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100099 BRUCKNER - MAHLER - SGHOENBERG Bruckner Mahler Schoenberg DIKA NEWLIN KING'S GROWN PRESS MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS : NEW YORK COPYRIGHT 1947 BY DIKA NEWLIN Printed in the United States of America by Vail-Ballou Press, Inc. King's Crown Press is a division of Columbia University Press organized for the purpose of making certain scholarly material available at minimum cost. Toward that end,, the publishers have adopted every reasonable economy except such as would interfere with a legible format. hms First Printing: 1947 Second Printing: 1947 To my friends MARIAN PASCHAL and HENRIETTE VOORSANGER whose interest has made this work possible Acknowledgments Both author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the following per- missions to use quotations, both of words and of music; without the amiable cooperation of those listed here, it would have been difficult indeed to have concluded this study. Associated Music Publishers, Inc., New York, for various quotations from works by Bruckner, Mahler and Schoenberg, and Boosey Hawkes, Inc., New York, for quotations from works by Mahler, reprinted by permission of the copyright owners, Boosey and Hawkes, Inc., New York; and also for the quotation from the Preface to Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. Dodd, Mead and Co., New York, for quotation from Franz Grill- ' parzer, by Gustav Pollak. E. P. Button and Co., Inc., New York, for quotations from Johannes Richard Brahms, by Specht, and from Arnold Schoenberg, by Egon Wellesz. The Greystone Press, New York, for quotation from Gustav Mahler, by Walter and Krenek, W. Luce & John Co., Boston, for quotation from Masks and Min- strels of New Germany, by Percival Pollard. G. Schirmer, Inc., New York, for quotations from works by Beethoven and Bruckner, used by permission of the publisher, G. Schirmer, Inc. Arnold Schoenberg, for quotations from various works. Charles Scribner's Sons, New for York, quotation from Ivory, Apes and Peacocks, by James Huneker. The Macmillan New Company, York, for quotation from Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche by (translated by Alexander me.)* Preface . HE IDEA of this book originally came to me during my years of that time study with Arnold Schoenberg in Los Angeles (1938-1941). At I was first introduced to the most "radical" works of Schoenberg works virtually unknown in this country so far as public performances are concerned. I felt the need of a historical background which would It this which to explain the origins of the new style. was brought me a study of the works of Mahler and Bruckner; for Schoenberg's oft- indicated that the roots of expressed indebtedness to Mahler plainly scores different Schoenberg's style might be found in Mahler's (however Mahler's music might be in texture from Schoenberg's), and the re- well lationship between Mahler and Bruckner seemed established. Thence, it was but a step to the conclusion that Schoenberg is not only the heir of Bruckner and Mahler but also the heir of the great Viennese classical tradition, which they transmitted to him. It is this conclusion which I have tried to prove in the following pages; it has been my desire to portray Schoenberg's works as the culmination of several centuries of historical development, rather than as the products of a wilful icono- clasm. To this end, I have attempted to place Schoenberg in the Vien- nese cultural scene by analyzing, not only the musical background, but his also the literary, artistic, and political background of generation a task which I have likewise performed for the period of Bruckner and of Mahler. Such an extensive project could never have been carried out without the assistance and cooperation of those who were familiar at first hand with the milieu which I wished to reconstruct. Though space forbids detailed acknowledgments, I would like to express here some measure Paul of my gratitude to all who helped me in any capacity to Professor Henry Lang and Dr. Erich Hertzmann, of the Department of Music, Columbia University, whose patient and painstaking guidance and aid unfailing encouragement were, from the beginning, of inestimable to me; to Dr. Herman T. Radin, who kindly furnished me with PREFACE of Mahler material in his photostats and copies unpublished possession; of to Mr. Leo Katz, for valuable commentary on the art-movements for the characteristic the twentieth century; to Mr. Francis Aranyi, to anecdotes relating to the premiere of Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder; all those who, by word or deed, stimulated my imagination to a more I or made me vivid conception of the period with which dealt, who manifestations Rudolf acquainted at first hand with its musical Kolisch, Eduard Steuermann, Fritz Stiedry, Erika Stiedry-Wagner, Alma this Mahler Werfel; and, inevitably, to