Dangerous Melodies

by Jonathan Rosenberg

  On those occasions when singers graced the concert stage, listeners could now avoid the alien tongue. In mid-January 1918, the orchestra offered a successful Beethoven-Brahms festival and several days later, the Carnegie Hall audience heard Wagner in a Philharmonic concert attended by a number of American and Allied servicemen in uniform. The latter concert featured several arias from the Wagner canon—all sung in English—as was the case some ten days before in a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth, in which the text of the final movement was offered in translation.65

  Despite what orchestra manager Leifels had declared a few months before, in late January, the Philharmonic stopped performing the music of living German composers. The first to go was Richard Strauss, whose Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks was stricken from two programs. In deciding that New York audiences would no longer hear compositions by living Germans, Leifels said the ensemble had been removing their works occasionally, and “we decided that we must hang our flag out once and for all.”66 An increasing number of protests from subscribers who opposed hearing some German music had led the board to act, though he emphasized no one had complained about playing the music of “dead Germans.” According to Leifels, the board recognized that patriotism was behind the protests, and he pointed out that the ban would apply mostly to the music of Richard Strauss, since almost no other works by living Germans were part of the orchestra’s repertoire.67 A supportive Maestro Stransky observed that the orchestra was merely doing what had been done in the other Allied nations. The programs for the current season had been planned before the country went to war, he said, with many concerts scheduled to include works by Strauss, when that was not yet a source of distress.68

  Among the reasons for banning pieces by living Germans, aside from wishing to silence “alien music,” was the contention that playing Strauss meant American funds would flow into the hands of a German national via royalty payments, providing material comfort to the enemy. Whatever the justification, not every observer approved of the Philharmonic’s decision, as a Musical Courier piece suggested. After noting that the US government had recently ruled that German and Austrian royalty payments would henceforth be suspended—thus undercutting the economic argument—the publication labeled the Philharmonic’s policy absurd, adding that all it would take for the music of Strauss to return to the concert hall would be for him to expire. And there was a peculiar logic to the idea that the death of Strauss “would cloak him with virtue,” meaning his music would no longer reflect “the spirit of modern autocratic Germany.”69

  Musical America responded differently. There was no cause for upset, the editors pointed out, since concertgoers would be deprived mainly of the music of Richard Strauss, which meant, sadly, no more Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, or Death and Transfiguration. As for the other Germans whose music would be silenced, they were not crucial to the community’s “musical happiness.” After all, how much would anyone miss the temporary absence of Weingartner, Humperdinck, Korngold, and Schoenberg?70

  As the Philharmonic season drew to a close in the spring of 1918, another storm swirled. At the April 1 annual meeting of the orchestra’s board it was made known that a letter had been sent to a board member by Richard Fletcher, editor of The Chronicle, the monthly notable for whipping up anti-German feeling, particularly about musical matters. At the time, Fletcher had been working closely with a second board member, Elizabeth (Lucie) Jay, who was similarly energetic in expressing anti-German sentiment (especially about classical music), and who had been laboring doggedly to limit what could be played and by whom. Fletcher’s letter asked for Josef Stransky’s resignation, appealing to what he believed was the inclination of all loyal citizens to remove the enemy stain from the national landscape. The time had come, Fletcher declared, “for every true American to stamp out whatever Teuton influence . . . remains in this country.” He informed the board that he had learned the maestro’s box had been visited by questionable characters whose allegiance to America was suspect.71

  The board did not act on Fletcher’s letter and Lucie Jay resigned. The press reported that Stransky had begun the process of becoming an American citizen, and noted that he now called himself not an Austrian but a Czecho-Slav, which meant he was not necessarily an enemy of the United States. Meanwhile, a New York Tribune piece claimed that Stransky had told a reporter that he supported the president. But the allegations continued. It was rumored that Stransky had offered his services to Austria at the start of the war, a story he emphatically denied. Still more problematic was the publication of a photograph in several papers, which showed the conductor’s wife standing in the company of pro-German figures in New York, along with Count von Bernstorff, then the German ambassador to the United States.72

  The day after the board had considered his firing, Stransky issued a long letter that appeared in various newspapers and periodicals, in which he attempted to establish his innocence and loyalty to his adopted country. In lawyerly fashion, the conductor presented the reasons concertgoers should support him. During the first part of the war, he acknowledged, his “sympathies were with the German people,” though he pointed out that he had never favored the policies of the German government. With America at war, Stransky declared, “I decided to take a definite stand with my adopted country.” The conductor highlighted his decision to play “The Star-Spangled Banner” at numerous Philharmonic concerts, and spoke of his Bohemian (i.e., pro-Allied) origins and Czecho-Slovak parents. Stransky noted that he had taken out US citizenship papers, renounced his native country, and had been “outspoken for America.” He had donated his services to the Red Cross, given money to patriotic organizations, led his ensemble at army camps, and was responsible for the Philharmonic’s decision to ban all pieces by living Germans.73

