marc A. Weiner, “Richard Wagner’s Use of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s ‘The Mines of Falun’,” 19thCentury Music, 5 (1981-82), 201-14; Dieter Borchmeyer, Das Theater Richard Wagners: Idee – Dichtung – Wirkung (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982), passim; and Ingeborg Köhler, “Richard Wagner und E. T. A. Hoffmann,” Mitteilungen der E. T. A. Hoffmann-Gesellschaft, 29 (1983), 36-40. – My research was concluded in October 1983.

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German opera in 1813.13 Above all, French and Italian opera dominated the contemporary German stage, alternating with lightweight Singspiele of enormous popularity such as Friedrich Himmel’s Fanchon, das Leyermädchen (1804), set to a shallow text by Kotzebue and hardly memorable, except for Hoffmann’s passing mention of it for local color in Ritter Gluck (1809). The operas of Gluck and Mozart were rarely performed. The final version of Beethoven’s Fidelio was not yet ready. After Abu Hassan in 1811, Weber did not compose any operas until 1817 when he started working on Freischütz. Spohr’s Faust, though completed in 1813, was not produced until 1816 in Prague, by Weber himself. Certainly the stagnant German operatic scene was ripe for a breakthrough; and Hoffmann envisioned his and Fouqué’s joint venture as just such a breakthrough, a veritable ‘Kunstwerk der Zukunft,’ as it were. That the opera did not quite live up to his expectations was chiefly Fouqué’s fault. But more of Undine later. We must remember that in the fall of 1813 Hoffmann was still primarily a professional musician, albeit a very literary one: he wrote “Der Dichter und der Komponist” shortly after he finished composing the first act of Undine. With eight Singspiele and operas to his credit by that time, including his latest, Aurora, a grand heroic opera of 1812, he was an expert practitioner of musical theater.14 But his dialogue’s framework is conspicuously literary. Hoffmann presents an animated conversation on opera between two old schoolfriends;

13

See especially Richard Engländer, “The Struggle between German and Italian Opera at the Time of Weber,” Musical Quarterly, 31 (1945), 479-91; Siegfried Goslich, Die deutsche romantische Oper (Tutzing: Schneider, 1975); Edward J. Dent, The Rise of Romantic Opera, ed. Winton Dean (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976); Aubrey S. Garlington, “German Romantic Opera and the Problem of Origins,” Musical Quarterly, 63 (1977), 247-63; and John Warrack, “German Operatic Ambitions at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century,” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 104 (1977-78), 79-88. 14

Cf. Hermann Dechant, E. T. A. Hoffmanns Oper “Aurora” (Regensburg: Bosse, 1975) and Allroggen, note 11 supra.

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Ludwig, a composer, and Ferdinand, a poet, meet by chance in vividly portrayed war-torn Dresden. Typically, the same Ludwig and Ferdinand turn up once again as the conversational protagonists in another popular Hoffmann story, Die Automate (1824). The operatic dialogue’s fictional frame must have made a particularly lasting impression on both Weber and Wagner who, as is well known, had very definite literary ambitions themselves. There is no question that they both were intimately familiar with “Der Dichter und der Komponist.” Weber, in fact, is at his literary best in chapter 5 of his semi-autobiographical and quintessentially Romantic novel fragment Tonkünstlers Leben, eine Arabeske, on which he worked intermittently between 1809 and 1820, and all of which is demonstrably inspired by Hoffmann’s fictional universe and critical speculations.15 Chapter 5 is specifically indebted to Hoffmann’s dialogue, both in subject matter and narrative design: Weber offers music theory and criticism in the form of dramatized fiction, very much à la Hoffmann. What starts out as a conversation between Felix, the composer hero, and his friend Diehl on whether Schiller’s Wallenstein ought to be presented on stage uncut or abridged, soon gives way to Felix’s critical analysis of the contemporary operatic scene. As for Wagner, his creative assimilation of the ideas and formulations that he first encountered in Hoffmann’s dialogue can be regarded as the earliest major source of inspiration for his lifelong preoccupation with operatic theory and practice and with the complex interrelation of word and tone.16 Also, no matter how ultimately naive and 15

Cf. Steven P. Scher, “Carl Maria von Weber’s Tonkünstlers Leben: The Composer as Novelist?” Comparative Literature Studies, 15 (1978), 30-42. 16

Cf. Reinhard Gerlach, “Musik und Sprache in Wagners Schrift Oper und Drama. Intention und musikalisches Denken,” in: Richard Wagner. Werk und Wirkung, ed. Carl Dahlhaus (Regensburg: Bosse, 1971), pp. 9-39; Curt von Westernhagen, “Wagner as a Writer,” in The Wagner Companion, eds. Peter Burbridge and Richard Sutton (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979), pp. 341-64; Ronald Taylor, Richard Wagner: His Life, Art and Thought (London: Elek, 1979), passim; Martin GregorDellin, Richard Wagner. Sein Leben, sein Werk, sein Jahrhundert (Munich: Piper, 1980), passim; and Borchmeyer, note 12 supra, passim.

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amateurish, his numerous belletristic prose efforts – among them “Der Virtuose und der Künstler” (1840), “Eine Pilgerfahrt zu Beethoven” (1840), “Ein Ende in Paris” (1841), and “Ein glücklicher Abend” (1841) – all bear definite traits of Hoffmann’s fiction and critical writings.17 It is characteristic, of course, that Wagner nowhere refers explicitly to “Der Dichter und der Komponist” or to any other pieces of Hoffmann’s music criticism, though he does acknowledge repeatedly his profound debt to the tales of his favorite German storyteller.18 Forever the self-stylizer, like Brecht, Wagner was always mindful of covering his traces. While in specific detail Hoffmann’s argument adheres to what he envisioned and defined in “Der Dichter und der Komponist” as the genuinely Romantic opera, the main issues he raises are those of a broadly conceived poetics of opera. The most crucial questions are, of course, the most universal ones. But they also remain directly relevant to Hoffmann’s own ultimately unresolved dilemma as opera composer. Why should the composer not write his own libretto? Why are good poets so reluctant to write opera texts? Would it not be ideal, after all, if the poet and the composer were united in one and the same person? These are loaded questions indeed; and their discussion yields stimulating insights that could hardly have escaped attentive readers like Weber and Wagner. Ludwig, the composer, confesses, for example, that it would be most debilitating for him to have to think of inventing the appropriate words while composing the music, to have to get bogged down in the frustrating act of versification, for “in the moment of musical inspiration every word or phrase would seem inadequate and weak, and the composer would have to descend from his height in order to beg for the bare means of existence in the lower 17

“The Virtuoso and the Artist;” “A Pilgrimage to Beethoven;” “An End in Paris;” and “A Happy Evening.” English translations all conveniently in one volume: Richard Wagner: Stories and Essays, ed. Charles Osborne (London: Owen, 1973).

18

Richard Wagner, Mein Leben (Munich: Bruckmann, 1911), I, 17, 26, 43, 80, 85, 86, and passim.

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realm of words.”19 Surely, Hoffmann is talking here pro domo, trying to justify himself for not having provided his own Undine text. Ludwig’s contention also throws light on why Weber – himself of sound literary judgement – never considered writing his own libretti no matter how much grief he had to endure in his collaboration with Friedrich Kind, the myopic librettist of Freischütz, not to mention Helmina von Chézy and her embarrassingly feeble text for Euryanthe. As a composer, Weber, like Hoffmann, wanted to meddle in the poet’s task as little as possible. But when writing poetry, Weber had a knack for verse parody, as the following, pricelessly abominable two concluding lines from his humorous poem “Verspottung des eigenen Versemachens” (”Mocking One’s Own Versifying”) convey: Angstschweiß brandheiß gleißt Wang’ ab! Sprache – renkst, schränkst, kränkst ihn ins Grab!20

The veiled reference to his own, bitter experiences with librettists is unmistakable when he adds in prose: Well, who compels me to attempt writing verse?! [...] That’s what happens; he who scolds other people’s children gratuitously has the greatest trouble with his own; whatever I found bad in bad poetry is paid back to me doubly in my own offspring.21

19

“[...] in dem Augenblick der musikalischen Begeisterung würden ihm [dem Komponisten] alle Worte, alle Phrasen ungenügend – matt – erbärmlich vorkommen, und er müßte von seiner Höhe herabsteigen, um in der untern Region der Worte für das Bedürfnis seiner Existenz betteln zu können” (Die Serapions-Brüder, note 2 supra, p. 81). English translation by Ulrich Weisstein, in The Essence of Opera, ed. Weisstein (New York: Norton, 1964), p. 169. 20

Carl Maria von Weber, Kunstansichten: Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Karl Laux (Leipzig: Reclam, 1969), p. 283. For optimal effect, these two lines best remain untranslated. 21 “Ja, wer heißt mich denn Verse versuchen? [...] So geht’s; wer andrer Leute Kinder unberufen tadelt, erfährt das größte Leid an den eigenen; was ich je an schlechten Versen schlecht gefunden, zahlt sich mir doppelt heim in den eigenen Kindern.” Ibid., p. 284.

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It was above all the dearth of suitable libretti that so severely impeded the development of German opera. We know well how desperately Beethoven searched throughout his career for appropriate texts and – apart from Fidelio – never found any to his liking.22 No wonder that after the opening performance of Euryanthe, which was immediately dubbed Ennuyanthe, he remarked: “Always the same old story: German poets cannot put together a good book.”23 Marschner’s lament from 1856 likewise reflects the hopelessness of the situation: Among the 61 opera texts that were sent to me, there was not a single one that offered even one reasonable idea for revision. What is one to do? Keep silent altogether, get old, let the well dry out, so as not to spread the word that German poets cannot write operas?24

As to be expected, Wagner’s attitude toward the poet-composer relationship was markedly different from Weber’s. Hoffmann’s dialogue triggered Wagner’s speculations on this crucial topic early in his career and he never really stopped reflecting about it, often contradicting himself in the process. He began quite consciously as a writer of opera texts for his own use. But as late as 1851, at the end of Opera and Drama, he was still haunted by questions similar to the ones he first encountered in “Der Dichter und der Komponist”: “Has the poet to restrict himself in presence of the musician, and the musician in presence of the poet?” and “Ought we to think of the poet and musician as

22

See Steven P. Scher, “Beethoven and the Word: Literary Affinity or Artistic Necessity?,” Jahrbuch des Wiener Goethe-Vereins, 84/85 (1980/81), 130-31. 23 24

Engländer, note 13 supra, 487.

“Unter den 61 mir zugeschickten Opernbüchern war auch nicht eines, das nur eine vernünftige Idee zu einer Umarbeitung dargeboten hätte. Was soll man tun? Ganz stillschweigen, alt werden, den Quell versiegen lassen, um es nicht laut werden zu lassen, daß die deutschen Dichter keine Opern dichten können?” Marschner in a letter to Carl Herloßsohn, dated June 9, 1856. Quoted in Martin Ehrenhaus, “Die Bedeutung der deutschen Romantik für das moderne Musikdrama,” Die Musik, 45 (1912), 269. Translation mine.

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two persons or as one?”25 It is clear from his scattered remarks that he saw himself progressing from librettist to poet to poet-composer: From here [Holländer] begins my career as a poet, and my farewell to the mere concoctor of opera texts. [...] From here on in all my dramatic works I was first a poet, and only after the completion of the poem did I become a musician again. Only I was a poet who was aware in advance of the possibilities of musical expression for the completion of his texts.26

These revealing comments from Wagner’s Eine Mitteilung an meine Freunde, 1851 (A Communication to My Friends) echo the initial, more general definition of opera from Hoffmann’s dialogue, according to which “only that work can be a true opera in which music is a necessary and direct outgrowth of the poetry.”27 The connection is also evident when we listen to composer Ludwig’s curiously selfcontradictory elaboration: I maintain that like the musician, the librettist must immediately compose everything he conceives, and that it is only the distinct awareness of particular melodies and notes as distributed among the various voices and instruments and the com-

25

“Hat sich der Dichter dem Musiker, und der Musiker dem Dichter gegenüber zu beschränken?” and “[...] ob wir uns Dichter und Musiker in zwei Personen, oder nur in einer zu denken haben sollen?” Richard Wagner, Dichtungen und Schriften, Jubiläumsausgabe in zehn Bänden, ed. Dieter Borchmeyer (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1983), VII, 344 and 347. English translations in Wagner on Music and Drama: A Compendium of Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, ed. Albert Goldman and Evert Sprinchorn, trans. H. Ashton Ellis (New York: Dutton, 1964), pp. 231 and 233. 26

“Von hier an [Holländer] beginnt meine Laufbahn als Dichter, mit der ich die des Verfertigers von Operntexten verließ [...] Ich war von nun an in Bezug auf alle meine dramatischen Arbeiten zunächst Dichter, und erst in der vollständigen Ausführung des Gedichtes ward ich wieder Musiker. Allein ich war ein Dichter, der des musikalischen Ausdrucksvermögens für die Ausführung seiner Dichtungen sich im voraus bewußt war.” Richard Wagner, Dichtungen und Schriften, VI, 239 and 295. Translation mine. 27

“Eine wahrhafte Oper scheint mir nur die zu sein, in welcher die Musik unmittelbar aus der Dichtung als notwendiges Erzeugnis derselben entspringt” (Die Serapions-Brüder, note 2 supra, p. 83). Translation by Weisstein, note 19 supra, p. 170.

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plete mastery over the inner realm of tones which distinguish the former from the latter.28

Hoffmann’s definition of Romantic opera, “with its fairies, spirits miracles, and metamorphoses, [...] as the only true one, for music is at home only in the realm of Romanticism”29 – along with formulations like “Only the inspired poet is capable of writing a truly Romantic opera, for he alone can transport the wondrous phenomena from the spirit realm into everyday life”30 – pronouncements such as these obviously left a deep impression on Wagner and were directly responsible for his beginnings as poet and composer. For example, young Wagner simply took Hoffmann’s enthusiastic recommendation to heart that Gozzi’s dramatic fairy tales offered a rich, hitherto untapped source of splendid operatic subjects and based Die Feen (1834), his first full-scale Romantic opera, on Gozzi’s La donna serpente. Once again, in his reminiscences Wagner talks only about Gozzi and keeps silent about Hoffmann’s mediating role.31 Finally, just one more striking detail (and there are many more). In the short essay “Über die Benennung ‘Musikdrama’” from 1872, Wagner neglects to mention where he found the earlier form “das musikalische Drama,” out of which he fashioned as his own coinage the term “Musikdrama”:32 in 28

“Ich behaupte, der [Operndichter] muß ebenso gut gleich alles im Innern komponieren, wie der Musiker, und es ist nur das deutliche Bewußtsein bestimmter Melodien, ja bestimmter Töne der mitwirkenden Instrumente, mit einem Worte die bequeme Herrschaft über das innere Reich der Töne, die diesen von jenem unterscheidet” (Die Serapions-Brüder, p. 89). Translation ibid., pp. 174-75. 29

“[...] mit ihren Feen, Geistern, Wundern und Verwandlungen, [...] [als] die einzig wahrhafte, denn nur im Reich der Romantik ist die Musik zu Hause” (Die SerapionsBrüder, pp. 83-84). Translation, ibid., pp. 171. 30

“Eine wahrhaft romantische Oper dichtet nur der geniale, begeisterte Dichter: denn nur dieser führt die wunderbaren Erscheinungen des Geisterreichs ins Leben.” (Die Serapions-Brüder, p. 84). Translation, ibid.

31 32

Wagner, Mein Leben, note 18 supra, pp. 90-92.

Wagner, Dichtungen und Schriften, note 25 supra, IX, 272. Hoffmann first used the term “musikalisches Drama” to describe the symphony, which he also called “die Oper der Instrumente,” as early as 1809 (cf. Hoffmann, Sämtliche Werke, note 2

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“Der Dichter und der Komponist,” of course, employed for the first time as a synonym for opera. And now, let me turn briefly to Undine. Weber knew Hoffmann’s opera thoroughly: he attended three performances of it in Berlin and even borrowed the score from Hoffmann before he wrote his famous review in 1817. The question of Wagner’s acquaintance with Undine, on the other hand, is fascinating, however ultimately moot; what little evidence we have is merely circumstantial. All we know is that Wagner’s uncle Adolph, who had a formative influence on young Richard’s intellectual development, was Hoffmann’s closest friend in Leipzig, and that Hoffmann played through the Undine score for him on the piano.33 Adolph Wagner was also the translator of Fouqué’s story into Italian and knew Fouqué personally. Given this constellation, it is unlikely that Richard Wagner had no knowledge of at least the existence of Hoffmann’s opera (and that he did not want to find out more about it), though – curiously enough – there is no trace anywhere of his acquaintance with Hoffmann as a musician. But Wagner must have known Weber’s review. And the night before he died, on February 12, 1883, Wagner was reading Fouqué’s Undine to Cosima and friends.34 More important in our context is that Weber recognized the direct correlation between Hoffmann’s pioneering poetics of Romantic opera as formulated in “Der Dichter und der Komponist” and his Undine as the attempt to translate these aesthetic speculations into operatic practice. Weber’s attitude toward ‘anxiety of influence’ tellingly reflects his method of reception: supra, vol. 5, Schriften zur Musik: Nachlese, pp. 24 and 19.) Nietzsche employed the term “Musikdrama” in his 1870 lecture “Das griechische Musikdrama.” According to Borchmeyer (note 12 supra, pp. 92, 94, and 104), Wagner persuaded Nietzsche never again to use this term. 33

Friedrich Schnapp, ed., Der Musiker E. T. A. Hoffmann: Ein Dokumentenband (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1981), pp. 380-81. 34

Taylor, note 16 supra, p. 245.

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Whenever we discern a pronounced individual trait in creations of our predecessors which is a necessary one if the work is supposed to be a work of art, then we must study this trait, use it as a model, and try to incorporate it into our work.35

Indeed, without Weber’s creative assimilation of Undine, together with Hoffmann’s dialogue, his Freischütz – which as a model gave the decisive impetus to the subsequent evolution of German Romantic opera through Marschner to Wagner – would hardly have been possible. Hoffmann’s choice of subject matter for his “Zauberoper” conforms to his composer Ludwig’s prescription: Fouqué’s Romantic narrative portrays the intervention of the supernatural – the fairytale world of water sprites, ghosts, and miraculous happenings – in the everyday world of medieval courtly life, with its dark secrets and concealed identities behind the protective façade of class structure and religion. Unfortunately, Fouqué turned out to be a rather inept adapter of his own story; the libretto is seriously flawed, both dramatically and linguistically. As Weber observed: “the author in fact knew his own story only too well, so that he has often been betrayed into a kind of self-deception – the belief that others would know it as well as he did himself.”36 But Hoffmann did his best to compensate musically and conceptually for the awkwardness of the text. Whatever literary sophistication Undine seems to possess, is in fact musical. The extra dimension of emotional and psychological depth stems from Hoffmann’s individualized musical characterization of the protagonists and their surroundings. Literarization of the ideational content through 35 “Wenn wir an Schöpfungen unserer Vorgänger irgendeine scharf ausgeprägte Eigenart erkennen, die notwendig da sein muß, wenn die Arbeit ein Kunstwerk sein soll, so müssen wir dieselbe studieren, sie nachbilden und unserm Werk in gleichem Maße mitzuteilen versuchen.” Quoted in Edgar Istel, Die Blütezeit der musikalischen Romantik in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1909), p. 142. 36

“Hr. von Fouqué kannte das Märchen gar zu gut, und da ist denn oft eine Art von Selbsttäuschung möglich, die auch die Andern wissend glaubt.” “Über die Oper Undine,” note 4 supra, p. 385; “On Undine,” note 4 supra, p. 203.

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musical empathy or the attempt to capture in musical expression the basic idea that governs the work as a whole – this is how I would define Hoffmann’s overall compositional strategy that Weber found particularly admirable. It is the same strategy that enabled Weber to endow his Freischütz with the very musical qualities that made it into a spectacular and lasting success. To convey the theatrically effective intrusion of supernatural forces and horror à la Wolf’s Glen into the life of simple, superstitious country folk surrounded by the typically German forest atmosphere, Weber composed ingenious, folklike yet original music that gave the work an unmistakably German character. Both Undine and Freischütz still contain many Singspiel elements. But it was Hoffmann’s Undine that first began to open up the by then stagnant German Singspiel matrix wide enough so that it could accommodate the many novel features of early nineteenth-century musical theater which, in integrated form, later found their way into the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk.37 I can only allude here in summary fashion to some of these innovative aspects and practices. Redemption through pure love is the basic idea underlying Undine; it is employed here for the first time in operatic history, only to reappear fully exploited in Wagner as the central theme of his Romantic operas as well as his later music dramas. Or, to mention another obvious parallel, Undine concludes on a tragic note, literally with a Liebestod – the word itself occurs in the libretto38 – with a scene that prefigures the finale of Tristan and Isolde. Also, Hoffmann’s consistent organization of musical material around certain descriptive motifs, manipulated symphonically and developed for psychological impact, foreshadows Weber’s and Wagner’s leitmotiv technique. Other pioneering compositional devices include tone painting in order to achieve pictorial representation by means of specific orchestral effects (i. e., the appro37 As John Warrack aptly observes, “the history of German Romantic opera is to a large extent that of its progress towards the Gesamtkunstwerk of Wagner.” Warrack, note 13 supra, p. 85. 38

Undine, piano score, note 3 supra, p. 235.

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ximation of the watery background surrounding Undine), conspicuously placed dissonances to bring about a ghostly aura, and the creation of mysterious sound effects through a calculated mingling of tone colors in the lower register of the woodwinds and accompanied by pianissimo wind instruments. Undine, Hoffmann’s pioneering contribution to German Romantic opera, fully confirms John Warrack’s generalizing insight that the “works of those who hoped for a native German opera in the primitive years and in the growth of the uncertain young tradition contain much of what is of value in its own right, not merely as anticipation of what might lie ahead.”39 Yet it is equally clear that much of the value of Hoffmann’s opera rests in its enduring resonance for subsequent composer generations. The short aria “Wer traut des laun’gen Glückes Flügeln” of the lovely water-nymph Undine from Act II, for example, is a good illustration for Weber’s concrete creative assimilation of Hoffmann’s musical ideas. Undine’s music – according to Weber’s review – “is alternately playfully rippling and striking enough to suggest her magic powers.” Weber calls attention specifically to this aria as the one “that most successfully suggests both sides of Undine’s character; and indeed the treatment is so charming and spirited that it may well serve as a sample of the whole work [...].”40 In Ännchen’s aria “Kommt ein schlanker Bursch gegangen” from Freischütz, Weber unmistakably echoes the basic melodic and rhythmic contours in Undine’s aria:41 39 Warrack, note 13 supra, p. 87. Warrack’s insight is persuasively argued and substantiated in Jürgen Schläder’s monograph Undine auf dem Musiktheater (Bonn: Bouvier, 1979). 40

“[...] Undine, deren Tonwellen bald lieblich gaukeln und kräuseln, bald auch mächtig gebietend ihre Herrschaft künden” and “Höchst gelungen und ihren ganzen Charakter umfassend, dünkt Ref. die Arie im 2ten Act, die so ungemein lieblich und geistvoll behandelt ist, daß sie als ein kleiner Vorgeschmack des Ganzen dienen kann.” “Über die Oper Undine,” note 4 supra, p. 386; “On Undine,” note 4 supra, p. 204.

41

Undine, piano score, note 3 supra, p. 105; Carl Maria von Weber, Der Freischütz, Complete Vocal and Orchestral Score (New York: Dover, 1977), p. 86 and 88. Cf.

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Weber in his review was certainly correct in pointing to Kühleborn as the central figure of the opera: “The most powerful impression is made by Kühleborn [...] and the characteristic melodies and instruments which always accompany him and announce his uncanny presence.”42 Indeed, it is Kühleborn, Undine’s raging uncle – now destructively evil, now benevolently protective – who inspired Hoffmann’s most future-oriented musical characterization, anticipating the through-composed features of Weber’s Euryanthe and Wagner’s opJustus Mahr, “Die Musik E. T. A. Hoffmanns im Spiegel seiner Novelle vom ‘Ritter Gluck’,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 129 (1968), 346. 42

“Am mächtigsten springt Kühleborn hervor [...] durch Melodienwahl und Instrumentation, die, ihm stets treu bleibend, seine unheimliche Nähe verkündet.” “Über die Oper Undine,” note 4 supra, p. 386; “On Undine,” note 4 supra, p. 203.

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eras. In Undine, Hoffmann keeps the number of solo arias to a minimum and works instead with what he calls “scenes,” in other words with ensembles, choruses, and recitatives which he welds together by extending the solo pieces into more open, through-composed tonal spaces. This kind of innovative, scenic compositional technique is particularly evident whenever Kühleborn and his army of water sprites intervene in the action, as for example in the climactic revenge aria with chorus “Freund’ aus Seen und Quellen” from Act II. Perhaps the most Hoffmannesque among Hoffmann’s musical creations, this majestic “water prince” is a worthy descendant of Beethoven’s Pizarro and the first Romantic representative of the demonic principle in opera. As the prototype of the ambivalent, world-negating hater of mankind, Kühleborn became the model for the long line of operatic character baritones and basses, from Weber’s Kaspar and Lysiart through Marschner’s Hans Heiling to Wagner’s Dutchman, Telramund, and even Wotan of the Ring, perhaps the most majestic and ambivalent of them all. I began this essay by lamenting that Hoffmann’s compositions and writings on music have still not received their fair share of critical attention. It is gratifying to be able to conclude on a more positive note: leading musicologists and practicing music critics like Joseph Kerman, Carl Dahlhaus, Charles Rosen, and Andrew Porter have repeatedly registered their awareness in recent years of the lasting impact on music history and criticism of Hoffmann of the Tales. In the September 1983 issue of Critical Inquiry, on “Canons” in literature and the arts, for example, Joseph Kerman devotes the central section of his article describing the formation of a canon of great composers in music history to Hoffmann who first conjoined Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven as the musical trinity that still perdures. Acknowledging that “the discipline of musical analysis [as we know it today] was refined from its adumbrations in the work of Hoffmann,” Kerman also confirms this multiply gifted artist’s epoch-making role as a sagacious critic of music:

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When E. T. A. Hoffmann in 1810 proclaimed Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven as the three great Romantic composers – though Beethoven was clearly primus inter pares – an idea that caught so much of the resonance of contemporary aesthetics itself resonated hugely into the future.43

43

Joseph Kerman, “A Few Canonic Variations,” Critical Inquiry, 10 (September 1983), p. 112.

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Der Opernkomponist Hoffmann und das europäische Musiktheater seiner Zeit1 (1993) Den Spuren des ‘europäischen’ Hoffmanns, also den nicht-nurdeutschen Wirkungslinien dieses multitalentierten Künstlers der Romantik nachzugehen, hat sich der vorliegende Band als neue Perspektiven versprechendes Ziel gesetzt: „Diese Wirkungslinien reichen bis in die Gegenwart und lassen sich über Europa hinaus bis nach Amerika und Ostasien ausziehen.“2 Eine solche Formulierung ermutigt uns, etwas weiter auszuholen und uns sogar „zum kühnen Fluge in das ferne Reich [...] der romantischen Oper mit ihren Feen, Geistern, Wundern und Verwandlungen“3 zu rüsten. In diesem Sinne sei es auch erlaubt, die folgenden „zufälligen Gedanken“4 zum ‘Opern-Hoffmann’ mit zwei vielleicht nicht ganz abwegigen außereuropäischen Zeugnissen einzuleiten. But what about [his] music? It doesn’t get very good marks, because musicians don’t like dabblers, and literary men don’t like people who cross boundaries – especially musical boundaries.

1

Aus Werken E. T. A. Hoffmanns wird zitiert nach der fünfbändigen Ausgabe des Winkler-Verlags, München 1960-1965: Winkler I = Fantasie- und Nachtstücke Winkler II = Die Elixiere des Teufels; Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr Winkler III = Die Serapions-Brüder Winkler IV = Späte Werke Winkler V = Schriften zur Musik. Nachlese 2

Hartmut Steinecke im Programm zum Symposion „E. T. A. Hoffmann. Deutsche Romantik im europäischen Kontext“, Berlin, 22.-26. 9. 1992. 3 4

Hoffmann: „Der Dichter und der Komponist“, in: Winkler III, S. 83.

Hoffmann: Zufällige Gedanken bei dem Erscheinen dieser Blätter, in: Winkler V, S. 342.

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If you are a writer, you’re a writer, and if you’re a composer, you’re a composer – and no scabbing.5

Diese bemerkenswerte Stelle steht im 1988 veröffentlichten Roman The Lyre of Orpheus des kanadischen Schriftstellers Robertson Davies; und der „dabbler“, dessen Musik schlecht benotet wird, ist kein anderer als E. T. A. Hoffmann! Selbstverständlich ist der Titel des Buches der berühmten Rezension von Beethovens Fünfter Symphonie (1810) entnommen, und im Mittelpunkt des im heutigen kanadischen Universitätsmilieu spielenden humoristischen Romans steht – typisch hoffmannesk als Fiktion innerhalb der Fiktion – eine postume PseudoGeburt: Es ist die Rekonstruktion, Vollendung und Aufführung einer angeblich im Nachlass neu entdeckten, fragmentarisch gebliebenen Hoffmann-Oper mit dem schönen Titel Arthur of Britain, or The Magnanimous Cuckold zu einem Text des Engländers James Robinson Planché, des Librettisten der letzten Weber-Oper Oberon (1826). Première einer unbekannten Hoffmann-Oper im postmodernen Toronto – eine dem „skeptischen Phantasten“6 durchaus ebenbürtige skurrile Idee. Das zweite Zeugnis, auch von rezeptionsgeschichtlichem Interesse, stammt aus England und bringt uns Hoffmanns eigener Zeit hundert Jahre näher: Musicians will be interested by the fullness with which the Author’s [Hoffmann’s] views on musical subjects – so much in advance of his age, and so just and accurate – are developed in many places, such as the dialogue called „The Poet and the Composer,“ and the conversation which precedes the tale „Master Martin.“ It would be of much interest could any of Hoffmann’s numerous musical compositions be brought to light at the present day; they appear to have been considerably in advance of their period, although Weber’s criticism on one of Hoffmann’s operas is full of praise.7 5

Robertson Davies: The Lyre of Orpheus. New York 1988, S. 36.

6

Vgl. Rüdiger Safranski: E. T. A. Hoffmann. Das Leben eines skeptischen Phantasten. München 1984.

7

E. T. A. Hoffmann: The Serapion Brethren, übersetzt von Major Alexander Ewing, London 1886 und 1892, Bd. 1, S. iv.

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So schreibt Major Alexander Ewing 1886 im Vorwort zu seiner Übersetzung der Serapions-Brüder (The Serapion Brethren) – die erste und bisher einzige komplette englische Version der großen Erzählsammlung, inklusive der Rahmengespräche. Wenn man bedenkt, daß die seriöse Hoffmann-Forschung erst 1894 mit Georg Ellingers kritischer Biographie beginnt, ist der Brite Ewing im Jahre 1886 über Hoffmanns Verdienste als Musikkritiker und Komponist erstaunlich gut informiert. Mit sicherem Urteilssinn macht er seine angelsächsischen Leser auf zwei von Hoffmanns ertragreichsten musikästhetischen Beiträge aufmerksam, die ursprünglich 1813 und 1814 in der Leipziger Allgemeinen Musikalischen Zeitung erschienen und später in Die Serapions-Brüder aufgenommen wurden: „Der Dichter und der Komponist“ und „Alte und neue Kirchenmusik“. Offensichtlich weiß Ewing auch einiges über Hoffmanns kompositorische Tätigkeit, wenn auch wahrscheinlich nur vom Hörensagen, wie sein Hinweis auf die Oper Undine – Hoffmanns bestes musikalisches Opus, komponiert zu Fouqués Text in den Jahren 1813-14 in Dresden und Leipzig und uraufgeführt 1816 in Berlin – bezeugt. Als ein historisch bedeutendes Dokument romantischer Musikkritik muß wohl Webers enthusiastisch positive Rezension der Undine von 1817 auch in England rezipiert worden sein. Aber von Hoffmanns Musik war Major Ewing und seinen Zeitgenossen sicherlich nichts bekannt. Was die Vertrautheit mit Hoffmanns Kompositionen betrifft, ist es mit uns Heutigen zwar etwas, aber nicht wesentlich besser bestellt als vor hundert Jahren. Nach wie vor „steht Hoffmanns musikalisches Schaffen ganz im Schatten des dichterischen,“ berichtet Werner Keil noch 1986; „das öffentliche Bewußtsein [kennt] bis heute den Komponisten E. T. A. Hoffmann nicht“ und „selbst der Fachwelt ist Hoffmanns musikalische Hinterlassenschaft weitgehend unbekannt geblieben.“8 Sicherlich wurde in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten sowohl in der

8

Werner Keil: E. T. A. Hoffmann als Komponist. Studien zur Kompositionstechnik an ausgewählten Werken. Wiesbaden 1986, S. 2 und 32.

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Musikwissenschaft als auch im öffentlichen Musikbetrieb relativ viel getan, um den ausübenden Musiker, der Hoffmann ja bis zu seinem dreiunddreißigsten Lebensjahr fast ausschliesslich war, neben dem zu Recht weltberühmt gewordenen Meistererzähler Hoffmann besser bekannt zu machen. Von seinen insgesamt 85 Kompositionen in buchstäblich allen musikalischen Gattungen sind einige repräsentative Werke, wie z. B. das Klaviertrio, das Harfenquintett, seine einzige Symphonie und das Miserere, auf Schallplatten (neuerdings sogar auf CD-Platten) zugänglich gemacht worden. Obwohl Werke für das Musiktheater (acht Opern und Singspiele und 23 Bühnen- oder Ballettmusiken und Melodramen) in seinem musikalischen Oeuvre entschieden überwiegen, ist Hoffmanns durchaus beachtliches Opernschaffen bisher auf Platten spärlich vertreten; bis vor kurzem existierte bloß eine Querschnittauswahl aus dem Singspiel Die lustigen Musikanten. Allerdings ist unlängst auch eine CD-Aufnahme der Oper Aurora erschienen.9 Am schlimmsten ist aber die schwer erklärliche Tatsache, daß bis heute von der Undine keine kommerziell erhältliche Aufnahme existiert – lediglich im Rundfunk hört man von Zeit zu Zeit Ausschnitte aus der 1987 mit dem RIAS-Orchester unter Roland Bader eingespielten Gesamtaufnahme, die seitdem (da immer noch kein finanzstarker Geburtshelfer in Sicht) umsonst auf ihre CD-Geburt wartet. Diese Sachlage ist besonders entmutigend zu einer Zeit, wenn nicht einmal historisch wichtige und eher geringfügige Jugendwerke oder Fingerübungen – also kaum potenzielle Bestseller –, wie das zugegeben charmante Singspiel Die beiden Pädagogen (1820) des elfjährigen Mendelssohn (mit Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in der Rolle des Dorfschullehrers Kinderschreck) oder die einaktige Oper Don Sanche, ou Le chateau d’amour (1824-25) des dreizehnjährigen Franz Liszt, schon längst auf dem internationalen Schallplattenmarkt zugänglich sind.

9

Apollon-2 CD-303 001 [152’], siehe Notiz in: MHG 37, 1991, S. 80-81.

