Forbidden Music: The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis
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Hanslick reserves special condemnation for triviality in music, the banal and the picturesque. He does not spare Jewish composers, and his acidic reviews attacking bland conventionalism highlight that he was always aware of ‘empty worthiness’ as an ever-present danger. His reviews of Wagner and Liszt are notoriously partisan, often written in a way that shamelessly basks in his own highly enjoyable and immensely readable vituperation. Yet, taking a selection of reviews from his decades of writing on music, we can discern the lines he drew between progressive and conservative, conventional and original, and often, by extension, between the assimilating Jew and the establishment Gentile.
His review of Liszt's tone poems, and specifically Les Préludes from 1857, is a directory of musical values with which he challenges the very basis of the New German School. The extraneous burdens imposed on music to provide a programmatic narrative leave him particularly piqued.12 In later reviews, he hands Liszt a back-handed compliment by praising his orchestration of a Schubert march – Schubert being as incapable of orchestrating in the manner of Liszt as Liszt is of coming up with ideas as original as Schubert.13 Elsewhere, he voices a suspicion that the ‘Gretchen’ movement of Liszt's Faust Symphonie was included in a Philharmonic concert as it was the only bit of the work worth hearing.14 To Hanslick, Liszt was of a fundamentally unproductive nature. Hanslick's review of Liszt's Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie, published in the Neue Freie Presse on 22 November 1881, tells us as much about the critic as it does about Liszt. The book was originally published in 1859, but Hanslick is profoundly disturbed to find ten pages brimming with anti-Semitism added to the new edition. Hanslick quickly locates a pamphlet originally printed in [Buda]Pest called ‘Franz Liszt on the Jews’ written under the pseudonym of Sagittarius, in all probability the name of Pester Lloyd’s music critic Max Schütz.15 Armed with Liszt's previous statements regarding Jews, Hanslick offers him enough rope to hang himself and quotes copiously from the most offensive passages of Des Bohéhmiens. He is outraged at Liszt's character assassinations of Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, for whom Hanslick recalls Liszt having earlier expressed the highest admiration. Most of Liszt's polemic is rehashed Wagner on the same subject, though Liszt adds the quite hair-raising practical suggestion of ridding Europe of all Jews, by force if necessary, and shipping them to Palestine. ‘Is this Wagner's influence or has the Abbé simply been spending too much time in Rome?’ Hanslick quips. He ends this review more in sadness than anger while expressing alarm at the prominent platform Liszt's writings offer for such mindless bigotry.16
The final irony however comes with Hanslick's obituary of Liszt printed in the Neue Freie Presse on 8 August 1886. He reminds us that Liszt was born in the German-speaking border regions of Hungary and never spoke a word of Hungarian. ‘Furthermore, he preferred to write and speak French, even when conversing with Germans.’ He cites Liszt's formative years in Paris, where he was a supporter of equality and freedom during the ‘July Revolution’, while remaining a devotee of the aristocracy and a lover of beautiful women. Ultimately, according to Hanslick, Liszt grew to be too cosmopolitan, ‘at home everywhere and nowhere, a characteristic that ultimately undermined the profundity of his music’.17 It is quite startling how Hanslick unwittingly uses almost the same vocabulary to describe Liszt's music as that employed by Hitler's National Socialists to describe Jewish composers some fifty years later.
It is only when Wagner's music appears on a concert programme that Hanslick is prepared to liken Liszt's ‘Gretchen’ movement to the transcendental heights of Mozart. The Prelude to Tristan and Isolde is compared to listening to the beginnings of sentences without ever being able to hear their conclusions. He complains of the constant repetition of chromatic motifs, meaningless seventh chords, and orchestration that is meant to inject sensuality but instead, ‘jangles nerves’.18 ‘Mild und leise’ (the ‘Liebestod’) is denounced as the scrupulous translation into music of Wagner's bombastic libretto, while the trombones at the beginning of Hans Sachs's second act aria, ‘Jerum! Jerum! Hallahalohe!’ from die Meistersinger ‘sound like cannibals who have bitten into a piece of human flesh that is still too hot to eat’.19 In short, Wagner's near perfect depiction of the erotic in music is something that offends and unsettles Hanslick's rational sensibilities; his references to nerves being ‘jangled’, ‘confused’ or ‘disturbed’ are a pejorative swipe at Wagner's ability to wrench control over the listener's emotional reactions.