  Still, some were unwilling to let Stransky off the hook. With Fletcher in charge, The Chronicle continued to challenge Stransky’s loyalty, claiming it would not abandon the question until the conductor had explained the evidence against him. The editorial declared that he now “bleats of a belated and unconvincing loyalty to the United States.”74 Despite the effort to remove him, Stransky survived, and when the next season began, he remained on the podium, though many still doubted his loyalty.75

  The city’s other leading ensemble, the New York Symphony, opened the 1917–1918 season under Walter Damrosch with a program that included the music of Richard Strauss. The German-born conductor spoke that day of his unwillingness to allow the war to limit what he would perform, meaning all German compositions would remain. But that would change, as Damrosch’s orchestra, like Stransky’s, would restrict its choices and proscribe compositions by living Germans, while Wagner would be limited to instrumental excerpts from the operas. Beyond that, any works that included the German language would be performed in English.

  In an exchange with one of his subscribers in May 1918, Damrosch explained his position on playing German music, a view he also considered in his memoir published a few years after the war. Writing to Mrs. Lewis Cass Ledyard, who had contacted him to explain that she planned to resign her position on the orchestra’s board because of the continued performance of German compositions, Damrosch claimed that music should not be dragged through the ideological mud created by the war. While Germany had “strayed from paths of honor,” he wrote, the works of the iconic figures of German music—Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms—had become as much a “part of American civilization as of Germany’s.” Such personalities were not responsible for the execrable actions of the German government, he said, insisting they had nothing to do with the torpedoing of the Lusitania (the British passenger ship on which 1,198 innocent people had perished), or with the “Rape of Belgium.” He understood her desire to ban the music of living Germans, and the wish to eliminate “the German tongue from our operas and concerts” until Germany returned to its place among “civilized nations.” As he reminded Mrs. Ledyard, the British and French, who had endured far more wartime pai
n and suffering than the United States, continued to perform the music of Beethoven, Brahms, and the operas of Wagner (in English).76 There was little chance, Damrosch asserted in another letter, that the American people, upon hearing a Beethoven symphony, would believe that a country capable of producing such wondrous music was not also capable of committing the “atrocities” of the current war. America’s cause was sufficiently strong that playing German compositions would actually highlight the difference between the nobility of such music and the low state to which present-day Germany had fallen.77

  Nor was the debate in New York limited to the symphonic realm, for the Metropolitan Opera Company faced challenges of its own. Given the importance of German opera in the company’s repertoire, it is no surprise that tensions flared during the first full operatic season after America went to war. As the 1917–1918 season began, Lucie Jay, the only woman on the Philharmonic’s board, launched an attack against the Met. In The Chronicle, she offered the first of many contributions on German music, which, when compared to her later efforts, was a measured response to the Wagner question. A note appended to the article alerted readers to The Chronicle’s position, with the editor asserting that Jay was boldly firing “the first shot against the menace of this insidious German propaganda.” According to the editor, the genius of many German figures, including Beethoven, Goethe, and Bach, had long been used to advance the “Teutonic plan for world dominion.” The point was clear: German opera should be banned until the war was over.78

  Lucie Jay pleaded for a deeper relationship between classical music and the American people, and hoped the public might develop a richer musical understanding, which went beyond responding to the “emotional in music,” by which she meant an attachment to late nineteenth-century compositions like those by Tchaikovsky and Wagner. Music lovers ought to explore and appreciate the music of Bach, Mozart, and Haydn, which would enhance their artistic sophistication. She repudiated those who supported a complete ban on German music. Nothing inherent in German concert music necessitated its elimination, she wrote.79 It would be a “mistake,” however, to perform German opera during the war, especially Wagner. Particularly when sung in German, Wagner’s creations depicted violent scenes, which would ineluctably draw the minds of Americans to the “spirit of greed and barbarism,” which had produced so much suffering.80

  Apart from Jay’s ruminations, one could encounter more-compelling reflections on German opera, as suggested by the heartfelt declaration of a mother of two soldiers fighting in France. This longtime Met subscriber said she understood the argument that “masters” like Wagner and Beethoven did not represent current “German ambition and German thought,” and she realized her resentment toward Germany should not include hostility toward German opera performed by German singers. She confessed, however, if “I and others who are in the same position are to be honest . . . we cannot listen to anything which suggests the horror that we mothers now face.” The source of her distress lay in the “very word ‘German’,” which “conjures up in our minds” an “intolerable” situation.81

  One can empathize with this mother of two doughboys and understand the pain she experienced at a performance by someone such as Otto Goritz, who had allegedly exulted in German atrocities like the Lusitania sinking, which killed nearly 1,200 souls, including 128 Americans. But her distress sprang from something deeper than the transgressions of a callous singer. The source of her anguish, she suggested, lay in German culture—or even German-ness. And such emotions, unleashed by listening to German artists singing German music, meant that hearing German opera had become impossibly difficult. A personal connection to the war, a consequence of having family members under fire, explains why some could not disentangle German music from events overseas.