391

Die gegenwärtige Forschung verspricht jedoch Erfreulicheres. In der Musikwissenschaft führt der Komponist Hoffmann kein Schattendasein mehr: Seit 1971 erscheint eine für 12 Bände geplante Auswahledition der musikalischen Werke, und seinen Kompositionen wird zunehmend gebührende Achtung und Neubewertung zuteil.10 Mit Recht ist Hoffmanns Opernschaffen zum Hauptgegenstand der neueren musikologischen Hoffmann-Forschung geworden. Wenn man mit Werner Keils zusammenfassender Formulierung übereinstimmt, ist der Grund dafür nicht weit zu suchen: „Uneingeschränkt Großes hat er [Hoffmann] wohl nur in seinen Bühnenwerken geleistet.“11 Und der Schweizer Musikologe Ernst Lichtenhahn, einer der gründlichsten Kenner und Interpreten von Hoffmanns Musikästhetik, kommt auf Grund einer Analyse von Hoffmanns Auffassung der Dichotomie „Instrumentalmusik – Vokalmusik“ zu dem Schluß: „für Hoffmann [war] nicht die Sinfonie, sondern die Oper Zentrum und Ziel des eigenen kompositorischen Schaffens“.12 Was wir als uneingeschränkt große kompositorische Leistung anerkennen sollten, darüber ließe sich natürlich streiten. Ich stimme 10

Die wichtigsten einschlägigen Arbeiten sind Gerhard Allroggen: E. T. A. Hoffmanns Kompositionen. Ein chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis seiner musikalischen Werke mit einer Einführung. Regensburg 1970; Hermann Dechant: E. T. A. Hoffmanns Oper „Aurora“. Regensburg 1975; Jürgen Schläder: Undine auf dem Musiktheater. Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der deutschen Spieloper. Bonn 1979; Judith Rohr: E. T. A. Hoffmanns Theorie des musikalischen Dramas. Baden-Baden 1985; und Keil [Anm. 7]. Schließlich soll noch verwiesen werden auf Gerhard Allroggens die jüngsten Forschungsergebnisse kritisch auswertende Abhandlung über den Komponisten Hoffmann im Band 2/2 der von ihm und Hartmut Steinecke herausgegebenen neuen Hoffmann-Ausgabe des Deutschen Klassiker Verlags, Frankfurt am Main 1988 [Anm. 11] und auf David Charltons exemplarisch edierte und mit wertvollen kritischen Anmerkungen versehene Ausgabe der musikalischen Schriften in englischer Übersetzung: E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings: „Kreisleriana“, „The Poet and the Composer“, Music Criticism, edited, annotated, and introduced by David Charlton; translated by Martyn Clarke, Cambridge 1989. 11 12

Keil [Anm. 7], S. 244.

Ernst Lichtenhahn in Brigitte Feldges und Ulrich Stadler: E. T. A. Hoffmann. Epoche – Werk – Wirkung. München 1986, S. 257.

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Herrn Keil zunächst zu, möchte aber auch einen Schritt weitergehen und die übergreifende Frage zur Diskussion stellen: Inwieweit ist Hoffmanns opernkompositorische Tätigkeit, seine lebenslange Faszination und Beschäftigung mit der Oper als musiktheatralische Wirklichkeit und seine unermüdliche kritisch-theoretische Auseinandersetzung (auch im erzählerischen Werk) mit der Oper als charakteristische Kunstform seiner Zeit für eine neue Sicht des künstlerischen Gesamtphänomens Hoffmann im europäischen Kontext von Bedeutung? Es geht mir keineswegs darum, das von vornherein unglücklich gewählte Sobriquet ‘Gespenster-Hoffmann’ durch die ebenso verengende Bezeichnung ‘Opern-Hoffmann’ ersetzen zu wollen. Ich finde nur, daß wir dem mehrfach begabten Künstler Unrecht tun, wenn wir seiner zukunftweisenden Leistung auf musikalischem Gebiet, insbesondere als Opernkomponist und Musiktheoretiker, weiterhin weniger kritische Aufmerksamkeit schenken als seinem virtuosen und erstaunlich modernen Erzählschaffen. Der Erzähler und der Musiker Hoffmann sollen und müssen daher, soweit wie möglich, als Einheit betrachtet und interpretiert werden. Die Grundlage für eine solche erwünschte kritische Zusammenschau ist mit der neuen Hoffmann-Ausgabe des Deutschen Klassiker Verlags13 geschaffen worden, in der dem chronologischen Anordnungsprinzip gemäß die musikalischen Schriften (einschließlich der selbstverfaßten Libretti) den dichterischen Werken ebenbürtig in die Edition integriert werden. Allerdings gehören im Falle Hoffmann die musikalischen Werke auch zu den sämtlichen Werken; und in einer besseren Verlagswelt hätten sie den ihnen gebührenden Platz in der neuen Gesamtausgabe einnehmen können. Nun aber zurück zum ‘Opern-Hoffmann’. Von Jugend auf hegt Hoffmann den innigen Wunsch, sich als Opernkomponist einen Namen zu machen; sein künstlerischer Ehrgeiz verdichtet sich früh zu einer permanenten Opernbegeisterung, die biographisch leicht nach-

13

E. T. A. Hoffmann. Sämtliche Werke, hg. v. Hartmut Steinecke et al. Frankfurt am Main 1985.

393

weisbar ist und hier nur punktuell angedeutet werden kann. Schon 1795 ist der musikbeflissene neunzehnjährige Auskultator intimer Kenner von Mozarts Don Giovanni, seiner Lieblingsoper, die er in Königsberg auch auf der Bühne erlebt und später immer wieder als „Oper aller Opern“ bezeichnet.14 Im selben Jahr schreibt er an Hippel, diesmal von einer Aufführung der neuen Salieri-Oper Axur begeistert: „Ach Freund, eine einzige so komponierte Oper könnte das Glück meines Lebens machen!“15 1799 beendet er in Berlin seinen Opernerstling zum selbstverfassten Libretto, das dreiaktige Singspiel Die Maske, das aber nie zur Aufführung gelangte. 1804 folgt das ein Jahr später in Warschau mit Publikumserfolg aufgeführte Singspiel Die lustigen Musikanten, zu Brentanos Text. (Auf dem Theaterzettel ist das Werk als „eine ganz neue Oper in 2 Akten“ bezeichnet, komponiert „von einem hiesigen Dilettanten.“) Nach abgeschlossener Arbeit an dem dreiaktigen Singspiel Liebe und Eifersucht (1807) zu Calderóns Text in August Wilhelm Schlegels Übersetzung schreibt Hoffmann aus Berlin an Hitzig: „Wird diese Oper einst gut gegeben, so kann sie meinen Ruf für immer begründen.“16 Auch dieses Werk wurde nie aufgeführt. Von 1808 an bezeichnet der gattungsbewußte Komponist Hoffmann seine umfangreicheren Bühnenwerke konsequent als „Opern.“ So z. B. nennt er den vieraktigen Trank der Unsterblichkeit (1808, zu von Sodens Text) eine „romantische Oper“, Aurora (1812, zu Holbeins Text) eine „große heroische Oper“ und Undine eine „Zauber-Oper in drei Abtheilungen.“ Undine wurde in Berlin das Theaterereignis der 1816/17-Saison und brachte für Hoffmann endlich die Erfüllung seiner Jugendträume, als Opernkomponist anerkannt zu werden. Die traurige Geschichte des Theaterbrandes, der auch Schin-

14

Hoffmann: Don Juan, in: Winkler I, S.73.

15

E. T. A. Hoffmanns Briefwechsel, hg. v. Friedrich Schnapp, München 1967, Bd. I, S. 70. 16

Ibid., I, 236.

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kels Dekorationen zerstörte, ist allzu bekannt. Der Trank der Unsterblichkeit und Aurora blieben zu Hoffmanns Lebzeiten unaufgeführt. Nach Undine kam der überbeschäftigte Bestseller-Autor Hoffmann kaum mehr zum Komponieren. Bis in die letzten Tage vor seiner tödlichen Erkrankung jedoch beschäftigten ihn neue, obwohl unausgeführt gebliebene Opernpläne, wie z. B. eine Bearbeitung von Calderóns El Galan fantasma (Der Liebhaber nach dem Tode), die das komische Gegenstück zu seiner Undine werden sollte und eine erneute Zusammenarbeit mit Fouqué – diesmal an einer opera seria. Noch 1821 war Hoffmann ein aktiver und hoch angesehener Teilnehmer am regen, explosiven Berliner Opernleben: Er bearbeitete und übersetzte den französischen Text von Gaspare Spontinis Oper Olimpia für deren Berliner Première und verfaßte seine letzte große opernästhetische Abhandlung „Nachträgliche Bemerkungen über Spontinis Oper Olympia“, in welcher er seine frühere, ganz im Sinne der romantischen Oper à la Undine konzipierte Opernauffassung im Dialog „Der Dichter und der Komponist“ revidierte und zukunftweisend erweiterte. An seinem lebenslangen Selbstbewußtsein als Opernkomponist hat er also trotz des großen literarischen Erfolgs seiner letzten Jahre nichts eingebüßt. Schon diese skizzenhafte Übersicht zeigt, daß eine Auswertung von Hoffmanns durchaus konsequenter Entwicklung als Opernkomponist ohne Einbeziehung seiner kritischen Ansichten über Geschichte, Theorie und Ästhetik der Musik nicht denkbar ist – von der Bedeutung seiner im Erzählwerk (von der als Aufsatz genannten Erzählung „Ritter Gluck“ bis zum Roman Kater Murr) überall verstreuten musikbezogenen Äußerungen gar nicht zu reden. Die eher allgemein zutreffende Einsicht von Carl Dahlhaus erscheint in dieser Hinsicht ganz auf Hoffmanns Situation gemünzt zu sein: „Die Literatur über Musik ist kein bloßer Reflex dessen, was in der musikalischen Praxis der Komposition, Interpretation und Rezeption geschieht, sondern gehört in einem gewissen Sinne zu den konstitutiven Momenten der

395

Musik selbst.“17 Tatsächlich ist es im Falle des in der Musiktheaterpraxis erfahrenen Komponisten Hoffmann das einzigartige, gegenseitig fruchtbare Zusammenwirken von schöpferischen und kontemplativen Leistungen, was seine musikgeschichtliche Bedeutung, seine Sonderstellung als wegweisende Übergangsfigur bestimmt: Überlieferer, Vermittler und Erneuerer zugleich. Bei der Lektüre von Hoffmanns Musikkritiken fällt der erstaunlich sichere, jedoch nie überhebliche Ton des Rezensenten immer wieder auf. Als Beispiel für diesen unverwechselbaren Ton sollen die Anfangssätze der allerersten Rezension dienen, die Hoffmann 1809 in der Allgemeinen Musikalischen Zeitung veröffentlicht hat: Daß die Instrumentalmusik jetzt zu einer Höhe gestiegen ist, von der man vor nicht gar zu langer Zeit wohl noch keinen Begriff hatte; daß ferner die Sinfonie insonderheit durch den Schwung, den Haydn und Mozart ihr gaben, das Höchste in der Instrumentalmusik – gleichsam die Oper der Instrumente geworden ist: alles dieses weiß jeder Freund der Tonkunst. Alle im Orchester üblichen Instrumente, ihre charakteristischen Eigenheiten aussprechend, in der Aufführung solch eines Drama zu vereinigen, und so, [...] das Einzelne nur zum Ganzen wirken zu lassen: das war die schwierige Aufgabe, welche jene Heroen der Tonkunst in der Sinfonie mit Glück lösten... [etc.]18

Hier schreibt offensichtlich jemand, der nicht nur über souveräne Sachkenntnisse verfügt und mit Geschichte, ästhetischer Theorie und Aufführungspraxis in den verschiedenen musikalischen Gattungen innig vertraut ist, sondern der auch die jüngsten Entwicklungen des internationalen Musiklebens kritisch auswerten und seine eigenen, nicht selten originellen Ansichten und Erwartungen überzeugend vermitteln kann. Es überrascht nicht in unserem Kontext, daß Hoffmanns intensive Beschäftigung mit dem Phänomen Oper auch in seinen Schriften zur Musik eine zentrale Stellung einnimmt. Darüber hinaus, daß die Anzahl der speziell der Gattung Oper gewidmeten Beiträge bei weitem überwiegt, sind Hoffmanns Überlegungen auch dort, wo 17

Carl Dahlhaus: Die Idee der absoluten Musik. Kassel 1978, S. 66-67.

18

Hoffmann, in: Winkler V, S.19-20.

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sie in erster Linie andere musikalische Gattungen betreffen, auffallend oft unmittelbar oder indirekt opernbezogen. Im obigen Zitat, z. B., erscheint die typische Formel „Oper der Instrumente“ das erste Mal und läßt zugleich einen Hauptgedanken Hoffmannscher Musikästhetik anklingen: das symbiotische Wechselverhältnis von Oper und Instrumentalmusik. Nur noch ein repräsentatives Beispiel aus der 1810 Rezension von Beethovens Fünfter Symphonie, die die berühmte Definition der Instrumentalmusik als „die romantischste aller Künste“ enthält. Auch hier sind die wohlbekannten und bisweilen zum Klischee gewordenen Anfangsbemerkungen unmißverständlich auf Hoffmanns eigene Opernauffassung19 ausgerichtet; die Auffassung nämlich, daß allein die symphonische Musik à la Haydn, Mozart und Beethoven, „das Höchste in der Instrumentalmusik“20, d. h. die „Oper der Instrumente“ dazu befähigt sei, die Oper erst zur wahren Oper zu machen – zur romantischen Oper also, als welche er sein Lieblingswerk, die „Oper aller Opern“ Don Giovanni empfindet und deutet.21 Hier ist auch der Punkt, wo Hoffmann sich entschieden von der herkömmlichen Affektenlehre distanziert und gleichzeitig programmusikähnliche symphonische Experimente seiner Zeit als „lächerliche Verirrungen“ von sich weist. Für ihn besitzt die wahre, geniale Instrumentalmusik „die magische Kraft“, die durch Worte angedeuteten „bestimmbaren Empfindungen oder gar Begebenheiten“ in der Vokalmusik zu intensivieren, durch besonnene Inspiration zu beleben, mit einem Wort, zu romantisieren: In dem Gesange, wo die hinzutretende Poesie bestimmte Affekte durch Worte andeutet, wirkt die magische Kraft der Musik, wie das Wunder-Elixier der Weisen, von dem etliche Tropfen jeden Trank köstlich und herrlich machen. Jede Leiden19 Vgl. Friedrich Rochlitz’ Begriff der „Sinfonie mit Gesang“ und Franz Horns romantische Theorie der Oper, ausführlich besprochen in Rohr [Anm. 8], S. 33 und 42-43. 20 21

Hoffmann, in: Winkler V, S. 19.

Ibid., S. 363: „Mozart brach neue Bahnen, und wurde der unnachahmliche Schöpfer der romantischen Oper.“

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schaft – Liebe – Haß – Zorn – Verzweiflung etc. wie die Oper sie uns gibt, kleidet die Musik in den Purpurschimmer der Romantik, und selbst das im Leben Empfundene führt uns hinaus aus dem Leben in das Reich des Unendlichen.22

Dementsprechend erkennt und befürwortet Hoffmann die Möglichkeit einer idealen Einheit von Instrumentalmusik und Vokalmusik in der „wahrhaften Oper, [...] in welcher die Musik unmittelbar aus der Dichtung als notwendiges Erzeugnis derselben entspringt.“23 So formuliert der Komponist Ludwig im Dialog „Der Dichter und der Komponist“, geschrieben 1813, während der Undine-Komposition. Gleich anschließend versucht er, seine Definition weiter zu präzisieren und seinem Dichterfreund und Dialogpartner Ferdinand zugänglicher zu machen: Allerdings halte ich die romantische Oper für die einzig wahrhafte, denn nur im Reich der Romantik ist die Musik zu Hause. [...] In der Oper soll die Einwirkung höherer Naturen auf uns sichtbarlich geschehen und so vor unsern Augen sich ein romantisches Sein erschließen, in dem auch die Sprache höher potenziert, oder vielmehr jenem fernen Reiche entnommen, d. h. Musik, Gesang ist, ja wo selbst Handlung und Situation in mächtigen Tönen und Klängen schwebend, uns gewaltiger ergreift und hinreißt. Auf diese Art soll [...] die Musik unmittelbar und notwendig aus der Dichtung entspringen.24

Diese zentrale Stelle, wie auch der ganze Dialog, scheint auf den ersten Blick bloß die Zusammenfassung Hoffmannscher Ästhetik der romantischen Oper zu sein; die Festhaltung theoretischer Vorsätze, die er – nach langjährigem Experimentieren mit Singspielkomposition und Textdichtung und im vollen Einklang mit seinem erst später formulierten serapiontischen Erzählprinzip – auf der Höhe seines opernkompositorischen Könnens in der Undine weitgehend praktisch zu realisieren wußte. Jeder Hoffmann-Interpret weiß jedoch, daß sich einzelne Hoffmann-Werke ohne Bezug auf das Gesamtwerk selten mit

22

Ibid., S. 34-35.

23

Hoffmann, in: Winkler III, S. 83.

24

Ibid., S. 83-84.

398

Gewinn deuten lassen. Die drei Vorarbeiten zu unserem Dialog reichen bis in die Entstehungszeit der Erzählung „Ritter Gluck“ zurück und weisen auf den schon erwähnten Spontini-Aufsatz voraus. Es handelt sich um drei von Hoffmanns frühen Opernrezensionen (erschienen 1810/11 in der Allgemeinen Musikalischen Zeitung), jeweils einer deutschen, französischen und italienischen Oper gewidmet, die für seine kritischen Ansichten über das europäische Musiktheater grundlegend sind. Diese Überlegungen zu Joseph Weigls Singspiel Das Waisenhaus (1808), zu Glucks Iphigénie in Aulide (1779) und zu Paers Sofonisbe (1805), zusammen mit „Der Dichter und der Komponist“, erweisen sich als besonders aufschlußreich, indem sie Hoffmanns Mutmaßungen über sein Opernideal nicht nur vor und während, sondern auch nach der Undine-Komposition ahnen lassen. Die emphatische Erwähnung der Bedingung für die romantische Oper im obigen Zitat, z. B., daß „die Einwirkung höherer Naturen auf uns sichtbarlich geschehen“ sollen, bezieht sich zunächst im UndineKontext unmittelbar auf die geisterhaften Erscheinungssequenzen der Kühleborn-Figur. (Kühleborn ist übrigens die einzige durchkomponierte Figur in der Zauber-Oper, die nur singt und konsequent nur durch Orchesteruntermalung – also ausschließlich musikalisch – charakterisiert wird.) Bei näherer Betrachtung aber erweist sich die Wendung „Einwirkung höherer Naturen“ als auch für die Göttin Aurora in Hoffmanns gleichnamiger Oper (1812) anwendbar, in diesem Sinne eine Antizipation der Kühleborn-Figur in Undine. Über die Assoziation des Mythologischen mit dem Übernatürlich-Phantastischen läßt sich wiederum eine mögliche Beziehung zwischen der Göttin Aurora und der Göttin Vesta in Spontinis Oper La vestale (1807) feststellen. Zwar hat Hoffmann La vestale erst 1813 in Dresden gehört und 1816 rezensiert, aber er konnte Spontinis Oper schon früher in Bamberg durch Holbein, den Textdichter seiner Aurora, kennengelernt haben. Am wichtigsten in diesem Kontext scheint mir die Plausibilität der Annahme, daß Hoffmann schon zur Zeit der allmählichen Verfertigung seiner Gedanken zur romantischen Oper à la Aurora und Undine

399

(also 1809-1813) das zukunftträchtige Opernideal einer „romantischen opera seria“25 hat vorschweben können, deren Konturen er später in Spontinis Opern zu erkennen glaubte. Was der lebenslange GluckVerehrer Hoffmann anvisiert haben konnte, war also eine Wiedergeburt der von ihm über alles bewunderten Gluckschen Reformoper aus romantischem Geist als Überwindung des moribunden deutschen Singspiels und des romantischen Operntypus à la Undine. Nachdem im ersten Band von Kater Murr (1819) Spontini noch in einem satirischen Kontext mit Gluck, Mozart und Beethoven in einem Atem genannt wird,26 revidiert Hoffmann im großen Spontini-Aufsatz von 1821 seine frühere abwertende Einschätzung von Spontinis operngeschichtlicher Bedeutung von Grund auf und begrüßt ihn unmißverständlich als den Gluck seiner Zeit, mit der ungewöhnlichen Prämisse: „daß in Spontini, der, ein echter Genius, den göttlichen Funken in sich trug, das Wesen der Oper ganz nach dem Sinn der alten wahren großen Meister, jedoch in der Gestaltung die große Meister in der fortschreitenden Zeit der Kunst gegeben, aufging.“27 In seiner Undine hat Hoffmann versucht, die im Dialog und in der Trias von vorangegangenen Rezensionen formulierten theoretischen Vorsätze zur romantischen Oper kompositorisch und teilweise auch dramaturgisch zu verwirklichen. Er konnte sich jedoch von der Zwangsjacke der Singspiel-Konventionen – wie z. B. die Verbindung einzelner musikalischer Nummern durch gesprochene Dialoge – nicht befreien (was übrigens auch Beethoven mit seinem Fidelio und Weber mit seinem Freischütz nicht gelang). Bekanntlich war es Richard Wagner, der die von Hoffmann anvisierte, ideale Durchdringung von 25

Norbert Miller: Hoffmann und Spontini. Vorüberlegungen zu einer Ästhetik der romantischen opera seria, in: Wissen aus Erfahrungen. Werkbegriff und Interpretation heute. Festschrift für Herman Meyer zum 65. Geburtstag, hg. v. Alexander von Bormann, Tübingen 1976, S. 424. 26 27

Hoffmann: Kater Murr, in: Winkler II, S. 410.

Hoffmann: Nachträgliche Bemerkungen über Spontinis Oper Olympia, in: Winkler V, S. 370.

400

Musik und Dichtung und Zusammenwirkung der Instrumentalmusik und Vokalmusik erst in seinen durchkomponierten Musikdramen – oder soll man sie mit Nietzsche „symphonische Opern“ nennen28 – annähernd verwirklichen konnte. Und noch Wagner in seinen Anfängen hatte größtenteils die gleichen Hindernisse zu bekämpfen, wie Jahrzehnte zuvor der Opernkomponist Hoffmann und seine deutschen Kollegen.29 Wagner erinnert sich mit Bitterkeit in seiner „Autobiographischen Skizze“ (1842-43): „[Ich mußte] sehr bald dieselbe Erfahrung machen, die heut’ zu Tage jeder deutsche Opernkomponist zu gewinnen hat: wir sind durch die Erfolge der Franzosen und Italiener auf unserer heimathlichen Bühne außer Kredit gesetzt, und die Aufführung unserer Opern ist eine zu erbettelnde Gunst. Die Aufführung meiner „Feen“ ward auf die lange Bank geschoben.“30 In der Tat waren zu Hoffmanns Zeiten die Hindernisse im Wege der Entwicklung und Etablierung einer eigenständigen deutschen Oper enorm: eine eigene, tief im Nationalbewußtsein und in der Nationalsprache verwurzelte Operntradition wie in Italien oder in Frankreich gab es in Deutschland nicht. Kein Wunder, daß zunehmend nach einer deutschen Nationaloper verlangt wurde, die – in Carl Maria von Webers Worten – „gern von Fremden lernt, aber es in Wahrheit und Eigentümlichkeit gestaltet wiedergibt, um uns so endlich auch den Rang unter den Kunstnationen festzustellen, dessen unerschütterlichen Grund Mozart in der deutschen Oper legte.“31 Unter dem erdrückenden Schatten absoluter Vorherrschaft der italienischen opera buffa und 28

Dahlhaus [Anm. 15], S. 38. Siehe auch Dahlhaus: Wagners Stellung in der Musikgeschichte, in: Richard-Wagner-Handbuch, hg. v. Ulrich Müller und Peter Wapnewski, Stuttgart 1986, S. 61. 29 Vgl. Carl Maria von Weber: Kunstansichten. Ausgewählte Schriften, Leipzig 1975, S. 215-17. 30

Zitiert in Stefan Kunze: Über den Kunstcharakter des Wagnerschen Musikdramas, in: Richard Wagner. Von der Oper zum Musikdrama, hg. v. Stefan Kunze, Bern 1978, S. 29.

31

Weber [Anm. 27], S. 215.

401

der französischen opéra comique an zeitgenössischen deutschen Bühnen – ein anhaltendes Erbe des 18. Jahrhunderts – konnte sich selbstverständlich das zumeist simple, schablonenhafte deutsche Singspiel, trotz der zwei Gipfelleistungen der Gattung, Mozarts Entführung und Zauberflöte, nur schwer behaupten. An europäischen Opernbühnen außerhalb Deutschlands wurden Singspiele selten, wenn überhaupt, aufgeführt. Auch die deutsche romantische Oper war, wie Dahlhaus feststellt, „– trotz des Pariser Erfolgs, den Webers Freischütz 1824 als ‘Robin des Bois’ erzielte – kein europäisches, sondern ein national begrenztes Phänomen.“32 Importierte Italiener regierten als allmächtige Hofkomponisten und Kapellmeister, das Repertoire bestimmend, an prominenten Opernzentren wie Wien (Salieri und Cimarosa), Dresden (Paer und Morlacchi)) und Berlin (Spontini). Als Deutscher war Weber als Operndirektor in Prag und später in Dresden eine Ausnahme. Das typische Repertoire bestand, von Ort zu Ort etwas variiert, neben Gluck und den späteren Mozart-Opern aus italienischen Werken von Paisiello, Salieri, Cimarosa, Paer und Rossini; aus französischen Opern von Grétry, Cherubini, Méhul, Spontini und Boieldieu; und auch aus beständig populären Singspielen von Kauer, Wranitzky, Himmel, Weigl, Wenzel Müller und anderen.33 Wenn überhaupt Opern in deutscher Sprache aufgeführt wurden, waren sie mit wenigen Ausnahmen italienische oder französische Werke in deutscher Übersetzung. Zwar mangelte es keineswegs an deutschen Opernkomponisten. Nur komponierten die meisten von ihnen notgedrungen zumeist italienische und/oder französische Texte – ob sie am europäischen Opernleben erfolgreich teilnahmen, wie der Wahl-Italiener Simon Mayr und der zum Pariser gewordene Meyerbeer, oder nicht. Es ist z. B. bezeichnend, daß der Deutsche Gluck für Wien im Auftrag italienische und französische Opern geliefert, aber nie in seinem Leben ein 32 33

Dahlhaus, in: Richard-Wagner-Handbuch [Anm. 26], S. 62.

Vgl. die Chronologie von Opernkomponisten und Werken zu Hoffmanns Zeit im Anhang.

402

deutsches Wort für die Opernbühne vertont hat. Und trotz Entführung und Zauberflöte empfinden wir heute noch den Opernkomponisten Mozart in erster Linie als Komponisten italienischer Opern und nicht als österreichischen Opernkomponisten! Was also in Deutschland vor allem fehlte, waren die in der Opernpraxis erfahrenen Textdichter nach dem italienischen und französischen Modell, die den Komponisten attraktive, in Stoff und Form bühnenfähige, deutschsprachige Libretti von Qualität hätten liefern können. Beethoven hat sein Leben lang vergebens nach geeigneten Operntexten gesucht, und Weber mußte sich mit Librettisten von zweifelhaftem Kaliber wie Friedrich Kind (für Freischütz) und Wilhemine von Chézy (für Euryanthe) abgeben. Heinrich Marschners Lament aus dem Jahre 1856 spricht für sich: „Unter den 61 mir zugeschickten Opernbüchern war auch nicht eines, das nur eine vernüftige Idee zu einer Umarbeitung dargeboten hätte. Was soll man tun? Ganz stillschweigen, alt werden, den Quell versiegen lassen, um es nicht laut werden lassen, daß die deutschen Dichter keine Opern dichten können?“34 Über die Misere der deutschen Oper wußte Hoffmann natürlich Bescheid; als Komponist wurde er ja von seinem Textdichter für Undine auch nicht gerade ideal bedient und mußte für die sprachliche und dramaturgische Unbeholfenheit von Fouqués Libretto weitgehend musikalisch kompensieren. In seinen Bamberger Jahren hat Hoffmann den niveaulosen, provinziellen deutschen Theaterbetrieb aus direkter Nähe erlebt und seine eigenen, bitteren Erfahrungen damit gemacht. Obwohl er sich nur Phantasie-Reisen in die ersehnten süd- und westeuropäischen Opernländer leisten konnte, war er über die Entwicklungen des europäischen Musiktheaters schon seit seiner Jugendzeit bestens informiert. Als Musikdirektor und Dirigent bei Joseph Secondas Operngesellschaft in Dresden und Leipzig konnte er dann doch, trotz

34

Zitiert in Martin Ehrenhaus: Die Bedeutung der deutschen Romantik für das moderne Musikdrama, in: Die Musik 45, 1912, S. 269.

403

der lähmenden Kriegsereignisse, seine praktischen Opernerfahrungen unter wesentlich besseren professionellen Verhältnissen erweitern und kritisch verwerten. Innerhalb von bloß neun Monaten – es war auch die Entstehungszeit der Undine und des „Goldenen Topfs“ – „hat er dort fast 40 verschiedene Opern in 122 Vorstellungen dirigiert“35: eine erstaunliche Leistung, auch ohne seine gleichzeitig, sozusagen nebenbei betriebene, intensive kompositorische, literarische und musikkritische Tätigkeit. Das Panorama der zeitgenössischen europäischen Opernszene aus eigener Sicht, das Hoffmann in seinen musikalischen Schriften so anschaulich zu entwerfen versteht, beruht also nicht nur auf souveränen Kenntnissen der Opernliteratur, sondern auch auf praktischen Erfahrungen als Opernkomponist und Operndirigent. Sein kritischer Weitblick kosmopolitischer Prägung deutet an, daß es ihm gelang, das Provinzielle der deutschen Opernverhältnisse geistig zu überflügeln. Nur aus dieser seiner Perspektive als kosmopolitischer, zukunftorientierter Musik-Denker von europäischem Format war es Hoffmann möglich, die beiden, für das kommende Zeitalter charakteristischen, divergierenden musikalischen Tendenzen in dem grundlegenden Gegensatz zwischen deutscher Instrumentalmusik und italienischfranzösischer Oper zu erkennen.36 Als überzeugter, aktiver Verfechter der Idee der deutschen romantischen Nationaloper jedoch – sich dabei dem erfolgreicheren Kollegen Weber anschließend – war auch Hoffmann nicht frei von Vorurteilen gegen Vertreter der zeitgenössischen italienischen Oper. Wie später Wagner, hielt er besonders den überall in Europa frenetisch bejubelten Neuankömmling Rossini für einen gefährlichen, weil einflußreichen Verräter des erhabenen Ideals der 35 36

Allroggen [Anm. 11], Bd. 2/2, S. 715.

Bei Dahlhaus erscheint dieser Gegensatz als prägnante musikhistorische Formel, auf Beethoven und Rossini reduziert: „Das 19. Jahrhundert ist musikalisch in seiner ersten Hälfte ebenso das Zeitalter Beethovens und Rossinis gewesen, wie es in seiner zweiten durch Wagner und Verdi geprägt wurde“. Dahlhaus: Die Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts, Wiesbaden 1980, S. 47.

404

wahren Oper: „Man denke nur an Rossinis und anderer seines Gelichters fratzenhafte Sprünge und Rouladen, an die holperichten Violinpassagen, an das widerwärtige Getriller, welches oft statt der Melodie dasteht und dann von Sängerinnen zum Überdruß abgegurgelt wird“.37 Aus Hoffmanns Sicht stand Spontini, der andere prominente Italiener, doch für etwas ganz anderes. Warum Hoffmann ausgerechnet dem Opernkomponisten Spontini so viel kritische Aufmerksamkeit und letzlich auch so viel Lob spendete, hat Norbert Miller in mehreren Arbeiten aufschlußreich untersucht.38 Ich möchte zum Schluß kurz, wenn auch spekulativ und nur ergänzend, auf einen Beziehungskomplex hinweisen, der als Beispiel für das gegenseitige Durchdringen des erzählerischen, kompositorischen und musikästhetischen Schaffens auch zur Erhellung des Hoffmann-Spontini-Verhältnisses beitragen könnte. Es ist kein Zufall, meine ich, daß der Opernkomponist Gluck als modellhafte Bezugsfigur am Anfang sowie am Ende der schöpferischen Laufbahn des zum Opernkomponisten berufenen Hoffmann im Mittelpunkt steht. Der Titelheld der Erzählung „Ritter Gluck“ ist ja, wenn auch als Revenant, ebenfalls Opernkomponist, dessen Werke, wie er durch sein eigenartiges Vorspielen aus Armida demonstriert, „fast ganz dem Original getreu“ „mit Glucks Hauptgedanken durchflochten“ den Geist Gluckscher Musik „in höherer Potenz“ atmen.39 Die Wendung „in höherer Potenz“, manchmal auch „höher potenziert“, kehrt klischeehaft bei Hoffmann immer wieder und deutet auf den Romantisierungsprozess hin. In diesem Sinne könnte man Ritter Glucks Werke, die er alle, wie er behauptet, „aus dem Reich der 37

Hoffmann, in: Winkler V, S. 364-65.

38

Vgl. u.a. Norbert Miller: [Anm. 23]; E. T. A. Hoffmann und die Musik, in: Akzente 24, 1977, S. 114-35; Der musikalische Freiheitskrieg gegen Gaspare Spontini. Berliner Opernstreit zur Zeit Friedrich Wilhelms III, in: Preußen. Dein Spree-Athen. Beiträge zu Literatur, Theater und Musik in Berlin, hg. v. Helmut Kühn, Reinbek 1981, S. 200-227; Für und wider die Wolfsschlucht. E. T. A. Hoffmann, die „Freischütz“-Premiere und das romantische Singspiel, in: Festschrift für Rudolf Elvers zum 60. Geburtstag, hg. v. Ernst Hertrich und Hans Schneider, Tutzing 1985, S. 369-82.

39

Hoffmann: Ritter Gluck, in: Winkler I, S. 23.

405

Träume“40 kommend geschrieben, als die von Hoffmann anvisierte Möglichkeit auffassen, mit neuem, romantischem Geist durchdrungene Opernkompositionen wohl „im Geiste, nicht [aber] im Stil Glucks zu schaffen.“41 Das Jahr 1808 markiert für Hoffmann das Ende seines Experimentierens mit dem Singspiel als Gattung. Den Trank der Unsterblichkeit, seinen nächsten Opernversuch, nennt er bereits eine „romantische Oper.“ Die Niederschrift des „Ritter Gluck“ fällt auch ungefähr in diese Zeit. Das würde bedeuten, daß sich schon im „Ritter Gluck“ – noch lange vor der Undine-Konzeption – Keime der Hoffmannschen Idee einer romantischen opera seria als Überwindung des Singspiels und der romantischen Oper à la Undine finden lassen. Die Linie führt dann über wiederholte, widersprüchlich kritische Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Spontinischen Operntypus in Rezensionen und im „Brief über Tonkunst in Berlin“ (1815) zu Schriften von 1820-21 wie „Gruß an Spontini“, „Zufällige Gedanken bei dem Erscheinen dieser Blätter“ und zuletzt die „Nachträglichen Bemerkungen über Spontinis Oper Olympia“. In diesen Arbeiten unternimmt Hoffmann, Spontinis musikgeschichtliche Stellung als der „Erneurer der hohen oder tragischen Oper Glucks in der Gegenwart“42 zu bestimmen und weist ihm einen Platz im Kanon der Opern-Größen neben Händel, Hasse, Gluck und Mozart zu. Von E. T. A. Hoffmanns „Ritter Gluck. Eine Erinnerung aus dem Jahre 1809“ zu Richard Wagners „Erinnerungen an Spontini“ (1851) ist kein langer Weg. Wagner, der seinem Lieblingsschriftsteller mehr verdankt, als er je zugab, bestätigt hier die Linie Gluck-Spontini durchaus in Hoffmanns Manier: Spontini war das letzte Glied einer Reihe von Komponisten, deren erstes Glied in Gluck zu finden ist; was Gluck wollte, und zuerst grundsätzlich unternahm, die 40

Ibid.

41

Miller [Anm. 23], S. 416.

42

Ibid., S. 406.

