Walter Braunfels Essay Engl

Walter Braunfels: Essay “Timelessly unfashionable” by Frithjof Haas: About the compositional work of Walter Braunfels English translation by Maroula Blades and Joerg Heinrich After the premiere of the opera “Die Vögel” (“The Birds”) the critic Alfred Einstein wrote in April 1922: “I don’t think that over the opera stage has played such an absolute artistic work like this ‘lyrical fantastic game to Aristophanes’. One can and must in his need compare it with the ‘mastersingers’ and with the ‘Palestrina’ by Pfitzners.” 1 By a re-performance, 50 years later the Stuttgart Opera director Wolfram Schiwinger wrote: “Today, one does not only remember the 19th century, but also the after-pains, everywhere there is a new receptiveness to feel for musical poetry and lyrics. This opera may be heard again. Only a few deserve it out of that time.” 2 What is out standing in this creation, this in two verdicts, these lay apart in half a century, as deemed important and nevertheless almost completely forgotten? Walter Braunfels, born 1882, was raised like Richard Strauss, who was half a generation older, in the classic romantic tradition, the following of Wagner and Brahms. But unlike Strauss, Braunfels has written his most important works after the drastic experience of being a soldier in the First World War. The terrible impressions of the thirty year old, which the successful fifty years old composer Walter Braunfels, ‘Die Vögel‘ (‘The Birds‘): Figurine des Wiedehopf (Figurine of the Hoopoe) for the Cologne performance that Hans Strohbach made in 1930 with the proscription through the National Socialism in the Second World War even had to suffer much more, marks a creation, which in our presence is significant to accommodate. The breakdown of an intellectual world order did not influence Braunfels, like by the new-tone Walter Braunfels (about 1908) musicians of the twenties, the avoidance of tradition, but conscious of its essential values. This tie on the traditional customs was called for a long time contemptuously, ‘neo-romantic,’ while one has only been aware of the independent value of this style direction recently and so the important contemporaries of Braunfels, Anton Zemlinsky, Hans Pfitzner and Franz Schreker were rediscovered. Braunfels has not chosen the way to emigration despite proscription and performance ban by the national socialistic cultural policy; he remained a silent stone of annoyance in the country where enemies stood against him, where however the roots of his artistic makings still lay.What are the sources of these musical works, which finds renewed interest today? During his childhood and teenage years in Frankfurt, Braunfels began to study at an early age with his mother and later by James Kwast the piano works of Bach, Beethoven and Schumann. However, beside his interest for Greek antiquity which woke in high school, he found no role model in his musical environment that seemed worthwhile striving after. The early Frankfurt theatre impressions by the operas of Flotow, Lortzing, Gounod, and Meyerbeer could not persuade him to a musician’s life. Only in Munich where he studied law and national economy, he became so fascinated by the performances arranged by Felix Mottl that he decided to become musician. While he studiously worked for one year on the piano tutored by Theodor Leschetitzky in Vienna, as a composer he remained largely autodidactic. The contact to the important master teacher of the neo-romantic Munich school, Ludwig Thuille, was only confined to guiding advice and compositional encouragement. More important were the experiences as a trainee-conductor, sitting in the rehearsals and the performances of Wagner’s ‘Ring’ and ‘Tristan and Isolde’ under the direction of Felix Mottl. Ludwig Thuille characterized the composers of the new romantic Munich school These experiences clung so deeply, that decades later Braunfels could still play these works off by heart to his pupils, as he had heard them under Mottl. Even more defining for him was the many performances of the stage works from Hector Berlioz, who Mottl at that time in Munich passionately propagated. The glowing fascination of this music had a stirring effect on the inspiration of the young composer. His own gift, the improvisational strength of invention, found conformation here. Like the young Belioz, who had wandered through the Italian Campagna (Italian Campaign) improvising on the guitar in addition to singing, Braunfels improvised at the end of public piano recitals, after he had played the late sonatas from Beethoven. The opera composer found his fantastic imagination’s gift an attractive subject by E.T.A. Hoffmann. After the unfinished ‘Golden Topf’ (‘Golden Pot’) he succeeded with a ingenious throw with the opera ‘Prinzessin Brambilla’ (‘Princess Brambilla’), which premiered in 1909 through Max von Shilling in Stuttgart. In the libretto of this early work, the hero is not able distinguish his unreal visions from the real I, so that the ideals become reality, this engaged the composer in a second version (1930) and in a third version (1953) to