Dangerous Melodies

by Jonathan Rosenberg

  Further complicating the story, as the United States became more deeply involved in the war, one’s position on what was acceptable was liable to shift, which suggests a key point: One’s views on German music were shaped less by the war in general than by American involvement in the war, which brought home the conflict’s horror in a visceral and increasingly painful way. It was American belligerency that informed how people responded to German compositions.

  Beyond the matter of what to do about German music, America’s animosity toward Germany and German culture would also affect the country’s attitude toward German musicians in the United States, who confronted a public increasingly unwilling to allow “enemy artists” to perform. Singers, instrumentalists, and conductors, along with the operatic and symphonic works they offered the American people, were swept up in the anti-German fever, which grew increasingly fiery as the country’s involvement in the war deepened. If German music engendered anxiety and anger, the presence of German musicians caused similar distress, for they were believed to harbor attitudes that imperiled the United States. Musicians with German backgrounds, particularly those who were not American citizens, were thought dangerous, a widely held sentiment that was also directed at the German saloon keeper, manual laborer, and school teacher.

  But such sentiments would not begin to engulf the country until after America entered the war in April of 1917. Indeed, in January, just weeks before the United States severed diplomatic relations with Germany, Wagner’s operas retained their allure, as the Metropolitan offered New Yorkers three iconic works—Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger, and Siegfried—sung by an array of mainly German artists. Not a single question was raised about the propriety of such performances.34

  On January 31, 1917, the German government announced that it would commence a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare against all ships, belligerent and neutral (including passenger and merchant vessels), in a zone around the British Isles and off the coast of Europe.35 Although aware that its policy, which meant all American ships would now become targets of German submarines, would lead to American intervention, the German government was convinced this final effort to strangle Great Britain would lead to victory. And this, German policy makers believed, would be accomplished before the United States could bring its power to bear in Europe. The German gamble was not without merit, though it was one Germany would lose.36

  On February 3, Woodrow Wilson announced that the United States would break diplomatic relations with Germany.37 That same day, Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony Orchestra were playing a young people’s concert at Carnegie Hall, which, due to the diplomatic situation, began with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the popular patriotic tune that was not yet the national anthem. The German-born maestro told the audience one of music’s chief duties was “to inspire patriotism,” after which he led a performance of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, a beloved piece by a nineteenth-century German.38

  In March, German submarines sank several American merchant ships, leading Wilson to conclude that America’s honor and safety would be compromised if he failed to respond.39 Equally significant, Wilson now believed that to have a hand in shaping the peace settlement, the United States could no longer stand on the sidelines. Wilson and his cabinet decided the country would enter the war, making it the first time in American history the government would send soldiers to fight in Europe.

  On April 6, 1917, four days after Wilson’s call for war, as he affixed his signature to the war declaration, the Metropolitan Opera was performing Wagner’s Parsifal as part of its annual Good Friday tradition. Three German singers graced a stellar cast, along with an Austrian, a Dutchman, and several Americans, all of whom were led by Bodanzky. As the press reported, the company had no intention of banning German opera during the remaining two weeks of the season, and Die Meistersinger and Tristan and Isolde would be heard over the next few days.40 According to Musical America, which noted the coincidence of playing Wagner on the day America went to war with Germany, Parsifal reflected “a very different spirit from that which inspires that nation to-day.” Readers were told that the iconic music drama captured the solemnity of the international situation. The work’s theme of “redemption through suffering” lent the moment greater importance than it would otherwise have had. The notion that German compositions possessed more insidious qualities had yet to take hold.41

  In mid-April, the Metropolitan Opera was the scene of dramatic developments, as some feared the audience would register its discontent toward German soprano Johanna Gadski, who was featured in the lead female role in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Gadski had been accused of questionable behavior, the result of a New Year’s Eve party she had hosted in 1915 in her New York apartment at which the well-known German baritone Otto Goritz had sung a virulently anti-American song making light of the killing of Americans at sea by German submarines. Gadski and Goritz claimed the song was simply an innocent example of New Year’s revelry with no anti-American subtext. More difficult to deny was that Gadski’s husband, Captain Hans Tauscher, a representative of the German munitions maker Krupps and a reserve officer in the German army, had been indicted and tried for conspiring to blow up Canada’s Welland Canal in 1916. Although Tauscher was acquitted and had left the country, some in the press thought the Met should terminate Gadski’s contract on the grounds of anti-American behavior and questionable associations.42

  Yet, nothing untoward happened on that April evening, and the performance of Tristan was beautifully realized. Gadski sang exceptionally well and the audience demanded repeated curtain calls. According to one writer, it was a wonderful display of “the American sense of courtesy!”43

  While widespread support persisted for the German singer, some continued to demand Gadski’s head. The New York Globe argued for removing her from the Met stage and published numerous letters on the subject, nearly all supporting its position.44 Animosity toward Gadski and other German artists also appeared in The Chronicle, a New York monthly, which declared that she, along with all supporters of the German government, should be fired. According to the paper, plenty of American singers could perform Wagner as well as Gadski, who saw “right in tyranny, brutality, and bestiality.” The publication highlighted the perniciousness of the German language, which led “one [to] prefer his German music expurgated of the spoken word—the guttural tongue which voiced the entire category of national crime.”45