406

möglichst vollständige Dramatisierung der Opernkantate, das führte Spontini – so weit es in der musikalischen Opernform zu erreichen war – aus.43

Ob die ungewöhnliche Bezeichnung „Opernkantate“ ein verdeckter Hinweis auf Hoffmanns Ausdruck „geistliche Oper“44 sein sollte? Bei Wagner ist alles möglich. Gewiß aber ist: Bisher findet sich bei Wagner von Vertrautheit mit Hoffmanns kompositorischem Schaffen keine Spur.

43

Richard Wagner: Erinnerungen an Spontini, in: Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, Leipzig 1907, Bd. 5, S. 86. 44

Hoffmann: Alte und neue Kirchenmusik, in: Winkler V, S. 223.

407

Chronologie: Opernkomponisten und Werke zu Hoffmanns Zeit [Die mit dem • Zeichen versehenen Werke wurden von Hoffmann rezensiert.] Händel (1685-1759) Hasse, Johann (1699-1783) Holzbauer, Ignaz (1711-1783) Gluck (1714-1787)

Hiller, Johann Adam (1728-1804) Sacchini, Antonio (1730-1786) Haydn, Joseph (1732-1809) Dittersdorf (1739-1799)

Paisiello, Giovanni (1740-1816) Grétry, André (1741-1813) Cimarosa, Domenico (1749-1801) Kauer, Ferdinand (1751-1831) Reichardt, Joh. Fr. (1752-1814) Dalayrac, Nicolas (1753-1809) Winter, Peter von (1754-1825) Wranitzky, Paul (1756-1808) Mozart (1756-1791)

Cherubini (1760-1842)

Méhul (1763-1817) Mayr, Simone (1763-1845) Gyrowetz, Adalbert (1763-1850) Fioravanti, Valentino (1764-1837)

Günther von Schwarzburg (1777) •Iphigénie en Aulide (1774) Armide (1777) •Iphigénie en Tauride (1779) Der Teufel ist los (1766) •Oedipe á Colone (1786) Doktor und Apotheker (1786) Das rothe Käppchen (1788) Hieronymus Knicker (1789) Il barbiere di Siviglia (1782) Zémire et Azor (1771) Il Matrimonio segreto (1792) Das Donauweibchen (1798)

•Das unterbrochene Opferfest (1796) Oberon (1789) Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782) •Don Giovanni (1787) •Die Zauberflöte (1791) Lodoiska (1791) Les deux Journées (1800) Faniska (1806) •Ariodant (1799) Joseph (1807) Medea in Corinto (1813) •Der Augenarzt (1811) •I Virtuosi ambulanti (1807)

408

Himmel, Fr. Heinrich (1765-1814) Weber, Bernh. Anselm (1766-1821) Quaisin, Adrien (1766-1828) Weigl, Joseph (1766-1846) Müller, Wenzel (1767-1835) Elsner, Józef (1769-1854) Beethoven (1770-1827) Paer, Ferdinando (1771-1839)

Fanchon, das Leyermädchen (1804) •Sulmalle (1802) •Le Jugement de Salomon (1802) •Das Weisenhaus (1808) Der Fagottist, oder die Zauberzither (1791)

Fidelio (1805 & 1814) Camilla (1799) Leonora (1804) •Sofonisba (1805) Spontini, Gaspare (1774-1851) •La Vestale (1807) •Fernand Cortez ou La Conquéte du Mexique (1809) •Olimpie (1819 & 1821) •Lalla Rukh (1821) Boieldieu, Adrien (1775-1834) •Le Nouveau Seigneur de village (1813) Hoffmann, E. T. A. (1776-1882) Die Maske [1799] Die lustigen Musikanten (1805) Liebe und Eifersucht [1807] Der Trank der Unsterblichkeit [1808] Aurora [1812] Undine (1816) Schmidt, Joh. Philipp (1779-1853) •Die Alpenhütte (1816) •Das Fischermädchen oder Haß und Liebe (1818) Kreutzer, Conradin (1780-1840) Die Alpenhütte (1815) Morlacchi, Francesco (1784-1841) Spohr, Louis (1784-1859) Faust (1816) Zemire und Azor (1819) Weber, Carl Maria (1786-1826) Der Freischütz (1821) Euryanthe (1823) Oberon (1826) Meyerbeer, Giacomo (1791-1864) •Emma di Rosburgo (1819) Rossini (1792-1868) Tancredi (1813) Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816) Otello (1816)

409

Marschner (1795-1861) Schubert (1797-1828) Lortzing (1801-1851) Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Liszt, Franz (1811-1886) Wagner (1813-1883)

Die Zwillingsbrüder (1819) Die Zauberharfe (1819-20) Undine (1845) Die beiden Pädagogen (1820) Don Sanche (1824-25) Die Feen (1833-34) Tannhäuser (1845) Lohengrin (1850)

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Da Ponte und Mozart Wort und Ton in Don Giovanni (1994) I „Don Giovanni und kein Ende!“ lautet der Angstschrei des ahnungslosen, einigermaßen musikkundigen Literaturwissenschaftlers, der es versucht, sich heute mit der Wirkungsgeschichte und Forschungsliteratur über diese „Oper aller Opern“1 vertraut zu machen. Dabei ist es nicht einmal der Aspekt des Uferlosen, der am abschreckendsten wirkt. Natürlich ist es kaum möglich, wenn man ehrlich sein will, dieses ungeheure Forschungsvolumen zunächst einmal auch nur annähernd vollständig überblicken oder kritisch auswerten zu wollen. Was beim ersten Blick am meisten erstaunt, ist vielmehr die Feststellung, zu welcher man nach eingehendem Studium der Fachliteratur gezwungen wird: daß es bis heute recht wenige Interpreten gibt, die die einzigartige Wechselbeziehung zwischen Text und Musik in Mozarts und Da Pontes Oper werknah genug berücksichtigt oder untersucht haben.2 Zwar existieren musikologische Analysen und Dutzende 1

E. T. A. Hoffmann, Don Juan. Oper in zwei Abteilungen von Mozart, in: Dramaturgisches Wochenblatt, Berlin, Nr. 14 vom 7. Oktober l8l5, S. 107. Wieder abgedruckt in E. T. A. Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik. Nachlese. Hg. Friedrich Schnapp. München l963, S. 297.

2

Vgl. besonders Sabine Henze-Döhring, Opera seria, Opera buffa und Mozarts Don Giovanni: Zur Gattungskonvergenz in der italienischen Oper des 18. Jahrhunderts. Laaber 1986; Stefan Kunze, Mozarts Opern. Stuttgart l984; Wye J. Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni. Chicago l983; Julian Rushton, W. A. Mozart: Don Giovanni. Cambridge 1981; Ulrich Weisstein, So machen’s – eben nicht alle: Da Ponte/Mozarts „Don Giovanni“ und die vergleichende Erotik, in: Elemente der Literatur. Elisabeth Frenzel zum 65. Geburtstag. Hg. Adam J. Bisanz und Raymond Trousson. Stuttgart l980, S. 8l-94; Wolfgang Hildes-

412

von mehr oder weniger zuverlässigen Opernführern, die ein gründliches Studium der musikdramatischen Ereignisse ermöglichen. Diejenige Frage aber, die zu einer Gesamtdeutung als Zusammenschau vom Verhältnis zwischen Wort und Ton und sorgfältig konstruierter Charakterkonstellation führen könnte, nämlich die Frage nach der Eigenart von Da Pontes Libretto als besonders geeignetem Operntext, wird selten, wenn überhaupt, gestellt. Für den Literaturwissenschaftler ist es daher kaum faßbar, daß Da Pontes genialer Text, welcher es Mozart überhaupt erst ermöglichte, ein musikdramatisch einmaliges WortTon-Kunstwerk zu gestalten, als ‘verbal construct’ von der Opernforschung bisher in solchem Maße vernachlässigt werden konnte.3 Nicht weniger verwunderlich erscheint aus heutiger Sicht die Tatsache, daß es ausgerechnet E. T. A. Hoffmann und Kierkegaard waren, die schon im neunzehnten Jahrhundert zu Don GiovanniExegeten par excellence kanonisiert wurden und mit ihren romantisierend-erzählerischen wie auch ästhetisierend-philosophischen Ideen über die Oper die interpretatorischen Grundrichtungen bis heute wesentlich und nachhaltig bestimmt haben. Die Aufnahme von Hoffmanns Prosastück Don Juan (l8l3) in der kulturgeschichtlichen Don Giovanni-Rezeption als zwar aus dem Bereich der Literatur stammende aber trotzdem kritisch ernstzunehmende Operndeutung ist besonders aufschlußreich. Hoffmanns idealisiertes Bild von Donna Anna als die wahre und einzig würdige Gegenspielerin Don Giovannis wurde nämlich von sukzessiven Interpreten-Generationen undiskriminiert

heimer, Mozart. Frankfurt a. M. l977; Aloys Greither, Die sieben großen Opern Mozarts. Versuch über das Verhältnis der Texte zur Musik. Heidelberg l977; Anna A. Abert, Die Opern Mozarts. Wolfenbüttel l970; Kurt Honolka, Der Musik gehorsame Tochter. Opern – Dichter – Operndichter. Stuttgart l962; Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama. New York 1956, S. 80-84 und 116-23; Leopold Conrad, Mozarts Dramaturgie der Oper. Würzburg l943; Hermann Abert, W. A. Mozart. Bd. 2. Leipzig 1919-21; Ernst Lert, Mozart auf dem Theater. Berlin l9l8; und Hermann Cohen, Die dramatische Idee in Mozarts Operntexten. Berlin l9l5. 3

Vgl. Ulrich Weisstein, Librettology: The Fine Art of Coping with a Chinese Twin, in: Komparatistische Hefte (Bayreuth), H.5/6, l982, S. 33.

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übernommen und wird, trotz einzelner Gegenmeinungen, bis in unsere Tage weiter kultiviert.4 „Donna Anna und kein Ende!“ also... Noch l98l spricht Attila Csampai in seiner modellhaften Opernbuch-Edition von Hoffmanns „genialem Mißverständnis“ und „romantischer Fehldeutung“,5 wenn er über diese merkwürdige Entwicklung der Interpretationstradition referiert: „Seine [Hoffmanns] folgenschwere Behauptung, Donna Anna sei von dem Verführer ‘entehrt’ worden, wurde erst in unserem Jahrhundert korrigiert.“ Und ferner: „E. T. A. Hoffmanns dichterische Deutung der Don Giovanni-Handlung ist ein Beispiel dafür, wie grundlegend eine literarische Auseinandersetzung die Rezeption eines Stoffes auf längere Zeit hinaus in einer bestimmten Richtung beeinflussen kann.“6 Dabei ist es unverständlich, daß die eigentliche dichterische Intention, die im typisch Hoffmannschen Untertitel der Novelle, „Eine fabelhafte Begebenheit, die sich mit einem reisenden Enthusiasten zugetragen“ – ein Fantasiestück also –, kristallklar zu erkennen ist, so konsequent verkannt werden konnte. Gewiß ist Hoffmanns Don Juan von vornherein als literarische Fiktion und nicht als analytisch-kritischer Deutungsversuch von Da Pontes Text und Mozarts Musik konzipiert worden. Ebenso wie seine dichterischen Gestalten Ritter Gluck und Johannes Kreisler interpretatorisch nicht mit dem Komponisten Christoph Willibald Gluck und dem Musiker E. T. A. Hoffmann gleichzusetzen sind, ist sein aus der Novelle Don Juan bekanntes Bild Donna Annas mit Da Pontes und Mozarts Operngestalt nicht identisch, wenn auch unmittelbar von dieser „Oper aller Opern“ inspiriert.

4

Zuletzt bei Stefan Kunze (Anm. 2), S. 322.

5

Attila Csampai und Dietmar Holland, Hg. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Don Giovanni. Texte, Materialien, Kommentare. Reinbek l98l, S. l0-ll. 6

Ebd., S. 2l3.

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Selbstverständlich war Hoffmann ein intimer Kenner von Mozarts Oper, die er schon l795 in Königsberg kennengelernt hatte.7 Auch wenn er in Don Juan ausdrücklich behauptet, er ziehe seine Anregungen für das Verständnis des Werks nur aus Mozarts Musik, „ohne alle Rücksicht auf den Text“,8 ist es nicht zu bezweifeln, daß er mit Da Pontes Originaltext engstens vertraut war. So gründet er z. B. seine berühmte Verführungsthese bewußt auf die unauflösbare Ambiguität bestimmter Textbezüge, deren Erkenntnis den gesamten Handlungsablauf hindurch eine dramaturgisch wirksame sprachliche und musikalische Spannung erzeugt. Die mögliche Doppeldeutigkeit der Ausdrücke „piegarmi“ und „mi scolsi“ in Donna Annas Erzählung über Giovannis nächtlichen Überfall (I,l3) wird in direkte Beziehung gebracht mit dem im Kontext nicht eindeutig erklärbaren Ausdruck plötzlicher Entrücktheit von allem Irdischen im abschließenden „Allegretto moderato“-Teil der Donna-Anna-Arie „Non mi dir“ (II,l2), dessen Text („Forse un giorno il cielo ancora/Sentirà pieta di me“) Hoffmann in seiner Novelle sogar wörtlich zitiert.9 Trotz solcher werknahen Rekonstruktionsversuche der Hoffmannschen Deutung bleibt aber seine Donna Anna eine selbständige literarische Erfindung. Die Annahme daher, der Humorist und Ironiker Hoffmann sei nicht im Stande gewesen, für seine mit Ambiguitäten durchsäte Lieblingsoper Don Giovanni mehr als nur eine einzige, eher einspurige ‘Interpretation’ zu entwerfen, wäre eine unverdiente Geringschätzung der dichterischen Phantasie dieses vielleicht größten Fabulierkünstlers der deutschen Romantik. Ein ganz anderes, geradezu erheiterndes DonnaAnna-Bild findet sich in der Tat in Hoffmanns Seltsame Leiden eines Theaterdirektors (l8l8), einem groß angelegten, fiktiven Dialog über 7

Siehe Hoffmanns Brief an Hippel, vom 4. März l795, in: E. T. A. Hoffmann, Briefwechsel, Bd. I. Hg. Friedrich Schnapp, München l967, S. 59.

8

E. T. A. Hoffmann, Don Juan, in: Hoffmann, Fantasie- und Nachtstücke. München l960, S. 77. 9

Ebd., S. 78.

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Bühnendramaturgie und Theaterpraxis. Die spontan erfundene, anekdotenhafte Stelle aus diesem wenig bekannten Werk verdient hier vollständige Wiedergabe: Vor wenigen Wochen wurde auf dem gedachten Theater die Oper Don Juan gegeben. Ich saß im Parterr. Die Sängerin, welche die Donna Anna vorstellte, war eine geborene Italienerin, aber ... alt und häßlich genug sah sie aus, das muß ich gestehen. Dies veranlaßte denn einen jungen Mann, der mir unfern saß, sich zu seinem Nachbar zu wenden und sehr mißmütig zu äußern: wie doch die alte häßliche Person, die noch dazu falsch sänge, alle Illusion störe; denn unmöglich könne man glauben, daß dem leckern Don Juan nach dieser ganz hingewelkten Blume gelüsten solle. Der Nachbar erwiderte mit einer überaus pfiffigen Miene: „Das verstehen Sie nun gar nicht, mein Lieber! Mit sehr gutem Bedacht hat die erleuchtete Direktion die Partie der Donna Anna jener würdigen wiewohl etwas garstigen Person zugeteilt, denn dadurch wird eben erst Don Juans heillose Ruchlosigkeit recht in volles Licht gehoben: der Himmel hat die gute Donna Anna eben nicht mit Schönheit gesegnet, reich ist sie, wie man aus guten Quellen weiß, auch nicht, denn lieber Gott, was wirft die Kommendantur in einem kleinen Landstädtchen ab und mit der Statue im Garten ist es eitle Prahlerei, die ist nur aus Pappe geschnitten und weiß bemalt. Wie froh ist daher der würdige Vater, daß sich der gute Monsieur Ottavio ganz unvermutet eingefunden und daß er die Tochter, ist sie gleich schon stark in die Jahre gekommen, doch noch glücklich unter die Haube bringt. Dies alles weiß der verruchte Don Juan. Hier ist keine Schönheit, keine Jugend, keine Anmut, die ihn reizen kann, ja vielleicht Widerwillen, Abscheu mit Gewalt bekämpfend stellt er der guten Donna nach, bloß um die Ruhe, das Glück einer rechtschaffenen Familie auf immer zu verstören. Diese Lust an Unlust ist ja 10 eben das teuflische Prinzip, das ihn beseelt.“

Die Gefahr für den Don Giovanni-Interpreten ist nach wie vor, der Versuchung der Devise „Donna Anna und kein Ende!“ zu erliegen und Walter Felsensteins verführerischer Frage „Was geschah in Donna Annas Zimmer zwischen ihr und Don Giovanni?“11 mit Begeisterung, letzten Endes aber sicherlich unergiebig weiterhin nachzujagen. Stattdessen wird im Folgenden versucht, anhand von konkreten Beispielen einigen wesentlichen Zügen der Da Ponteschen Textgestaltung im Libretto nachzuspüren, um abschließend die Vielfalt des einzigar10 11

Ebd., S. 668.

Walter Felsenstein, Donna Anna und Don Giovanni (l966), in: Felsenstein, Schriften. Zum Musiktheater. Berlin l976, S. 379.

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tigen Zusammenspiels zwischen Da Pontes Text und Mozarts Musik wenigstens in Ansätzen beleuchten zu können.

II Es erübrigt sich hier zunächst, die zahllosen Argumente für und wider die Qualität des Don Giovanni-Librettos noch einmal ausführlich auszuloten. Wenn Wolfgang Hildesheimer Da Ponte emphatisch Mozarts „besten – oder, besser gesagt: seinen einzigen guten – Textdichter“12 nennt, ist er zweifellos der Wahrheit näher als Ernest Newman, der den Don Giovanni-Text zu „one of the sorriest pieces of stage joinery ever nailed together by a hack in a hurry“13 erklärt. Solche allgemeinen Werturteile, wie positiv oder negativ sie ausfallen mögen, sind interpretatorisch von wenig Belang. Die entscheidende, wenn auch schwer faßbare Frage ist vielmehr, warum und inwiefern Da Pontes spezifisch für Mozarts Opernbühne geschaffener Operntext besonders geeignet scheint, von dem Komponisten schöpferisch assimilierend – d. h. seinen musikdramaturgisch bestimmten Vertonungsstrategien entsprechend – in Besitz genommen zu werden. Wenn wir also die Besonderheit der gegenseitigen Durchdringung von Text und Musik in Don Giovanni ergründen wollen, müssen wir zuerst versuchen, die eigentümliche Beschaffenheit von Da Pontes Opernbuch näher zu bestimmen. Nach einer Gesamtdarstellung, die spezifisch Da Pontes Leistung als Mozarts Librettist gewidmet ist, sucht man in der Fachliteratur vergebens. Aber auch die spärlichen Einzeluntersuchungen beschränken sich größtenteils auf Vergleiche der Da Ponteschen Texte mit den

12

Hildesheimer (Anm. 2), S. 227.

13

In: Sunday Times (London), 3. Oktober l954.

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Vorlagen.14 Vielleicht der aufschlußreichste und für die Librettoforschung richtunggebendste unter den neueren Beiträgen ist Horst Rüdigers Charakteristik „Die Abenteuer des Lorenzo Da Ponte: Librettist, Memoirenschreiber, Kulturmanager“. Wie Rüdiger treffend bemerkt: Entscheidend für den Librettisten Da Ponte ist nicht seine mehr oder minder deutliche Abhängigkeit von den Vorlagen, sondern die Art, wie er diese auf Grund seiner fortschrittlichen theoretischen Überlegungen in die Theaterpraxis umge15 setzt hat.

Schon bei der geglückten Zusammenarbeit an Figaro hat Da Ponte sich als „kongenialer Partner Mozarts“ erwiesen und als solchem war ihm die dienende Funktion des Librettos für die Gesamtgestalt der Oper stets gegenwärtig, doch stellte er als Librettist auch keine übertriebenen Ansprüche und kannte die Grenzen seines Talents genau. Nicht selbständige Kunstwerke wollte er schaffen, sondern allgemeinverständliche, gut und abwechslungsreich gebaute (d. h. alle ästhetischen Vorgaben für die Musik darbietende) Textbücher – entstanden aus der literarischen Tradition und vor allem aus aktuellem Bewußtsein 16 um Nöte und Freuden der Menschen.

Da Pontes Don Giovanni-Libretto, das sich – vielleicht mehr als sein Figaro-Text – durch Witz, Scharfsinn, Ironie, double entendre und klar umrissene, mannigfaltige Charakterstudien auszeichnet, bot Mozart den notwendigen Spielraum, das Ausdrucksvermögen der Sprache durch gezielte Vertonungsstrategien schöpferisch auszudehnen.17 Vor allem erkannte Mozart in Da Pontes Libretto die durchge14

Siehe z. B. Stefan Kunze, Don Giovanni vor Mozart. Die Tradition der DonGiovanni-Opern im italienischen Buffa-Theater des l8. Jahrhunderts. München l972.

15

In: Die österreichische Literatur. Ihr Profil an der Wende vom l8. zum l9. Jahrhundert (l750-l830), Hg. Herbert Zeman, Graz l979, S. 345. 16

Cornelia Kritsch und Herbert Zeman, Das Rätsel eines genialen Opern-Wurfs – Da Pontes Libretto zu „Cosi fan tutte“ und das literarische Umfeld des l8. Jahrhunderts. Ebd., S. 375.

17

Siehe R. B. Moberly, Mozart and his Librettists, in: Music & Letters 54, l973, S. l64 und Kunze (Anm. 2), S. 337.

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hend herrschende und auf allen Ebenen des Geschehens und der Charakterzeichnung deutlich spürbare sprachliche Ambiguität – und er verwandelte sie in erstaunlich konsequent durchgehaltene musikalische Ambiguität. Auf den ersten Blick scheint der Don Giovanni-Text ein rasch zusammengeflicktes, wenn auch mehr oder weniger kohärentes Netzwerk von verbalen Klischees zu sein. Dutzendweise, von Szene zu Szene, begegnen uns Durchschnittsausdrücke und -wendungen, die für die italienische Librettosprache typisch sind, wie eine ziemlich aufs Geratewohl aus dem ersten Akt zusammengesuchte Kostprobe beweist: „misero“, „son tradito“, „Qual misfatto! qual eccesso!“, „il mio tesoro“, „crudele“, „cospetto“, „poverina“, „misera me“, „vendetta“, „mio bene“, „idol mio“, „Cieli!, „infelice“, „Ohimè“, „giudizio“, „Oh Numi! son tradita!“, „Mori, iniquo!“, u. s. w. Beim genaueren Lesen jedoch stellt sich heraus, daß Da Ponte diese Klischees keineswegs nur zufällig, sondern in den meisten Fällen durchaus bewußt und gezielt anwendet. Nicht umsonst heißt z. B. der vollständige Originaltitel der Oper (wohl kaum mehr im allgemeinen Bewußtsein gegenwärtig) Il dissoluto punito ossia Il Don Giovanni; die geistreiche, obwohl klischeehafte Vielfalt von Synonymen, mit welchen Da Ponte seinen Titelhelden als Gentlemanverbrecher versieht, dient auch dem Zweck indirekter aber effektvoller Charakterisierung:18 „scellerato“, „libertino“, „indegno“, „assasino“, „briccone“, „empio“, „barbaro“, „mostro“, „fellon“, „sciagurato“, „iniquo“, „traditor“, „mentitore“, „carnefice“, u. s. w. Da Pontes librettistische Meisterschaft besteht vor allem in seiner souveränen Handhabung des Gesamtvokabulars. Dieses Vokabular erweist sich nämlich für alle acht Charaktere als im Grunde genommen gemeinsam, d. h. als weitgehend identisch, aber geistreich variiert. Mit Hilfe von gezielten Wortwiederholungen verteilt Da Ponte 18

Vgl. Walter Wiora, Zu Kierkegaards Ideen über Mozarts „Don Giovanni“, in: Beiträge zur Musikgeschichte Nordeuropas. Hg. Uwe Haensel. Zürich l978, S. 45.

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seinen Wortschatz so geschickt unter den Hauptfiguren, daß sie dadurch – obwohl sie klar unterscheidbaren Sozialbereichen angehören – linguistisch in enge, unauflösbare Beziehung miteinander und gegeneinander gesetzt werden. Diese unterschwellige, sprachbedingte Aufeinanderbezogenheit der Charaktere erweckt den Gesamteindruck durchgehaltener Ironie, welche, die Handlungssituationen und Figurenkonstellation gleichzeitig relativierend, hinter jeglicher derber Komik und kosmischer Tragik eine allgemeine Moral des universell Menschlichen aufscheinen läßt. Daß die inhärente Ambivalenz solcher ironisierender Textbehandlung die Bühnenwirksamkeit der Oper ungemein erhöht, ist zunächst auch ohne Mozarts Musik offensichtlich. Einerseits bleiben die Einzelfiguren, denen ihre linguistische Verknüpfung untereinander nie richtig bewußt wird, von Anfang bis zum Ende des Geschehens in ihrer Naivität befangen. Anderseits wurde damit der Text nicht nur ironisch konzipiert, er wird auch ironisch rezipiert: Das genießende Publikum erkennt nach und nach die geheime Identität des Wortschatzes und faßt die daraus entstehende Ironie als übergreifenden Beweis für die Relativität der dargebotenen comédie humaine auf. Wie sieht aber Da Pontes bedeutungsgeladene Assoziationstechnik durch Wortschatzmanipulation in der Praxis aus? Nehmen wir als Beispiel seine differenzierte Behandlung von Don Ottavios Schwur in der dritten Szene des ersten Aktes und dessen weiteres Echo im Rest des Librettos. Im Duett „Fuggi, crudele, fuggi!“ (1,3) fordert Donna Anna Ottavio feierlich zum Schwören auf „Ah! vendicar, se il puoi,/Giura quel sangue ognor.“ Ottavios heroisch untermalter und mehrmals hintereinander wiederholter Schwur wirkt hier zunächst als das entscheidende Moment, das die Rachehandlung auslöst: „lo giuro ... lo giuro agl’occhi tuoi,/Lo giuro al nostro amor.“ Er wird im Schlußteil des Duetts noch weiter bekräftigt: „Che giuramento, oh Dei!“ In Wirklichkeit bleibt aber Ottavios Schwur bloß leere heroische Geste und seine groß angekündigte Racheaktion unausgeführt. Echte Rache dagegen, die auch Rachetätigkeit auslöst, schwört erst

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Donna Elvira in ihrer Arie „Ah chi mi dice mai“ (1,5). Daß Ottavios Schwur ohne Wirkung bleiben wird, deutet Da Ponte konstrastierend dadurch an, daß er im Rezitativ der direkt darauffolgenden Szene Leporello Don Giovanni ebenfalls zum Schwören auffordern läßt: LEPORELLO: DON GIOVANNI:

Giurate Di non andar in collera. Lo giuro sul mio onore [...]

Zwischen Leporello und Don Giovanni geht es aber diesmal um eine recht triviale, scherzhafte Angelegenheit, die eigentlich gar keinen Schwur benötigt und nur dazu dient, den hochgestochenen Bedeutungsinhalt von Ottavios Schwur indirekt ins ironische Licht zu rücken, um ihn dadurch im voraus zu relativieren. Daß die Stelle auch gleichzeitig die Nichtswürdigkeit und lügnerische Disposition Don Giovannis charakterisiert, ist ein zusätzlicher Gewinn. Giovanni verleugnet nämlich seinen soeben abgegebenen Schwur: LEPORELLO: DON GIOVANNI:

E il giuramento!... Non so di giuramenti... taci... o ch’io...

Daß Da Ponte den Bedeutungsinhalt des Schwur-Komplexes bewußt manipuliert, beweist Donna Elviras atemlose rezitativische Erzählung von ihrer Verführung durch Don Giovanni. Nicht zufällig wählt Giovanni Leporellos Wort „collera“ von vorhin; und es sind genau die „giuramenti“, an welche Elvira erinnert, von welchen Giovanni aus gutem Grund nichts wissen will: DON GIOVANNI: DONNA ELVIRA:

Via cara Donna Elvira, Calmate questa collera... In casa mia Entri furtivamente, a forza d’arte Di giuramenti e di lusinghe arrivi A sedurre il cor mio; [...] (I,5)

Der Schwur-Komplex erscheint an noch prominenterer Stelle in der dritten Szene des zweiten Aktes: als grotesk-parodistischer Höhe-

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punkt und zugleich für Elvira unbewußt als Spannungsmoment ihrer tiefsten, grausamsten Erniedrigung durch den als Don Giovanni posierenden Leporello: DONNA ELVIRA: LEPORELLO: DONNA ELVIRA: LEPORELLO:

E non m’ingannerete? No, sicuro. Giuratemi. Lo giuro a questa mano, Che bacio con trasporto [...]

Obwohl eher indirekt und assoziativ, der letzte Bezug des SchwurMotivs fällt zusammen mit dem dramatischen Höhepunkt der Oper: COMMENDATORE: DON GIOVANNI:

Dammi la mano in pegno! Eccola! (II,15)

Wenn Giovanni dem Commendatore die Hand gibt „in pegno“ und damit sein Schicksal besiegelt, ist diese Handlung kein echter Schwur, doch gewissermaßen dessen gestisches Äquivalent. Geschickte Manipulation des Schwur-Komplexes ermöglicht also Da Ponte, durch ironische Spiegelung und Widerspiegelung nicht weniger als fünf der Hauptfiguren linguistisch miteinander zu verbinden und gegeneinander auszuspielen und gleichzeitig auch zu ihren individuellen Charakterportraits wesentliche Züge beizutragen. Es gibt erstaunlich viele ähnliche Beispiele, die Da Pontes vielseitige und konsequente Sprachbehandlung bezeugen. Fragt man aber nach dem eigentlichen Angelpunkt des Don Giovanni-Textes, dann muß man Da Pontes eigene literarische Erfindung nennen, die sich meines Wissens in keiner Vorlage findet: das Schrei-Motiv. Dieses geniale Motiv, im Werk direkt oder indirekt allgegenwärtig, schließt im weiteren Sinne alles ein, was mit dem akustisch-sprachlichen Bereich zu tun hat, wie z. B. Hören, Anhören, Zuhören, Überhören, Erkennen, Verkennen, und Verstellen von Stimmen. Was könnte in der Tat opernhafter, zu einem Operntext geeigneter sein, als ein übergreifendes literarisches Motiv, das sich auf die menschliche – gegebenenfalls auch über- und unterirdische – Stimme bezieht?

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Gleich in der ersten Szene der Oper ertönen Donna Annas Hilferufe („Gente! servi! al traditore!“), die die turbulente Handlung mit einem Ruck in Gang setzen und welche Don Giovanni verzweifelt zu dämpfen sucht: „Donna folle! indarno gridi!/Chi son io tu non saprai.“ Der letzte Schrei dagegen gehört Don Giovanni selber, während er trotzend in den Flammen der Hölle versinkt, sekundiert von Leporellos angstvollem Echo, einem Schreckenston, der aber auch seine Erleichterung ausdrückt (II,25). Dieser Doppelschrei erinnert noch ein letztes Mal an die perfekt aufeinander eingespielte Partnerschaft von Meister und Diener, von kompromißlosem Lebenskünstler und opportunistischem Überlebenskünstler. Ironischerweise wird aber dieses scheinbar so vertraute Abhängigkeitsverhältnis durch Don Giovannis Verdammnis gleichzeitig aufgehoben: Der ‘erlöste’ Leporello sucht sich sofort einen neuen Herren, damit er sein rückgratloses Untertanendasein weiterführen kann. Die Schreie, die die anderen Charaktere ausstoßen, sind ebenso bedeutsam wie handlungsbestimmend; sie verlauten immer dort, wo im Geschehen ein Höhepunkt oder Wendepunkt erreicht wird. Zerlinas Schreie hinter den Kulissen im ersten Finale („Oh Numi! son tradita!“, „Gente aiuto, aiuto gente!“ u. s. w., I,20) haben sogar eine doppelte Funktion. Sie beziehen sich nicht nur unmittelbar echohaft auf Donna Annas Hilferufe, sondern bewirken auch den abrupten Zusammenbruch der von Don Giovanni und Leporello inszenierten großartigen Tanzszene und führen zur öffentlichen Demaskierung Giovannis als „scellerato“. Die Parallelstelle findet sich in der Tafelszene des zweiten Finales, wo beim Erblicken der Statue zuerst Donna Elvira und dann Leporello vor Entsetzen aufschreien („Che grido indiavolato!“, kommentiert Don Giovanni; II,l4). Der Wendepunktcharakter dieses Spannungsmoments wird auch musikalisch deutlich hervorgehoben: „Mit ihrem [Elviras] grellen Schrei erklingt im Finale erstmals der bodenlose verminderte Akkord h-d-f-as, der die Signatur des wenig späteren Auftritts der Statue ist (h-d-f-

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gis).“19 Und sogar der dramatisch zum Äußersten gesteigerte Auftritt des Commendatore enthält einen entscheidenden ironischen Textbezug, der Don Giovannis eigenen, seine Verdammnis besiegelnden Aufschrei direkt veranlasst: COMMENDATORE: DON GIOVANNI:

Dammi la mano in pegno! Eccola! (Grida forte). Ohimé! (II,15)

Die Anspielung in den Worten des Commendatore auf Don Giovannis „La ci darem la mano“ ist unverkennbar. Die Assoziationskette von prägnanten Schreien, die gewissermaßen das Rückgrat des Geschehens bildet und die diversen Aktionsstränge zusammenhält, macht uns aber auch auf Da Pontes Überbetonung der Stimmenbewußtheit der einzelnen Charaktere aufmerksam. Schon im Quartett „Non ti fidar, o misera“ (I,l2), wenn Don Giovanni versucht, Donna Elvira zur Verrückten abzustempeln, schöpfen Anna und Ottavio Verdacht aufgrund von Giovannis Redeweise: „Quegli accenti sì sommessi“. Kurz danach erkennt Donna Anna den nächtlichen Eindringling und Mörder ihres Vaters: Non dubitate più: gli ultimi accenti Che l’empio proferì, tutta la voce Richiamar nel cor mio di quell’indegno che nel mio appartamento [...] (I,l3)

Und bei ihrem Auftritt als Masken genügt es Anna, Elvira und Ottavio, bloß die Stimme Don Giovannis zu vernehmen, um sich von seiner Schuld überzeugt zu fühlen: „Al volto ed alla voce/Si scopre il traditore.“ (I,l9) Man könnte natürlich einwenden, daß die erhöhte Stimmenbewußtheit der Charaktere (oder auch ein auffallender Mangel an Hellhörigkeit) im Libretto realistisch motiviert sei: Da Ponte läßt näm19

Kunze (Anm. 2), S. 369.

