“SOMETHING UNCOMMONLY GERMAN”: HANS PFITZNER’S PALESTRINA, EINE MUSIKALISCHE LEGENDE

SABINE LICHTENSTEIN*

In June 1917, during the First World War, Thomas Mann attended the final rehearsal, the world première and the next three performances of Hans Pfitzner’s Palestrina, eine musikalische Legende, conducted by Bruno Walter in the Prinzregententheater in Munich. Six months later he remarked: “This is truly mentally and artistically a work of outstanding quality, something uncommonly German, from the world of Faust and Dürer, and with a suggestion of meaning which makes it entirely something for me.”1 Palestrina was a godsend. As it happened, at that moment Mann was writing his Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, a lengthy essay which he referred to as his feat of arms. In any event, it was a (cultural and) political manifesto. In this essay Mann defended what he regarded as the typically German, apolitical introversion (“Verinnerlichung”) which stands in opposition to what he regarded as the loud democratic rhetoric of the French. Palestrina confirmed this romantic view. Pfitzner’s work was “ethics in sound”, both an apology and a product of the German “Verinnerlichung” and Romanticism. It celebrated stillness, mysticism and music, and presented political discourse as petty squabbling. The opera was even romantic seduction. It let “sympathy with death” be heard – sympathy in relation to which Mann acknowledged in the Betrachtungen: “It

* I gratefully acknowledge the financial support for the translation of this article that ASCA has contributed. 1 6 November 1917 to Peter Pringsheim, in Thomas Mann Briefe 1889-1936, ed. Erika Mann, Frankfurt am Main, I, 1979, 141. Mann’s public response contributed to Pfitzner’s becoming known: see “Aufruf zur Gründung des Hans Pfitzners-Verein für Deutsche Tonkunst”, and “Tischrede auf Pfitzner” (both in Rede und Antwort, 1984) and particularly the praise in Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, 406-26. Unless stated otherwise, all Thomas Mann’s texts are from his Gesammelte Werke in Einzelbänden, ed. Peter de Mendelssohn, Frankfurt am Main, 1980-1986. 326 Sabine Lichtenstein contains hostility, opposition, against history which is happening in favour of that which is happened, in other words of death.”2 This longing for death and the past, in particular, renders the opera a paradigm of (late) German Romanticism, in Mann’s view. During the approximately twenty years which preceded the completion of Pfitzner’s magnum opus and in which the composer composed other dramatic music, the subject matter of Palestrina held his attention.3 Although he doubted his own literary competence,4 dissatisfied he put aside the drafts of, amongst others, James Grun, the librettist of Der arme Heinrich and Die Rose vom Liebesgarten, and Ilse von Stach, the librettist of Das Christ-Elflein. Between the end of 1909 and August 1911 he wrote the libretto himself. In it he concentrated on the life of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and his famous Missa Papae Marcelli, and on the Council of Trent, in which this mass may have played a role. The Geschichte der Musik by August Wilhelm Ambros had prompted Pfitzner to take up this subject and it also became the most important source for the libretto.5 Ambros’ study provided Pfitzner with many details of Palestrina’s life and work, his musical connection with Josquin and other predecessors, and the stile moderno. Sometimes, particularly in the first Act, Pfitzner almost quotes verbatim from Ambros’ work.6 Likewise he quotes from Paolo Sarpi’s Istoria del Concilio tridentino.7 He studied the latter work for two years, together with the Istoria del Concilio di Trento by Pietro Sforza Pallavicino. He used

2 Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, 319, 424; “Unordnung und frühes Leid” in Späte Erzählungen, 155 (Gesammelte Werke in Einzelbänden). 3 After the incidental music Das Fest auf Sollhaug (première 1890), the operas Der arme Heinrich (première 1895), Die Rose vom Liebesgarten (première 1901), the incidental music Das Kätchen von Heilbronn (première 1905), and in 1906 the opera Das Christ-Elflein and the incidental music Gesang der Barden followed. 4 “Palestrina; ein Vortrag über das Werk und seine Geschichte” (1932), in Hans Pfitzner, Reden, Schriften, Briefe; Unveröffentliches und bisher Verstreutes, ed. Walter Abendroth, Berlin-Frohnau, 1955, 422. 5 August Wilhelm Ambros, Geschichte der Musik, Leipzig, 1881, IV, 1-337; “Palestrina; ein Vortrag über das Werk und Seine Geschichte”, in Hans Pfitzner: Sämtliche Schriften, ed. Bernhard Adamy, Tutzing, 1987, IV, 419. 6 Cf. Ambros’ remark that a papal maestro di cappella could not permit himself to compose madrigals about “golden hair and the starry eyes” of a lady (Geschichte der Musik, 7, 8) with Pfitzner’s “Ungnädige Dame mit Sternenaugen” (“ungracious lady with starry eyes”) and “ungnädige Dame, goldenhaarige” (“ungracious lady, golden- haired”): Palestrina, beginning of I,1 and close of I,2. 7 Johann Peter Vogel, Hans Pfitzner, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1989, 66.