  A few weeks after Gadski’s triumph, she announced her resignation from the Met, a decision she said was necessitated by the campaign against her. The Prussian soprano defended her actions and spoke of her affection for America. Denying that she had said or done anything against the United States, Gadski called it her “second home.” The Musical Courier, one of the nation’s most distinguished music publications, observed that all “friends of art” will lament what had happened to the great Wagnerian.46 Gadski’s April 13, 1917, performance in Tristan was noteworthy not just because it marked her final performance at the Met. More significantly, German opera would not be heard at the house until 1920—and then only in English—and no German opera would be performed, in German, until the 1921–1922 season, three years after the end of the war.

  As one listens to the national conversation both inside and outside the music community in early 1917, one recognizes that many thought it would be foolish to allow the war to intrude upon what was played. An April editorial in the Chicago Daily Tribune sought to distinguish between the German government, described as a “menace” to America, and “German genius,” which had provided “some of the most precious possessions of civilized life.” While strongly disapproving of Kaiser Wilhelm, the editors maintained it would be shortsighted for Americans to deprive themselves of Germany’s philosophers, poets, artists, and scientists. That would not weaken the enemy. It was essential, they insisted, for the United States to be worthy of its “ideals,” and to fight “without venom.”47

  This idea, that the United States had to t
ranscend its hatred of Germany and the German people, was expressed often in the classical-music community. Significantly, the notion was central to the ideals Woodrow Wilson regularly conveyed to the American people. While by 1917 there was little inclination to excuse the actions of Germany, one detects a willingness among many to establish a boundary between art and politics. In the spring of 1917, a Los Angeles letter writer, Charles Cadmon, implored the editors of Musical America to “admonish” readers about the dangers created by war’s “inflamed passions,” which might cause one to forget that it was crucial to continue to appreciate the superb “music and musicians of all nations.” Calling himself a “loyal American,” Cadmon promised he would keep his ideas about music and musicians distinct from his reflections on “patriotism.”48

  If the dominant view suggested it would be foolhardy or even un-American to ban German music, one began to hear unsavory noises, which, ultimately, exerted considerable influence on American musical life. In a letter to the New York Times, Edward Mayerhoffer, despite being a German-born musician living in a New York suburb, said he understood why Americans might not want to hear German music. The “morals” of the German government and the German people have “proved to stand so low” that it was impossible to listen to such music these days without a great feeling of irritation. It might be wise to ban German music when played and directed by Germans, he observed, until the war was over.49 A similar perspective, expressed in Musical America, revealed growing discomfort at the prospect of hearing performances of German music, though the letter writer acknowledged that the “great composers belong to humanity and not to any particular nationality.” While recognizing the “genius” of Wagner, Beethoven, Brahms, and even Richard Strauss, he admitted that he found the “very word ‘German’ ” to be “offensive.” At one time, it represented a variety of noble qualities, but the war had altered his perceptions. For now, the writer would listen to no German music, as it reminded him of “scenes of horror” and of the “outraging of women.”50

  By the fall of 1917, it was increasingly common to imagine that German music was inseparable from Germany’s repellent wartime behavior, which fueled the idea that it might become necessary to inoculate concertgoers from the threat presented by German composers. As an overseas correspondent for a New York paper remarked, once the word “Hun” became “the well-nigh universal description of a German,” Germany’s relationship with the world had changed.51 The conviction that Germans were barbarians, which intensified as the United States became more deeply involved in the war, would ultimately transform the bond between concertgoers and German music, thus undermining the belief that art transcended politics.

  Wondering about the coming New York music season, the New York Herald asked whether German opera, songs, and concert music would lose their fascination. And what about artists from Germany and Austria-Hungary? Would they remain popular or would Americans replace them? If the public supported maintaining the status quo, the article claimed, the German masters of the past would be heard.52

  As the 1917–1918 New York season began, all seemed in order in America’s most populous city, a metropolis with an enormous foreign population that included more than seven hundred thousand residents of German heritage. The Metropolitan Opera was poised to perform a full range of works, including nine operas by Wagner, while the opening concerts of the city’s two major orchestras, the Philharmonic and the Symphony, included pieces by the most prominent living German composer, Richard Strauss.53 The Herald reported that the public continued to respond to German music as enthusiastically as it did to French and Italian compositions. Audiences had embraced the notion that “art is international,” an idea Walter Damrosch addressed at the opening concert by his New York Symphony.54

  Damrosch told the audience he had received a letter from an old and valued subscriber, asking whether the orchestra should now ban German music. After asserting that the United States had to do everything it could to achieve victory in a “righteous” cause, Damrosch explained why he intended to present the music of all nations. Giving voice to the universalist idea, the conductor spoke of music’s power to provide a balm for the scars wrought by war. The concerts would serve as a haven from war’s chaos and a “solace for its wounds.” The war was terrible, but the life of the country must go on. It was essential, he insisted, for organizations like his symphony to continue to receive support, “more whole-heartedly, more whole souledly,” in war than in peace.55