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lich praktisch die ganze Handlung unter dem Mantel nächtlichen Dunkels abspielen. Die Bedeutung seiner akustisch orientierten Gesamtkonzeption geht aber weit über die Bemühung um die Wahrscheinlichkeit des Bühnengeschehens hinaus. Eine Reihe von weiteren Textstellen bezeugt, wie unentbehrlich für Da Pontes Charakterzeichnung und Gestaltung von echter Situationskomik das Erkennen und Verkennen von Stimmen eigentlich ist. Obwohl Don Giovanni und Leporello reichlich Gelegenheit haben, Donna Elvira bei ihrer Ankunft heimlich zu beobachten und ihr zuzuhören („Ah chi mi dice mai“, I,5), geschieht es erst, wenn Giovanni die unerkannte „bella/Dal vago abbandonata“ eroberungsbereit mit „Signorina“ anredet und sie nach seiner Stimme fragt, daß sie sich endlich gegenseitig erkennen. Später, in der Fensterszene, ist Leporello schon von vornherein hellhöriger: Zitto! di Donna Elvira Signor, la voce io sento! (II,2)

Ähnlicherweise erkennt die mit dem Feuer spielende Zerlina schlechten Gewissens den nahenden Don Giovanni an seiner Stimme: „Ah Masetto, Masetto! odi la voce/Dal monsù cavaliero!“ (I,l7). In der Friedhofsszene ist es Don Giovannis unbändiges Gelächter (Bühnenanweisung: „Ride molto forte“), das die Statue des Commendatore zum ersten Mal zum Reden provoziert: „Di rider finirai pria dell’ aurora“ (II,ll). Don Giovannis und Leporellos extreme Stimmenbewußtheit ist überhaupt viel zu auffällig, um von Da Ponte (oder Mozart?) nicht mit Absicht als zentrales, handlungsgestaltendes Element konzipiert worden zu sein. Als Verführungskünstler von beachtlichen, katalogisierten Leistungen verfügt Don Giovanni über diverse Mittel und Fähigkeiten, die ihm zur Verhüllung seiner Identität dienen, darunter auch über das Talent, seine Stimme beliebig verstellen zu können. Und Leporello ist darin kein übler Schüler seines Herrn. Wenn er als Don Giovanni verkleidet Donna Elvira erobern muß und sich Sorgen

425

macht, daß er dabei von ihr erkannt werden könnte, berät ihn sein Meister:“Fingi la voce mia“ (II,l). Giovanni selbst braucht natürlich in der Kunst des Sich-Verstellens keine Unterweisung. Er ahmt Leporellos Stimme so glaubhaft nach, daß Masetto ihn ohne Bedenken sofort ‘erkennt’: DON GIOVANNI: MASETTO:

Non mi conosci? Il servo Son io di Don Giovanni. Leporello! (II,4)

Schließlich geschah es sicher nicht zufällig, daß Mozart Don Giovannis und Leporellos Gesangspartien für eine zur Verwechslung ähnliche Stimmlage komponiert hat. Die geheime Unteilbarkeit der zwei komplementären Charaktere, von Da Ponte durch textliche Diktion immer wieder angedeutet, wird u. a. auch auf diese Weise musikalisch verwirklicht: Auf lange Strecken in der Oper sind Herr und Diener ihren Stimmen nach tatsächlich so ununterscheidbar, daß dadurch auch ihre Identitäten verwischt werden.20

III „Daß Mozarts ‘Don Giovanni’ aus der Musik lebt, bedarf keiner Erörterung.“21 Mit dieser schlichten Behauptung, der man nur zustimmen kann, will der Musikologe Stefan Kunze Da Pontes librettistische Leistung keineswegs unterschätzen. Auch wenn wir von dem MozartDa Ponte-Arbeitsverhältnis so gut wie nichts Genaues wissen, klingt Horst Rüdigers allgemein gehaltene Einschätzung der Kollaboration plausibel: 20

Am auffallendsten kommt diese angedeutete geheime Identität im Duett „Eh via, buffone, non mi seccar!“ (II,l) zum Ausdruck. Aber auch in den meisten Rezitativpassagen sind die zwei Stimmen oft schwer auseinanderzuhalten.

21

Kunze (Anm. l4), S. l23.

426

In den Fällen einer guten Zusammenarbeit werden Tonführung, Orchestrierung, Wahl der Stimmlagen und -charaktere, bei Da Ponte und Mozart auch der Anteil der Arien und Rezitative durch das Wort, das genaue, treffende, knappe, manchmal zwar die Grenze zum Trivialen überschreitende, aber potentiell immer Verto22 nung heischende Wort oft bis in die Einzelheiten bestimmt.

Am prägnantesten aber faßt Wolfgang Hildesheimer Da Pontes für Mozarts Kompositionsweise geradezu ideale Leistung zusammen: Da Ponte hat das optimale Gerüst geliefert, eine stellenweise poetisch glänzende, dramaturgisch beinahe vollkommene, in den Secco-Rezitativen geistvolle Texvorlage, zwar grob-buffonesk in den individuellen Handlungsmotiven, aber reich an jenen offenen Passagen, die dem Komponisten die Freiheit einer dauernd wechselnden Distanz zu seinem Stoff gaben: Die Möglichkeit, entweder deskriptiv ‘bei der Sache’ zu bleiben, oder, sich von ihr entfernend, gleichsam kontrapunktisch, andere Ebenen zu suggerieren, unter denen die Worte als auslösende Faktoren verschwänden. Mozart hat beide Ebenen wahrgenommen und damit der Oper als 23 Gattung eine neue Dimension erstellt.

Offensichtlich geht es hier darum, von Da Pontes Leistung ausgehend die Eigenart des Mozartschen Arbeitsprozesses näher zu bestimmen: Hildesheimer scheint eine beinahe konkrete Antwort auf die fesselnde Frage gefunden zu haben, wie die Oper Don Giovanni als so effektives Doppelkunstwerk aus Wort und Ton zustande kam. Es bleibt also abschließend zu prüfen, ob ein Weiterdenken von Hildesheimers anregender Einsicht überhaupt zum besseren Verständnis des vielgestaltigen Wechselspiels zwischen Da Pontes Text und Mozarts Musik führen könnte. Im größeren Rahmen der von Hildesheimer angedeuteten zwei Ebenen sind vor allem drei grundlegende Vertonungsstrategien zu unterscheiden, durch welche es Mozart gelang, Da Pontes optimale Textvorlage musikalisch zu beseelen: Analogie, Subversion und Transzendenz. Unter Analogie im weiteren Sinne verstehe ich mit Hildesheimer die „Möglichkeit, [...] deskriptiv ‘bei der Sache’ zu blei22

Rüdiger (Anm. l5), S. 339-340.

23

Hildesheimer (Anm. 2), S. 229.

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ben“, d. h. eine Entsprechung von Mozarts Musik und Da Pontes Sprache in ihrer buchstäblichen Bedeutung, eine Anpassung des musikalischen Idioms auf einzelne textbetonte Charakterzüge und Handlungsmomente, einen schöpferischen Angleichungsprozeß also, der z. B. das Klingengeräusch eines Schwertgefechts (I,1, Partiturtakte l67l75)24 genau so wie auch dessen zur Rückerinnerung dienende symbolische Andeutung (II,15, Partiturtakte 525-548)25 identifizierbar musikalisch-mimetisch wiedergibt. Auf den ersten Blick könnte man meinen, daß allzu realistisch ausgeführte Analogieversuche, besonders wenn dem Text musikalischer Nachdruck im Übermaß verliehen wird, eher monoton, eindimensional und durchsichtig wirken würden. In Mozarts Opernschaffen ist dies aber nie der Fall. Vielmehr wird in Mozarts Hand analogisierende Textvertonung zu differenzierter musikalischer Kleingraphik, zum dramaturgisch wirksamen, musikalischen Textbelebungsmittel. Leporellos Register-Arie (I,5) bietet eine regelrechte Fundgrube für Mozarts Analogieverfahren;26 es genügt hier bloß, auf die breit angelegte musikalische Ausarbeitung seiner Zeile „E la grande maestosa“, zusammen mit der kontrastierend neunmal wiederholten „la piccina“ in der unmittelbar darauffolgenden Zeile „La piccina è ognor vezzosa“, hinzuweisen. Weitere, vergleichbare Beispiele für Mozarts evozierende Textbehandlung sind u. a. das vortreffliche Selbstportrait aus Wort und Ton des als Leporello verkleideten Don Giovanni:

24

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke. Bd. 17: Il dissoluto punito ossia il Don Giovanni. Hg. Wolfgang Plath und Wolfgang Rehm. Kassel l968, S. 4l-42. 25 26

Ebd., S. 440-443.

Vgl. Ulrich Weisstein, „Per porle in lista“: Da Ponte/Leporello’s amorous inventory and its literary and operatic antecedents from Tirso de Molina to Giovanni Bertati, in: Komparatistik. Theoretische Uberlegungen und südosteuropäische Wechselseitigkeit. Festschrift für Zoran Konstantinovic. Hg. Fridrun Rinner und Klaus Zerinschek. Heidelberg l98l, S., l79-l98 und Rolf Dammann, Die „Register-Arie“ in Mozarts Don Giovanni, in: Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 33, 1976, S. 56-78.

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In testa egli ha un capello Con candidi pennacchi, Addosso un gran matello, E spada al fianco egli ha. (II,5)

und die auf die ganze zweite Hälfte der Arie „Vedrai, carino“ (II/6) ausgedehnte musikalische Nachzeichnung von Zerlinas Herzschlag in den Zeilen „Sentilo battere,/Toccami qua“. ‘Subversion’ als Mozartsche Schaffenskategorie? Der etwas esoterische Begriff klingt zunächst verblüffend in unserem Kontext und verlangt nach Erörterung und Definition. Was hat die Kompositionsweise der Oper Don Giovanni eigentlich mit Ideen wie Umsturz, Zerstörung, Unterschwelligkeit, Hintergehen, Duplizität und Gegensätzlichkeit zu tun? Ziemlich viel, wenn man genauer hinschaut: Mozarts Musik als Subversion – zusammen mit Da Pontes ironisierendem Text – ist nämlich die Hauptquelle für die unverkennbar ambivalente Grundstimmung, welche alle Aspekte der Oper überschattet. Sie ist auch für die durchgehaltene Mehrdimensionalität des Werks verantwortlich. Gerade für die Vertonung des traditionell vielschichtigen, aus Elementen der Opera buffa und Opera seria zusammengesetzten Don Giovanni-Stoffes27 brauchte Mozart so viel Freiheit wie möglich, um sich seinem differenzierten Einfühlungsvermögen gemäß im Raum der gegebenen Charakterkonstellation und Handlungsebenen kompositorisch uneingeschränkt bewegen zu können. Hildesheimer deutet diese übergreifende Tragweite des Begriffs als Distanzmanipulation an, indem er Da Ponte einräumt, Mozart „die Freiheit einer dauernd wechselnden Distanz zu seinem Stoff“ gegeben zu haben. Zwar scheint wohl der spekulative Versuch, diese für Mozarts spätere Opernpraxis (vor allem für die Da Ponte-Opern) wesensbestimmende Vertonungsstrategie mit dem einen Sammelbegriff ‘Subversion’ erfassen zu wollen, von vornherein zum Scheitern verurteilt zu sein. Den27

Vgl. Henze-Döhring (Anm. 2) und Daniel Heartz, Goldoni, Don Giovanni and the dramma giocoso, in: The Musical Times 120, 1979, S. 993-98.

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noch meine ich, daß es sich lohnt, die Verwendbarkeit des Begriffs wenigstens zur Diskussion zu stellen. Wenn Charles Rosen axiomatisch behauptet, „in his corruption of sentimental values, Mozart is a subversive artist“,28 meint er natürlich Subversion als effektive Sozialkritik. So z. B. subvertiert Mozart Da Pontes Text zu Masettos Arie „Ho capito, Signor sì!“ (I,8) dadurch, daß er Masettos scheinbar harmlose, klassenbewußt unterwürfige Zeilen musikalisch in eine radikal herausfordernde Stellungnahme umfunktioniert, die deutlich ans Aufrührerische grenzt: Masettos Musik widerspricht seinen Worten und verstärkt damit seine eigentliche, unausgesprochene Intention. (Hildesheimer bemerkt hierzu: „Hat denn niemand gemerkt, daß der Masetto der F-dur-Arie ‘Ho capito“ [Nr. 6] ein wütender Unterdrückter, ein potenzieller Aufrührer ist?“)29 Subversion als Widerspruch von Wort und Ton ist auch ohne gesellschaftskritische Tendenz möglich und wirksam. Was Zerlina um Bestrafung bittend in ihrer Arie „Batti, batti, o bel Masetto“ (I,l4) zwar sagt, aber kaum wörtlich meint, wird gleichzeitig von Mozarts zärtlich-verführerischer Musik unmißverständlich negiert. Der jähzornige Masetto erliegt der Überzeugungskraft der Musik und achtet nicht auf Zerlinas Worte: Statt sie zu verprügeln, umarmt er sie. Subversion als Distanzmanipulation ist es aber vor allem, womit – um auf das Hildesheimer-Zitat zurückzukommen – Mozart in Don Giovanni „der Oper als Gattung eine neue Dimension erstellt“ hat. Die Don Giovanni-Opern vor Mozart sind nämlich alle mehr oder weniger reine Buffaopern. Wie Stefan Kunze belegt, wird ihr Komödiencharakter „realisiert durch eine Musik, die nicht mehr distanziert, sondern sich mit der Handlung identifiziert. [...] Die ursprüngliche Vielschichtigkeit des Stoffes ist in der Buffa [...] nahezu verschwunden. Das Spiel wird der Musik und den Personentypen entsprechend gewisser28

Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. New York l972, S. 325.

29

Hildesheimer (Anm. 2), S. 238.

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maßen eindimensional.“30 Nicht so bei Mozart. Um die Vielschichtigkeit des Stoffes für seine Oper zu rekonstituieren, hat Mozart in seiner Musik für Donna Anna und Don Ottavio, aber auch für Donna Elvira und den Commendatore, auf die „kunstmäßige, künstliche Faktur“31 der heroischen Oper und der Opera seria zurückgegriffen und von der „distanzierenden, entrückenden Eigenschaft der Musik“32 weitgehend Gebrauch gemacht. Daß dieser geniale Griff zu einer einzigartigen Vermischung der Gattungen geführt hat und in operntheoretischen Diskussionen noch heute Kopfzerbrechen verursacht, ist allzu bekannt. Als Extrem ist Don Ottavio ein auffallendes Beispiel: Er ist Mozarts subversiver Distanzmanipulation sozusagen zum Opfer gefallen und hat deswegen unter den unvergeßlichen Mozartschen Operngestalten ein unverdientes Schattendasein zu führen. Muß er schon in Da Pontes Libretto als höchst periphere Figur herumirren, hat ihn der Komponist erst recht zur Randerscheinung relegiert. Er paßt einfach in keine der Handlungsebenen richtig hinein. Und dennoch hat Mozart für ihn zwei Bravourarien komponiert – “Il mio tesoro“ für die 1787 Prager Uraufführung, ersetzt in der Wiener Fassung durch „Dalla sua pace“ –, die aber wiederum nirgendwo in der Oper befriedigend untergebracht werden können: Don Ottavio ist von einem solchen musikdramaturgischen Leichtgewicht, daß er kaum je imstande ist, die Bühnenbretter mit sicheren Füßen zu berühren. Alles in allem war also Joseph Loseys Idee gar nicht so abwegig, in seinem Don GiovanniFilm Ottavio seine „Dalla sua pace“ irgendwo außerhalb des Geschehens in einem Ruderboot stehend in die leere Schilflandschaft hinaus singen zu lassen: Der Einfall weist auf eine beachtliche Affinität mit Mozarts subversiver Distanzierungsintention hin.

30

Kunze (Anm. l4), S. l2l.

31

Ebd.

32

Ebd., S. l20.

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Die diversen Ensemblesituationen, in welchen Mozarts Kunst subtiler Distanzmanipulation als Subversion ihren Höhepunkt erreicht, müssen einer Spezialuntersuchung vorbehalten bleiben. Es würde sich in dieser Hinsicht lohnen, besonders diejenigen Ensembles ausführlich zu betrachten, in welchen die meisten Charaktere zusammengebracht werden, wie z. B. im ersten Finale, im Sextett beginnend mit Elviras „Sola, sola in bujo loco“ (II,7-9), oder in der Scena ultima. Transzendenz als Vertonungsstrategie dient Mozart vor allem dazu, über Da Pontes stellenweise mit Absicht spärlich gestaltete Textvorlage – über das, was eigentlich gesagt wird – musikalisch weit hinausgehen zu können. Ein Sublimierungsprozeß also, Transzendenz ist in diesem Sinne nichts weniger als die bewußte Überhöhung und Verdeutlichung des im Libretto oft nur implizierten Bedeutungsinhalts durch die Musik. Während Subversion und Analogie kompositorisch stets konkret handlungs- und charakterbezogen bleiben und die symbolhaft metaphysische Tragweite des Stoffes kaum – und wenn überhaupt, dann nur indirekt – durchblicken lassen, ermöglicht Transzendenz dem Komponisten, Bedeutungsebenen zu suggerieren, welche nur musikalisch vermittelt werden können und unter welchen (laut Hildesheimer) „die Worte als auslösende Faktoren verschwinden“. Die unvergeßliche Figur des Komturs ist vielleicht das auffallendste Beispiel für dieses Transzendenzverfahren; der Commendatore verdankt nämlich seine überlebensgroße Bühnenpräsenz und ‘Unsterblichkeit’ als Operngestalt einzig und allein Mozarts Musik. Im Vergleich mit den anderen Charakteren ist die Rolle bescheidenen Umfangs: Der Commendatore spricht nicht viel, und wenn er spricht, hat er die Tendenz, sich zu wiederholen. Ohne die Musik, die Mozart ihm auf den Leib komponiert hat, würde er als lachhafte, eindimensionale Karikatur aus der Buffa-Handlung nie herausragen. „Der Commendatore wird erst als Gespenst real“,33 bemerkt Hildesheimer treffend. Musikalisch ist er aber in der Oper allgegenwärtig – von den 33

Hildesheimer (Anm. 2), S. 245.

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ersten dreißig Takten der Ouvertüre, wo er, zwar noch unbekannt, in geheimnisvollen d-Moll-Akkorden als Bote des Überirdischen vorausdeutend angekündigt wird, bis zur Höllenfahrt Don Giovannis. Mozarts hochdramatische, spannungsvoll zum Höhepunkt schreitende Musik erhebt den Commendatore weit über das prosaisch Unglaubhafte des Bühnengeschehens hinaus und macht ihn zum Sinnbild des paradigmatisch Übernatürlichen. Aus der Perspektive des Musikwissenschaftlers hat Joseph Kerman gewiß nicht Unrecht, wenn er meint, „discussing Mozart without considering tonality, rhythm, phraseology, and form is a little like discussing Bergman without considering the camera, or Shakespeare without considering verse“.34 Hier wurde bloß punktuell und in Ansätzen der Versuch unternommen, einige bisher weniger beachtete Aspekte des Wort-Ton-Verhältnisses in Mozarts und Da Pontes Don Giovanni etwas eingehender zu überlegen und zur Diskussion zu stellen. Es ist sicher keine falsche Bescheidenheit, wenn Stefan Kunze in der Vorbemerkung zu seiner neuen, analytischen Studie über Mozarts Opern schreibt: „Das Zusammenspiel von Musik und Drama in Mozarts Opern einer umfassenden Betrachtung zu unterziehen, die dem Rang des Gegenstandes gerecht würde, muß der Zukunft vorbehalten bleiben“.35

34

In: New York Review of Books, 9. February l978, S. 32.

35

Kunze (Anm. 2), S. 6.

Acoustic Experiment as Ephemeral Spectacle? Musical Futurism, Dada, Cage, and the Talking Heads* (1994)

Recklessness is what makes experimental art beautiful. John Ashbery1

Looking back over the uncommonly varied and innovative aesthetic landscape of twentieth-century Europe and North America, interdisciplinarity emerges most clearly as the overarching notion that seems to have governed individual and collaborative artistic experimentation alike. While the borders traditionally separating the individual art forms have not been eliminated entirely, they have become less distinct than ever before. In rapid succession, avant-garde movements evolved in an intermedia context on an international scale and had a formative impact on the diverse cultural phenomena that constitute what Jean-François Lyotard calls the “postmodern condition”. Indeed, the deep-seated interrelatedness of virtually all events and developments in our century – whether historical, political, social, economic, or artistic – remains unprecedented. Particularly when viewed in this wider context of cultural criticism, Lyotard’s definition of the overworked concept ‘postmodern’ acquires interpretive legitimacy: * This paper was also published in Traditions of Experiment from the Enlightenment to the Present. Essays in Honor of Peter Demetz, ed. by Nancy Kaiser and David Wellberry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 355-368. 1

John Ashbery, quoted in The Craft of Poetry, ed. by William Packard (New York: Doubleday, 1974), 128.

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The word [postmodern] is in current use on the American continent among sociologists and critics; it designates the state of our culture following the transformations which, since the end of the nineteenth century, have altered the game rules for science, literature and the arts.2

The aim of this essay is to contemplate, however provisionally, certain evanescent and seemingly marginal transformations in early twentieth-century music and thinking about music and to draw attention to the perduring, as yet virtually unassessed, interdisciplinary consequences of these transformations3. More precisely, I shall argue that the portentous ideas about ‘noise as music’ so assiduously promoted by the Italian Futurists were not conceived in splendid disciplinary isolation and that their impact was not confined merely to the realm of music. Not only have these ideas (along with some of their fascinating though short-lived technical realizations) profoundly influenced subsequent avant-garde musical experimentation down to our own day, but right from their conception they were inextricably intertwined with – and became indispensable to – the theory and practice 2

Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), xxiii.

3

Especially in recent decades, critical commentary on all possible aspects of Futurism – in many languages besides Italian – has been voluminous, and there seems to be no end in sight. Most of these studies are circumspect and informative but predominantly descriptive rather than analytically critical in nature and offer little more than occasional honorable mentions of musical developments. For a comprehensive bibliography, see Jean-Pierre Andreoli-de Villers, Futurism and the Arts: A Bibliography, 1959-73 (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1975). Even Marjorie Perloff’s admirably all-encompassing critical study The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986) provides only passing references to musical matters. For specifically musicological studies, see Fred K. Prieberg, Musica ex machina. Über das Verhältnis von Musik und Technik (Berlin/Frankfurt/Wien: Ullstein, 1960); Otto Kolleritsch, ed., Der musikalische Futurismus. Ästhetisches Konzept und Auswirkungen auf die Moderne (Wien/Graz: Universal Edition, 1976); Rodney J. Payton, “The Music of Futurism: Concerts and Polemics”, Musical Quarterly 62 (1976), 25-45; and Karl Gustav Fellerer, “Der Futurismus in der italienischen Musik”, Mitteilungen (Mededelingen) der Königlichen Belgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Literaturen und Schönen Künste. Klasse der Schönen Künste 39/3 (1977), 1-68.

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of mainstream Futurism, particularly literary Futurism. They have also left indelible traces in the ingenious sonic and linguistic strategies that have come to be associated primarily with Dadaist and later with concrete poetry. Italian Futurism was the brainchild of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), an angry young intellectual of moderate poetic talent but ample independent means who was set “on changing experience, and the world, society, as well as all the arts, totally”4. As self-appointed chief ideologue, Maecenas, and impresario, Marinetti launched the movement with a real bang: on 20 February 1909 he published his infamous “Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo”, conspicuously placed on the front page of the Paris paper Le Figaro. The shock effect elicited by this pompous and arrogant text couched in effusive poetic prose, the first of countless manifestos to follow, was just what its author hoped for. Significantly, it already contained the premises for enlisting music (along with poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, and even film) in the all-out attack on traditionalism of every conceivable kind. As a result of this intellectual bombshell, though hardly of consequence when compared to its prominent predecessor, Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto of 1848, “Futurism established itself as the most aggressive artistic phenomenon of its age in the least amount of time and on the widest possible international front”5. Considering the febrile climate of proliferating artistic movements sketched by Diaghilev in 1913, such an astonishing success was no mean feat: Twenty new schools of art are born within a month. Futurism, Cubism – they are already prehistory. One needs but three days to become pompier. Mototism overcomes Automatism, which yields to Trepidism and Vibrism and they in turn to Planism, Serenism, Omnism and Neism.6 4

Peter Demetz, Italian Futurism and the German Literary Avant-Garde, The 1986 Bithell Memorial Lecture (London: Institute of German Studies, 1987), 1.

5

Max Kozloff, Cubism/Futurism (New York: Charterhouse, 1973), 118.

6

Kozloff, 120.

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Glorifying war and technological progress; rhapsodizing about speed and simultaneity; extolling the beauty of machines, cars and airplanes; delighting in the cacophony of modern industrial cities replete with the rumble of traffic and factories; wanting to do away with libraries and museums – these key anti-passatismo sentiments and objectives of the Futurists are well known, as is their ardent nationalism and patriotism, which predisposed them early on to Mussolini’s Fascism and precipitated their demise.7 Marinetti’s founding document was followed almost immediately by the publication of two manifestos in a similar vein on Futurist painting (1910). They were signed by Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, and Gino Severini – extraordinarily gifted painters who were soon able to demonstrate their militant doctrines in artistic practice. This was certainly not the case with the proponents of musical Futurism, whose contribution to the movement turned out to be theoretical and visionary rather than work-oriented, not least because they simply lacked sufficient talent to create a body of enduring works of art like their painter colleagues.8 Boccioni’s powerfully dynamic paintings, for example, are still regularly exhibited and valued the world over and continue to represent Futurist art at its best, while Futurist music has been virtually forgotten. Francesco Balilla Pratella (1880-1955) was the only professionally trained musician among the Futurists. Directly inspired by Marinetti’s first manifesto, the decidedly less belligerent and cosmopolitan Pratella came forward with no fewer than three manifestos of his own: “Manifesto dei musicisti futuristi” (1910), “Manifesto tecnico della musica futurista” (1911), and “La distruzione della quadratura” 7

For a succinct discussion of these orientations and their consequences, see Demetz, 2-4.

8

“Die Russolos waren keine großen Komponisten, aber sie gehörten zu den sympathischen Fanatikern, die für eine Idee leben und kämpfen, gleichgültig, ob sie Bestätigung findet oder nicht.” (Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, “Die Ordnung der Freiheit”, Melos 29,1962, 265)

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(1912). They were published together as prefaces to the piano score (cover design by Boccioni!) of Pratella’s Musica futurista per orchestra (1912), the first officially Futurist piece of music. In practice, however, this piece seems to have fallen far short of substantiating the novel compositional principles that Pratella proposed – atonality, rhythmic irregularity, microtonality, and enharmonicism. A contemporary reviewer found Musica futurista less than exhilarating: “Is it perhaps the march of the Futurists? Maybe. But rather than avant-garde music, I would say it was suitable to accompany dancing bears.”9 It is telling that perhaps the only programmatic prescription of truly Futurist flavor in all of Pratella’s long-winded theorizing was added to his second, technical manifesto in all probability by Master Marinetti himself: Give musical animation to crowds, great industrial shipyards, trains, transatlantic steamers, battleships, automobiles, and airplanes. Add the domination of the machine and the victorious reign of Electricity to the great central motive of a musical poem.10

Even with all due respect for Pratella’s role as the first theorist of musical Futurism, it is hard to comprehend today that it was as a composer that he ignited the keen speculative and experimental imagination of his painter colleague Luigi Russolo (1885-1947). During a performance of Pratella’s Musica futurista, the non-musician Russolo hit upon the idea for his noise theory, which he first outlined in the 1913 manifesto “L’arte dei rumori”. He addressed that manifesto personally to “Dear Balilla Pratella, Great Futurist Composer”, and it became the first chapter of Russolo’s 1916 book of the same title,

9 10

A. E., Rivista Musicale Italiana 20 (1913), 682.

Quoted in Michael Kirby, Futurist Performance (New York: PAJ Publications, 1986), 165.

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translated only recently into English as The Art of Noises (1986).11 In addition to a radically new musical aesthetics based on noises of every perceivable and conceivable kind12, Russolo’s pioneering treatise also offered a descriptive account of the series of new mechanical instruments called intonarumori or ‘noise intoners’ that he and his friend Ugo Piatti designed and actually constructed and that were capable of generating and regulating an astonishing spectrum of mechanically producible non-musical sounds13. By providing a theoretical and practical framework for the expanded musical realm of the future as he envisioned it, Russolo may also have paved the way for the unrelenting intermedia experimentation that has energized much of twentieth-century artistic avant-garde activity. His iconoclasm is as strong as it is suggestive: We must break out of this narrow circle of pure musical sounds, and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.... We futurists have all deeply loved and enjoyed the harmonies of the great masters. Beethoven and Wagner have stirred our nerves and hearts for many years. Now we have had enough of them, and we delight much more in combining in our thoughts the noises of trams, of automobile engines, of carriages and brawling crowds, than hearing again the “Eroica” or the “Pastorale”.14

11

Luigi Russolo, The Art of Noises, trans. by Barclay Brown (New York: Pendragon Press, 1986). Brown’s introduction provides to date the most illuminating critical-analytical overview of Russolo’s thought. 12

“We will delight in distinguishing the eddying of water, of air or gas in metal pipes, the muttering of motors that breathe and pulse with an indisputable animality, the throbbing of valves, the bustle of pistons, the shrieks of mechanical saws, the starting of trams on the tracks, the cracking of whips, the flapping of awnings and flags. We will amuse ourselves by orchestrating together in our imagination the din of rolling shop shutters, the varied hubbub of train stations, iron works, thread mills, printing presses, electrical plants, and subways [and] the newest noises of modern war.” (Ibid., 26) Russolo’s diction in this passage clearly shows signs of Marinetti’s all-pervasive inspiration. 13

For reasons still unclear, none of the intonarumori seem to have survived World War II. Either they were accidentally destroyed during the war in France or they have not yet been rediscovered.

14

Russolo, 25 (Russolo’s emphases).

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Russolo privileged noise in order to legitimize it as usable artistic raw material; he even devised a classification of six major noise categories and proposed a new system for noise notation which, in modified form, is still used for notation of electroacoustic music. His fundamental prescriptive insight implied nothing less revolutionary than the emancipation of noise from mundane acoustic confinement. Noise became musically composable and has remained very much so until today: Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at 50 m.p.h. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them, not as sound effects, but as musical instruments.15

This Russoloesque passage, revealingly enough, comes from “The Future of Music: Credo”, a lecture first delivered in 1937, but not published until 1958, by none other than John Cage, “one of the most important figures in twentieth-century music [and] perhaps the most influential and eloquent spokesperson for the musical avant-garde”16. As relevant today as it was fifty years ago, his comment could just as well have been made in one of his Norton Lectures given at Harvard in 1989.17 Apart from its potential for the twentieth-century musical avant-garde – which has been realized to an unprecedented degree by 15

Quoted in Richard Kostelanetz, John Cage (New York: Praeger, 1970), 54.

16

Daniel A. Herwitz, “The Security of the Obvious: On John Cage’s Musical Radicalism”, Critical Inquiry 14 (1988), 784. Cage’s “contributions to music have included the vast extension of percussive means (most notably the invention of the prepared piano as we know it today), the development of new rhythmic configurations in composition, the early use of electronically processed sounds, and the early use of ‘aleatoric’ or ‘chance’ elements. He has reworked the Dadaist event into an occasion specifically for and about music, which produced the musical happening.” (Ibid., 784 f.)

17

According to Anthony Tommasini’s report, in true ‘happenings’ fashion, “[t]he talks themselves struck listeners variously as a metaphysical meditation on the world, or Dadaist poetry or gibberish.” (The New York Times, 23 April 1989, Section 2, 27)

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practitioners of musique concrète (Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry), electronic music (Edgar Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Herbert Eimert, Luciano Berio, Luigi Nono, and Henry Pousseur), aleatory music (John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff) and, most recently, computer music18 – the immediate practical benefits of Russolo’s emancipation-of-noise theory for the ongoing Futurist movement were enormous. Along with improvised incendiary speeches, poetry recitations, and exhibits of painting and sculpture, the scandalous Futurist soirées (precursors of later ‘happenings’) regularly staged by Marinetti in cities all over Europe invariably included some sort of Futurist musical event. Marinetti’s impassioned account of the first public demonstration of the clumsy battery of intonarumori, on 21 April 1914 in Milan, aptly captures the spectacle aspect of the concert-turned-riot and his obvious delight in the whole affair: A huge crowd. Boxes and galleries full to bursting. Deafening uproar of conservatives who want at all costs to interrupt the concert. For an hour the futurists resisted imperturbably. At the beginning of the fourth piece an extraordinary thing happened: suddenly five futurists – Boccioni, Carrà, Armando Mazza, Piatti and myself – were seen to come down from the stage, cross the orchestral pit, and assault with punches, slaps and walking-sticks the hundreds of conservatives in the stalls, who were drunk with stupidity and traditionalist mania. The battle in the stalls lasted for half an hour, while Luigi Russolo continued to conduct his 19 intonarumori on the stage.19 18

For orientation about these movements, I have found the following titles most helpful: Frederick C. Judd, Electronic Music and Musique Concrète (London: Neville Spearman, 1961); Pierre Schaeffer, La musique concrète (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967, 2nd. ed. 1973); Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (London: Studio Vista, 1974); Jon Appleton and Ronald C. Perrera, eds., The Development and Practice of Electronic Music (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1975); David Keane, Tape Music Composition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); Michel Chion, Guide des objets sonores (Paris: Buchet Chastel/INA/GRM, 1983); Barry Truax, Acoustic Communication (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1984); Peter Manning, Electronic and Computer Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); Simon Emmerson, ed., The Language of Electroacoustic Music (New York: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1986); and Ruth A. Solie, “When the Message Becomes the Medium: Text-Music Relationships in the Avant-Garde”, Ars LYRICA 4 (1989), 7-18.

19

Quoted in John C. G. Waterhouse, “A Futurist Mystery”, Music and Musicians 15/8 (1967), 27f.

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Much of the noise (literal as well as musical) generated by Italian Futurism began to lose its shock value and quirky intellectual appeal after World War I, though it continued to be echoed for some time by subsequent avant-garde movements. With the advent of Fascism, Marinetti sold his soul to Mussolini and his brainchild gradually slipped into oblivion. “Futurism is dead. What killed it? Dada.” Thus spoke a pamphlet attacking Marinetti in 1921 from Paris.20 The matter was surely not quite that simple, for many of the Futurist ideas and innovative artistic strategies, however altered in spirit and practical application, lived on in Dada and beyond21. As Hans Richter reminisces in his Dada: Art and Anti-Art: Like all newborn movements we were convinced that the world began anew in us; but in fact we had swallowed Futurism – bones, feathers and all. It is true that in the process of digestion all sorts of bones and feathers had been regurgitated.22

There was, of course, no such thing as Dadaist music per se. Yet Dadaist events, just as the Futurist serate before them, would have been inconceivable without some sort of specifically performanceoriented music or semblance of music as animating acoustic backdrop. Characteristically, though, no trace whatsoever remains of Berlin Dadaist Efim Golishev’s literally inimitable piano composition of 1919, which Raoul Hausmann introduced as follows: Man spielt Ihnen DIE ANTISYMPHONIE in drei Teilen (Die Kreisguillotine) a) Die provokante Spritze b) Die chaotische Mundhöhle c) Das biegsame super FA. Eh, Herr Johann Sebastian Bach, Ihre wohltemperierte Unordnung erlebt den Krach mit der dodekaistischen Antisymphonie! Aus und vorbei mit dem tönenden Zopf einer, ach so herrlich begründeten Tradition! Dada siegt auch in Tönen! 20

Quoted in Pontus Hulten, Futurismo & futurismi, trans. by Asterisco et al. (New. York: Abbeville Press, 1986), 459.

21

For a succinct account of Dada’s Futurist legacy, see Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art, trans. by David Britt (London: Thames and Hudson, 1965), 217f. 22

Richter, 43.