Jewish composers hardly fare any better. Anton Rubinstein is warned against trying to inject too much originality into every bar, creating what Hanslick calls a ‘Baroque and unmusical’ effect. He is also cautioned against writing too much music too quickly. Hanslick noted that Rubinstein had already composed ‘half-a-hundred’ works, many of which weren't significant. Later, when reviewing Rubinstein's Ocean Symphony, he criticises what he calls Rubinstein's inability to maintain his originality.20 Hanslick writes that he cannot recall a single work by Rubinstein, including his first two operas, in which quality was sustained throughout, or where it even improved as the work progressed. Reviews such as this, along with reviews of countless piano recitals, indicate that Vienna was hearing a lot of Rubinstein, both as performer and composer. His performances of Mendelssohn and Schumann are praised as sublime re-creations: Hanslick uses the word ‘nachdichten’, meaning to re-compose as a poet. An indication of Jewish musical assimilation can be inferred from the 1871 appointment of Anton Rubinstein as artistic director of Vienna's Musikverein, or ‘Society of Music Friends’. His successor from 1872 was Brahms.
It is worth recalling that Hanslick was reviewing Wagner before he began reviewing Brahms – indeed, reviewing Wagner positively. Yet as Hanslick commented in 1862, ‘Brahms is already a significant personality, possibly the most interesting among our contemporary composers.‘21 It is fascinating that the first thing Hanslick praises in the young Brahms is his individuality and his finely organised musical nature. This highlighting of ‘organised’ is telling. He praises Brahms in his D major Serenade for avoiding sumptuous orchestral effects. His respect for Brahms is seemingly boundless, bearing in mind that Hanslick is the older of the two (Hanslick was eight years older than Brahms and twelve years younger than Wagner). Taking the position of the senior statesman, he still managed to criticise Brahms in several important works such as the G major Sextet, describing parts of it as abstract music-making and complaining of headaches, caused by its restless mixing and brooding. He found no sensual beauty, rhythmic life or melodic pliancy and thought the finale reminded him of Schumann's staler, later works.22
Moving from Brahms to his immediate circle, however, we gain an even clearer understanding of Hanslick's ideals. Hanslick's reaction to the young Goldmark's overture Sakuntala reveals a number of points that shed light on Hanslick's values: the work is ‘fresh and characteristic in inventiveness'; ‘clearly structured and with the finest details’. Only a few places remind him of Goldmark's ‘earlier sentimentality’ and ‘dissonance’.23 Of Joseph Joachim, Hanslick writes that ‘even in the enviable position of being the most important violinist of our day, he plays with the embodiment of transfigured virtuosity’. He goes on to say that the appreciation of Joachim's musical insight only reminds one later of his staggering technical command. ‘How easy and sweet it is to enjoy this utter perfection, yet how difficult it is to describe.‘24 He also loves Joachim's ‘purity and discipline of style’. The recital reviewed here must have been an exceptional experience as Joachim was accompanied by none other than Brahms. They played Schubert's Fantasy in C major and Beethoven's A major Sonata in addition to solo works by Tartini and Bach. ‘No third person stood either between them or beside them. Bound together by artistic closeness and close friendship, here were two artists, whom Germany must joyously count among its noblest!‘25 Hanslick regrets that no works of Brahms were played and despairs of Brahms's own reluctance to shine as a virtuoso. He then goes on to suggest that Rubinstein is the better pianist of th
e two. Joachim as a composer leaves Hanslick unimpressed: his music is too reflective, ‘his creative flow is neither swift nor rich; his inventive powers are honourable, but lacking in sensuality and elementary strength.‘26
For Brahms's close friend, the Jewish pianist-composer Ignaz Brüll, Hanslick has few words of encouragement, despite the popularity his operas enjoyed at the time, mounted with the best casts that the Imperial Opera could provide. In his review of Brüll's opera Bianca, Hanslick mentions that the music remains as unoriginal as Brüll's previous works:
It remains wedded to the pleasant-sounding without ever setting its sights any higher; it delivers what a harmless, attractive and agreeable small opera has to deliver. […] If one is familiar with the music of his opera Das goldene Kreuz, which has even made its way to America, or his now [ubiquitous] Landfriede, one knows the music of Bianca as well. We are the least of those who should wish to criticise Herr Brüll in any manner, but didn't we pointlessly martyr our brains trying to think of something to say that we have not already said about Landfriede and Das goldene Kreuz? We can only mention the same good and bad points with perhaps more emphasis on the latter than the former. Indeed, even the wish that Brüll could be more self-critical can be read in earlier reviews. In Bianca, we see a facile hand able to turn out what an unimaginative muse has not only produced but pronounced as satisfactory. […] The composer works with only two key elements: his talent and his art. The former is inborn, the latter acquired, and they not only enhance or support each other, but rather the one takes up where the other lets off.27
Towards the end of this blistering appraisal, Hanslick outlines the dilemma of reviewing Viennese composers. Readers would certainly have been aware that Brüll was a friend of Brahms and therefore part of Hanslick's own musical circle:
The conscientious critic finds himself placed in a difficult position when dealing with local composers. He owes the talents of the city a certain consideration while at the same time needing to be forthright. He should not deflate the expectations that come with the enormous amount of work that has been invested, but neither should he lose the confidence of his public by heaping empty praise. In the case of Brüll, this dilemma is marvellously solved by the observation that we can be quite sure that in future, the composer will deliver us something far better than Bianca.28
Another major figure that moved in orbits around Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms was the Jewish pianist and composer Ferdinand Hiller, largely forgotten today. Hanslick has enormous affection for Hiller and mentions him frequently in his autobiography, an endorsement not reciprocated by Hiller, who makes just one passing reference to Hanslick in his own memoirs. Despite respect bordering on reverence, Hanslick refuses to offer empty praise. In his memoirs, he recounts Hiller's jovial comment that Hanslick was inclined to review his writings more favourably than his compositions. Hanslick gleefully acknowledges this – he did not undervalue Hiller's gifts as a composer, but thought his books far better.29 On 18 and 19 August 1885, only three months after Hiller's death, Hanslick devotes six pages to him, using the correspondence between Hiller's librettist and friend Moritz Hartmann as the basis for an extended obituary. This is all the more exceptional as Hanslick makes the point that Hiller wanted to make his mark as an opera composer, though this was a task for which he was unsuited (along with other unnamed German pianist-composers, presumably Brüll or Rubinstein). The correspondence between Hartmann and Hiller centres on finding an appropriate operatic subject to follow his successful oratorios Saul and Die Zerstörung Jerusalems.30 The resulting opera, Die Katakomben,31 was finally produced in Wiesbaden (‘a place better known for curing gout rather than important operatic premieres’) and eventually made it to Hanover, Karlsruhe and Rotterdam. Hanslick mentions dryly that it was ‘the most successful’ of Hiller's many operas. Fundamentally, he finds Hiller's music lacking in originality, a trait Hanslick believes that Hiller recognised in himself when writing to Hartmann of his natural tendencies towards consensus, ‘perhaps a tendency that was also reflected in his music’. Schumann, who thought very highly of Hiller's compositions (as did Mendelssohn), eventually came to the conclusion that Hiller's music was like a basket of ripe und unripe fruit thrown together. It could produce no true pleasure, since alongside the inspired was the trivial and contrived. This was an opinion that Hanslick shared. The rest of the article is devoted to praising Hiller's gifts as a writer.32