the one whose work made study best not only possible but necessary, who is his own critic, and whom I have allowed to speak in his own words wherever feasible to Arnold Schoenberg. New York City Contents Introduction: The Continuity of Musical Tradition in Vienna; Austrian Convention and Revolt i BOOK ONE: ANTON BRUCKNER Conservatism and Catholicism L The Problem of Bruckner 17 II. Backgrounds for Bruckner 19 III. Bruckner Comes to Vienna 33 IV. Concepts of Symphonic Style 36 V. Sources for Bruckner's Theory of Harmony 47 VI. Bruckner as Church Composer 54 VII. Bruckner's Chamber Music 70 VIII. Bruckner the Symphonist 78 BOOK Two: MAHLER I. Mahler, Bruckner, and Brahms 105 II. Portrait of Mahler as a Young Man 1 1 1 III. Das Klagende Lied 115 IV. Literary Influences on Mahler 119 V. Mahler the Lyricist 125 VI. Mahler the Opera Director; Mahler the Symphonist 136 BOOK THREE: SCHOENBERG AND BEYOND Decades of Decision L 1874-1899 209 II. 1900-1907 218 2 INTRODUCTION in In a brief survey of the musical aspects of the high baroque influence Vienna we may find much to point to the future. The direct of Italianism may perhaps be disposed of first; it is still very active in the eighteenth century, but becomes of practically no measurable 1 importance in more recent times. Insofar as the Italian influx stimu- lated the production of opera in Vienna, however, it is of the greatest importance for events to come. Standing at the threshold of the eighteenth century, we can look ahead exactly two hundred years to the time when the Vienna Opera House, under Mahler's direction, will be the focal point of Vienna's cultural life. And, in the twentieth cen- as in the is tury seventeenth, the opera the special joy of the House of Hapsburg, and the ornament of its festive occasions. In fact, there is even something faintly anachronistic in the spectacle revealed to us in the letters of Mahler, who was in so many ways the prototype of modernity, which tell of his grave preoccupation with the problems of arranging a gala opera evening in honor of the visit of the Shah of Persia. Opera, too, becomes of importance to the neo-Viennese school in still another for the way, entire period of late romantic flowering from which die school stems is under the aegis of the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk. Wagner himself comes to Vienna and, thanks to the presence there of becomes the Hanslick, focal point of a dispute beside which even the most vitriolic episodes in the later controversies over Mahler, over and over Schoenberg, Schoenberg's pupils seem a little pale. Brahms, lured to Vienna the of by pleas friends, by the untenability of his somewhat anomalous situation in Hamburg, and by memories of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, becomes, willy-nilly, an anti-pope set the up against Wagnerites. The Upper Austrian Bruckner, a curious baroque figure, falls under the of spell Wagner's music; he, too, comes to Vienna, and lives to regret it as he becomes an innocent victim in the Wagnerian controversy. Mahler, first in Vienna as a young con- servatory student, returns at the of height his career, as a feted opera conductor, to the of play part high priest to Wagner with his unfor- gettable performances of Tristan and the other And Wagnerian master- pieces. Schoenberg begins his career thoroughly steeped in Wagner MUSICAL TRADITION IN VIENNA 3 I heard the Much later he says, "When I was twenty-five had operas 2 In of all of Wagner between twenty and thirty times each." view these facts, the citation of the beginning of Tristan in the last move- ment of Berg's Lyric Suite attains a more than passing symbolic sig- nificance. But of all the heritages from the baroque, one of the most significant and most problematic is the Catholic heritage. The Hapsburg mon- archy was a stronghold of Catholicism in the baroque era and it re- mained so throughout its existence; the aristocracy, too, was strongly Catholic, and anti-Semitism was a force to be reckoned with in Vienna, of the in spite of the Jewish domination of a large proportion press. It is only through the entrenchment of Catholicism in the rural dis- revolu- tricts of Austria during the Vormarz (the period preceding the in his tion of 1848) that a character like Bruckner, truly fanatical fervent Catholicism and in his submissiveness to established authority, can be explained. It has already been said that Bruckner was a man of the baroque. Indeed, it is not surprising that he should have been so, considering the environment in which he spent his formative years. The Abbey of St. Florian is one of the most majestic edifices in pure baroque style "J6811^ style" surpassed in Lower Austria only, per- haps, by Melk. And its magnificent organ inspired Bruckner to con- trapuntal improvisations which bespeak the seventeenth-century soul in a man who was still alive when Schoenberg was twenty-one.