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Meine Herrschaften, Ihre eingerosteten Ohren klingen? Lassen Sie sie durch die musikalische Kreissäge zersägen! Spülen Sie die Reste Ihrer Stimme mit Golyscheff aus Ihrer chaotischen Mundhöhle!23

Surely there must have been more to the musical Futurist legacy passed on to Dada than promoting sophomoric entertainment like Russian composer Golishev’s rather forgettable recital (which we cannot even be certain actually took place)! What the Dadaists did inherit from musical Futurism – or rather from Russolo’s integration of Marinetti’s boldly innovative poetic theory and practice into his own L’arte dei rumori – was an acute awareness of the unlimited possibilities of acoustic mimesis inherent in the sounds of language. Indeed, this heightened awareness has remained perhaps the single indispensable prerequisite for today’s experimenters with phonetic poetry like the Austrian sound poet Ernst Jandl, the poet-composer Gerhard Rühm and other practitioners of concrete poetry the world over. It may not be an exaggeration to say that without the impact, however indirect, of Marinetti’s theory of ‘words-in-freedom’ (parole in libertà) and of its first practical demonstration in his memorable “Zang Tumb Tumb” (1914), a free-word poem-reportage attempting to recreate the experience of the World War I battle of Adrianopolis in the form of a ‘verbal score’, twentieth-century avant-gardistic experimentation with the interface of text and music would have taken quite a different course. Practically all postulates of Marinetti’s categorical paroliberismo – e. g. abolition of traditional syntax, punctuation, and metrics; massive employment of onomatopoeia; introduction of mathematical and even musical notation; and the demand for a typographical revolution and “free expres-

23

Raoul Hausmann, Am Anfang war Dada, ed. by Karl Riha and Gerhard Käpf (Steinbach: Anabas Verlag 1972), 105f.

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sive orthography”24 – have been taken up in some form or other, if not outright adopted, by subsequent avant-garde artists. Both despite and because of the undeniable link with Marinetti’s pioneering efforts, Dada’s contribution to the world of sound proved to be far more inspired and lasting than that of Futurism. The Dadaist counterpart to Russolo’s rather vacuous and contrived ‘noise music’ was the truly imaginative ‘word music’ of Hugo Ball and Kurt Schwitters, which consisted predominantly of ingenious onomatopoetic vocables and word clusters. Ball, Schwitters, and other Dadaist poets invented fascinating new forms of verbal composition expressly designed for performance such as sound poems (Lautgedichte), simultaneous poems, noise poems (poèmes bruitistes), gymnastic poems (poèmes mouvementistes), and optophonetic poems25. “Sound poetry as a conscious art form”, as concrete poet, composer and Cage disciple Dick Higgins defines it, “lies between music and poetry, and depends upon this acoustic element for its formal and aesthetic sense [...]. There may be considerable sense or logic in the acoustic structuring of a sound poem.”26 It took Kurt Schwitters over ten years to complete his monumental sound poem “Ursonate” (1932), a unique example of the combined legacy of musical and literary Futurism and Dada. Mindful of the potential of the human voice (preferably his own) to produce noise-sounds, Schwitters drew on traditional musical techniques and forms and utilized many of Marinetti’s stylistic, typographical, and orthographic strategies, pushing the idea of ‘musicalizing’ spoken text to its outer human limits. But in spite of all the serious effort, genuine engagement and linguistic virtuosity that

24

See especially Marinetti’s “Destruction of Syntax – Imagination without Strings – Words-in-Freedom” (1913), reprinted in Futurist Manifestos, ed. by Umbro Apollonio (New York: Viking, 1973), 95-106. 25

For a useful characterization of these forms, see the preface in 113 Dada Gedichte, ed. by Karl Riha (Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 1982), 7-22. 26

Dick Higgins, “Early Sound Poetry”, Literature in Performance (1985), 42.

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he invested in making “Ursonate”, it is difficult not to suspect that the supreme humorist and ironist Schwitters was fully aware of the ultimate absurdity of his grotesque creation. If the phonograph recordings on which he himself performs selections from the work are any indication,27 he must have thought the whole affair hilariously funny: a serious jest bordering on parody and self-parody combined. Since its founding in 1916 at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Dada has never ceased to provide inspiration for generations of avantgardists working in different artistic media. A recent, admittedly rare instance of this creative reception, cross-cultural as well as crossdisciplinary, deserves closer scrutiny: an obscure but timeless Dadaist text was rediscovered and successfully integrated into postmodern popular culture (with mass appeal, no less). By way of an open-ended conclusion, then, I shall examine how Hugo Ball’s sound poem “Gadji beri bimba” (1916) has been transformed into the influential classic hit song “I ZIMBRA” (1979) by Talking Heads, one of the finest rock groups performing today. Surfacing from the SoHo underground in the late 1970s and led by singer-songwriter-guitarist David Byrne, Talking Heads have been hailed for injecting fresh creativity into the popular music genre. Their song “I ZIMBRA” exemplifies a unique approach to the setting of text to music, reworking Ball’s Dada poem while preserving its original flavor and sonic and linguistic properties and using African polyrhythms and minimalist elements of musical texture. Gadji beri bimba

Hugo Ball

gadji beri bimba glandridi laula lonni cadori gadjama gramma berida bimbala glandri galassassa laulitalomini gadji beri bin blassa glassala laula lonni cadorsu sassala bim gadjama tuffm i zimzalla binban gligla wowolimai bin beri ban o katalominai rhinozerossola hopsamen laulitalomini hoooo 27

For a list of Schwitters recordings, see Ernst Nündel, Kurt Schwitters in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981), 150.

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gadjama rhinozerossola hopsamen bluku terullala blaulala loooo zimzim urullala zimzim urullala zimzim zanzibar zimzalla zam elifantolim brussala bulomen brussala bulomen tromtata velo da bang bang affalo purzamai affalo purzamai lengado tor gadjama bimbalo glandridi glassala zingtata pimpalo ögrögöööö viola laxato viola zimbrabim viola uli paluji malooo tuffm im zimbrabim negramai bumbalo negramai bumbalo tuffm i zim gadjama bimbala oo beri gadjama gaga di gadjama affalo pinx gaga di bumbalo bumbalo gadjamen gaga di bling blong gaga blung28 I ZIMBRA

Talking Heads

GADJI BERI BIMBA CLANDRIDI LAULI LONNI CADORI GADJAM A BIM BERI CLASSALA GLANDRIDE E GLASSALA TUFFM I ZIMBRA BIM BLASSA GALASSASA ZIMBRABIM BLASSA GALLASSASA ZIMBRABIM A BIM BERI GLASSALA GLANDRID E GLASSALA TUFFM I ZIMBRA GADJI BERI BIMBA CLANDRIDI LAULI LONNI CADORI GADJAM A BIM BERI GLASSALA GLANDRIDE E GLASSALA TUFFM I ZIMBRA29

Mindful of Peter Demetz’s admonition – especially when dealing with such texts as Ball’s poem and Byrne’s song lyrics – that “we should be eager to feel the sensual pleasures yielded by art, rather than

28 29

Reprinted in Riha, ed., 113 Dada Gedichte, 34.

The first song on the Talking Heads’ album Fear of Music (Sire Record Company, 1979). Byrne’s text is printed on the record jacket.

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to exert our energies in the hermeneutic search for meaning”30, I shall, whenever possible, resist the temptation to find semantic content where there may be precious little or none. Yet I feel compelled to begin with the observation that the lyrics of “I ZIMBRA” possess a nonwestern flavor. In words such as “tuffm” and “gadjam” the consonant groupings suggest African or Middle Eastern speech and the prominence of the high vowels ‘e’ and ‘i’ may infer Indian speech. There are neither diacritical marks characteristic of western languages such as circonflex or umlaut (Ball’s “ögrögöööö”), nor words whose sounds or spellings specifically evoke western words such as the programmatic title of Ball’s better-known sound poem “Karawane”, which instantly conjures up a particular context. Thus Byrne’s lyrics intimate a nonwestern setting but not an expressly African one. Perhaps not accidentally, then, Byrne shapes his lyrics out of material taken largely from the first five lines of “Gadji beri bimba”, though more direct African clues like “zanzibar” appear in the rest of Ball’s poem. For example, “rhinozerossola”,31 “elifantolim”, and perhaps even “affalo” suggest African wildlife (Byrne’s “ZIMBRA”, derived from Ball’s “zimbrabim”, may connote ‘zebra’). Jungle calls such as “hoooo”, “loooo”, and “ögrögöööö” further evoke an African landscape. Also, the unusual consonant combinations occur less frequently as the poem develops and there is a greater proportion of the ‘African’ low vowels ‘a’, ‘o’ and ‘u’ toward the end. With a stretch of the imagination, of course, “Gadji beri bimba” may be interpreted as a concise narrative. The poem possesses overall linguistic coherence and carefully avoids radical changes in sonority (except for the obvious onomatopoetic instances). Ball draws on a 30

Peter Demetz, “Varieties of Phonetic Poetry: An Introduction”, in: From Kafka and Dada to Brecht and Beyond, ed. by Reinhold Grimm, Peter Spycher and Richard A. Zipser (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 33.

31

Here the veiled, punning allusion to Luigi Russolo, whom Ball must have known, is not inconceivable. The immediate contextual association is the German Rüssel, of course. The related form “russula” occurs in Ball’s sound poem “Karawane”.

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host of quasi-narrative devices to create the impression of a story: he emphasizes words and word clusters through repetition, and he consistently alters and modifies the shape and length of individual words to suggest elaboration and development of characters or events. There are perceivable hints of conflict (“rhinozerossola hopsamen [...] loooo”,) and climax (“ögrögöööö”); and as the poem concludes, the lines grow shorter and shorter, intimating decay and death: gaga di bumbalo bumbalo gadjamen gaga di bling blong gaga blung

It is as if Ball had transcribed some anxious native’s monologue about a jungle incident in a wholly contrived pseudo-African language. For his musical setting, David Byrne has created a text of its own distinction: he has restructured Ball’s poem and pared it down to singable dimensions. Paying little attention to the stresses and divisions within and between words, Byrne treats the text as a continuous series of syllables within individual lines, keeps the rhythm of each line consistent, and makes no effort to articulate the words as semantic entities. By combining and recombining words and syllables strategically extracted from the original, his streamlined version significantly enhances the effect of the song text while it still retains Ball’s linguistic coherence, nonwestern flavor, and, through the use of “I ZIMBRA” as title and refrain, the African allusion. The phrase “I ZIMBRA” is Byrne’s own felicitous coinage, of course. He must have realized – correctly, I believe – that the vocables “zim”, “zimbrabim”, and “i zim” in various combinations served as the linguistic backbone to Ball’s poem. “Beschriebene Musik ist wie ein erzähltes Mittagessen”, as Grillparzer adroitly remarked,32 so I shall not dwell too long on what the 32

Quoted in Kart Storck, Musik und Musiker in Karikatur und Satire (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1913), 155.

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Talking Heads’ song sounds like; it must be heard to be appreciated, just as Ball’s “Gadji beri bimba” was intended to be enjoyed in live recitation. The music of “I ZIMBRA”, scored for multiple guitar, bass, percussion, and a small mixed chorus, consists of a series of repeated polyrhythmic textures comprising minimal motivic patterns. It begins with a section in which the textural elements are introduced one at a time and concludes with a recapitulation of the complete textural development. Each line of the song possesses a discrete rhythmic character and each stanza alternates with a movement to the subdominant and a repeated guitar figure. The second stanza conspicuously lacks a beat: with the omission of “BIM” in the second line, there is no syllable on that downbeat. After setting up a specific pattern, Byrne intentionally violates it, but in so doing he effectively reinforces the rhythmic flow. The transition leading to the recapitulation in the final stanza consists of a repeated exchange between the bass and the guitar reminiscent of the call-response pattern found in West African drummingmusic. Talking Heads have recrafted Ball’s sound poem into an effective song of their own: Ball tells a jungle story, Talking Heads transform it into a tribal chant.33 As a chant, it need not tell the whole story but simply capture its essence. Ball’s text is condensed in the Talking Heads’ lyrics, which are then allowed to unfold in the more spacious musical setting. The listener need not be familiar with Ball’s “Gadji beri bimba” to experience the Dadaist flavor unmistakably present in the Talking Heads’ “I ZIMBRA”. In a larger historical context, musical Futurism will be remembered as a revolutionary moment in early-twentieth-century aesthetics: by championing the acceptance of noise as musical material, it initiated a 33

David Byrne might have come across Ball’s description of his own first recitation of “Gadji beri bimba” at the Cabaret Voltaire: “I do not know what gave me the idea of using this music, but I began to chant my vowel sequences like a recitative, in liturgical style, and tried not only to keep a straight face but to compel myself to be in earnest.” Quoted in Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art, 43.

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radically new way of thinking about the essence of music and gave rise to parallel developments in, and reciprocal interactions with, the other arts, particularly literature. Ephemeral as the crude intonarumori and the scandalous spectacles that their repeated demonstrations precipitated may well be regarded today, the acoustic and later electroacoustic experimentation – not to mention phonetic poetry – unleashed by Luigi Russolo’s intriguing L’arte dei rumori has certainly been more enduring. The key catalyst largely responsible for turning the revolutionary moment of musical Futurism into an ongoing evolutionary process of intermedia avant-garde activity has undoubtedly been John Cage. In his “The Future of Music: Credo” of 1937, Cage prophetically outlined the course of experimentation for the second half of the twentieth century and beyond: I believe that the use of noise [...] to make music [...] will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments [...] which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard. Photoelectric, film, and mechanical mediums for the synthetic production of music will be explored.34

That a recently formed British rock group chose to perform under the name “The Art of Noise” is just one more indication that Russolo’s curiously consequential legacy has not been entirely forgotten35.

34 35

Quoted in Kostelanetz, John Cage, 54f.

See also Jacques Attali’s provocative Bruits: essai sur l’économie politique de la musique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1977), trans. by Brian Massumi as Noise. The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985).

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Mozart – an Epistolary Aesthetician? (1997) In recent years there has been a growing consensus among critics, theorists, and historians of eighteenth-century European culture – of music, literature, philosophy, and aesthetics – that the phenomenon Mozart was as much a product as a practical embodiment of Enlightenment ideas.1 Yet to a large extent this notion continues to remain unsubstantiated conjecture, and for good reason: even after two hundred-plus years of universal recognition and voluminous scholarly research, as well as wild speculation, what we really know about Mozart is still disappointingly little. Perhaps this is why lately he has become a ubiquitous postmodern cultural icon. But the fact remains that besides the many colourful legends and other spurious lore about him (shamelessly codified in the film Amadeus), what we have from him directly are some three hundred letters and his extant compositions, 835 in all. We are still waiting for an informed and comprehensive interart study of Mozart’s intellectual makeup and literariness in conjunction with his compositional practice; a cross-disciplinary exploration that would document his awareness, reflections, opinions, judgments, and creative reception of contemporary currents of thought, based on solid textual and biographical evidence rather than on unbridled fancy.2 1

See, for example, Enrico Fubini, Musica e cultura nel Settecento europeo (Torino, 1986); Georg Knepler, Wolfgang Amadé Mozart: Annäherungen (Berlin, 1991); Robert L. Marshall, Mozart Speaks. Views on Music, Musicians, and the World (New York, 1991); and Nicholas Till, Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, Virtue and Beauty in Mozart’s Operas (London, 1992). 2

Maynard Solomon’s magisterial new biography, Mozart: A Life (New York, 1995), though excessively Freudian in method, displays uncommon documentary rigor and interpretive common sense.

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Much remains to be done – and can be done, I believe – toward solving the riddles and dispelling the rigidified misconceptions that continue to obscure the phenomenon Mozart. In the following I shall raise some questions Mozart research has yet to address in a more circumspect and systematic fashion. Is it possible, for example, to derive from Mozart’s scattered epistolary utterances a coherent aesthetic credo that could be perceived in retrospect as an integral part of Enlightenment musical thought? To what extent, if at all, does the phenomenon Mozart also comprise an intellectual dimension: Mozart, the self-reflective musical thinker? In other words, can we seriously and responsibly entertain the notion of a Mozartean aesthetics? If so, how far can we trace its intellectual origins? I shall also call attention to a promising lead along these lines that, curiously enough, has remained virtually unexplored, but can be documented and assessed more conclusively. I mean the formative and lasting influence in aesthetic matters that the German-born Encyclopedist Friedrich Melchior Grimm as a mentor figure during Mozart’s 1778 Paris stay must have exerted on the 22-year-old budding theorist and practitioner of opera composition. This is a tall order, of course, for a short paper. I have no simple answers to these complex questions; it is difficult, after all, to approach an unsystematic system systematically. All I can offer here is a report on work in progress that suggests and exemplifies some potentially rewarding avenues of critical inquiry that might contribute toward a composite portrait of Mozart as an “epistolary aesthetician.” Clearly, Mozart had no part in the fervent aesthetic debates on musical matters that raged during his lifetime, chiefly in Encyclopedist circles, conducted assiduously by the likes of Diderot, Rousseau, Rameau, D’Alembert, Grimm, and Gluck. In fact, Mozart could not have been actively involved, even if he had been better connected, given the severe temporal and personal constraints of his exhausting life style; in the early years as a traveling virtuoso, roaming about Europe accompanied by his impresario father Leopold, and later in

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Vienna as a freelance composer and performer much in demand. Despite these constraints, however, he was an avid reader of everything that came his way. In addition to the musical literature of the day and the innumerable opera libretti he ploughed through, he regularly read newspapers and journals wherever he happened to be and was ever mindful of new publications in music theory, aesthetics, and pedagogy.3 Since he was also a passionate theatergoer, it is reasonable to assume, even beyond what was found in his personal library, that his knowledge of classical and contemporary dramatic literature was quite extensive. (After all, it was Mozart who selected Beaumarchais’ play for adaptation by Da Ponte as the libretto for Figaro.4) Contrary to widespread opinion that Mozart’s mind was decidedly not of a theoretical or philosophical bent, the letters he wrote during the composition of Idomeneo and the Abduction (roughly between 1780 and 1782) in particular yield ample evidence that he not only contemplated the intricate problems concerning text-music relationships, but also tried to articulate his aesthetic precepts and compositional strategies as they evolved in his mind and cohered into a critical stance sui generis. To be sure, Mozart was not an intellectual (in the modern, elusive sense of that word), but a practicing musician through and through. Yet we should not underestimate the cumulative educational value of the unique exposure to diverse cultures, languages, personal contacts, and intellectual influences that resulted from precisely his kind of itinerant and intense life style. It might not be an exaggeration to say – as has been argued recently – that “Mozart, [...] as the most cosmopolitan of composers, was conversant at first hand with all the contemporary developments of his time.”5 Endowed with 3

H.C. Robbins Landon (ed.), The Mozart Compendium: A Guide to Mozart’s Life and Music (New York, 1990).

4 5

Paul Nettl, Mozart and Masonry (New York, 1957), pp. 117-19.

William Fleming and Frank Macomber, Musical Arts and Styles (Gainesville, Florida, 1990), p. 203.

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native intelligence and a phenomenal memory, Mozart quickly absorbed and retained everything he encountered, including the leading ideas and intellectual currents of his age, and not only those concerning musical matters. It is true – however disappointing for posterity – that in his letters Mozart practically never refers expressly to certain momentous contemporary political or cultural events, prominent thinkers, literary or musical figures, or, say, to the Aristotelian principle of imitation or contemporary perceptions of “nature”. But this fact alone should not mislead us into concluding that he was unaware of them. It is just that Mozart’s awareness of the world around him was of a different sort, subtly sublimated in his music. As he put it, with memorable conciseness, in a letter to his father Leopold from Mannheim, 8 November 1777: I cannot write in verse, for I am not a poet. I cannot arrange the parts of speech with such art as to produce effects of light and shade, for I am no painter. Even by signs and gestures I cannot express my thoughts and feelings, for I am no dancer. But I can do so by means of sounds, for I am a musician.6

A telling case in point is the Magic Flute, a veritable gold mine of concrete affinities between Mozart’s humanitarian aesthetic ideal and the aura of secular humanism so characteristic of his age. (How the blatantly misogynist thrust of Schikaneder’s text can be reconciled with humanitarian ideals and secular humanism is quite another matter!) At any rate, it is in this, his last opera that the practicing freemason Mozart’s own, highly personal interpretation of Masonic ideas blends with Enlightenment thought and finds commensurate expression in the musical world of Sarastro, while the endearing, carefree innocence of Papageno’s music aptly conveys the composer’s ultimate dream vision of the quintessential natural man – a nod perhaps to Rousseau’s primeval man in nature, but with a Mozartean twist. 6

Emily Anderson (trans. and ed.), The Letters of Mozart and His Family (2 vols., London, 1966), p. 363.

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The mature Mozart was certainly familiar with Rousseau’s ideas, and not just with the German translation of a parody of Rousseau’s one-act opera Le Devin du village (1752), which at age twelve he set to charming music as Bastien und Bastienne (1768). As the melodist par excellence in the history of western music, Mozart surely would have sided with Rousseau – and not with Rameau – in the famous melody-versus-harmony debate. In a letter to his father on December 28, 1782, Mozart aptly suggests what he considers the salient aesthetic features of the three piano concertos (K. 413, 414, and 415) he had just composed: The concertos are a happy medium between what is too difficult and too easy – very brilliant – pleasing to the ear – natural without being vapid – There are passages here and there from which the connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the non-connoisseurs cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why.7

Typically, Mozart’s incisive critical remarks possess an interpretive validity that transcends their immediate context, the three piano concertos. We have here an example of the epistolary aesthetician Mozart at his self-reflective, critical best: he allows us a rare glimpse into the innermost secrets of his craft by subjecting his compositional strategy to his own critical scrutiny. And what is even more remarkable, this self-reflective passage could just as well be read as a characterization of the quintessential Mozartean melody, or, for that matter, as an articulation of the aesthetic ideal inherent in Mozart’s music – naturalness, that is, meaning simplicity without being simplistic, balance, moderation, intimation of beauty and truth, or, as the late Leonard Bernstein described the G-minor Symphony, K. 550: “utmost passion utterly controlled.”8 Further on in the same letter, Mozart’s musings take a turn toward the melancholy, showing how keenly 7 8

Ibid., p. 833.

Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question (Cambridge, MA, 1976), pp. 39-49.

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aware he was of the irreconcilability of his own compositional ideal with the sobering reality of contemporary musical taste: Moderation – truth in all things – is no longer either known or appreciated. To attain success one must write stuff that is so inane that a cabbie could sing it, or so unintelligible that it pleases precisely because no sensible man can understand it.9

The enigmatic sentence that immediately follows is no less revealing. Mozart abruptly cuts off his critical remarks by confessing to his father his secret aspiration to become a practicing aesthetician of music: This is not what I have been wanting to discuss with you; but I should like to write a book, a short introduction to music, illustrated by examples [‘eine kleine Musicalische kritick mit Exemplen’], but, nota bene, not under my own name.10

Regrettably, he never got around to writing the little treatise (“Kritik” in eighteenth-century usage meant a systematic study). But the very fact that he contemplated writing it attests to his innate critical temperament. It is probably fair to say, without trying to minimize his likewise extraordinary achievement in other musical genres, that Mozart was above all an opera composer. Not surprisingly, most of his epistolary critical remarks concern the aesthetics of combining music and text and confirm that he was indeed conversant with contemporary developments in operatic theory and practice. Two of his letters in particular, written to Leopold during the composition of The Abduction, comprise what we might call his aesthetics of opera in miniature. In one of these letters, dated October 13, 1781, he makes his perhaps best-known aesthetic pronouncement: “In an opera the poetry must be altogether the obedient daughter of the music.”11 9

Quoted in Neal Zaslaw, Mozart’s Symphonies: Context, Performance Practice, Reception (Oxford, 1989), p. 528.

10

Anderson, The Letters of Mozart, p. 476.

11

Ibid., p. 428.

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Briefly tracing the background of this influential pronouncement must suffice here to support my conviction that by no means did Mozart’s dictum materialize out of thin air. On the contrary, it shows that he was cognizant of the famous opera debate between the Gluckists and the Piccinnists12 which was still raging when he arrived in Paris in March 1778, accompanied by his mother. After her sudden death on July 3, 1778, Mozart spent the last three months of his singularly unproductive six-month sojourn living in the apartment of Encyclopedist Friedrich Melchior Grimm and his convivante Madame d’Epinay, whose salon was frequented by prominent intellectuals like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot. (Oddly enough, we have no record whatsoever of Mozart’s personal encounter with any of these celebrities.) During his six months in Paris, faintly remembered there only as the sensational child prodigy of fifteen years earlier, the 22-year-old Mozart was for the first time in his life at a safe distance away from father Leopold. He was left to his own devices to make a name for himself – which he didn’t. We know from the scant biographical evidence we have that the initially amiable personal contact between Grimm and Mozart gradually deteriorated, due to petty financial differences, and the two men parted in discord. But, as reflected in the Paris letters and even years later in specific epistolary formulations of his own aesthetic and compositional premises, Mozart profited enormously from the frequent, if not daily intellectual exchanges with Grimm (age 55 at the time), many of whose critical views on music and musical theater the young composer shared and eventually appropriated. Here is one of several relevant comments by Mozart from Paris, on 5 April 1778: I have this moment returned from the Concert Spirituel. Baron Grimm and I often give vent to our musical rage at the music here, I mean between ourselves, of

12

See Klaus Hortschansky, ed., Christoph Willibald Gluck und die Opernreform (Darmstadt, 1989).

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course. For in public we shout: Bravo, Bravissimo, and clap our hands until our fingers tingle.13

It can hardly be coincidental that Mozart’s epistolary adage of 1781 about poetry as music’s obedient daughter closely echoes Grimm’s formulation of the same idea in his 1765 Encyclopedia article entitled “poème lyrique” (actually a theoretical treatise on the opera libretto), which Mozart must have known. As Grimm put it: The inner economy of the musical drama, based on the truth of imitation as well as on the nature of our senses, must serve the librettist (‘poëte lyrique’) as an elementary poetics. Indeed, he must subordinate himself in everything to the musician: he can only claim a secondary role.14

The composer Gluck likewise drew on Grimm’s influential article when, in his 1767 preface to the opera Alceste, he stated his reverse aim as opera reformer “to confine music to its proper function of serving the poetry for the expression and the situations of the plot.”15 For a proper understanding of Mozart’s eminently quotable statement, which is usually cited out of context, it is imperative that we consider it in its epistolary context. Immediately following the statement in question, Mozart specifically recalls the time he spent with Grimm in Paris, linking it to the discussion of Italian opera in Grimm’s “poème lyrique” article: In an opera the poetry must be altogether the obedient daughter of the music. Why do Italian comic operas please everywhere – in spite of their miserable libretti – even in Paris, where I myself witnessed their success? Just because in them the music reigns supreme, and when one listens to it all else is forgotten. Why, an opera is sure of success when the plot is well worked out, the words written solely 13

Anderson, The Letters of Mozart, p. 522.

14

Quoted in Martin Fontius, “Mozart im Hause Grimm,” in Mozart und die Ästhetik der Aufklärung (Berlin, 1989), p. 53. [My translation.] Grimm’s article “Poème lyrique” appeared originally in vol. 12 of the Encyclopèdie (Paris, 1765), pp. 823-36. To date there is no complete English translation available.

15

Quoted in Donald Jay Grout, A History of Western Music (New York, 1973), p. 468.

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for the music and not merely to suit some miserable rhyme here and there [...] – I mean, words or even entire verses which ruin the composer’s whole idea. Verses are indeed most indispensable for the music – but rhymes – solely for the sake of rhyming – the most detrimental. [...] The best thing of all is when a good composer, who understands the stage and is talented enough to make sound suggestions, meets an able poet, that true phoenix; in that case no fears need be entertained as to the applause even of the ignorant.16

Just one more example of textual and topical correspondences between Mozart and Grimm – and there are many more compelling ones. In a letter to Leopold from Vienna on May 7, 1783, Mozart’s own list of the essential ingredients he envisions for his kind of comic opera recalls Grimm’s somewhat pedestrian enumeration of the typical Italian operatic ingredients in his Encyclopedia article. According to Grimm, there must be “six roles, no less than five, no more than seven, including one leading actor, one leading actress, one second actor, one second actress [...]; the protagonist must be in love with the leading lady, the second actor with the second actress [...],” etc.17 For comparison, here is Mozart’s more sophisticated, personalized wish-list, anticipating, of course, the character constellations of the great Da Ponte operas to come: [Varesco] might write me a new libretto for seven characters [...] The essential thing is that on the whole the story should be comic; and, if possible, he ought to introduce two equally good female parts, one of these to be seria, the other mezzo carattere, but both parts equal in importance and excellence. The third female character, however, may be entirely buffa, and so may all the male ones, if nec18 essary.

To conclude, I have no doubt that rigorous scrutiny of Mozart’s letters – correlated with other biographical and textual evidence and with the perceptible impact on Mozart of contemporary aesthetic theorizing 16

Anderson, The Letters of Mozart, p. 773.

17

Quoted in Alfred R. Oliver, The Encyclopedicists as Critics of Music (New York, 1947), p. 40. 18

Anderson, The Letters of Mozart, p. 848.

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about music – will yield many more illuminating new insights, from which a Mozartean aesthetics of some coherence could be distilled. Had it been made public, Mozart’s epistolary conception of poetry as music’s obedient daughter – in direct contradistinction to Gluck’s well-known precept – would have placed the younger composer into the center of the Enlightenment’s opera debate, on the side of progressive music aestheticians of his age. It is precisely this progressive, forward-looking stance that E.T.A. Hoffmann acknowledged in his famous 1810 review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, when he proclaimed Mozart – along with Haydn and Beethoven – as a romantic composer par excellence. For Hoffmann, the term “romantic” was virtually synonymous with “great” – a value judgment rather than a pedestrian period designation. He instinctively recognized in the phenomenon Mozart the secret of self-reflective artistic genius: a unique combination of contemporaneity and modernity. Like all great musicians before and after him, Mozart was able first to summarize (that is, to absorb, internalize, individualize, and sublimate) and then to outgrow and transcend the musical culture of his age. This is, perhaps, why his music perdures.

E. T. A. Hoffmanns „Der Dichter und der Komponist“ Manifest romantischer Librettologie oder melopoetische Erzählfiktion? (1998) „Sonderbar aber ziemlich plausibel“1: Mit diesen nicht gerade eindeutigen Worten beschließt Eduard die kritische Unterhaltung der Freunde, die im ersten Band von Hoffmanns Erzählsammlung Die Serapions-Brüder (1819) die Geschichte „Die Fermate“ umrahmt. Diese Schlußformel fungiert aber gleichzeitig auch als antizipierender Auftakt und unauffälliger Interpretationshinweis für das unmittelbar darauffolgende Rahmengespräch der Serapionsbrüder, in welchem – vorgetragen von Theodor, dem Musiker in der Freundesrunde – der Text „Der Dichter und der Komponist“ eingebettet ist. Auf die zentrale Frage nämlich, von dem eher skeptisch veranlagten Freund Lothar gestellt, „Ist denn nicht vollkommene Einheit des Textes aus der Musik nur denkbar, wenn Dichter und Komponist eine und dieselbe Person ist?“ (75), antwortet Theodor: „das klingt alles ganz erstaunlich plausibel und ist doch so ganz und gar nicht wahr. Es ist, wie ich behaupte, unmöglich, daß irgendeiner allein ein Werk schaffe gleich vortrefflich in Wort und Ton.“ (75-76) Nachdem Theodor statt eines Beweises sein „Gespräch zweier Freunde über die Bedingnisse der Oper“ (76) vorgelesen hat, die Binnenerzählung also, bleibt Lothar im anschließenden Rahmengespräch weiterhin skeptisch: „Alles, was er [Theodor] sophistischerweise über die Unmöglichkeit selbst eine Oper zu dichten und zu komponieren vorgebracht, mag recht plausibel klin1

Hoffmann: Die Fermate, in Die Serapions-Brüder, Werke, Winkler, Bd. 3, S. 74. Die in Klammern angegebenen Seitenzahlen im Text beziehen sich auf diesen Band.

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gen, es hat mich aber nicht überzeugt.“ (96) Und Freund Cyprians Schlußwort beläßt die Frage erst recht in der Schwebe: „Ich bin [...] der entgegengesetzten Meinung. Doch lassen wir den unnützen Streit, der um so unnützer ist, als Theodor, leuchtet ihm jene Möglichkeit, die er bestreitet, ein, der erste sein wird, der sie mit der Tat beweiset“ (96). „Sonderbar aber ziemlich plausibel“: Die unverbindliche Haltung, die diese Formel ausdrückt, ist typisch für den Schriftsteller Hoffmann, der auf jeder Seite seiner musikästhetischen und musikkritischen Schriften, ebenso wie in den sonstigen, oft direkt musikbezogenen Erzählwerken, seine durch und durch auf Fiktionalität bedachte Schreibmanier verrät. Gerade hier ist nach wie vor der wunde Punkt der musikwissenschaftlichen Rezeption des Dichterkomponisten Hoffmann: Wie soll man eigentlich musikbezogene Erzähltexte wie „Ritter Gluck“, „Don Juan“, die „Kreisleriana“-Stücke oder „Der Dichter und der Komponist“ lesen und verstehen? Darf man überhaupt auf den fiktionalen Gehalt dieser Werke mehr oder weniger verzichten und sie prinzipiell als wichtige, von einem ausübenden Musiker verfasste Sachtexte auffassen, als Dokumente romantischer Musikästhetik, auf gleicher Ebene mit dem Aufsatz „Alte und neue Kirchenmusik“ und der bahnbrechenden Rezension von Beethovens Fünfter Symphonie? Was vermittelt uns der Text „Der Dichter und der Komponist“ über Hoffmanns Haltung zu der Frage des Verhältnisses von Wort und Ton, von Dichter und Komponist? Inwieweit ist seine Haltung als Opernkomponist, der gelegentlich auch seine eigenen Operntexte verfasste, historisch bedingt und von besonderer Bedeutung für die Entstehung seiner musikalisch gelungensten Oper Undine, zu welcher jedoch Fouqué das mißlungene Libretto besorgte? Es ist höchste Zeit, scheint mir, daß wir solche und andere Teilaspekte dieser notorisch vertrackten Problematik ernsthaft zur Diskussion stellen und dabei Norbert Millers nüchternem Rat folgen: „Die Frage nach E. T. A. Hoffmann und der Musik [läßt sich] nur dann im Ansatz beantworten, wenn die Trennung in Dichter und Komponist aufgehoben

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wird und wenn man beim Versuch der Erklärung auf eine Formel für den ganzen Komplex abzielt“.2 Verfaßt zu einem Zeitpunkt, wo er sich als Komponist der Undine und als Dichter des Goldenen Topfes auf der Höhe seines schöpferischen Könnens befand, ist die Dialog-Erzählung „Der Dichter und der Komponist“ des Dichterkomponisten Hoffmann zweifellos von besonderer Bedeutung für das Verständnis seines Gesamtwerks. Um so erstaunlicher, daß es bisher nur vereinzelte Ansätze zu einer gebührenden Gesamtinterpretation dieses wichtigen Textes gibt. Entweder betrachtete man den Dialog aus musikwissenschaftlicher Sicht als die Hauptquelle für Hoffmanns opernästhetische Ansichten bis zu Undine und ließ dabei die fiktionale Komponente außer Acht (der britische Musikologe David Charlton ist hier eine Ausnahme3), oder man interpretierte den Text aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Sicht als poetologisches Dokument, ohne auf die musikästhetischen Aspekte einzugehen (wie z. B. unlängst, 1986, Georg Wellenberger4). Zunächst ein kurzer Überblick zu Hoffmanns intensiver opernkompositorischer Tätigkeit und zur Entstehung und Publikationsgeschichte von „Der Dichter und der Komponist“; den Inhalt der DialogErzählung darf ich als mehr oder weniger bekannt voraussetzen. Seinen Opernerstling zum selbstverfassten Libretto, das dreiaktige Singspiel Die Maske, das aber nie zur Aufführung gelangte, beendet der 23-jährige Hoffmann 1799 in Berlin. 1804 folgt das ein Jahr später in Warschau mit Publikumserfolg aufgeführte Singspiel Die lustigen Musikanten, zu Brentanos Text. Das dreiaktige Singspiel Liebe und

2

Norbert Miller: E. T. A. Hoffmann und die Musik. Zum Verhältnis von Oper und Instrumentalmusik in seinen Werken und Schriften, in: Kaleidoskop: eine Festschrift für Fritz Baumgart zum 75. Geburtstag, hg. v. Friedrich Mielke, Berlin 1977, S. 267. 3

Vgl. E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings: „Kreisleriana“, „The Poet and the Composer“, Music Criticism, hg. v. David Charlton, Cambridge 1989.

