Introduction
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Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-45547-3 - Haydn’s Jews: Representation and Reception on the Operatic Stage Caryl Clark Excerpt More information Introduction Art is always a good hiding place, not for dynamite, but for intellectual explosives and social time bombs … And precisely in their despised and often despicable beauty and lack of transparency lies the best hiding place for the barb that brings about the sudden jerk or the sudden recognition. Heinrich Böll1 The early operas of Joseph Haydn are surprisingly good places to look for intellectual explosives and social time bombs. The great composer’s tradi- tional image reflects little of the cultural context within which he learned his art. Haydn was, however, familiar with the lexicon of dramatic tropes associated with ethnic representation on the stage in the mid-eighteenth century, and incorporated stereotypes in his theatrical works. Especially prominent were Jewish stereotypes in operas composed near the start of his career. Subsequently, the portrayal of Jews on stage changed mark- edly, and Haydn’s work reflected this trend. Before the Enlightenment, when Jews were treated as a people apart, physical infirmities and other markers of ‘difference’ were frequently caricatured on the comedic stage. But when society began to debate the ‘Jewish Question’ – understood in the later eighteenth century as how best to integrate Jews into society as productive citizens – theatrical representations became more sympa- thetic. How Haydn negotiated this fault line in his works for the stage is the focal point of this book, while its general aim is to explore how Haydn’s music engaged in the act of representing and, in turn, how the revival of that music would reflect important social and political struggles in later days. By altering the conceptual frameworks through which we study Haydn’s music, by exploring the socio-cultural contexts in which 1 Heinrich Böll, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972; full text of lecture delivered 2 May 1973. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1972/boll-lecture.html (con- sulted August 2008). 1 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-45547-3 - Haydn’s Jews: Representation and Reception on the Operatic Stage Caryl Clark Excerpt More information 2 Introduction heworked,andbyemployingnewtoolsofinterpretation,myobjectiveis to open up new avenues for research. Contemporary musicology is deeply invested in cultural investiga- tionandmusicalhermeneutics.Inthepost-Kermanera,ourtheoreti- calqueriesand‘musicalcontemplations’haveshiftedfrompositivism andformalismtoaconsiderationofhowmusicconveysmeaningsin differentcontexts,socialsettings,andpoliticaleras.2 Questions begin- ningwith‘when’,‘where’,or‘forwhom’maybemorestraightforwardto answer than those beginning with ‘why’ or ‘how’, but it is by attempting toanswerthemoredifficultquestionsaboutthemanywaysthatmusic reflects,shapes,andintersectswithculturethatwestandtogainthe most.Wemaynotalwaysframeourinterpretiveendeavoursinthepow- erful language employed by Heinrich Böll, whose rhetorical stance was formulatedduringthetumultuousColdWaryears.Butinthesameway that this modernist German writer exposed the political within the liter- ary,musicologistsarebeginningtotakeontheuneasytaskofuncover- ingthepoliticalwithinthemusical,andtherebytopushforwardthe boundaries of the field. Especially relevant here is Pamela Potter’s detailed study of musicol- ogy’spoliticizationundertheThirdReich.Herbook,Most German of theArts:MusicologyandSocietyfromtheWeimarRepublictotheEndof Hitler’s Reich (1998), uncovers the extent to which the German musi- cological establishment buttressed Nazi institutions and embraced National Socialist ideology and propaganda in the 1930s and early 1940s.Asherstudyreveals,prominentGermanmusicologistscollabo- ratedwiththestate,workingtoalignmusicologicalresearchendeav- oursinsupportofNazicausesinexchangeforgovernmentalsupport.3 Whilethisisanextremeexample,itisnotanisolatedcase.Asstudents of the German social philosopher and music critic Theodor Adorno, wecanneitherignorethewaysinwhichmusichasbeenshapedby 2 Joseph Kerman, ContemplatingMusic:ChallengestoMusicology(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985). 