end of his life. Out of the same spirit of ‘visionary fantastic’ from the steady changing I derived the first orchestral masterpiece, the ‘Phantastischen Erscheinungen eines Themas von H. Berlioz’ (‘The fantastic appearance of a theme from H. Berlioz’), Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted in Frankfurt and Bruno Walter in Munich. In the same year 1914, in which Reger wrote his Mozart- Variations, Braunfels invented a new variations technique through the identification with Berlioz: Mephistos Floh-Ballade (Mephitis Flea Ballad) from ‘Faust’s Verdammnis’ (‘Faust’s Damnation’), it wasn’t only changed in its formal musical structure, but always appeared in new transformations: as if an always changing personification of the composer Belioz would continue through the following epochs. In a similar way, a few years later, Braunfels had written orchestral variations over the so-called Champagner-Lied (Champagne Song) out of ‘Don Giovanni’. Perhaps this composition is less fortunate because the perfect sound of Mozart’s originals oppose the transmission to the modern orchestra. In addition to the meeting with Berlioz there was a second emphatic experience in the Munich years: Anton Bruckner, his fundamental religiousness overwhelmed Braunfels. This as well as the terrible war experiences induced him to think about his religious point of view and to confront himself with theology. He converts to Catholicism. From now on a definite deep Christian conviction determines the rest of his creations. Under the influence of his highly admired father-in-law, Adolf von Hildebrand, the important sculptor and representative of a late classic, he understood his Catholicism as having a continuous effect on a changing antiquity. And so he was led to the comedy of Aristophanes, the ‘Vögel’ (‘Birds’), which provided the substance for his most successful opera. His own libretto initially follows the Greek original, but the second act takes a Christian turn and ends with the religious hymn from a humble human race: “Great is Zeus, Hans Strohbach, figurine of the ‘Kiebitz‘ (‘Lapwing‘) for the Cologne performance of the ‘Vögel‘ (‘Birds‘) (1930) eternal, all bountiful he is, holy He! Praise him, eternal praise!” The composer paraphrases his roll as a librettist as follows: “It was never possible for me to compose a finished text, the word only forms itself in the moment of musical spirituality.” 3 At the première of the ‘Vögel‘ (‘Birds‘) Fritz Brodersen portrayed the ‘Wiedehopf‘ (‘Hoopoe‘) The text is usually simultaneous with the music; often it even arises after the musical idea. The composer therefore doesn’t raise any claim with his libretto on independent literary quality. He also liberally handles quotes from foreign texts. In the libretto the ‘Vögel’ (‘Birds’) there are processed verses from Eichendorff, since the composer could not find any suitable words by Aristophanes on which he could compose the love scene between the nightingale and the man. The opera ‘Die Vögel’ (‘The Birds’) became Braunfels most successful opus because here was a timeless, uniquely musical substance that became its very own opera theatre. The musical language of the ‘Vögel’ (‘Birds’) has an unmistakable independence. Already from the affectionate string melody in the first bars the magic releases, which this fantasy world conjures, freed from the earth’s heaviness.It is hard to find role models for this music; Hans Pfitzner is still the most likely choice, Braunfels highly estimates him under the contemporaries. Hans Knappertsbusch brought ‘Don Gil von den grünen Hosen‘ (‘Don Gil of the Green Trousers‘) to the première in 1924 Despite the declared belief in ‘Tristan’, hardly any chromatic isfound in the ‘Vögel’ (‘Birds’); also nothing is to be felt of the simultaneous avant-garde atonal trends. The music seems timeless, without being imitating. A listener from the first performance formulated the following: “One feels pleasure by the melody formations of classical purity and beauty, pleasure with astonishing harmonic logic even with the boldness.” 4 The most important work that followed from this epoch of substantial productivity is the oratorio ‘Te Deum’, premier in 1922 by Hermann Abendroth in Gürzenich by Cologne. A contemporary report speaks about the “largest success that a première ever had in Cologne.” 5 Wilhelm Furtwängler called the work in a letter to the composer “with reference to the emotion, the most beautiful and the most open” 6 what he has written. The composition of the Latin hymn is an ecstatic passionate confession of the convert to Catholicism. A comparison with the ‘Te Deum’ from Anton Bruckner is noticeable. While Bruckners composition radiates a firm, quiescent devoutness, the work from Braunfels shows an immense exuberance: in the first and third set a never ending jubilation, in the second set a threatening apocalyptic vision; the final set is a grave mourning music for the deceased father-in-law, Hildebrand, and ends with the “non confundar in aeternum” in a hymmnic apotheosis as the assurance of redemption.

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