4

Vgl. Georg Wellenberger, Der Unernst des Unendlichen. Die Poetologie der Romantik und ihre Umsetzung durch E. T. A. Hoffmann, Marburg 1986, bes. S. 105126.

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Eifersucht (1807) zu Calderóns Text in August Wilhelm Schlegels Übersetzung wurde nie aufgeführt. Von 1808 an bezeichnet der gattungsbewußte Komponist Hoffmann seine umfangreicheren Bühnenwerke konsequent als „Opern“. So z. B. nennt er den vieraktigen Trank der Unsterblichkeit (1808, zu von Sodens Text) eine „romantische Oper“, Aurora (1812, zu Holbeins Text) eine „große heroische Oper“ und Undine eine „Zauber-Oper in drei Abtheilungen“. Undine wurde in Berlin das Theaterereignis der 1816/17-Saison und brachte für Hoffmann endlich die Erfüllung seiner Jugendträume, als Opernkomponist anerkannt zu werden. Die traurige Geschichte des Theaterbrandes, der auch Schinkels Dekorationen zerstörte, ist allzu bekannt. Der Trank der Unsterblichkeit und Aurora blieben zu Hoffmanns Lebzeiten unaufgeführt. Nach Undine kam der Bestseller-Autor Hoffmann kaum mehr zum Komponieren. Bis in seine letzten Tage jedoch beschäftigten ihn neue, obwohl unausgeführt gebliebene Opernpläne, wie z. B. eine Bearbeitung von Calderóns El Galan fantasma (Der Liebhaber nach dem Tode), die das komische Gegenstück zur Undine werden sollte, und eine erneute Zusammenarbeit mit Fouqué – diesmal an einer opera seria. Noch 1821 war Hoffmann ein aktiver Teilnehmer am Berliner Opernleben: Er bearbeitete und übersetzte den französischen Text von Gaspare Spontinis Oper Olimpia für deren Berliner Première und verfaßte seine letzte große opernästhetische Abhandlung „Nachträgliche Bemerkungen über Spontinis Oper ‘Olympia’”, in welcher er seine frühere, im Sinne der romantischen Oper à la Undine konzipierte Opernauffassung im Dialog „Der Dichter und der Komponist“ revidierte und erweiterte. An seinem lebenslangen Selbstbewußtsein als Opernkomponist hat er also trotz des großen literarischen Erfolgs seiner letzten Jahre nichts eingebüßt. Der früheste, belegbare Plan, einen Aufsatz „über die Forderungen, die der Componist an den Dichter einer Oper mit Recht macht“5 für 5

Hoffmann an die Redaktion der AMZ, Bamberg, 25. Mai 1809, in: E. T. A. Hoffmanns Briefwechsel, hg. v. Friedrich Schnapp, München 1967, Bd. I, S. 293.

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die AMZ zu schreiben, stammt aus dem Jahr 1809 (auch das Erscheinungsjahr von „Ritter Gluck“!). Der Plan wurde aber erst vier Jahre später ausgeführt. Drei von Hoffmanns frühen Opernrezensionen (erschienen 1810/11 in der AMZ), jeweils einer deutschen, französischen und italienischen Oper gewidmet, dürfen als Vorarbeiten zu unserem Dialog angesehen werden. Die praktischen Erfahrungen kompositorischer Arbeit an Aurora (1812) und Undine (1813/14) sind auch in die opernästhetischen Formulierungen des Dialogs eingegangen. Die endgültige Niederschrift erfolgt unmittelbar nach der Komposition des ersten Undine-Aktes (auch die Entstehungszeit des „Goldenen Topfs“ und der Flugschrift „Die Vision auf dem Schlachtfelde bei Dresden“!). Das alles (und noch mehr) schafft Hoffmann sozusagen nebenbei, als voll engagierter Musikdirektor und Dirigent bei Joseph Secondas Operngesellschaft, mitten im Krieg zwischen Dresden und Leipzig pendelnd. Daß „Der Dichter und der Komponist“ von vornherein bewußt als fiktionaler Text konzipiert und als Erzählung strukturiert wurde, ist schon im Erstdruck in der AMZ (Dezember 1813) unverkennbar. Das Gespräch zweier Freunde über die Oper entwickelt sich nahtlos aus einer Rahmenhandlung, die durch Schilderung der Dresdner Kriegsumstände und Vorstellung der per Zufall zusammengeführten (und autobiographisch inspirierten) Dialogpartner dieses Gespräch überhaupt erst ermöglicht. Daß die gleichen zwei Freunde, Ludwig und Ferdinand, in der im Januar 1814 geschriebenen Erzählung „Die Automate“ als Protagonisten wieder erscheinen, ist aber sicherlich kein Zufall. In einem Brief an den Verleger Härtel nennt Hoffmann seine Dialog-Erzählung „Aufsatz“ (wie auch schon früher den „Ritter Gluck“) und bemerkt dazu gattungsbewußt: „die Einkleidung, welche die Spur der Zeitverhältnisse trägt und die tröstenden Schlußworte, die ich dem Dichter in den Mund gelegt, dürften wohl ein größeres Interesse gewähren, als wenn ich dem Ganzen die Form einer troknen

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Abhandlung gegeben.“6 Er jongliert hier mit nicht weniger als drei Gattungsbezeichnungen – Aufsatz, Einkleidung und Abhandlung – und fügt hinzu: „Ich lege ihn [den Aufsatz] überschrieben: der Componist und der Dichter, bey, und bitte nicht über die Länge zu schelten, da es mir darum zu thun war, manches recht gründlich auszusprechen.“7 Offensichtlich ist Hoffmann die verwendete Erzählstrategie seines Beitrags wenigstens so wichtig wie die darin zu vermittelnden operntheoretischen Formulierungen. Er findet dazu die geeignete Mischform sui generis, eine Kompromißform zwischen Essay und Fiktion. Wie William O’Brien treffend erklärt: „[Hoffmann engages] in a hybrid literary form where conceptual issues are ‘disguised’ in the tropology of fiction – the classical rhetorical definition of allegory.“8 Haben wir es hier bloß mit einem musikalischen Sachtext zu tun, mit einem sachkundigen Aufsatz über Wort-Ton-Probleme in der Oper? Sicherlich nicht nur, und wenn überhaupt, dann mit einem fingierten Sachtext; das Wort „Einkleidung“ deutet auf absichtliche Fiktionalisierung hin. Schon damals wußte man also, und nicht nur in wissenschaftlichen Kreisen, was eine trockene Abhandlung war ... 1819 nahm Hoffmann die Dialog-Erzählung von 1813 im Wortlaut unverändert als „serapiontisches“ Schlußstück in Band I von Die Serapions-Brüder9 auf und verstärkte dadurch ihren Fiktionsgehalt: Die durch die Kriegssituation eingerahmte Dialog-Erzählung erhielt eine zusätzliche Fiktionsebene, nämlich das Rahmengespräch der Freundesrunde, und einen zusätzlichen fingierten Autor, Theodor, der sich stillschweigend mit der Komponistenfigur Ludwig identifiziert und sich unmißverständlich zum Fiktionalisierungsprozess bekennt: „Ich

6

Dresden, 14. November 1813, in: ebd., Bd. I, S. 417.

7

Ebd.

8

William Arctander O’Brien: E. T. A. Hoffmann’s critique of idealism: psychology, allegory and philosophy in Die Automate, in: Euphorion 83 (1989), S. 391-92. 9

Hoffmann [Anm. 1], S. 74-99.

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schuf mir damals einen serapiontischen Freund [nämlich die Dichterfigur Ferdinand] der statt des Kiels das Schwert ergriffen.“ (76) Die Verwendung des Doppelrahmens bewirkt auch eine Akzentverschiebung der Aussage. Der Hauptakzent liegt jetzt weniger auf den zweifellos aufschlußreichen Äußerungen zum Wort-Ton-Verhältnis in der Oper, zum alten Streitthema „prima la musica e poi le parole“ (auch der Titel einer Salieri-Oper) oder umgekehrt „prima le parole e doppo la musica“, oder auf der Beschreibung und Bestimmung dessen, was die romantische Oper sein soll, sondern eher darauf, ob der Dichter und der Komponist einer solchen Oper eine und dieselbe Person sein soll. Es ist typisch für Hoffmann, daß er alle seine erzählstrategischen Mittel einsetzt, um sich in keiner dieser eng miteinander verbundenen Kernfragen festlegen zu müssen. Die Dialogform, die er immer wieder mit Vorliebe verwendet, vom melopoetischen Erstling „Ritter Gluck“ über „Die Automate“ bis zur letzten Geschichte „Des Vetters Eckfenster“, erweist sich hier als besonders geeignet, den Musiker und den Dichter Hoffmann dicht nebeneinander gestellt zu Wort kommen zu lassen. Im Verlauf des Dialogs wird es bald klar, daß die Dialogpartner in ihren Ansichten eigentlich schon von Anfang an einig gewesen sind. In anderen Worten, es gelingt Hoffmann, die Unterhaltung der Freunde als in Dialog verkleidete Monologe zu inszenieren, wobei Ludwig und Ferdinand sich gegenseitig mit Stichworten ermutigen, um das Zwiegespräch voranzutreiben. Ist es möglich, daß der Musiker Hoffmann in diesem Text unternimmt – zu einer Zeit, wo er sich mehr und mehr literarischen Arbeiten zuwendet –, seine eigenen dichterischen Ambitionen vor sich selber zu rechtfertigen, indem er seine Erzählstrategien als Dichter mit seinen kompositorischen Strategien als Opernkomponist zu verschmelzen versucht? Schwebt ihm eine Symbiose der Schwesterkünste als erstrebenswertes künstlerisches Ideal vor? Eine solche symbiotische Sehweise würde einen leichteren Zugang ermöglichen zum Verständnis seiner oft zitierten, klischeehaft wiederkehrenden und meis-

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tens viel zu generell formulierten Äußerungen und Definitionen wie „Dichter und Musiker [sind] die innigst verwandten Glieder einer Kirche: denn das Geheimnis des Worts und des Tons ist ein und dasselbe“ (83) oder „Eine wahrhafte Oper scheint mir nur die zu sein, in welcher die Musik unmittelbar aus der Dichtung als notwendiges Erzeugnis derselben entspringt.“ (83) Das größte und letzten Endes ungelöst gelassene Rätsel bleibt nach wie vor die Frage: Befürwortet der Universalkünstler Hoffmann in seinem Dialog eine Personalunion von Dichter und Komponist der wahrhaften Oper oder optiert er eher für eine Arbeitstrennung? Sind die diesbezüglichen Äußerungen direkt auf Hoffmanns Erfahrungen während der Undine-Komposition gemünzt? Enthält der Dialog – wenn auch indirekt – eine überzeugende Antwort auf die Frage, warum Hoffmann darauf verzichtete, Fouqués Undine selbst in einen Operntext umzuformen? Was die Frage nach Personalunion oder Arbeitstrennung betrifft, haben die meisten Interpreten den Dialog als eine eindeutige Ablehnung der Personalunion gelesen; eine Lesart, die ich nicht teilen kann. Zwar überschüttet der wortgewandte Ludwig seinen Dichterfreund Ferdinand mit Argumenten gegen das Selbstdichten einer Oper wie: „Ganz unmöglich würde es dem Musiker sein, sich nicht gleich bei dem Dichten mit der Musik, die die Situation hervorgerufen, zu beschäftigen“ (81) oder „in dem Augenblick musikalischer Begeisterung würden ihm [dem Musiker] alle Worte, alle Phrasen ungenügend – matt – erbärmlich vorkommen, um in der untern Region der Worte für das Bedürfnis seiner Existenz betteln zu können.“ (81) Im nächsten Moment beteuert er jedoch, daß „Dichter und Musiker die innigst verwandten Glieder einer Kirche“ seien (83) und des Dichters „Sprache, das in Musik ertönende Wort“ sei (83). Der Überredungskünstler Ludwig bringt es sogar soweit, daß Ferdinand als Dichter zugeben muß: „Ja, ich glaube, kein guter Vers könne in meinem Innern erwachen, ohne in Klang und Sang hervorzugehen.“ (89) Worauf Ludwig bejahend behauptet, der Operndichter „muß ebenso gut gleich alles im

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Innern komponieren, wie der Musiker.“ (89) Diese Forderung kann aber nur der Dichtermusiker erfüllen, der Dichter und Komponist zugleich ist. Durch Ludwig argumentiert hier Hoffmann als Meister der scheinbaren Widersprüche (Lothars Wort „sophistischerweise“ aus dem Rahmengespräch klingt nach); eine eindeutige Folgerung bleibt aus, wie auch der Dialog durch den Kriegslärm abrupt unterbrochen wird und fragmentarisch bleibt. Hoffmann läßt sich also nicht festlegen und befürwortet die Möglichkeit einer Personalunion ebenso, wie er eine Trennung von Dichter und Komponist nicht ablehnt. Bei Hoffmann – wie auch später bei Thomas Mann – gibt es selten ein ‘Entweder-Oder’, meistens nur ein ‘Sowohl-Als-Auch’. Hoffmanns Zusammenarbeit mit Fouqué am Undine-Libretto ist ein viel zu weites Feld, auch ohne Grass und Fonty; bis heute wissen wir leider allzu wenig darüber. Sicher ist, daß Spuren gewisser brieflicher Mitteilungen Hoffmanns noch vor dem Beginn wie auch während der Undine-Komposition in unserem Dialog wiederzuerkennen sind. Z. B. schreibt er an seinen Freund Hitzig: „Sie wissen, daß mir das Versifizieren gar nicht geläufig ist und wie schwer würde es mir daher werden aus der ‘Undine’ eine Oper zu machen.“10 Und nachdem Fouqué als Librettist zugesagt hat, an den Dichter selber: „Die Überzeugung von dem ganz eigentlichen Opernstoff, den die ‘Undine’ darbietet, war daher nicht das Resultat der Reflektion, sondern entsprang von selbst aus dem Wesen der Dichtung.“11 Die Beilage, die Hoffmann mit diesem Brief an Fouqué mitgeschickt hat, ist leider verschollen. Wie Hoffmann die Beilage beschreibt, läßt jedoch seinen nicht geringen Anteil am Libretto als Mitautor vielleicht erraten: „Sie haben, Herr Baron, eine ausführliche Skizze der Oper, wie ich sie mir vorzüglich Rücksichts der historischen Fortschreitung denke, verlangt, und nur dieses konnte mich bewegen, die Beylage auszuarbeiten, welche Szene für Szene das Hi10

Bamberg, 15. Juli 1812, in: [Anm. 5], S. 342.

11

Ebd., S. 347.

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storische, so wie den musikalischen Gang des Stücks nach einzelnen Nummern darlegt.“12 Wir dürfen also annehmen, daß der Komponist Hoffmann soweit wie möglich auch als Dichter-Dramaturg ferngesteuert und taktvoll an der Textgestaltung mitgewirkt hat. Wie bekannt, mußte Hoffmann für die sprachliche und dramaturgische Unbeholfenheit von Fouqués Libretto weitgehend musikalisch kompensieren. Damit aber sind wir bei unserem nächsten Thema angelangt und ich überlasse Herrn Kohlhase das Wort.

12

Ebd.

Melopoetics Revisited Reflections on Theorizing Word and Music Studies (1999) Taking stock of recent trends and preoccupations in the theory, methodology, and interpretive practice of musicotextual relations is the express aim of this essay. It identifies, characterizes, and critically assesses representative theoretical trends and other discernible contemporary interart/intermedial concerns and their disciplinary and institutional prospects. Among the overarching questions and topics discussed: What formative critical currents and directions, both theoretical and methodological, have evolved in recent years that promise to energize word and music studies? To what extent has the field of melopoetics been affected by the strategies and advances of the ‘new musicology’, cultural studies, and musical narratology? Is there a place for melopoetic criticism in the larger enterprise of contemporary criticism and theory? The scholars whose recent work is considered in some detail include Lawrence Kramer, Edward Said, Charles Rosen, Susan McClary, John Neubauer, Carolyn Abbate, and Albert Gier. The essay concludes with a short list of desiderata for ongoing melopoetic research.

Taking stock of recent trends and preoccupations in the theory, methodology, and interpretive practice of musicotextual relations is the express aim of this paper. It was conceived as a quasi-introductory statement for the 1997 Graz international conference on “Word and Music Studies: Assessing an Interart Discipline” to invite further exploration and debate concerning this relatively young field of inquiry that most of its practitioners – adopting Lawrence Kramer’s mellifluous coinage of 1989 – have come to refer to as “melopoetics” (“Dangerous Liaisons” 159).1 A continuation of the 1995 Lund meeting on 1

Use of the term ‘melopoetics’ is by no means generally accepted. In his essay in this volume [i.e., WMS 1], for example, Werner Wolf expresses unease, if not outright disapproval, concerning the term. The terminological discussion will no doubt continue.

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“Interart Studies: New Perspectives”, the 1990 Graz conference on “The Semantics of the Musico-Literary Genres”, and the 1988 Dartmouth conference on “Music and the Verbal Arts: Interactions”2, the 1997 Graz conference concluded with the founding of an “International Association for Word and Music Studies” (WMA). It is my hope that the following remarks will pave the way toward a theoretically and methodologically sound and up-to-date disciplinary framework for future musico-literary interart research.

*

*

*

Music always expresses the immediate in its immediacy; it is for this reason, too, that music shows itself first and last in relation to language [...]. Language involves reflection, and cannot, therefore, express the immediate. Reflection destroys the immediate, and hence it is impossible to express the musical in language.

Despite this memorable dictum from Kierkegaard’s Either/Or (vol. 1: 68), I trust the word ‘reflections’ in my title will not immediately destroy the immediacy of my random comments on theorizing our “dangerous liaisons” – to borrow yet another Kramerian appellation for instances of text-music interaction (“Dangerous Liaisons” 159). To be sure, Kierkegaard’s pronouncement also reminds us that there is nothing shockingly new in what is actually a revival – or rather a reprivileging – of the age-old questions that energize musicological as well as melopoetic theorizing, questions such as ‘Can music mean?’ and ‘Can music narrate?’. I shall return to these topics later. As Lawrence Kramer has said, “disciplines are theorized only after they have been practiced awhile” (“Dangerous Liaisons” 167). But that does not mean that theorizing is easy. Appraising the state of melopoetic criticism today, even after it has been practiced awhile, 2

The proceedings of these conferences have been published as Lagerroth et al., eds. Interart Poetics, Bernhart, ed. The Semantics of the Musico-Literary Genres, and Scher, ed. Music and Text, respectively.

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remains a daunting task.3 As the Boston University musicologist John Daverio aptly put it not so long ago: “Even though it has become a respectable scholarly and critical endeavor in the last several decades, charting the links between music and literature remains a tricky business” (257). In fact, for some time now musico-literary criticism has been in a state of creative flux; these are exciting times for anyone working in this area of interart inquiry. Having long been involved in the tricky business of teaching and writing about the diverse manifestations and interpretive intricacies of word-music convergence, I can safely say that the rate and quality of progress in this area of comparatistic research has exceeded all expectations: the field has never been more alive and kicking. Calvin S. Brown, the true pioneer in our field, would be gratified indeed. Apropos Brown: I recommend Walter Bernhart’s discriminating tribute to this exemplary scholar, to be included in the commemorative volume edited by Jean-Louis Cupers and Ulrich Weisstein. Bernhart evaluates Brown’s wide-ranging contributions to melopoetics from a contemporary perspective. There are a number of reasons for this vigorous scholarly activity of late, only one of which is the omnipresence in current academic discourse of the magic word ‘interdisciplinary’ and only some of which I shall be able to reflect on in what follows. Chief among these reasons is the momentous transformation in critical orientation today in the field of musicology, a transition that was presaged by Joseph Kerman in his influential 1985 book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology. Ever attentive to innovative currents of thought in music as well as in other fields, in his 1991 article on “American Musicology in the 1990s” Kerman updated and rearticulated his earlier prediction in summary fashion: “If the 1970s was a decade of consolidation, [...] the 1980s and 1990s might well become decades of disciplinary change, or motion” (131) and “I think we are looking at a 3

In the opening paragraph of his essay in this volume [i. e. WMS 1], Werner Wolf calls word and music studies “a discipline in which the construction of a theoretical and terminological framework has not received due attention”.

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discipline undergoing a classic paradigm shift. The 1990s look like exciting, rocky times for American musicology” (142). And not just for American and not just for musicology, one could add. Indeed, we have come a long way since Kerman’s prognosis. By radically distancing and emancipating itself from the formalism and positivism of traditional musicology and from the oppressive shadow of Schenkerian analysis, a ‘new musicology’ has emerged. Certain terms that connote postmodernist awareness and that Kerman thought would only gradually enter the musicological vocabulary of the nottoo-distant future – key words like “meaning, value, criticism, literary theory, deconstruction, narrative, canon, women, gender, sexuality, feminism, society, culture, politics, ideology” (132) – such terms have already been fully assimilated into the rapidly expanding, often ideologically charged critical vocabulary of the ‘new musicology’ of the present. To what extent has the field of melopoetics been affected by the concerns and strategies of this ‘new musicology’? What formative currents and directions, both theoretical and methodological, have evolved in recent years and will continue to energize word and music studies? Is there a place for melopoetic criticism in the larger enterprise of contemporary criticism and theory? Searching for at least partial answers to these questions, I take my cue from Edward Said, an informed and articulate observer of the current music scene. Early on in his Musical Elaborations (1991), Said states that that book “is meant neither as a contribution to systematic musicology nor as a series of literary essays about music as it relates to literature” (xiv). I read this statement not as an apology but as a subtle signal that he intends to cast his net of musical elaborations wider, to include the larger cultural context. As Said puts it, “the study of music can be more, and not less, interesting if we situate music as taking place, so to speak, in a social and cultural setting” (xvi). Given the sad truth of the anecdote he recounts about Foucault, who “once noted to Boulez the remarkable ignorance of contemporary intellectuals about music,

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whether classical or popular” (15), Said’s mediating stance is timely and illuminating as well as symptomatic. Sure enough, when we consider how culturally central music still was for leading modernist intellectuals – philosophers, writers, and poets like Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Susanne Langer, Proust, Thomas Mann, Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, and Wallace Stevens – the fragmented state of musical experience and its critical reception today is disconcerting indeed. But all is not lost for the institutional future of music, and of the other arts, for that matter. In our Age of Cultural Studies,4 interdisciplinary approaches have become ubiquitous, because they are for the most part progressive and constructive, especially if they do not succumb to the potential methodological flaw recognized by Roger Fowler: “Interdisciplinarity in practice often founders on the fact that two disciplines are merely juxtaposed; work at their interface, which should be most exciting, can become embarrassingly vague” (218). Roland Barthes was definitely on target when he likewise foresaw that interdisciplinary work is not a peaceful operation: it begins effectively when the solidarity of the old discipline breaks down – a process made more violent, perhaps, by the jolts of fashion – to the benefit of a new object and a new language, neither of which is in the domain of those branches of knowledge that one calmly sought to confront [...]. There now arises a need for a new object, one attained by the displacement or overturning of previous categories. (73-74)

Only time will tell, of course, but the cure for the current ills of the music business and its traditional academic component may just be to adopt and assimilate the best of what the evolving ‘new musicology’ has to offer. In fact, ever since Charles Rosen published his influential review article, suggestively entitled “Music à la Mode”, in the June 23, 1994 issue of the New York Review of Books, the newly energized musicology, along with melopoetics and other music-related interart fields, has received a good deal of critical attention and perhaps even a 4

See John Neubauer’s essay in this volume [i. e. WMS 1].

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touch of glamour in the media, and not surprisingly, also in the rapidly growing camp of cultural studies devotees. Rosen’s assessment of recent work by the ‘new musicologists’, among them Susan McClary and Lawrence Kramer, is often sharply critical. Nevertheless, Rosen acknowledges that they present an explicit program of bringing the subject into contact with social science, political history, gay studies, and feminism, to achieve a genuine intellectual prestige, and to transform musicology into a field as up-to-date as recent literary criticism [...]. (55)

Situated at the interface of musical and literary study, melopoetics might benefit most by yielding to the allure of the ‘new musicology’, albeit without distancing itself from its more traditional base in literary criticism and theory. In many ways, such a shift toward the field of music – we might even call it the paradigm shift in melopoetics – has been noticeable for some time now. The reason for this shift in orientation has to do partly, I think, with a significant change in the ranks of current melopoeticians. To put it simply, more musicologists with literary competence are being attracted to melopoetic work than ever before. This is a change for the better, of course, because it corrects an imbalance: it means that melopoetic criticism is no longer primarily based in literary study. It also means that research areas formerly said to belong to the domain of musicology, areas such as lied composition and opera, have opened up enough to accommodate studies coming from the literary side. Acknowledging this welcome readiness to meet half way, Mary Breatnach, in her important new study of Boulez and Mallarmé, points to the growing determination among literary critics and musicologists to find new ways of articulating the many and varied levels of the relationship between music and literature. A new critical language is being developed which is capable of moving between the arts, neither blurring the distinctions nor impeding fruitful overlaps [...]. (x)

As I have already implied, the scholar who has contributed the most in recent years toward developing this new critical language is

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Lawrence Kramer. In his three major studies – Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After (1984), Music as Cultural Practice, 1800-1900 (1990), and Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (1995) – and in numerous essays and reviews, he has been able to generate and employ an imaginative vocabulary of interart discourse, breaking new critical ground in virtually every area of musico-textual convergence, most notably in lied interpretation, musical narratology, and what he calls “tandem criticism of music and culture” (“Salome” 270). Concerning the last area, I find Kramer’s methodological aim very much in line with Said’s mediating stance, which I characterized earlier: Kramer wants “to find a meeting ground for literary criticism and musicology as both disciplines aspire to become vehicles of a more comprehensive criticism of culture” (“Salome” 269). As though he were responding directly to the constructive suggestion John Neubauer advanced at the 1988 Dartmouth conference – namely that “if we are to convince our colleagues that the joint study of music and literature is important, we must demonstrate that our conclusions affect what they do” (“Music and Literature” 3) – Kramer posits that “a serious musical hermeneutics is beginning to establish itself, an interdisciplinary enterprise that not only draws on the resources of nonmusical fields of study but also has something to offer those fields in return”. “The major force”, Kramer continues, “behind this emerging hermeneutics has been a call for understanding musical compositions in their cultural contexts. I would like to carry this project a step further and claim that music can also be understood as a cultural agency; that is, as a participant in, not just a mirror of, discursive and representational practices” (“Salome” 269-270). Since some of the latest theoretical approaches in lied interpretation are addressed by Suzanne Lodato and Lawrence Kramer elsewhere in this volume, I shall not consider this topic here. But I would like to comment on the sustained preoccupation with the question of music and narrative which, according to Kramer, has become of late

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“virtually a disciplinary subfield” of musicology (“Song and Story” 235). I have come to regard this subfield as an ideal hunting ground for melopoetics, especially since the two artistic media genuinely intersect there. I must confess, however, that until recently – along with scholars like the semiotician of music Jean-Jacques Nattiez – I have been somewhat skeptical about most efforts to prove the discernible presence of narrative elements in non-texted music; I have often found the various flights of fancy attempted when ‘reading’ music – employing terms borrowed from literary narratology like emplotment, diegesis, plot archetype, or enunciation – ultimately unconvincing. After all, we have been over all this before, and not such a long time ago either, including the never-ending debate about meaning in music. Was Wagner correct in claiming that Beethoven’s larger instrumental compositions were only in the last instance music, and first and foremost embodied an overarching poetic idea? Or the Beethoven biographer Paul Bekker who believed that Beethoven was primarily a thinker and poet and only secondarily a musician? Or Arnold Schering, who set out, in tedious analytical detail, to prove definitively – and preposterously – that Beethoven modeled certain symphonies, quartets, and piano sonatas on specific literary works? Or do we concur with Igor Stravinsky, a member of the opposite camp, when he writes in his Autobiography, published in 1936, the same year as Schering’s Beethoven und die Dichtung: What does it matter whether the Third Symphony was inspired by the figure of Bonaparte the Republican or Napoleon the Emperor? It is only the music that matters. But to talk music is risky, and entails responsibility. Therefore some find it preferable to seize on side issues. It is easy, and enables you to pass as a deep thinker [...]. (184)

There seems to be a direct line leading from Arnold Schering to Robert K. Wallace, a scholar of English literature. Inspired by his “idea that Emily Brontë is to Jane Austen as Beethoven is to Mozart” (“Teaching Music and Fiction” 18), Wallace published two “miscon-

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ceived” studies entitled Jane Austen and Mozart: Classical Equilibrium in Fiction and Music (1983) and Emily Brontë and Beethoven: Romantic Equilibrium in Fiction and Music (1986)5. Earlier he also proceeded to emplot the first movement of the “Pathetique” sonata along the lines of Poe’s story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, a parallel based on no evidence whatsoever, not even circumstantial. Despite such warning examples (and there are more), I have lately become convinced that prudently practiced musical narratology possesses definite potential for meaningful melopoetic work. I still feel uneasy when I come across categorical statements like Kramer’s that “there is and can be no fundamental difference between interpreting a written text and interpreting a work of music” (Music as Cultural Practice 6). But the turning point for me arrived when I listened to John Neubauer, at the 1995 Lund conference, developing his argument in “defense of emplotments”. What won me over were his sane and plausible insights that “all good listening is a ‘collaboration’ with the composer and that listening inevitably mobilizes our talent to emplot, making thereby use of stories supplied by our culture and its history” and that “emplotting instrumental music is the inverse of the musical setting of a text”. Propositions like these made me think along with Neubauer about his central question, about “what narrative potentials music has in order to be emplotted” (“Tales of Hoffmann” 118). By the end of his deliberations, I had no difficulty endorsing his constructive, pluralistic conclusion: Our ability to respond to music from other ages and cultures may as much be due to its openness to reemplotment as to some ageless meaning, compositional intention, or cultural archetype in it. We should continue to ask how composers and cultures emplot musical structures but if we are to understand the cultural power of music we must also study the listeners’ plots: yours, mine, and, yes, Helen’s plot of heroes and shipwrecks. (“Tales of Hoffmann” 126)

5

The adjective “misconceived” comes from Lawrence Kramer’s review of Jane Austen and Mozart. According to Kramer, Wallace’s “Jane Austen and Mozart whets an appetite for comparative criticism that it fails to satisfy” (277).

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It would be tempting to discuss in detail the advances in musical narratology made by Carolyn Abbate and Lawrence Kramer, particularly their remarks on theorizing musical enunciation, but this would take me too far afield. I shall instead touch on a minor point that demonstrates, at least for me, the perils of overinterpretation or overreading, or, to put it another way, shows how easily unbridled theorizing can cause an entire interpretive edifice to collapse. The point concerns Goethe’s well-known ballad “Der Zauberlehrling”, which provided the program for Dukas’ well-known symphonic scherzo The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Why, asks Carolyn Abbate, is Goethe’s final stanza – comprising the magic formula, spoken by the sorcerer, that breaks the spell and restores order in broomland – unexpectedly framed by quotation marks? Abbate concludes her musico-poetic analysis of Dukas’ symphonic poem – an analysis that became a central chapter entitled “What the Sorcerer Said” in her book Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (1991) – by taking these quotation marks to mean that in addition to the apprentice and the sorcerer there is now a third voice [that] enters the poem at the site of the quotation marks, and speaks a silent ‘he said’ after the Sorcerer’s words. [...] a third-person narrator, to us unheard, who peers out from the quotation marks that betray his presence. (57)

Here the Germanist in me must protest: this is sheer fabulation. As any informed reader would attest, there is nothing extraordinary, mysterious, or unexpected in Goethe’s use of quotation marks, here or elsewhere in his ballads. There is such a thing as poetic economy. Goethe was a good enough poet to know that he did not need to throw in a narrator at the last minute to achieve suspenseful closure in his poem. All he needed were simple quotation marks to indicate unambiguously where the apprentice’s monologue ends and the sorcerer’s incantation begins. Clearly, to justify her own reading of the poem in tandem with the concluding bars of Dukas’ symphonic scherzo, Abbate magnifies the function of these punctuation marks. Curiously

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enough, in his methodologically important review of Abbate’s book, Lawrence Kramer hesitates to refute her theory outright. He merely says, somewhat opaquely, that “Goethe’s quotation marks form a penumbra” (“Song and Story” 238). Seen in the proper context, however, I don’t think Abbate’s reading survives careful scrutiny. So far I have focused chiefly on representative North American contributions to melopoetics (pace John Neubauer of Amsterdam). It is only fair that I now turn to the state of the field elsewhere. This is all the more necessary, since I believe that we could benefit significantly from making melopoetic work even more internationally grounded than it already is. As things stand, there is still considerable delay in the dissemination and critical reception of the latest ideas, trends, and developments in different countries. This regrettable time lag could be minimized if we succeeded in further internationalizing the field. A case in point is the recent publication of two important collections of essays in German, devoted to various aspects of interart studies: Musik und Literatur: Komparatistische Studien zur Strukturverwandtschaft (1995), edited by Albert Gier and Gerold W. Gruber, and Literatur intermedial: Musik – Malerei – Photographie – Film (1995), edited by Peter V. Zima. Both of these volumes contain significant and often original musico-literary contributions and appear to be up-to-date on the latest state of German scholarship concerning the respective topics. In the Zima volume, each essay comes with an extensive selected bibliography which includes several titles in languages other than German. The non-German items cited, however, are all over ten years old. Albert Gier’s essay in the Zima volume, entitled “Musik in der Literatur: Einflüsse und Analogien”, is particularly relevant to our context. It provides – for the first time in German – a circumspect, theoretically and methodologically informed, and comprehensive assessment of the entire spectrum of melopoetics, drawing on scholarship in several languages, including English. But even Gier is not quite up-todate: he seems to be unaware of Lawrence Kramer’s writings, for ex-

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ample. To be sure, I should be the last person to find fault with Professor Gier, for he treats my own work most generously and approvingly. He reprints the diagram of my typology of musico-literary relations and phenomena and he adopts my three broadly defined categories “music in literature”, “music and literature”, and “literature in music” as his framework for mapping out the territory. In his constructive critical evaluation of this typology, Gier proposes to add “language as music” as a potentially useful fourth category and suggests that the three areas subsumed under the heading “music in literature” could be profitably conceptualized in terms of the semiotic triangle: verbal music (music as referent), word music (music as symbol), and musical structures and techniques (music as reference). As it happens, another seasoned interart scholar is less generous and not at all approving of this same typology. At the Lund meeting, Claus Clüver kindly gave me the original, as yet unpublished English version of his introductory essay, characterizing the whole of interart studies; it was written for a 1993 Swedish publication which also includes a Swedish translation of my introduction to the 1984 German volume I edited on literature and music. I was more amused than surprised to read that according to Clüver “it would appear to be not only futile but also potentially harmful to try to construct such a typology”. “Futile” – I can live with that. But “potentially harmful” – that is quite an accomplishment! Be that as it may, Claus Clüver misconstrues the intent of my typology, which was not meant to be exclusionary, as he claims. On the contrary, it was meant as an open-ended overview of the field, a map to facilitate initial orientation in the maze of diverse manifestations of musico-literary phenomena and to encourage further research. As such, it still fulfills its purpose fairly well.6 It was never

6

Werner Wolf’s constructive theoretical contribution is a case in point here: in his essay in this volume he expands, extends, and transcends my typology to accommodate basic concepts and categories of ‘intermediality studies’, a promising discipline still in statu nascendi.