3 Pamela M. Potter, MostGermanoftheArts:MusicologyandSocietyfromtheWeimarRepublicto the End of Hitler’s Reich (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). Especially relevant to the topic underinvestigationherearethe‘incentivestoaddresstheideologicalquestionsofraceandthe roleoftheJewinGermanmusicalculture’,whichweresteppedupstartingin1938(p.82).Aspart ofthe‘tasksandgoals’inpromotingracialresearch,people‘ofJewishheritage’wereidentified intheindexesofscholarlybiographiespublishedintheNaziperiod.Inthe‘Literaturverzeichnis’ at the end of Helmut Wirth’s Joseph Haydn als Dramatiker (WolfenbüttelandBerlin:Georg Kallmeyer, 1940),forexample,scholarshipproducedbyJewsisindicatedbythelabel‘Jude’(or “Halbjude” in the case of Hanslick) printed next to the author’s name (see pp. 190ff.). © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-45547-3 - Haydn’s Jews: Representation and Reception on the Operatic Stage Caryl Clark Excerpt More information Introduction 3 history and culture nor dismiss the kinds of cultural work performed by music. SometimesscholarsoftheWesternmusicalcanonappeartotakeon the trappings of the ethnomusicologist when investigating the changing cultural,social,andpoliticalcontextsofmusicalreception.Whenwe focusnotonhowmusicalworksarecomposedorproducedbutonwhat audiences they are written for and presented to, and in turn how they responded to what Carl Dahlhaus and Walter Benjamin referred to as the ‘afterlife’, we are investigating music as experience and must develop a correspondinglymoreculturallyembeddedsphereofenquiry.4 In Western MusicanditsOthers:Difference,Representation,andAppropriationin Music,forinstance,GeorginaBornandDavidHesmondhalghexplore howculturesarerepresentedinmusicand,conversely,howsocialand cultural identities and difference are constructed and articulated in music:‘Musicreflectsnothing;rather,ithasaformativeroleinthecon- struction, negotiation, and transformation of socio-cultural identities.’5 Ethnomusicologist Regula Burckhardt Qureshi has long advocated that we ‘recast the musical product into the realm of experience’,6 whichisthe directionmuchrecentoperascholarshipistaking.Culturallyembedded meaningsofperformancechangeaccordingtoplaceandcontext,andin thisregardHaydn’soperasarenoexception.Throughoutthisstudy,which movesfromHaydn’sEszterházatoMahler’sViennaandbeyond,Ihave been continually reminded of the ethnomusicological leanings in Gary Tomlinson’s writing, including his ideas about Foucauldian archeology andthewebofculture.Subscribingtothenotionofmetasubjectivity, Tomlinsonsuggeststhatonlybylookingcloselyattheinteractionsof manydifferentkindsofartisticcreators–includingsenders(e.g.compos- ers, librettists, performers, and producers) and receivers – across different historicalandgeographicallocationscanwehopetocapturethefullpoten- tialofamusicalutterance.Inhiswords,‘theextra-musicalfactorsinflu- encingmusicarenotrestrictedtowhatthecomposerencounteredand reactedto,butbymoreingrainedandinvisiblefactors,suchastherules ofdiscourseitselfthatunderlaythewaypeopleunderstoodthingswithin 4 Mark Everist, ‘Reception Theories, Canonic Discourses, and Musical Value’, in Nicholas Cook andMarkEverist(eds.),Rethinking Music (Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 379. 5 WesternMusicandItsOthers:Difference,Representation,andAppropriationinMusic(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 31–2. 6 Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, ‘Musical Anthropologies and Music Histories: A Preface and an Agenda’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 48/3 (1995), p. 335. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-45547-3 - Haydn’s Jews: Representation and Reception on the Operatic Stage Caryl Clark Excerpt More information 4 Introduction thecultureinquestion’.7 By engaging in a more culturally responsive and responsiblelevelofenquiry,itismyintentiontoascribetoHaydn’smusi- cal and theatrical utterances a ‘thicker’ metasubjectivity. Butasmysubjectofinvestigationisprimarilyopera,myenquiryalso embraces a range of interdisciplinary and performative approaches cur- rentlybeingengagedincontemporaryoperastudies.Touchedoninthis investigation,then,isanexplorationofhowaperformance‘does,’or‘how aperformancegeneratesordisruptslevelsofmeaningbydoing’.8 At times, thereissomethingverygrotesqueandessentialistgoingonhere,forI amsuggestingthatitwasnotsimplyenoughtoputtheJewonstagebut thathewasrequiredto‘perform’hispartaswell.Inacoupleofhismid- eighteenth-centuryoperas,Haydnappearstohaveprovidedaplacefor mainstreamEuropeanstohaveagoatbeingbi-cultural,asitwere,with ‘Jewishness’becomingasitethroughwhichonemighttryouttheposition oftheOther.IntheactofperformingtheroleprescribedfortheJew(or theTurk,orthecross-dresser),dominantculturewasabletousethethea- treasasiteforexploringandnegotiatingmoralandculturalambiguities withinitssociety.Itisthusinthecross-culturalandinterdisciplinarycon- vergenceofmusicology,ethnomusicology,operastudies,Orientalism,and performancestudiesthat I situatethisbookonHaydnandtheOther. jewish representation – othering haydn Jews,alongwithgypsies(theRomani),havelongbeenconsideredthe insideOtherwithinEurope.CodedasOtheryetresidingwithin,not away,theinternalOtherwasconstructedinsuchawayastotipthepower