  That same autumn, The Nation offered a different perspective on Wagner, in particular, arguing that banning his music would be “stupid.” Assessing the coming season at the Met, the editors observed that Wagner would be adequately represented, which was as it should be. There was no reason “to taboo Wagner” because the United States was fighting “Prussian militarism.” The editors pointed, as had others, to Wagner’s position as a stern critic of Germany. Were he alive today, he would be leading the reaction against “Kaiserism,” and they were relieved that his music remained on the Metropolitan’s list for the coming season.82 This position was embraced by various publications and individuals whose opinions were reflected on editorial pages and in readers’ letters.

  Although the Met had planned to present Wagner in the 1917–1918 season, on November 2, the company announced that German opera would not be performed at all.83 In his memoirs, Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the company’s long-time general manager, described the cancellation as his gravest challenge. Before the season began, the Italian administrator had been told, “You must continue to present German opera.” But in October, when “the war had really begun for this country,” and reports of the wounded and the dead began to reach America’s shores, members of the Met’s board said maintaining the German repertoire would be impossible.84 Once the bloodletting touched the American people, German opera was swept from the stage.

  As Gatti-Casazza would observe years later, he had suspected this would happen, which had led him to prepare a different set of performances that included no German works. When the Met’s board decided in early November that German opera would be banned, French and Italian compositions, along with some American and English operas, were substituted, a change the Met implemented within a week’s time. The general manager claimed the revised calendar was highly successful, and he recalled that twenty-three weeks of performances were presented, minus the forty to forty-five performances of works in German.85 Gatti-Casazza made clear that he had nothing to do with the ruling; his task was merely to implement the board’s wishes. As he told the Musical Courier, “Personally I have held that reason and fairness should rule in these matters, but . . . at a time like this, emotion is a much stronger force.”86

  As for the board’s action, it was reported that there was internal disagreement among the directors, with a New York Herald story explaining that a small minority favored continuing to offer the German repertoire. Apparently, the eruption of Karl Muck’s problems with the Boston Symphony (to be discussed in the next chapter) had a significant impact on the Met’s decision. The Herald also claimed that the board, which was entirely male, had been pressured by a group of society women who wanted to ban all German opera in New York. If nothing else, the company’s management feared that on the nights Wagner was offered, typically once a week, the ring of expensive parterre boxes, known as the “Diamond Horseshoe,” would remain vacant. While it was not initially clear whether German opera would continue to be performed in English, soon all German opera, whatever the language, would disappear.87

  In the wake of the Met’s decision, debate ensued among music commentators and the public about the alleged perils that performing German music, especially Wagner, posed to American society. As the Musical Courier explained, offering Wagner as before, with German artists singing in German at the nation’s largest opera house, would allow the German government to claim the United States was “not heart and soul in the war.” The solution was to have Wagner on American terms—with American conductors and American singers performing in English. Wagner’s creations were “world music,” which belonged to all.88

  Less enlightened publications had little sympathy for those who continued to support performing German opera. According to The Chronicle, those opposed to the ban were a “crop of idiots.” By rejecting proscription, such “fools” were aiding the “German Cause,” even if unconsciously. Indeed, such open-mindedness reminded one of the pacifists’ outlook, The Chronicle acidly remarked, a group Woodrow Wilson had dismissed on account of its “stupidity.”89

  Members of the public weighed in, their letters ranging from simplistic to thoughtful. Writing to the New York Times, Marian Stoutenburgh observed, if German opera had cont
inued, German singers would have been retained to perform Wagner, which led her to wonder “what loyal American would want to listen to a group of men and women,” who, if they had the chance, would do all they could to aid the enemy? According to this New Yorker, everyone understood that “great art belong[ed] to the civilized world,” though it was a “shame” to have it performed by those whose “zeal for the Fatherland” was clear.90 Other Times readers shared more incendiary reflections, emphasizing music’s malign power. “Our sons and husbands are hourly giving their lives to save America and civilization from the onrushing devastation of the loathsome Prussian war monster,” Myra Maxwell declared. At this moment, would even the “most rabid adherents of German opera” be willing to endure the “unlovely guttural language of our enemy, hissed in their faces under the friendly guise of art?” Scoffing at those who spoke about the “universality of art,” she said there would be ample time to consider such things when the war was over. For now, America should concern itself with “German arms . . . not German art.”91