The Musical Politics of 1920S Berlin by Dylan Neely
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The Musical Politics of 1920s Berlin by Dylan Neely A Thesis submitted to the Faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for theatrical BACHELOR OF ARTS Accepted ____________________________________ Laurence Wallach, Thesis Advisor ____________________________________ Asma Abbas, Second Reader ____________________________________ Mary B. Marcy, Provost and Vice President Bard College at Simon's Rock Great Barrington, Massachusetts 2010 Contents INTRODUCTION. Politicized Art and Aestheticized Politics: The Weimar Republic's Tangle of Understanding 1 ONE. Spirituality and Power in Western Music 15 TWO. The Weimar Republic and Berlin 39 THREE. Wozzeck and Jonny spielt auf 64 FOUR. Kurt Weill and Die Zeitoper 98 FIVE. Ideological Tensions: Hanns Eisler and Paul Hindemith 144 CONCLUSION. 162 Appendix 1. “3. Dreigroschenfinale” from Die Dreigroschenoper 171 Appendix 2. “In Praise of Illegal Work” 178 Bibliography 187 Illustrations 1. “Entartete Musik” Nationalist Socialist Poster. 9 2. George Grosz, “The Stab in the Back from the Right.” (Courtesy of Lewis 156) 49 3. Otto Dix, “To Beauty.” 55 4. George Grosz, “For the Fatherland”/”To the Slaughterhouse.” (Courtesy of Lewis 84) 56 5. Cover of Jonny spielt auf Score 85 6. Photograph of Der Protagonist from its Dresden Production (Courtesy of Farneth 50) 116 7. Caspar Neher, Die Dreigroschenoper Set Sketch (Courtesy of Farneth 72) 130 Musical Examples 1. Wozzeck, measures 479 - 489, introduction of Doctor. 66 2. Jonny spielt auf, measures 1 – 9. 87 3. Jonny spielt auf, measures 558 – 579. 90 4. Jonny spielt auf, measures 2410 - 2417 (final chorus). 91 5. “Kanonen-Song” from Die Dreigroschenoper, measures 1 – 10. 131 6. "Morität von Mackie Messer" from Die Dreigroschenoper, measures 1 – 24. 136 7 – 10. Scale examples, “3. Dreigroschenfinale” from Die Dreigroschenoper. 171 – 172 11. “3. Dreigroschenfinale” from Die Dreigroschenoper Analytic Graph. 174 – 175 12. “In Praise of Illegal Work,” measures 1 – 8. 179 13. Bass motion reduction, “In Praise of Illegal Work,” measures 8 – 16. 180 14. “In Praise of Illegal Work,” final measures. 183 Abstract The Musical Politics of 1920s Berlin explores the tangled relationship between aesthetics, politics, and spirituality through a close study of four exemplary musical works and their iconic composers. The Threepenny Opera represents a pinnacles of the exceptional collaborative relationship between the composer Kurt Weill and the playwright Bertolt Brecht. Jonny spielt auf, the first opera to incorporate jazz, was composed by Ernst Krenek; Wozzeck, composed by Alban Berg, is widely considered to be the one of the most successful atonal operas ever produced. The song “In Praise of Illegal Work” is an exemplary political song from Brecht and the composer Hanns Eisler, an avowed Marxist whose politically-motivated work exists in an accessible but modern idiom. The politically-fraught and violent environment of Weimar-era Berlin witnessed the shattering of boundaries between the aesthetic and political realms – artists politically mobilized and politicians acted as a vocal force in cultural debates. This young generation of composers strove to integrate their work into the public sphere of social function and political discourse. In their related politico-aesthetic projects, fundamental tenets of music's relationship to the social, political, and spiritual realms were reexamined and often overturned. Through a close examination of this unique historical moment, I seek to explore fundamental questions of art's relationship to power. Introduction Politicized Art and Aestheticized Politics: The Weimar Republic's Tangle of Understanding General trends . can hardly ever be explained satisfactorily by one reason or by one cause alone. The historian is in most such cases confronted with a very complex historical situation where he is almost at liberty, and that means at a loss, to isolate one factor as the 'spirit of the times.' . Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate attempts to escape responsibility. - Hannah Arendt1 Weimar-era Germany and its synecdoche Berlin encapsulate the crises in 20th century existence – there was a spreading nihilism as faith in God reached a nadir while economic conditions worsened, accompanied by rising levels of social unrest and a wildly tumultuous political situation. Certain cities experience historical moments that resist assimilation into our world's ongoing narratives of conflict and progress. These periods become mythologized, as the exceptional quality of their existence shifts our understanding from the unsatisfying activity of historical analysis to the engagement of anecdote and wonderment. Weimar-era Berlin was an extremely violent city with an exciting and unique culture. It shattered boundaries between the aesthetic and political realms - artists politically mobilized and politicians acted as a vocal force in cultural debates. Music was revolutionized by a young generation of composers as they strived to 1 Arendt 12, 18. integrate their work into the public sphere. My exploration of these composers' lives, alongside analysis of selected exceptional musical works that they produced, is intended as more than a musicological venture. The music composed and performed during the Weimar era is a window into the period's sociopolitical condition. This is true in the broader theoretical sense – that culture and politics are interdependent operations – and in the concrete reality of the Weimar Republic, which maintained a rousing debate over the relationship between politics and music. During the centuries preceding the creation of the Weimar Republic, there was little questioning of where the intersections of the social, political and aesthetic might lie within music. It was a silenced discourse amid the enormously important revivals of social, political and aesthetic thought in post-Medieval Europe. The assumption that these intersections existed in music at all, much less were capable of being analyzed and interpreted, was an outlandish consideration during the Imperial period of nineteenth century musical Romanticism. Even today, when such matters are crucial to contemporary theory in the visual arts and film, they are still commonly absent in discussion of music. Whether it is music's ability to viscerally impact its listeners in a manner that defies easy articulation or its fundamental linkage across cultures to variegated concepts of spiritual understanding, the artistic medium often finds itself consciously, even insistently, excluded from a type of analysis that would somehow lower it from its heavenly, ineffable Beauty or Truth. Yet, in the first decades of the twentieth century, a wild modernist gushing of writing concerning questions of function, aesthetics and politics began surfacing en masse – in mass-circulation newspapers, academic journals, and magazines of all sorts. World War I disrupted this ongoing cultural revolution, and the Weimar Republic that arose in its wake witnessed a unique resolution of the artistic crises of modernism. The massive expansion of musical resources and techniques, already underway (particularly in Vienna and Paris) in the decades preceding the war, became intimately linked with the overt politicization of aesthetics during the Weimar years. C omposers tried to resolve a plethora of urgent questions: What should the social function of music be? The political function? How can composed music divorced from the spirituality that had fundamentally supported the western concert tradition exist, much less have meaning or purpose? What is the appropriate compositional approach for confronting new musical recording and production technologies? What are the consequences of the large-scale dissemination that this technology has made possible for the musical establishment? And for the musical object as commodity? Are the concepts of the work of art or aesthetic value relevant? This unprecedented discourse was publicized and polemicized in a proliferation of radical theater and through the new medium of the radio. The debate balked the dogma of German Romanticism's established ideology – what Carl Dahlhaus calls “art religion.” 2 Composed music began consciously seeking wider and economically diverse audiences, and confronting issues of industrialized life. There was an immediacy to this general attitude – often vaguely referred to as the “Weimar spirit” - sparked by the political tumult of the period and a slowly forming explicit acknowledgement of the power music could have in serving political ends. The autonomy of music was questioned in a manner considered sacrilegious by more conservative factions of the musical establishment. In 2 Dahlhaus, “The Idea of Absolute Music,” 88. He describes “The art religion of the nineteenth century” as “the belief that art, though created by humans, is revelation.” (88) this thesis, I will be focusing on the young, innovative, and socially-engaged composers that matured during the Weimar period. In their own way, each of them confronted the artistic struggles to create and engage in an environment as fraught and politicized as the Weimar Republic's. The Composers Kurt Weill's life is iconic of the Weimar “outsider” 3 – a provincial Jew who studied composition, was at first enamored with