  As for what music Americans should hear, the German-born conductor said it would be “ethically false” to allow our anger toward the German government to lead us to exclude the “German masters.” Banning the music of Bach or Beethoven or Brahms would be misguided. Such figures no longer belonged to any one country, but were part of the “artistic life of the entire civilized world.” Damrosch would accept no limits on the music he presented to the American people. Rather “would I lay down my baton than thus stifle my heart’s deepest convictions as a musician.”56

  New York’s other leading ensemble, the Philharmonic, was hit hard by the war. The orchestra’s German-born president, Oswald Garrison Villard, was the grandson of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison on his mother’s side, which left him with a highly developed moral sensibility, a quality his mother helped foster. Oswald was also the son of Henry Villard, railroad magnate, financier, and a leading figure in the newspaper business. In the era of the Great War, this child of principle and privilege, who headed the New York Post and The Nation (both inherited from his father), was a committed pacifist.57

  In his 1917 presidential address, Villard set the ensemble’s mission in the context of world politics by ruminating upon the experience of attending a Philharmonic concert:

  [L]et no one forget that these walls a citadel of peace enclose. The pitiful waves of sound that beat across oceans moaning of bloody, unreasoning death pass by this temple of art. No echo of the strife without can enter, for here is sanctuary for all and perfect peace. . . . Herein meet citizens of one world to acclaim masters of every clime. . . . Democracy? Here is its truest home.58

  For Villard, music could filter out the toxins of a diseased world, and the musician could still the unsavory passions that propelled world leaders and those that did their bidding. Such sentiments suggested that music was crucial to America’s well-being, especially in wartime. But Villard, who became an object of scorn among the musical nationalists, soon had reason to doubt such verities.

  In early 1918, Villard resigned. While the reason for his decision is murky, it seems clear that his stance on the war led to his departure, though he said he had originally planned to serve for only a year. But Villard’s correspondence indicates that his opposition to American intervention in the war and his criticism of US diplomacy made his Philharmonic presidency untenable.59 In his January 2 resignation letter, Villard acknowledged that his view of the war was at odds with prevailing sentiment. A “hysterical” perspective dominated public opinion, he said, which made it necessary to act in a way that would not harm the Philharmonic.60

  If Villard’s decision suggests how the war touched New York’s music community, the Philharmonic’s changing repertoire underscores how the struggle began to reconfigure the city’s musical culture, for the orchestra began and ended the 1917–1918 season with two strikingly different ideas about performing German music. At the Philharmonic’s opening concert in late October 1917, the ensemble offered the music of Richard Strauss, a German who was very much alive. While not every concertgoer was pleased, the rationale for playing German music is suggested in an exchange of letters between Thomas Elder, a former Philharmonic subscriber, and Felix Leifels, the orchestra’s manager and secretary. After receiving an angry letter from Elder, who reminded Leifels that he (Elder) had complained previously that many listeners found all-German programs unacceptable, Leifels responded forcefully. The “high art of music and musical genius is the property and privilege of the world.” It should not be lin
ked to the crimes of a particular government. The United States was fighting against the ideas of the “Teutonic rulers and not against the great works of musical art wrought by men of genius,” who were not responsible for the conditions that had forced America into battle. Concerning Wagner, whom Elder had apparently singled out in an earlier letter, Leifels asserted that the composer’s views did not reflect the authoritarianism of the kaiser’s Germany. Indeed, Leifels explained, Wagner was exiled from Germany for a dozen years for participating in the 1849 revolution in Dresden against “autocracy.”61

  While one cannot say how widespread Elder’s sentiments were, his views are deeply unsettling. Though not opposed to playing German music, he worried that those attending such performances, especially concerts devoted solely to German compositions, might not fully embrace the war effort. His cousins fighting in the trenches in France needed every bit of support they could get, he said, but “pacifists” might make it difficult for “our boys” to fight if they believed the home front was divided. Elder claimed he was prepared “to assist in the lynching of all such people.” Those opposed to the war did not yet understand that “patient people” would eventually take “things into their own hands.” While Elder said he found Wagner’s music appealing, he insisted that concerts comprising only German compositions could be morally destructive by elevating “things German before the public.”62

  With the Philharmonic season underway, the disquiet over performing German music persisted. On a mid-December evening, with Stransky on the podium and the ensemble playing several Wagner excerpts, a message about the composer’s politics appeared in the program. It sought to allay the concerns of listeners inclined to link German music—Wagner, specifically—to Prussianism. The statement asserted that Wagner was a political and a musical revolutionary, and added that he had contemplated coming to the United States after the failed revolution of 1848, and gave “speeches and wrote articles in favor of freedom.”63 The Philharmonic’s effort to portray Wagner as an enlightened democrat was not unusual among those seeking to justify continuing to perform his music. Whether such history lessons influenced the outlook of concertgoers is difficult to gauge. More certain is that audiences continued to respond enthusiastically to Wagner, as they did on that winter evening, especially when his music was encountered in the concert hall—which usually meant they would not have to endure hearing the German language.64