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intended as an immortal critical construct, and thus Clüver’s prognosis that it “may not survive the next paradigm crisis” holds no terrors. From time to time I find it instructive to check on how our field is treated, if at all, in the latest handbooks and encyclopedias published in different countries. For example, the sizable Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism (London, 1990) includes a stimulating essay on “Literature and Music” by the British scholar David Lindley. His orientation is primarily historical, with only occasional mention of theoretical and methodological issues. He draws only sparingly and selectively on British, French, and American research, and he, too, is not quite up-to-date. Lindley’s discussion of the term ‘musical’ is sound and informative, but not well enough informed about the longstanding debate concerning its proper use in criticism along with designations like ‘musicality’ and ‘the music of poetry’. Coincidentally, the fall 1996 issue of the American journal Comparative Literature contains an article by the Cambridge philosopher Rupert Wood on “Language as Will and Representation: Schopenhauer, Austin, and Musicality”. But here again, perhaps because Wood’s focus is on philosophy and music, there is no trace of awareness of views concerning critical usage of the term. I conclude my reflections by first calling attention to an essay that, for me, exemplifies the best of current melopoetic theorizing and interpretive practice and then by proposing a few topics and projects that would merit future research. To find out more about the appellation “Shake-toven”, I recommend reading Lawrence Kramer’s 1995 article on “The Strange Case of Beethoven’s Coriolan: Romantic Aesthetics, Modern Subjectivity, and the Cult of Shakespeare”. I won’t give away too much of Kramer’s secret. His close reading of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s evocative description of Beethoven’s Coriolan overture reveals it to have been directly inspired by Shakespeare and not by Heinrich von Collin, even though it was composed for Collin’s play. (The Viennese Collin was Beethoven’s friend but not a very inspiring playwright.) This analysis

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enables Kramer to substantiate his claim that “musical meaning is in part created by the rhetoric [and the diction, I would add] of historically resonant responses, the textual (re)production of acts of hearing” (258). Equally mindful of the musical and literary issues involved, Kramer presents his analytical argument within the larger cultural context of post-Hoffmann Beethoven reception and image formation. Thus he also provides a model for interpreting “music as cultural practice”.

*

*

*

Finally, I would like to suggest eight desirable and possible tasks for melopoetic research: 1) plan conferences such as the present one on a regular basis (every two or three years), so as to promote closer contact among scholars active in melopoetics worldwide; 2) launch a new book series called Word and Music Studies as the central publication organ of the new association: in addition to publishing conference proceedings, future volumes of this series would include monographs and essay collections on topics relevant to wordand-music research on an international scale; 3) publish critical Forschungsberichte covering ongoing research in the field – as initiated by Calvin S. Brown in 1970, with sequels by Isabelle Piette (1985) and Francis Claudon (forthcoming [WMS 2]) – but more frequently, perhaps every five years as individual volumes in the new book series; 4) formulate a definition of melopoetics that would reflect the field’s disciplinary and institutional prospects; 5) subject to renewed critical scrutiny the terminology employed in musico-literary studies;

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6) compile a dictionary/glossary of melopoetic terms7, with special consideration of the usefulness of critical terms borrowed from one art to describe phenomena of the other art and vice versa; 7) attempt a systematic overview of the different types of musicanalogous structures in literature8; and 8) analyze familiar music-related texts as well as newly emerging, more experimental ones, with careful differentiation between multimedia, mixed-media, and intermedia texts, including the interrelations among strictly verbal texts like dadaist and futurist texts, sound poetry, and musiclike concrete poetry.9

References Abbate, Carolyn. Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991. Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text.” Josué V. Harari, ed. Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-structuralist Criticism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1979. 73-81. Bernhart, Walter, ed. The Semantics of the Musico-Literary Genres: Method and Analysis. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1994. —. “A Profile in Retrospect: Calvin S. Brown as a Musico-Literary Scholar.” Cupers/Weisstein, eds. 115-129. Breatnach, Mary. Boulez and Mallarmé: A Study in Poetic Influence. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996. Brown, Calvin S. “Musico-Literary Research in the Last Two Decades.” Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 19 (1970): 5-27. Claudon, Francis. “Musico-Literary Research in the Last Two Decades (1970-1990): A Sequel.” Cupers/Weisstein, eds. 25-44. 7

Albert Gier’s suggestion.

8

Albert Gier’s suggestion; see also William Grim’s essay in this volume [i. e. WMS 1].

9

Claus Clüver’s suggestion.

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Clüver, Claus. “Interartiella studier: en inledning.” Ulla-Britta Lagerroth, Hans Lund, Peter Luthersson, Anders Mortensen, eds. I musernas tjänst: Studier i konstarternas interrelationer. Stockholm: Symposion, 1993. 17-47. Cupers, Jean-Louis, Ulrich Weisstein, eds. Musico-Poetics in Perspective: Calvin S. Brown in Memoriam. Word and Music Studies 2. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. Daverio, John. Rev. of David Michael Hertz. The Tuning of the Word: The Musico-Literary Poetics of the Symbolist Movement. 19thCentury Music 13 (1990): 257-261. Fowler, Roger. Modern Critical Terms. London: Routledge, 1987. Gier, Albert, Gerold W. Gruber, eds. Musik und Literatur: Komparatistische Studien zur Strukturverwandtschaft. Frankfurt a. M.: Lang, 1995. —. “Musik in der Literatur: Einflüsse und Analogien.” Zima, ed. 6192. Kerman, Joseph. Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1985. —. “American Musicology in the 1990s.” The Journal of Musicology 9 (1991): 131-144. Kierkegaard, Soren. Either/Or. Transl. David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson. 2 vols. New York: Anchor Books, 1959. Kramer, Lawrence. Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1984. —. Rev. of Robert K. Wallace. Jane Austen and Mozart: Classical Equilibrium in Fiction and Music. 19th-Century Music 8 (1985): 277-279. —. “Dangerous Liaisons: The Literary Text in Musical Criticism.” 19th-Century Music 13 (1989): 159-167. —. “Culture and Musical Hermeneutics: The Salome Complex.” Cambridge Opera Journal 2 (1990): 269-294. —. Music as Cultural Practice, 1800-1900. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1990. —. “Song and Story.” 19th-Century Music 15 (1992): 235-239. —. Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1995. —. “The Strange Case of Beethoven’s Coriolan: Romantic Aesthetics, Modern Subjectivity, and the Cult of Shakespeare.” The Musical Quarterly 79 (1995): 256-280.

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Lagerroth, Ulla-Britta, Hans Lund, Erik Hedling, eds. Interart Poetics: Essays on the Interrelations of the Arts and Media. Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 24. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997. Leppert, Richard, and Susan McClary, eds. Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance, and Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987. Lindley, David. “Literature and Music.” Martin Coyle et al., eds. Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism. London: Routledge, 1990. 1004-1014. McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1991. Nattiez, Jean-Jacques. “Can One Speak of Narrativity in Music?” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 115 (1990): 240-257. Neubauer, John. “Music and Literature: The Institutional Dimensions.” Scher, ed. Music and Text 3-20. —. “Tales of Hoffmann and Others: On Narrativizations of Instrumental Music.” Lagerroth et al., eds. 117-136. Piette, Isabelle. Littérature et Musique: Contribution à une orientation théorique 1970-1985. Namur: Presses Universitaires de Namur, 1987. Rosen, Charles. “Music à la Mode.” New York Review of Books (June 23, 1994). 55-62. Said, Edward. Musical Elaborations. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1991. Scher, Steven Paul, ed. Music and Text: Critical Inquiries. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992. —. “Einleitung. Literatur und Musik – Entwicklung und Stand der Forschung.” Steven Paul Scher, ed. Literatur und Musik: Ein Handbuch zur Theorie und Praxis eines komparatistischen Grenzgebietes. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1984. 9-25. Schering, Arnold. Beethoven und die Dichtung. Berlin: Junker & Dünnhaupt, 1936. Stravinsky, Igor. Stravinsky: An Autobiography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936. Wallace, Robert K. “‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and SonataAllegro Form.” JAAC 35 (1977): 457-463. —. Jane Austen and Mozart: Classical Equilibrium in Fiction and Music. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1983.

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—. Emily Brontë and Beethoven: Romantic Equilibrium in Fiction and Music. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1986. —. “Teaching Music and Fiction: Austen and Mozart, Brontë and Beethoven.” Ars LYRICA 6 (1992): 18-24. Wood, Rupert. “Language as Will and Representation: Schopenhauer, Austin, and Musicality.” Comparative Literature 48 (1996): 302325. Zima, Peter V., ed. Literatur intermedial: Musik – Malerei – Photographie – Film. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995.

Judith Weir’s Heaven Ablaze in His Breast A Postmodern Dance Opera Based on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman”* (2000/2004) Few works of German romanticism have enjoyed the enduring popularity of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s “Der Sandmann” (1815). Sigmund Freud’s famous essay “The Uncanny” (1919) ensures continued critical attention to the original “Sandman” narrative. But the story’s wide-ranging impact extends to its many translations and diverse adaptations into ballets, operas, operettas, plays, and even films. Among the numerous works for the musical stage it inspired, however, only Léo Delibes’ ballet Coppélia (1870) and the Olympia act in Jacques Offenbach’s opera Les contes d’Hoffmann (1881) remain standard repertory worldwide. Musically as well as theatrically inferior works like Adolphe Adam’s ballet La Poupée de Nuremberg (1852) and Edmund Audran’s operetta La Poupée (1896) faded into oblivion long ago1. Scotland has not escaped the Sandman’s influence. In 1827, Sir Walter Scott wrote an infamous essay “On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition; and particularly on the Works of Ernest Theodore

* This is a revised and expanded English version of my essay “Judith Weirs Heaven Ablaze in His Breast: E. T. A. Hoffmanns Der Sandmann als postmoderne Tanzoper”, originally published in German in Literatur und Demokratie. Festschrift für Hartmut Steinecke zum 60. Geburtstag. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2000. 49-60. 1

For a critical commentary on these and other adaptations, see Hartmut Steinecke and Wulf Segebrecht, eds., E. T. A. Hoffmann: Sämtliche Werke in sechs Bänden. Frankfurt am Main, 1985-. Vol. 3: 964-965. See also Monika Woitas. “‘Anmut im Rhythmus und Dichtung als Spiel’. E. T. A. Hoffmann und das Ballett”. Jacques Offenbachs Hoffmanns Erzählungen. Konzeption, Rezeption, Dokumentation. Ed. Gabriele Brandstetter. Laaber, 1988. 389-420.

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William Hoffmann”, in which he called “The Sandman” “this wild and absurd story”2. And in 1989, the Scottish composer Judith Weir (born 1954) adapted Hoffmann’s tale in the dance/opera Heaven Ablaze in His Breast. It is conceivable that Weir was prompted by Scott’s negative evaluation of “The Sandman” – as well as the peculiarly ‘Hoffmannesque’ traits in Hoffmann’s fictional universe3 – to fashion her own unique version of this weird and uncanny tale for the contemporary musical stage. As she herself confirms: “The extremity of Hoffmann’s literary world was my first musical cue for [my] version of The Sandman”4. Outside of avant-garde musical circles, the young composer remained unknown until 1994, when her third opera, Blond Eckbert, premiered to critical acclaim in London5. Commissioned by the English National Opera, Blond Eckbert is based on Ludwig Tieck’s romantic fairy tale. While Weir’s Blond Eckbert was well received, Heaven Ablaze – her earlier, more esoteric stage project based on Hoffmann’s “Sandman” – generated little critical resonance. Following its premiere in Basildon on 5 October 1989, the production embarked on a twomonth tour through England and Scotland and received some enthusiastic applause but more consternation and lack of understanding. Apart from brief reviews and local press releases, critics did not en-

2

Foreign Quarterly Review I, 1827. Quoted in Sir Walter Scott on Novelists and Fiction. Ed. Ivan Williams. New York, 1968. 352.

3

See Klaus Kanzog. “Was ist ‘hoffmannesk’? Versuch einer Antwort”. E. T. A. Hoffmann-Jahrbuch 5 (1997): 7-18.

4

In the program brochure for the premiere of the stage version on October 5, 1989, Towngate Theatre, Basildon, England.

5

For a thorough musicological analysis of Weir’s early works up to 1988, see Tom Morgan. “Judith Weir”. Michael Finnissy, Malcolm Hayes and Roger Wright, eds. New Music 88. Oxford, 1988. 22-50.

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gage with this complex multimedia work6; and still today not even musically informed Hoffmann scholars have taken note of it. This is unfortunate, for as a postmodern Gesamtkunstwerk sui generis and a practical demonstration of “the innovative potential of the [currently intensively debated] concept of intermediality”7, Judith Weir’s Heaven Ablaze in His Breast deserves wider exposure, critical recognition, and interpretive scrutiny.

I Nicholas Kenyon, the music critic of The Observer, was one of the few who responded with enthusiasm: “Is it a ballet? Is it an opera? Is it a play? Who cares: it’s entirely individual and wonderful.”8 Indeed, Heaven Ablaze is a stageworthy blend of dance, music, and words that defies generic definition. Conceived from the outset as a hybrid, it exemplifies the versatility that characterizes Judith Weir’s artistic development in general and her compositional method in particular. Commissioned by the Second Stride Dance Company and drawing on members of the Vocem Electric Voice Theatre, this multimedia stage project took shape in Weir’s close collaboration with choreographer Ian Spink and designer Antony McDonald. But hers was the leading role within this creative trio: in addition to composing the music, she alone selected the literary model, developed the overall

6 Short reviews and notices on stage performances of Heaven Ablaze in His Breast appeared in Classical Music (5 October), The Scotsman (13 October), Cambridge Evening News (17 October), Cambridge Weekly Revue (19 October), Country Life (19 October), Opera Now (October), Harpers & Queen (October), Daily Telegraph (17 November), The Observer (19 November), The Sunday Times (19 November), The Independent (20 November), 20/20 (December), and Opera (January 1990). 7

Jörg Helbig. “Vorwort”. Intermedialität. Theorie und Praxis eines interdisziplinären Forschungsgebiets. Ed. Jörg Helbig. Berlin, 1998. 8. 8

The Observer, 19 November 1989.

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conception of the work, and reshaped and dramatized Hoffmann’s narrative. As with all her operas, Weir wrote her own text. After its tour through England and Scotland, the stage version of Heaven Ablaze was adapted for television and broadcast in May 1991 via BBC 2, receiving first prize a few months later at the International Festival for Film and Television Operas in Helsinki. The critical comments that follow are based on Judith Weir’s score (including sung and spoken text and sparse stage directions) and the film version9.

II Weir’s unusual casting points right away to the effective fusion of different art forms that makes Heaven Ablaze into a model intermedial construct: an ensemble of eight dancers, six singer/actors and actresses, and two pianists enacts the grotesquely tragic story of the student Nathanael, driven to madness and suicide by blind infatuation with the mechanical doll Olimpia10. While Weir’s adaptation remains true to Hoffmann’s text and context in mood, milieu, constellation of characters, and plot development, most of her novel interpretive insights and compositional strategies derive from the unusual casting. Weir and her collaborators hit upon a particularly effective idea for realizing the Doppelgänger motif and the notion of split personality: Nathanael, Olimpia, Klara, and Lothar – the four major characters – are double-cast as dancers and singers, who simultaneously perform their respective roles. The sustained doubling suggests a bond between Nathanael and his alter ego, which in turn confirms the impression

9

The score and the video recording of the film version were loaned to me by Weir’s London publisher, Chester Music Novello. Neither the ballet scenario for the danced action, nor the script for the film adaptation were accessible, if they are extant at all.

10

Plot details of Hoffmann’s familiar story need not be retold here.

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that the two Nathanaels on stage – singer/actor and dancer – perform one and the same part. Adaptation of a literary text for the musical stage naturally requires certain structural changes. “We have slightly deconstructed Hoffmann’s narrative for this theatrical realization”, reports choreographer Spink11. But such deconstruction does not tarnish Hoffmann’s narrative imprint on Weir’s text, which displays her remarkable linguistic sensitivity and dramaturgical flair. Weir even retains some of Hoffmann’s memorable epistolary passages, albeit streamlined. Nathanael, always shadowed by his flesh-and-blood alter ego, occupies center stage throughout the action, even if he is not visible for short stretches. From time to time he also functions as narrator/commentator. For Heaven Ablaze, Judith Weir transformed Hoffmann’s narrative into 14 interconnected scenes, played through without interruption. They are numbered consecutively in the score, as in a number opera by Mozart. That the scenes also have titles hints at the epic, episodic construction of the work, reminiscent of Brechtian theater. Or is it also a veiled authorial allusion to the operatic, yet also diegetic character of the musical component, an homage to Hoffmann the writer as composer? Weir’s observation is illuminating in this context: The presence of singers acting in this piece may suggest that it is an opera but the singers rarely sing ‘in character’. More often their music is simply part of the overall fabric of a scene, an adjunct to the visual impression. From time to time, however, an outbreak of Opera is unavoidable.12

The following list shows the sequence of scenes in Weir’s score, complete with headings for each scene: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Nathanael’s Letter to Lothar The Nursemaid’s Story Little Brutes The Spying

11

Quoted from the program brochure, see note 4.

12

Quoted ibid.

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5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Nathanael’s Delirium The Funeral The Correspondence The Breakfast, incorporating The Poem and The Duel Nathanael, his house partially destroyed by fire, is able to gain a clearer view of Olimpia 10. The Second Visit of the Barometer Seller 11. The Vision 12. The Concert Party i. Preparation ii. Olimpia’s aria iii. The Dance 13. The Desk 14. The Tower

Although the place changes frequently, most of the action unfolds in the same, generously designed interior space. Incorporated into the danced action, the movable scenery, equipped with doors and windows, gets rearranged by the team of performers from scene to scene. To fit her overall musico-dramatic conception of Heaven Ablaze, Weir invents a number of scenes and situations not in Hoffmann’s text and integrates them into the danced, sung, or spoken action. Scene No. 6, “The Funeral”, for example, depicts a wake around the bier of the mysteriously deceased father, acted by the family members, sung by an invisible six-part choir as a dirge set to the text of “Dona nobis pacem”, and underscored by soft tremolo chords in the two-piano accompaniment. Many of Weir’s interpretive ideas in Heaven Ablaze provide insights into the psychological relationships among the characters. Though not always convincing, the interpretations are subtly intimated either through pantomimic gestures or in passages that are solely danced or spoken. In Scene 3, “Little Brutes”, Coppelius frightens the children at the dinner table, while in the background nonverbal hints at unwelcome intimacies between Coppelius and Nathanael’s mother elude the unsuspecting father. Scene 2 presents the horrifying “Nursemaid’s Story”, in which the eye motif first appears, set for three alternating female voices. Here

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too Coppelius appears in the background, this time as a dirty old man. He poses as a children’s photographer, displaying pornographic interest in Nathanael’s younger sister (a role only danced and acted, not sung or spoken). In Scene 4, Nathanael is caught spying in his father’s study which is not set up for alchemistic experiments à la Hoffmann, but as a dark room. Coppelius and the father are shown developing photos of young women in fancy costumes – prefiguring perhaps the creation of the doll Olimpia, for which later both Professor Spalanzani and Coppola/Coppelius claim paternity. In picturing these pseudopaternal relationships between older men and young women, Heaven Ablaze alludes to a recurring theme in Hoffmann’s stories. Particularly felicitous is the use of operatic convention to cast a female dancer/actress of androgynous appearance in the part of Spalanzani, Olimpia’s ‘father’ and ‘creator’. That Spalanzani’s role is thus transformed into an ambiguous trouser role enables Weir to convey the idea of absolute domination of men over women while at the same time ironically relativizing it.

III Judith Weir herself calls Heaven Ablaze a “dance/opera”. In interviews she also speaks of a “dance piece”, and some reviewers employ the term “ballet/opera”. While the work does have a pronounced dance character, this does not mean that the musical component consists exclusively of dance music (none of it is ballet music in the classical sense, of course). But for long stretches dance does predominate, functioning as a kind of ‘kinetic recitative’, helping to propel the plot forward, while also compensating – through carefully choreographed movements, gestures, and pantomime – for the more static, retarding passages where the actors only sing and/or speak. As a result, danced action and narrated action merge: dance narrates. A good example for this kinetic recitative is Scene 9, in which Nathanael’s house has

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burned. The narrative is advanced solely by dance (without words), which visually unfolds the plot details hinted at in the scene’s title and provides a smooth transition to the next scene. But while the dance component in Heaven Ablaze is indispensable for visual representation of the plot, it is Weir’s contemporary, postmodern musical idiom – a kind of musical intertextuality13 – that determines the work’s overall conception. Music critic Paul Griffiths’s notion of what makes postmodern music postmodern and Umberto Eco’s understanding of irony as the dominant gesture of postmodern narrative stance together come perhaps closest to the essence of Weir’s compositional style in Heaven Ablaze: a blend of sustained irony and alienation, drawing on diverse forms of parody, satire, humor, musical and literary quotation, and social criticism. Here is first Paul Griffiths: Postmodernism [...] may be a matter of composing as before, of continuing or restoring the forms, genres, and rhetoric of earlier music, if not the ethics. [...] It may be all jumbled quotation. Or it may be a question of irony [...], of amused disbelief.14

And Umberto Eco: Irony, metalinguistic play, enunciation squared. Thus, [...] with the postmodern, it is possible not to understand the game and yet to take it seriously. Which is, after all, the quality (the risk) of irony. There is always someone who takes ironic discourse seriously.15

I can think of only one intermedial creation in the history of musical theater before postmodernism that is comparable to Weir’s “dance 13

Literary intertextuality is one of Hoffmann’s characteristic narrative strategies that can be found throughout his fictional universe. See Hartmut Steinecke. Unterhaltsamkeit und Artistik. Neue Schreibarten in der deutschen Literatur von Hoffmann bis Heine. Berlin,1998. 68.

14 15

Paul Griffiths. Modern Music and After. Oxford,1995. 240.

Umberto Eco. “Postmodernism, Irony, the Enjoyable”. Eco. Postscript to The Name of the Rose. New York, 1984. 68.

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piece” – in conception, overall design, media mix, casting, and musico-dramatic inventiveness. That work is Kurt Weill’s and Bertolt Brecht’s last collaboration: Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger (Paris, 1933)16. The two works share many basic traits. Weill’s and Brecht’s “ballet chanté”17 also originated as a commissioned work, for Georges Balanchine’s famous dance ensemble “Les Ballets 1933”. Set to Brecht’s cycle of thematically linked poems, Weill’s music consists of independent numbers for the danced action and separate pieces for solo and ensemble singing. Like Nathanael in Heaven Ablaze, the protagonist Anna in Seven Deadly Sins is double-cast, split into a singer/actress/narrator (Anna I) and a dancer (Anna II). Both Annas are on stage from beginning to end. But Judith Weir’s creative reception of the music of the past is by no means limited to musical modernism à la Seven Deadly Sins; her score for Heaven Ablaze abounds in strategically interspersed reminiscences of classical and romantic music. She regards the period around 1815, the year Hoffmann wrote his “Sandman”, as the age of the German Lied, the period of intimate chamber music evenings in bourgeois living rooms, with the family piano in the center. By dispensing with a large orchestra and scoring her music for two pianos, which are visible throughout the action, she remains true to the bourgeois milieu of Hoffmann’s text and also manages to withstand the temptation of effect-conscious operatic excess. Already Scene 1 of Heaven Ablaze exemplifies Weir’s characteristic compositional method. She sets Nathanael’s letter, which Lothar is ‘reading’18 to Klara, in a musical language that could at first be taken 16

For a detailed interpretation, see Steven Paul Scher. “Brecht’s Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger. Emblematic Structure as Epic Spectacle”. Studies in the German Drama, Donald H. Crosby and George C. Schoolfield, eds. Chapel Hill, 1974. 235252 [reprinted in this volume]. 17

Joachim Lucchesi and Ronald K. Schull, eds. Musik bei Brecht. Frankfurt am Main,1988. 596.

18

Lothar sings the text of the letter in German, while in the background the other singers echo with the English translation as a choral recitation.

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for genuine Schubert. But after just a few measures Lothar’s vocal line as well as the accompaniment become disfigured through dissonances and intentional distortions. Only snippets of a skillfully crafted pseudo-Schubert song remain; an ingenious parody of musical style. Weir loves to apply this kind of pastiche as a musical alienation technique. In Scene 3, “Little Brutes”, for instance, a sinister tension develops between the main event in the back of the stage – a typical, prim-and-proper German family dinner in progress – and the increasingly chaotic dance action in the foreground, with the undisciplined children skipping about. The musical accompaniment for this scene consists of a minimalistically repetitive, rhythmically and melodically distorted mazurka à la Chopin, which is to be played – according to the composer’s instructions – “with a machine-like precision”, and foreshadows the mechanical, puppet-like bearing of the doll Olimpia.

IV Judith Weir’s Heaven Ablaze reaches its musical and dramatic climax in Scene 12, “The Concert Party”. In Spalanzani’s house, the doublecast Olimpia is introduced to society as his artistically ‘talented’ daughter. While one Olimpia sings a bravura coloratura aria, the other dances, first solo and then with Nathanael. Weir achieves here a truly “multimedial fusion of different art forms”19 and demonstrates how the concept of intermediality can be translated into postmodern musical theater practice. The scene shows Weir’s individual compositional idiom to its best advantage, especially her effective combination of sustained irony and alienation. The model for Weir’s Olimpia is, of course, the famous parallel scene from Offenbach’s opera Les contes d’Hoffmann, which today strikes us as somewhat one-dimensional and old-fashioned. ‘Model’ 19

Helbig (see note 7). 11.

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for Weir does not mean blind imitation, but rather a welcome opportunity to revitalize and contemporize Offenbach’s version, both musically and dramatically; in a word, to ‘post-modernize’ it. Offenbach’s Olympia and Weir’s Olimpia are both brilliantly crafted vehicles for operatic parody, though they differ vastly in realization and effect. Offenbach’s Olympia sings a waltz tune to a comically archaic text: quasi-mechanical music-box music, with a side glance at soulless coloratura arias intended purely for show. But since the alienation is not caustic enough, in essence Offenbach’s aria remains culinary20. Weir’s Olimpia is cast in an entirely different mold. She is no longer a harmless and entertaining caricature à la Offenbach, but an ominous, uncanny, and self-absorbed creature isolated from her surroundings, eliciting both compassion and fear. Hoffmann’s narrative makes no mention of the text underlying her aria; we are told only that his Olimpia sings in a “high-pitched, almost shrill, glassbell-like voice”21. This mechanical, lifeless quality reappears in Weir’s score, inscribed as “Abrupt, jerking, metallic”. To heighten the ironizing alienation even further, Weir has her Olimpia sing for long stretches off-key in the highest possible vocal range, driving the audience’s acoustic tolerance to an extreme. The result is painfully irritating but hilarious opera parody, not unlike the vocal acrobatics in the breakneck arias of the Queen of the Night, which might also have been intended parodistically by Mozart and Schikaneder in The Magic Flute22. For the rest, Weir works with indirect musical reminiscences and slightly distorted melodic and rhythmic allusions. Direct quotation, too, is 20 See Kurt Oppens. “Gangster und Studenten – Hoffmann in zwei Welten. Zum Problem des Gesellschaftlichen in Offenbachs Hoffmanns Erzählungen”. Attila Csampai and Dietmar Holland, eds. Jacques Offenbach, Hoffmanns Erzählungen. Texte, Materialien, Kommentare. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1984. 265. 21

E. T. A. Hoffmann. "Der Sandmann". Hartmut Steinecke and Wulf Segebrecht, eds. E. T. A. Hoffmann: Sämtliche Werke in sechs Bänden. Frankfurt am Main, 1985-. Vol. 3: 38.

22

See Jane K. Brown. “The Queen of the Night and the Crisis of Allegory in The Magic Flute”. Goethe Yearbook 8 (1996): 142-156.

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frequently employed as a vehicle for musical alienation. For example, Weir’s waltz melody for the dance action in the ball scene is a distorted but still identifiable version of the well-known waltz from the ballet Coppélia, a veiled homage to its composer, Léo Delibes. Weir adds yet another original twist to her reinterpretation of the forever fascinating Olimpia figure. The text she chooses for the setting of Olimpia’s aria is a philosophical poem from the seventeenth century, the sonnet “Modo di filosofare” by Tommaso Campanella (15681639)23. Weir even reproduces the complete Italian text in the score alongside her own English translation: Il mondo è il libro dove il Senno Eterno scrisse I proprii concetti, e vivo tempio dove, pingendo I gesti e ‘l proprio esempio, di statue vive ornò l’imo e ‘l superno; perch ‘ogni spirto qui l’arte e ‘l governo leggere e contemplar, per non farsi empio, debba, e dir possa: - Io l’universo adempio, Dio contemplando a tutte cose interno. Ma noi, strette alme a’ libri e templii morti, copïati dal vivo con piú errori, gli anteponghiamo a magistero tale. O pene, del fallir fatene accorti, liti, ignoranze, fatiche e dolori: deh, torniamo, per Dio, all’originale!

The world is the book where eternal wisdom wrote its own ideas, and the living temple where, depicting its own acts and likenesses, it decorated the height and the depth with living statues; so that every spirit, to guard against profanity, should read and contemplate here art and government, and each should say, “I fill the universe, seeing God in all things”. But we, souls bound to books and dead temples, copied with many mistakes from the living, place these things before such an instruction. O ills, quarrels, ignorance, labors, pains, make us aware of our falling away: O, let us, in God’s name return to the original!

Weir’s staple compositional devices of intermedial irony and alienation converge here most effectively: the incongruity between Olimpia’s mechanical, grotesquely shrieking vocal delivery and the contemplative, quasi-religious import of the sonnet could not be greater. A host of intriguing ideas and associations drawn from centuries of European cultural history have contributed to Judith Weir’s original conception and collaborative realization of Heaven Ablaze in His Breast, her postmodern dance/opera version of Hoffmann’s “Sand23

For an interpretation of the poem and commentary, see Tommaso Campanella: Le Poesie. Edizione completa. Ed. Francesco Giancotti. Torino, 1998. 43-45.

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man”. Choreographer Ian Spink’s curiously opaque summary account – replete with sweeping generalizations, unsubstantiated legends, and obscure oddities – best suggests the vast spectrum of inspirations and influences that went into the making of Heaven Ablaze and invites further interpretive thought: Hoffmann’s world is ambiguous and often defies rational explanation. He lived in a century that saw the unification of Germany that was to grow to monstrous proportions within a mere sixty years. Modernism replaced Romanticism and the ‘demons’ of Hoffmann’s tales became reality. In designing the piece [Heaven Ablaze] therefore we have decided to borrow from the periods 1815 to 1938. We have been influenced by various ‘obsessions’ relating to dolls and small children: Oskar Kokoschka’s life-sized doll created to replace Alma Mahler who had left him the disturbing paintings of children by Balthus and the ‘created’ images of women depicted by photographers such as Horst in the 1930’s. The shadowy night-time experiments of Nathanael’s father and Coppelius have been transposed to experiments with film using the ‘eye’ of the projector.24

24

Program brochure, see note 4.

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503

Eine Berlinische Geschichte Hoffmanns Brautwahl in Busonis Opernbuch?* (2004) Dass Ferruccio Busoni und E. T. A. Hoffmann vieles gemeinsam haben, ist ein Understatement. Busoni war sein Leben lang mit seinem Lieblingsschriftsteller beschäftigt, man könnte sagen, überbeschäftigt; er war nicht nur Hoffmann-Kenner par excellence, sondern – wie aus dem Versteigerungskatalog seiner Privatbibliothek ersichtlich – auch seriöser Sammler von Erstausgaben und Sekundärliteratur1. Dass die Affinitäten zwischen diesen hervorragenden, multitalentierten Künstlerpersönlichkeiten ungewöhnlich zahlreich sind, ist unter den mit Busonis Leben und Werk vertrauten Musikwissenschaftlern wohlbekannt. Anders in der Literaturwissenschaft: Auch von den einigermaßen musikkundigen Literaturwissenschaftlern, sogar in der HoffmannForschung, werden bis heute die Busoni-Hoffmann-Bezüge kaum, wenn überhaupt, wahrgenommen. In der zur Zeit besonders regen Libretto-Forschung sucht man ebenfalls vergeblich nach kritischen Interpretationen der Literaturoper Die Brautwahl, Busonis Opernerstling mit von ihm selbst verfasstem Textbuch nach Hoffmanns gleichnamiger Erzählung, uraufgeführt 1912 in Hamburg2. Gelegentliche * Dieser Essay war ursprünglich ein 2001 in Berlin gehaltener Vortrag als Beitrag zum Symposium “Ferruccio Busoni – ein Italiener in Berlin”. Er wird hier erstmals veröffentlicht. Der Charakter eines Vortrags wurde beibehalten. 1

Bibliothek Ferruccio Antiquariat, 1925.

2

Busoni

[Versteigerungskatalog].

Berlin:

Max Perl

Erstveröffentlichung des Textbuchs als: Die Brautwahl. Musikalisch-fantastische Komödie in vier Akten, nach E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Erzählung. Ferruccio Busoni. Der mächtige Zauberer. Die Brautwahl. Zwei Theaterdichtungen für Musik. Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst. Triest, 1907. Zweite Fassung: Ferruccio Busoni. Die Brautwahl. Musikalisch-phantastische Komödie in drei Akten und einem Nachspiel nach E. T. A. Hoffmanns Erzählung. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, Berlin: Verlag

504

Kommentare zu Busonis Bearbeitung des Hoffmann-Textes stammen bisher ausschließlich von Musikwissenschaftlern und -kritikern wie Edward J. Dent, Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt und Antony Beaumont3. Die Anregung zu meiner Themenformulierung kam von Albrecht Riethmüller, als er mich einlud, als Germanist und Komparatist über die Hoffmannsche Vorlage und die Probleme ihrer Umformung zum Operntext zu sprechen: Für eine Tagung über „Ferruccio Busoni – ein Italiener in Berlin“ lässt sich nun einmal nichts Berlinerischeres finden als diese Oper. Ein wahres Wort, das auf Hoffmanns Erzählung wie auch Busonis Oper zutrifft. Allerdings ist das Adjektiv in meinem Titel nicht „berlinerisch“, sondern „Berlinisch“, mit großem „B“, denn dieses Adjektiv hat seine eigene Geschichte – und damit sind wir schon bei unserem Thema. Der Erstdruck von Hoffmanns Erzählung Die Brautwahl erschien 1819 im Berlinischen Taschen-Kalender auf das Schalt-Jahr 1820, mit dem von Hoffmann gewohnten, leicht barockisierenden Untertitel „Eine Berlinische Geschichte, in der mehrere ganz unwahrscheinliche Abenteuer vorkommen“4. In der zweiten, 1820 für den dritten Band der Serapions-Brüder umgearbeiteten Fassung5 hat Hoffmann das Harmonie, 1912. Berliner Neufassung für die Wiederaufführung 1992 als: Ferruccio Busoni. Die Brautwahl. Musikalisch-phantastische Komödie. Programmbuch der Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Berlin, 1992. 3

Edward J. Dent. Ferruccio Busoni. A Biography. Oxford, 1933; Dent. „Busoni and His Operas“. Opera 5 (1954): 391-397; Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt. „Busonis Brautwahl“. Schweizerische Musikzeitung 102 (1962): 344-351; Stuckenschmidt. Ferruccio Busoni. Zeittafel eines Europäers. Zürich, 1967; Antony Beaumont. Busoni the Composer. Bloomington, 1985; und Beaumont. „Busoni and the Theatre”. Opera 37 (1986): 384-391. 4

Wiederabdruck der ersten Fassung in: E. T. A. Hoffmann. Gespenster in der Friedrichstadt. Berlinische Geschichten. Günter de Bruyn, Hrsg. Frankfurt am Main, 1987. 5

Wiederabdruck der zweiten Fassung als „Die Brautwahl. Eine Geschichte, in der mehrere ganz unwahrscheinliche Abenteuer vorkommen“. E. T. A. Hoffmann. Sämtliche Werke in sechs Bänden. Bd. 4 [Die Serapions-Brüder]. Wulf Segebrecht, Hrsg. Frankfurt am Main, 2001. 639-721. Die in Klammern angegebenen Seitenzahlen im Text beziehen sich auf diesen Band.