At no point does Hanslick consider the religion or cultural background of the composers whose works he reviews as pertinent. However, his feuilletons for the Neue Freie Presse provide a fascinating documentation of where Jewish composers were heading culturally, and although these were composers towards whom Hanslick may have been favourably disposed from a purely aesthetic point of view, most of them were fundamentally cautious and conventional. A hint of an exception is felt in Hanslick's review of Mahler's completion of Weber's opera Die Drei Pintos. He finds the work itself unexceptional, though it might have been better had Weber lived to complete it. Of Mahler, he writes that he is competent at matching Weber's instrumentation, though he grows weary of continuous passages of rushing semi-quavers, punctuated by trombones and bass drum: 'Mr Mahler is orchestrating for today's public not the public of the 1820s.’ Hanslick goes on to praise Mahler's composition of the entr'acte before the second act, which he says offers an anticipation of Richard Wagner's sound world.33
Hanslick is equally impatient with the works of countless non-Jewish composers of the same period: for example, Josef Fuchs's 1889 opera Die Königsbraut (‘a composer who instinctively knows his limitations’),34 Johannes Hager's Marffa, performed in 1886 (‘it would be nice if his melodies did not leave one feeling that they had passed through a number of other hands first’),35 Victor Ernst Nessler's Der Trompeter von Säkkingen from 1884 (‘the most remarkable thing about this work is its success’),36 Karl Gramman's Andreasfest from 1885 (‘his work is neither better nor worse than that which we regularly encounter within contemporary German opera; however, that standard itself is depressingly low at the moment’),37 and Josef Hellmesberger's Fata Morgana from 1886 (‘I put the work's weaknesses down to the fact that he composed it in only 3 months’).38
One Jewish composer who came in for favourable treatment from Hanslick was the British musician Frederic Hymen Cowen, whose Scandinavian Symphony he reviewed in January 1882:
It isn't often that the English compose symphonies and even less often that they do it with success. Such a rarity was presented by Hans Richter in his most recent Philharmonic concert: both the symphony and its accompanying English composer. […] His Scandinavian Symphony is large, and into the last detail a well-crafted work. Cowen has long ceased to be a beginner and has for some considerable time possessed the necessary skills of writing for all the techniques of the modern orchestra. In his newest work – the only one of his we know – he presents himself more as poet and landscape artist than an independent and inventive musician. For that reason, the thematic material and counterpoint come less to the fore than his pallet of colours.39
With Cowen, who studied in Leipzig, we encounter the other centre around which newly assimilated Jewish composers could frequently be found. In some cases, they had direct, regular and friendly contact with Brahms, such as Friedrich Gernsheim. Cowen met Brahms during his Viennese sojourn, while others, such as Salomon Jadassohn (one of Cowen's professors at Leipzig), were obviously influenced by Brahms.
Hanslick's writings on Wagner and Liszt are far more nuanced than legend would have it. His moving obituary of Wagner published on 20 February 1883 opens with the line: ‘The news of Wagner's sudden death painfully shocked and stunned our musical circle.’ He can only acknowledge Wagner's importance within the stagnant pool of German opera. He goes on to say that Wagner had no enemies who were simply mean-spirited and partisan (presumably referring to himself), while restating his belief that Wagner set music on a destructive course. Hanslick feigns admiration for Wagner's ability to have do
ne this single-handedly, and cites the enormous vacuum left by his passing: ‘He created a new art-form, for which we remove our hats, without for a moment dishonouring those practitioners of the “old” art such as Mozart, Beethoven and Weber.’ He then goes on to declare that he was never in opposition to Wagner himself, but rather to the Wagnerians. Following Wagner's death, Hanslick's doubts about Wagner's music have all but disappeared. He ends with a quotation from Grillparzer: ‘Death is like a bolt of lightning: it transfigures that which it has destroyed.‘40 Yet it is revealing that with the death of Verdi 18 years later, Die Neue Freie Presse not only offers Hanslick's fulsome tribute, far longer than his Wagner obituary, but makes it their lead story, according Verdi the celebrity status of departed royalty, prime-ministers and generals.