505

Adjektiv „Berlinisch“ aus dem Untertitel entfernt; hauptsächlich, weil er eine größere Zahl lokaler und aktueller Anspielungen gestrichen hatte. Es ist der Serapionsbruder Lothar, der Die Brautwahl in der Erzählrunde vorliest. Die spielerische, ironisierende Art von Lothars Äußerung im direkt anschließenden, erzähltheoretisch wichtigen Rahmengespräch bezeugt, wie viel für Hoffmann das Berlin-Milieu und Lokalkolorit bedeutete: „Könnte“, sprach Lothar nach seiner skurrilen Art lächelnd, „könnte meine angenehme Geschichte von den seltsamen Drangsalen des Geheimen Kanzleisekretärs Tusmann nicht wenigstens einen Berliner Almanach zieren? Ich würde nicht unterlassen, die Lokalität noch lokaler zu machen, einige zelebre Namen hinzuzufügen und mir so den Beifall, wenigstens des literarisch-ästhetischen Theaterpublikums erwerben. (719-720)

Hoffmann verwendet das Adjektiv ‚Berlinisch’ noch einmal in der Brautwahl – aus erzähltechnischen Gründen – am Anfang des sechsten und letzten Kapitels, an einer für den weiteren Handlungsablauf zentralen Stelle. Es handelt sich um die Enthüllung der mysteriösen Identität des Goldschmied-Zauberers Leonhard, der Meistergestalt, der in der Geschichte alle Fäden zieht. Leonhard scheint hier kurz die Rolle des Erzählers zu übernehmen. Obwohl er in der ersten Person redet, steckt hinter seinem ‚Ich’ das ‚Ich’ des eigentlichen Autors Hoffmann, der sich immer wieder mit Zwischenbemerkungen und Erklärungen in den Erzählstrom einschaltet und den Leser direkt anredet: Freilich habe ich [Leonhard] in diesem Augenblick noch ein Kunststück vor [gemeint ist die Vorbereitung der Shakespeare-inspirierten Schlussszene mit den drei Kästchen] [...]: indessen kann ich davon deshalb keineswegs abstehen, da es zur Vollendung der Berlinischen Geschichte, welche von der Brautwahl dreier bekannten Personen, die sich um die Hand der hübschen Demoiselle Albertine Voßwinkel bewerben, handelt, unumgänglich nötig ist. (710)

1921 hat der unermüdliche, nicht immer urteilssichere HoffmannForscher Hans von Müller einen Sammelband mit dem Titel Zwölf Berlinische Geschichten aus den Jahren 1551-1816 herausgegeben,

506

darunter bekannte Texte wie Ritter Gluck, Das öde Haus und Des Vetters Eckfenster. Seitdem verwendet die Hoffmann-Forschung routinemäßig ‚Berlinische Geschichte’ als Gattungsbezeichnung für diejenigen Erzählungen, „für deren Schauplätze [und Charaktertypen] sich in Berlin reale Bezüge nachweisen lassen“6. Merkwürdigerweise hat von Müller Die Brautwahl nicht in seine Ausgabe aufgenommen; sie war ihm nicht ‚Berlinisch’ genug, obwohl ohne Zweifel „das Berlinische hier unter allen Erzählungen Hoffmanns am stärksten hervortritt“7. Der Hoffmann-Biograph Richard Schaukal nannte Die Brautwahl sogar die „schönste Weihegabe eines Altpreußen an die märkische Hauptstadt“8. Der Meinung war auch der todkranke Busoni, als er 1923 in dem Gesamtverzeichnis seiner veröffentlichten Werke Die Brautwahl „nicht mehr als ‘musikalisch-fantastische Komödie’ sondern als ‘eine Berliner Geschichte von 1820’” anführte9. Berlin und kein Ende! Auch aus biographischer Sicht sind die Ähnlichkeiten zwischen Hoffmann und Busoni frappierend. Der Italiener Busoni und der Ostpreuße Hoffmann – beide waren Wahlberliner; ‚Zugraste’, wie man in München so schön zu sagen pflegt. Beide waren schon bei ihrem ersten Besuch von der Großstadtatmosphäre Berlins angetan, und die Faszination hielt an bis zu ihrem Tod; Hoffmann kam das erste Mal 1798 als 22-jähriger nach Berlin und Busoni 1885 als 19-jähriger. Beide sehnten sich immer wieder zurück und entschieden sich nach mehreren Unterbrechungen für Berlin als ständigen Wohnsitz: Hoffmann 1814 als 38-jähriger und Busoni 1894 als

6

Klaus Kanzog. „Berlin-Code, Kommunikation und Erzählstruktur. Zu E. T. A. Hoffmanns ‘Das öde Haus’ und zum Typus ‘Berlinische Geschichte’“. Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 95 (1976): 43.

7

Otto Pniower. E. T. A. Hoffmanns Berlinische Erzählungen. Pniower. Dichtungen und Dichter. Essays und Studien. Berlin, 1912. 264.

8

Zitiert in Walther Harich. E. T. A. Hoffmann. Das Leben eines Künstlers. Bd. 2. Berlin, 1920. 200.

9

Staatsoper Programmbuch [Anm. 2]. 129.

507

28-jähriger. Busonis leidenschaftliches, auf Berlin gemünztes Bekenntnis könnte ebenso gut von Hoffmann stammen: „Heilig ist die Großstadt. Unendlich heiter, unendlich tragisch, banal und außerordentlich, geregelt und überraschend! [...] Ich brauche sie, und sie hat meinesgleichen nötig. Aber während sie mich kaum bemerkt, liebe ich sie und kann sie nicht missen.”10 Aber genug der Berlin-Bezüge! Wenden wir uns zunächst zu Hoffmanns Erzählung als Vorlage für Busonis Libretto11. In der zumeist unerfreulichen Rezeptionsgeschichte beider Werke sind die Parallelen auch verblüffend. Hoffmanns Brautwahl, entstanden in der Zeit zwischen den zwei hochgeschätzten Märchendichtungen Klein Zaches und Prinzessin Brambilla, führt bis heute ein Schattendasein in der Hoffmann-Literatur als eine rasch hingeworfene Auftragsarbeit des Bestseller-Autors, ohne besonderen künstlerischen Wert. Zu Unrecht, wie ich meine. Zugegeben, qualitätsmäßig kann sich der etwas uneben, voluminös und weitschweifig geratene Brautwahl-Text mit Klein Zaches oder Prinzessin Brambilla nicht messen. Die entscheidende Frage ist: Warum hat der intime Hoffmann-Kenner Busoni ausgerechnet Die Brautwahl seines Lieblingsschriftstellers als Grundlage für seine „musikalisch-phantastische Komödie“ gewählt? Offensichtlich hat er erkannt, dass Hoffmann sich hier „des motivischen Gerüsts der traditionellen Komödie bedient: der Liebesverbindung mit Hindernissen“12. Busoni fand es besonders reizvoll, dass in dieser Erzählung über das Berlinische hinaus ein Überfluss an charakteristischen, einzeln und zusammen wirkenden Ingredienzen von Hoffmanns Fiktionswelt vorhanden war: echt hoffmanneske Situationskomik, Humor, Ironie, Satire, Gesellschaftskritik, schöpferische Einfälle, kontrastie10

Zitiert in Reinhard Ermen. „Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin. Ein biographischer Essay“. Musica 48 (1994): 155. 11

Ich darf die Brautwahl-Handlung als mehr oder weniger bekannt voraussetzen. Auf die Aufführungsgeschichte der Oper werde ich hier auch nicht näher eingehen.

12

Lothar Pikulik. E. T. A. Hoffmann als Erzähler. Göttingen, 1987. 152.

508

rende Handlungsmomente und – last but not least – köstlich gezeichnete, unvergessliche Charaktere wie der weltfremde, pedantische und titelkranke Spießbürger-Bürokrat-Büchernarr Geheime Kanzleisekretär Tusmann; sein Schulkamerad, Schwiegervater in spe und ZigarrenKettenraucher Kommissionsrat Melchior Voßwinkel13, ein reicher, geiziger, bornierter Philister; seine bildhübsche, bürgerliche Tochter Albertine und der junge angehende Maler Edmund Lehsen als die obligatorischen ‚amorosi’ (Liebe auf den ersten Blick!); der Goldschmied Leonhard und der alte Jude Manasse, mysteriöse Revenants aus dem Berlin des 16. Jahrhunderts, spukhafte Magierfiguren, seit Jahrhunderten in einem letzten Endes harmlosen Wettkampf befangen. Am wenigsten gelungen ist Manasses Neffe als Edmunds Nebenbuhler, der frisch geadelte, arrogante, neureiche Wiener Baron-Millionär Benjamin Dümmerl, auch Bensch genannt. Dass ein Baron namens Dümmerl aus Wien ins Berlin-Milieu eingeführt wird, muss bestimmte Gründe haben. Hoffmanns Vorliebe für redende Namen und Anagramme ist bekannt. So z. B. steht der Name Lehsen für den Maler und Zeichner Wilhelm Hensel, den Hoffmann kannte und der später Fanny Mendelssohn heiratete. Der Name Dümmerl klingt natürlich sehr Wienerisch, könnte aber auch ein Anagramm sein für den Berliner Verlagsbuchhändler Ferdinand Dümmler, den Verleger von Klein Zaches und Kater Murr. Dümmler gehörte zum Freundeskreis Julius Eduard Hitzigs, Hoffmanns engster Freund und erster Biograph. Hoffmann hat auch gerne verschleierte Anspielungen in seine Texte eingebettet. An einer unauffälligen Stelle in der Brautwahl wird z. B. aus Schikaneders Zauberflöte-Text zitiert (656), und anderswo fällt beiläufig das Wort „Zauberposse“, ironischerweise aus dem Mund des ahnungslosen Kommissionsrats Voßwinkel: „Hat man jemals von solchen Zauberpossen gehört, die sich hier in unserm guten aufgeklär13

Hoffmann verwendet die Schreibung „Voßwinkel“, während Busoni „Voswin-

kel“ schreibt.

509

ten Berlin ereignet haben sollten?“ (674) Durch diese versteckten Anspielungen weist Hoffmann auf die Herkunft seines bunten Typenarsenals aus der Wiener Zauberpossen-Tradition der 1790er Jahre hin, die der Germanist Lothar Pikulik folgendermaßen definiert: „Gattungsbestimmend für das Zauberstück ist das Walten überirdischer Geister und [...] die Verbindung des Fantastischen mit dem Burlesken, zum Teil noch in Anknüpfung an die Tradition der Commedia dell’arte, die in Wien niemals ganz abgerissen war.“14 Hoffmanns Anspielungen durften dem Zauberflöten-Bewunderer, Wien-Kenner und Commedia-dell’arte-Fan Busoni kaum entgangen sein. Hoffmanns „Hang“, in seinen Texten immer wieder „das Märchenhafte in die Gegenwart, in das wirkliche Leben zu versetzen“ (720), kam Busonis „Neigung zum Magischen, zur Überwindung irdischer und alltäglicher Kausalität“ willkommen entgegen15. Der BusoniVerehrerin Gisella Selden-Goth gelang es vortrefflich, genau dieses Ambiente der Erzählung, Hoffmanns mit Absicht „wunderlich tolle“ Mischung von Fantastik und Alltäglichkeit, „ein buntes [scheinbar] willkürlich zusammengefügtes Mosaik“ (720) in einem Satz nachzuempfinden: In der „Königstadt“ Berlin ergehen sich am hellichten Tage Revenants aus vergangenen Jahrhunderten, am Rathausturm in der Spandauerstraße erscheinen mitternächtige Geister, in bürgerlichen Weinlokalen verwandeln sich menschliche Gesichter in Fuchsschnauzen, schwarze Rettige in Dukaten, ein eigentlich schon längst verbrannter alter Jude verflucht den solidesten aller Kommissionsräte, es werden Zigarren aus der Friedrichstraße geraucht, Hamburger Börsenavise empfangen, und würdige Kanzleiräte in einen Zauberspuk hineingezogen, der Wirkli16 ches und Unwirkliches toll durcheinander quirlt.

14

Ebda. 153.

15

Stuckenschmidt. Ferruccio Busoni [Anm. 3]. 108.

16

Gisella Selden-Goth. Ferruccio Busoni. Der Versuch eines Portraits. Leipzig, 1922. 91.

510

Bisher habe ich nur bestimmte Einzelaspekte der Erzählung behandelt und auf eine kohärente, detaillierte Inhaltsangabe verzichtet. Der Grund dafür liegt in der besonderen Eigenart von Hoffmanns Erzählweise und Charakterkonstellation und in der ungewöhnlich komplexen, mehrschichtigen Handlung. Mit einer noch so umsichtigen Nacherzählung des Inhalts ist es also nicht getan. Hoffmanns Texte im allgemeinen, und der Brautwahl-Text im besonderen, erfordern langsames, aufmerksames und wiederholtes Lesen, damit man möglichst alle Handlungsmomente und -wendungen, lokalen, historischen und literarischen Anspielungen und auktorialen Zwischenreden und Abschweifungen einzeln und im Kontext verstehen und genießen und die Konturen der sich beim Lesen allmählich entfaltenden Erzählstruktur verfolgen kann. Hoffmann glaubte nämlich fest an Novalis’ Diktum, dass der ideale Leser der erweiterte Autor sei. Hoffmann wünschte sich also einen Leser, der die „kaleidoskopische Natur“ seiner Erzählweise erkennt, „nach welcher die heterogensten Stoffe willkürlich durcheinandergeschüttelt, doch zuletzt artige Figuren bilden“ (720). Genau das ist in der Brautwahl der Fall. Von Anfang bis Ende der Geschichte unterhält und verunsichert Hoffmann seine Leser und fordert sie dadurch zur Mitarbeit auf. Er hält sie in permanenter Spannung, in einem Schwebezustand, dadurch, dass er mit den übergreifenden Themen und Handlungssträhnen jongliert und sich nie festlegen lässt. Bei Hoffmann – wie später bei Thomas Mann – gibt es selten ein ‚Entweder-Oder’, meistens nur ein ‚Sowohl-als-auch’: „Spuk und Zauberei sind nie ausdrücklich als wirkliche Geschehnisse hingestellt, Hoffmann läßt den Leser darüber im Ungewissen.“17 Während der Lektüre muss sich der Leser immer wieder fragen, worum es in dieser Erzählung eigentlich geht. Ist die rasch sich entwickelnde Liebesbeziehung zwischen der Bürgertochter Albertine und dem jungen Maler Edmund die Hauptsache? Wird sie trotz lustspiel17

Ferruccio Busoni. „Zum Geleit“. E. T. A. Hoffmann. Phantastische Geschichten. Eingeleitet von Ferruccio Busoni. München, 1914. X.

511

artiger Hindernisse in Heirat enden? Oder wird der tragikomische Pedant Tusmann am Ende doch die Braut bekommen, nur weil der Kommissionsrat Voßwinkel, Albertinens Vater, sein alter Schulkamerad ist? Soll man die scheinbar feindlichen Wettkämpfe der zwei wieder lebendig gewordenen, unheimlichen Revenant-Zauberer und Ahasver-Typen, Goldschmied Leonhard und Münzjude Manasse, ernst nehmen und symbolisch als Verkörperungen des ewigen Kampfes zwischen Gut und Böse deuten? Wird der als Fremdkörper importierte, unausstehliche Baron Dümmerl überhaupt noch eine Chance haben, Albertine zu gewinnen, nur weil er der reichste Freier ist? Wer ist die eigentliche Hauptfigur in der Geschichte? Ist es Leonhard, der Schutzgeist Edmunds, der mit seinen zauberischen Eingriffen die verwickelte Handlung in Richtung allgemeines Happy-End vorantreibt und sich selbst zum Deus ex machina ernennt? Ist Die Brautwahl eine Künstlererzählung, die das Schicksal des Künstlers in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft problematisiert und nicht mit Heirat, sondern mit dem Anfang von Edmunds Maler-Lehrjahren in Italien endet? Oder haben wir hier tatsächlich bloß eine „angenehme Geschichte von den Drangsalen des Geheimen Kanzleisekretärs Tusmann“, wie uns Serapionsbruder Lothar im Rahmengespräch verschmitzt versichert? (719720) Diese Auswahl von einschlägigen Fragen muss vorläufig genügen, die Komplexität der Erzählung, die ein Durchschnittsleser kaum bewältigen kann, wenigstens in Ansätzen anzudeuten. Gerade hier ist der wunde Punkt, weshalb Busoni als sein eigener Librettist scheitern musste. Als idealer Hoffmann-Leser wusste er wohl theoretisch, dass er vom zeitgenössischen Opernpublikum, von einem Opernpublikum überhaupt, nicht erwarten konnte, genügende Vorkenntnisse in die Aufführung mitzubringen, um die ideale schöpferische Mitarbeit leisten zu können: „Denn das weiß das Publikum nicht und mag es nicht wissen, daß, um ein Kunstwerk zu empfangen, die halbe Arbeit an

512

demselben vom Empfänger selbst verrichtet werden muß.“18 Trotzdem konnte er in der Praxis nicht umhin, das Unmögliche von seinem Publikum zu erhoffen, nämlich, dass die Zuschauer mit Hoffmanns Vorlage beinahe so gut vertraut waren wie er selber. Als Folge seiner grenzenlosen Bewunderung für Hoffmanns Sprache, samt formelhaft wiederholten Redewendungen und drollig verschnörkelten Ausdrücken, besteht Busonis Libretto zumeist aus unverändert übernommenen, nicht immer konsequent zusammenhängenden Dialogpassagen, die ohne intime Kenntnis des Originals auf die Zuschauer verblüffend und befremdend wirken und oft unverständlich bleiben. Von dem gemütlichen Plauderton des Originals, der reichlich Raum für Hoffmanns Humor, Ironie, Parodie, Satire und ‚comic relief’ bietet, ist in den gedruckt vorliegenden Fassungen von Busonis Opernbuch leider keine Spur19. Einen literarischen Text auf die Musikbühne zu übertragen erfordert meistens gewisse Strukturänderungen. Die Tiergarten-Szene an den Anfang der Oper zu stellen, ist der vielleicht glücklichste Einfall des Dichter-Komponisten Busoni – bei Hoffmann ist sie erst im zweiten Kapitel an weniger prominenter Stelle eingefügt. Kommissionsrat Voswinkels eigenartig parodistisches Loblied auf die Zigarre inmitten des stimmungsvollen Berlinischen Tiergarten-Milieus, begleitet von einer Musik-Kapelle, die mit einem Potpourri von Rossini, Mozart und Spiritual-Melodien aufwartet, ist dichterisch wie musikalisch Busonis eigene Erfindung. „Busoni hat diese Stimmung aus Biedermeier, Blasmusik und Tabakrauch erstaunlich sicher getroffen“, kommentiert Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt20.

18

Ferruccio Busoni. Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst. Mit Anmerkungen von Arnold Schönberg und einem Nachwort von H. H. Stuckenschmidt. Frankfurt am Main, 1974. 26.

19

Vgl. Anm. 2.

20

Stuckenschmidt. „Busonis Brautwahl“ [Anm. 3]. 346.

513

Die Zigarre ist schon in der Brautwahl-Erzählung ein denkwürdiges Requisit für ‚comic relief’; für den leidenschaftlichen Zigarrenraucher und Zigarrenkistensammler Busoni eine zusätzliche Affinität mit dem Pfeifen- und Zigarrenraucher Hoffmann. Bekanntlich hat Busoni sogar einen quasi-wissenschaftlichen Essay über die Zigarrenkiste als bewundernswertes ästhetisches Objekt verfasst. Hier ist eine kleine Kostprobe: Ich wüßte nicht, daß irgend ein Schriftsteller bisher seine Aufmerksamkeit der Zigarrenkiste zugewandt, oder die Mühe sich genommen hätte, ihren Reiz und ihre „Endgültigkeit“ zu beschreiben. [...]. Die Zigarrenkiste hat durchschnittlich die Größe eines starken Lexikonbandes. Wie bei den Büchern, ist eine übermäßige Verringerung oder Erweiterung des Formates unbefriedigend, weil dieses zu der menschlichen Hand und Handhabung in einem Verhältnis stehen muß. Der Boden und die Seitenwände sind leicht ineinander vernagelt, der Deckel an der Hinterseite nur durch einen verklebten Papierstreifen festgehalten, dessen Falte das Heben und Senken des Brettes ermöglicht. Seitwärts ist der Deckel so viel enger als die Kiste, daß er, geschlossen, zwischen den Seitenwänden sich einklemmt; vorne erreicht er die vollständige Tiefe des Vierecks, so daß sein Rand die vordere Seitenwand nach oben fortsetzt und abschließt. Bei dem echten Typus der Zigarren21 kiste bleibt das Holz rauh und ungeschmückt [...].

Und es geht noch seitenlang so weiter ... Aber zurück zu Busonis Tiergarten-Szene und zu Voswinkels Lied, dessen bedenklicher Mischmasch von Text durchaus kritische Aufmerksamkeit verdient. Voswinkel singt: Ja, Natur, Gespräch und Tabaksblatt Sind ein freundlich grünend Kleeblatt Und Barbaren haben uns gelehrt, Was Kultur recht lange hat entbehrt. Darum steht mancher Rothäuter Höher als ein Goethe-Deuter, Selbst ein Türke ist gescheiter [...] (Ja gescheiter – viel gescheiter, Und weiser!) Brave Jungen auch die Negros, die sich plagen in Plantagen 21

Ferruccio Busoni. „Die Zigarrenkiste“. Busoni. Von der Einheit der Musik. Berlin, 1922. 201-202.

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bei exotischen Allegros. (Er trällert eine Negermelodie). (Ja, wir sind recht musikalisch, ob der Ton auch kannibalisch –) (er trällert weiter – immer lustiger) Hiawatha! – Manahatta! 22 Apalacco! und Tobacco –

Ein peinlicher, alberner, ja schwachsinniger Text! Lustig? Soll man dabei herzhaft lachen oder nur verlegen lächeln? Als karikaturhafte Charakterzeichnung eines einfältigen, selbstgefälligen, ungebildeten Bürgers, Hofmannsthals Baron Ochs nicht unähnlich, ist der Text durchaus gelungen. Der Kommissionsrat ist ein Wirrkopf, der alle Ingredienzen seiner Halbbildung in den selben Topf wirft und dabei vergnügt seine Zigarre pafft. Die Nebeneinanderstellung von „Hiawatha! – Manahatta! / Apalacco! und Tobacco –“ wirkt unfreiwillig komisch; sie evoziert das nordamerikanische Indianermilieu samt Pseudo-Indianerrufen à la Karl May ... Aber wie soll man die bedenkliche Wortwahl und den herablassenden Ton verstehen? Das heikle Thema Kultur versus Barbarei wird angetippt und Rothäuter (reimt sich mit Goethe-Deuter!), Türken und Negros werden pejorativ apostrophiert. Seit 1907 steht dieser Liedtext im Wortlaut unverändert in jeder Libretto-Fassung, inklusive der Berliner Neufassung von 1992. Haben wir hier vielleicht im nachhinein mit einem rassistischen Text zu tun? Keineswegs, da die Worte aus Voswinkels Munde kommen. Selbstvergnügt plappert er einfach unreflektierte, unverdaute Klischees vor sich hin, ohne die leiseste Ahnung zu haben, was er da alles zusammensingt. Ich vermute eher, dass dieser eklektische Text Busoni in erster Linie dazu diente, seine Partitur mit exotischen wie auch aus der traditionellen Musikgeschichte geschöpften musikalischen Zitaten, Reminiszenzen und Melodien zu bereichern. In noch größerem Ausmaß gilt das auch später in der Oper für Busonis konsequente Verwendung von Zitaten, Melismen und Wendungen aus dem spezifisch 22

Staatsoper Programmbuch [Anm. 2]. 133-134.

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orientalisch-hebräischen Musikgut. Die Manasse-Musik ist ausdrücklich mit „in modo giudaico“ bezeichnet. Wie gestaltet Hoffmann die Tiergarten-Szene? Als Prosaisten stehen ihm erzählerische Mittel zur Verfügung, mit denen er – rückblendend und vorausweisend, charakterisierend und beschreibend – Ereignisse, Handlungsmomente und Figurenkonstellationen motivieren, erklären und vermitteln kann. Das sind eben epische Strategien, die einem Librettisten versagt bleiben. Wie bei Busoni ist die Komik der Zigarren-Episode als indirekte Charakterisierung Voßwinkels schon bei Hoffmann unentbehrlich. Aber er stellt die ankeimende Liebesbeziehung zwischen Albertine und Edmund in den Mittelpunkt der Szene. Dass die beiden sich schon früher einmal in einer Kunstausstellung flüchtig, per Zufall und anonym, begegneten, wird auch in Busonis Libretto kurz erwähnt, nicht aber die bizarren Umstände und tangiblen Konsequenzen der Begegnung, die Hoffmann in einer unvergesslichen Rückblende verlebendigt. In der Schilderung dieses unerwarteten, indes auch typisch Berlinischen Vorfalls ist Hoffmann, der virtuose, humoristische Erzähler und unnachahmlicher Meister echter, körperlicher Situationskomik in seinem Element: Da läßt Albertine den Handschuh, den sie eben von der Hand gezogen, auf die Erde fallen; schnell bückt sich Edmund ihn aufzuheben, Albertine ebenfalls, beide fahren mit den Köpfen zusammen, daß es knackt und kracht! [...] Entsetzt prallt Edmund zurück, tritt bei dem ersten Schritt den kleinen Mops der alten Dame wund, daß er laut aufquiekt, bei dem zweiten einem podagrischen Professor auf die Füße, der ein furchtbares Gebrülle erhebt und den unglücklichen Edmund zu allen tausend Teufeln in die flammende Hölle wünscht. Und aus allen Sälen laufen die Menschen herbei und alle Lorgnetten sind auf den armen Edmund gerichtet, der unter dem trostlosen Wimmern des wunden Mopses, unter dem Fluchen des Professors, unter dem Schelten der alten Dame, unter dem Kickern und Lachen der Mädchen über und über glühend vor Scham, ganz verzweifelt herausstürzt, während mehrere Frauenzimmer ihre Riechfläschchen öffnen und Albertinen die hoch aufgelaufene Stirn mit starkem Wasser reiben. Schon damals, in dem kritischen Augenblick des lächerlichen Auftritts, war Edmund, ohne doch dessen sich selbst deutlich bewußt zu sein, in Liebe gekommen [...]. (662-663)

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Das Lustspielpotential dieses Auftritts hat Busoni für sein Opernlibretto leider nicht wahrgenommen. Ein erfinderischer Regisseur könnte aber den Zusammenprall der liebenden Köpfe, wenn auch nur als Pantomime, theatralisch wirksam in die Tiergarten-Szene einfügen. Für die viel zu grandios angelegte Kirchenvision, von Busoni als der Höhepunkt seiner Oper konzipiert, gibt es in der Hoffmannschen Vorlage keine Entsprechung. Von Leonhard in einen Traumzustand versetzt, erblickt Albertine ihren Edmund, ihren Zukünftigen, in einer „ernsten italienischen Kirche“ (so die Bühnenanweisung) als FrescoMaler mit Zukunft. Die Szene ist kaum motiviert, eher schwerfällig und pompös, begleitet von Orgelklängen und einem unsichtbaren Chor, der in schülerhaftem Latein liturgieartig etwas wie Busonis geistiges und künstlerisches Kredo anstimmt: Deus et ars et natura Vera sunt trinitas Nulla religio superior 23 Vita omnia comprehendit.

Am besten fragt man sich gar nicht, was das alles im Kontext bedeuten soll. Die Szene erinnert mich an die ähnlich überladene Apotheose, mit Goethes vertontem Chorus Mysticus, am Ende von Liszts Faust-Symphonie. Auch der Schluss von Busonis Brautwahl ist wesentlich anders gestaltet als Hoffmanns. Scheinbar enden beide Werke mehr oder weniger glücklich für alle Beteiligten. Die jeweiligen Happy-Ends sind jedoch weitgehend unterschiedlich. In Busonis Oper ist Leonhards Schlusswort „Nun fort, nach Rom!“ unmissverständlich. Zwar gewinnt Edmund Albertine zur Braut, er darf aber zunächst noch nicht an Heirat denken. Er muss sein Versprechen halten und zuerst seinen Werdegang zum wahren Künstler in Italien absolvieren. Die Frage, ob er irgendwann nach Berlin zurückkehrt und Albertine heiratet, wird 23

Staatsoper Programmbuch [Anm. 2]. 178.

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nicht einmal gestellt. Albertine bleibt bei ihrem Vater zu Hause, und alles bleibt beim Alten. In Hoffmanns Brautwahl dagegen hat der schelmische, allwissende Erzähler das letzte Wort: „Nun! man muss abwarten, was geschieht!“ Der Leser bekommt eine gute Portion Nachgeschichte mitgeliefert, darunter auch die typisch Hoffmannsche unerwartete Wendung, die sich – weil voraussehbar – als gar nicht so unerwartet herausstellt. Während der Maler Edmund „schon länger als ein Jahr in Rom“ weilt und sich immer seltener meldet, tröstet sich Albertine mit dem hübschen, wohlsituierten und ambitionierten Referendarius Gloxin, der – Gott sei Dank! – kein Künstler ist und „offenbar Heiratsgedanken im Kopfe hat“ (718-719). Wie so oft bei Hoffmann steckt die höchste Ironie im redenden Namen. Gloxinie oder Gloxinia ist nämlich eine aus Brasilien stammende Zierpflanze, ein domestiziertes Urwaldgewächs, benannt nach dem Straßburger Botaniker Benjamin Gloxin, gestorben 1784. Durch die Heirat mit dem soliden Referendarius Gloxin erhält Albertine, was sie sich immer schon gewünscht hat: das gutbürgerliche häusliche Glück, komplett mit Zimmerpflanzen. Ist also die Brautwahl-Geschichte letzten Endes nichts anderes als „Viel Lärm um Nichts“? „Wenn man bedenkt, daß der ganze Aufwand von spukhaftem Treiben eigentlich umsonst gewesen ist, so erhält das Ganze den Charakter eines schnell vorüberrauschenden Schwankes, in dem auch das Wunderbare nur dazu dient, den kraftvollen Humor des Ganzen um so deutlicher hervortreten zu lassen.“24 Apropos Shakespeare – bekanntlich ist die kulminierende Brautwahl-Szene mit den drei Kästchen der entsprechenden Portia-Szene aus dem Kaufmann von Venedig nachgestaltet. Aber Shakespeares Geist, besonders der Geist seiner Komödien, ist auch sonst in Hoffmanns Erzählung überall zu spüren. Durch die zahlreichen, immer wieder in den Text eingeflochtenen Shakespeare-Zitate und Anspie24

Georg Ellinger. E. T. A. Hoffmann. Sein Leben und seine Werke. Hamburg und Leipzig, 1894. 138.

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lungen bereitet Hoffmann seine Leser auf die Kästchen-Szene vor. Schade, dass Busoni auf alle diese Shakespeare-Bezüge, außer einem, in seinem Libretto verzichtet hat. (In der 1992-Fassung wurde auch dieser einzige Bezug gestrichen.) Es handelt sich hier um einen einschlägigen zeitgenössischen Hinweis, den Hoffmann in seinen Text eingebaut hatte und der für die Interpretation der Manasse-Figur aufschlussreich ist. Der Kaufmann von Venedig war nämlich zur Zeit der Niederschrift der Brautwahl-Geschichte auf dem Berliner Theaterspielplan, mit dem Star-Schauspieler Ludwig Devrient, Hoffmanns Busenfreund, in der Rolle von Shylock. Sogar Kommissionsrat Voswinkel hat das Stück gesehen, „in dem Herr Devrient ‘nen mordsüchtigen Juden spielt – den Shylock – den es nach Negoziantenfleisch gelüstet“25. Wenn der Hoffmann-Forscher Hans von Müller richtig vermutet, ist die Manasse-Figur eine übertriebene Karikatur des Shylock-darstellenden Devrient26. Manasse, eine von vornherein fiktive Gestalt, wird also auf einer höheren Ebene noch weiter fiktionalisiert zum Shylock-spielenden Devrient-Manasse. Dieses durchaus hoffmanneske Fiktionalisierungsmanöver ermöglicht, die unleugbar antisemitisch anmutenden Schilderungen von Manasses stereotypisch jüdischen Charakterzügen und Handlungsweisen zu entschärfen. In der Tat wirkt der anfangs so furchterregende, hasserfüllte und fluchspeiende Manasse im Laufe der Geschichte immer harmloser, wenn nicht unbedingt sympathischer. Sein fürchterlicher Fluch mit dem alttestamentarischen Dales, z. B., wird augenblicklich vergessen und kommt zu nichts. Zum Schluss noch ein Wort über die Darstellung der Juden bei Hoffmann und Busoni; in der Brautwahl gibt es deren nur zwei, Manasse und seinen Neffen Bensch. Wie der Herausgeber Wulf Se-

25 26

Staatsoper Programmbuch [Anm. 2]. 175.

Hans von Müller. „Nachwort zu Hoffmanns Brautwahl“. Von Müller. Gesammelte Aufsätze über E. T. A. Hoffmann. Friedrich Schnapp, Hrsg. Hildesheim, 1974. 236.

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gebrecht in der unlängst erschienenen kritischen Ausgabe der Serapions-Brüder nüchtern kommentiert: Der Zitatcharakter, die Literarizität und die betonte Typenhaftigkeit der Figuren [in Hoffmanns Brautwahl] sind auch in Rechnung zu stellen, wenn es darum geht, die „Darstellung der Juden“ angemessen zu beurteilen [...]. Die erzählerische Rekapitulation von gängigen Klischees [...] bedarf weder einer ‘Entschuldigung’ Hoffmanns [...] noch einer ‘Anklage’ [...]; solche Betrachtungsweisen verwechseln auf fatale Weise Fiktion und Faktizität. Sie unterstellen einen Erklärungsbedarf dort, wo die allgemeine Unaufgeklärtheit zur Voraussetzung der dargestellten erzählerischen Realität wird. Der (nichtjüdische) Brautvater Voßwinkel erweist sich [...] als nicht weniger geldgierig als der Jude. (1475-1476)

Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidts treffende Sätze über Busonis Haltung bringen uns zum Berlinischen zurück: Der jüdische Geist ist für das biedermeierliche Berlin, in dem die Brautwahl „spielt“, so kennzeichnend, daß Busoni schwer auf ihn verzichten konnte. Eine Stadt und eine Zeit, in der die Mendelssohns und Meyerbeers wichtige Träger der deutsch-romantischen Musikkultur waren, in der Rahel Varnhagen einen literarischen Salon unterhielt, in der Heine gelebt hat [...] – sie hatte jüdisches Wesen 27 ebenso integriert wie einst hugenottisches.

Wie ich schon in meiner Analyse von Voswinkels Tabak-Lied angedeutet habe, war „für [den Komponisten] Busoni das jüdische Element obendrein eine Art exotischer Lokalfarbe“28. In der Brautwahl – in Hoffmanns Erzählung wie auch in Busonis Oper – ist also die Darstellung der Juden nur ein Teilaspekt des Ganzen. Diesen Teilaspekt bei Deutungsversuchen übermäßig zu vergrößern, halte ich für unergiebig.

27

Stuckenschmidt. Ferruccio Busoni [Anm. 3]. 90.

28

Ebda. 90.

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Acknowledgements The editors gratefully acknowledge permission granted by the following publishers and copyright holders to reprint material in this volume: Comparative Literature Editions Rodopi BV Erich Schmidt Verlag Gunter Narr Verlag Journal of English and German Philology Penn State University Press Peter Lang GmbH The University of Wisconsin Press W. Kohlhammer GmbH Wayne State University Press Wiener Goethe-Verein Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature