Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora Brigid Cohen Frontmatter More Information

Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-00300-2 — Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora Brigid Cohen Frontmatter More Information

Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora

The German-Jewish émigré composer Stefan Wolpe was a vital figure in the history of modernism, with affiliations ranging from the Bauhaus, Berlin agitprop, and the kibbutz movement to bebop, Abstract Expressionism, and Black Mountain College. This is the first full-length study of this often overlooked composer, launched from the standpoint of the mass migrations that have defined recent times. Drawing on over 2,000 pages of unpublished documents, Cohen explores how avant-garde communities across three continents adapted to situations of extreme cultural and physical dislocation. A conjurer of unexpected cultural connections, Wolpe serves as an entry-point to the utopian art worlds of Weimar-era Germany, pacifist move- ments in 1930s Palestine, and vibrant art and music scenes in early Cold War America. The book takes advantage of Wolpe’s role as a mediator, bringing together perspectives from music scholarship, art history, comparative literature, postcolonial studies, and recent theories of cosmopolitanism and diaspora.

Brigid Cohen is Assistant Professor of Music at New York University. Her teaching and research focus on twentieth-century avant-gardes, questions of migration and diaspora, theories of cosmopolitanism, and relationships between music, the visual arts, and literature. Her work has been recognized with awards from the American Musicological Society, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Paul Sacher Foundation, and the J. Paul Getty Research Institute. She is a recipient of the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin.

New perspectives in music history and criticism General editors: Jeffrey Kallberg, Anthony Newcomb and Ruth Solie

This series explores the conceptual frameworks that shape or have shaped the ways in which we understand music and its history, and aims to elaborate structures of explanation, interpretation, commentary, and criticism which make music intelligible and which provide a basis for argument about judgements of value. The intellectual scope of the series is broad. Some investigations will treat, for example, historiographical topics, others will apply cross-disciplinary methods to the criticism of music, and there will also be studies which consider music in its relation to society, culture, and politics. Overall, the series hopes to create a greater presence for music in the ongoing discourse among the human sciences.

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Annette Richards, The Free Fantasia and the Musical Picturesque

Richard Will, The Characteristic Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Beethoven

Christopher Morris, Reading Opera Between the Lines: Orchestral Interludes and Cultural Meaning from Wagner to Berg

Emma Dillon, Medieval Music-Making and the ‘Roman de Fauvel’

David Yearsley, Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint

David Metzer, Quotation and Cultural Meaning in the Twentieth Century

Alexander Rehding, Hugo Riemann and the Birth of Modern Musical Thought

Dana Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt

Bonnie Gordon, Monteverdi’s Unruly Women: The Power of Song in Early Modern Italy

Gary Tomlinson, The Singing of the New World: Indigenous Voice in the Era of European Contact

Matthew Gelbart, The Invention of Folk Music and Art Music: Emerging Categories from Ossian to Wagner

Olivia A. Bloechl, Native American Song at the Frontiers of Early Modern Music

Giuseppe Gerbino, Music and the Myth of Arcadia in Renaissance Italy

Roger Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani

Gundula Kreuzer, Verdi and the Germans: From Unification to the Third Reich

Holly Watkins, Metaphors of Depth in German Musical Thought: From E. T. A. Hoffmann to Arnold Schoenberg

Davinia Caddy, The Ballets Russes and Beyond: Music and Dance in Belle-Époque Paris

Brigid Cohen, Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora

Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora

Brigid Cohen

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314-321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi - 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06-04/06, Singapore 079906

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107003002 © Brigid Cohen 2012 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 First paperback edition 2016 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Cohen, Brigid Maureen. Stefan Wolpe and the avant-garde diaspora / Brigid Cohen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-107-00300-2 1. Wolpe, Stefan. 2. Musicians – Biography. 3. Avant-garde (Music) – History – 20th century. I. Title. ML410.W8355S76 2012 780.92–dc23 [B] 2011049749 ISBN 978-1-107-00300-2 Hardback ISBN 978-1-316-64116-3 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of illustrations and musical examples page ix Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Toward a historiography of modernism in migration 1 Modernism, migration, and Wolpe 1 Retheorizing musical modernism 8 Beyond national frameworks and studies of exile and assimilation 12 Migrant cosmopolitanism 22 On the interpretation of modernist works 31 1 Wolpe’s Self-Revelatory Poetics and Critical Reflections, Circa 1951 38 “The real clarification and real-true solution of human particularities” 38 “Held In” 40 Form and broken form 47 “The un-losable friendship of human recognition” 55 Wolpe’s self-revelation and self-narration 64 2 Weimar-Era Montage and Avant-Garde Community 76 Part 1: At the Bauhaus 76 “What would we be in a position to do without school?” 76 Montage: the ethics of estrangement, formalization, and reclamation 88 Part 2: After the Bauhaus 104 Zeus und Elida 105 Shock and experimental form 130 3 “Amalgamated” Musics and National Visions in 1930s Palestine 140 “Amalgamated” idioms and Mandate-era politics 140 Wolpe’s political position in Palestine 145 Wolpe’s “full concern” and pedagogical presence 158 “If it be my fate ...” 169 The “dream-panorama” of Jewish music 183 “But only if it existed: the most spiritual community” 193

viii Contents

4 The Mid-Century Poetics and Politics of Experimental Community 202 The Oboe Quartet: community life and memory 202 Resisting the “holes of oblivion”: Wolpe, Arendt, and human plurality 212 Transforming “things” into “beings”: Wolpe, Blücher, and “organic modes” 222 Wolpe’s mid-century communities in profile 230 Bebop 232 Eighth Street Artists’ Club 245 Black Mountain College 255 Heterotopia 263 Epilogue: The Witnessing Memory 267 No direction home 267 The self-narrator’s belonging 275 Haunted objects 284 The “discontinuum” of testament 295 Interpretive communities and publics 301

Select Bibliography 304 Index 322

Illustrations and musical examples

Figures

2.1 Mordecai Ardon (a.k.a. Max Bronstein), Material Study: Composition Made of Different Materials, Bound by Rhythmic Forms. Permission Ora Ardon. page 91 2.2 Paul Klee, Untitled (“Deutschnationaler”), 1921. Hand puppet. 38 cm. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern. Livia Klee Donation. © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. 97 2.3 Paul Klee, Untitled (“Steckdosengeist”), 1925. Hand puppet. 35 cm. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern. Livia Klee Donation. © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. 98 2.4 Paul Klee, Untitled (Group picture with hand puppets), 1916–1925. Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern. Livia Klee Donation. © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. 99 2.5 Stefan Wolpe, Untitled, 1920. One-coat paint on varnished cardboard. 31.5 × 35.4 cm. Bauhaus Archive, Berlin. Photo: Markus Hawlik. Permission Katharina Wolpe. 102 2.6 Stefan Wolpe, Dolly Schlichter, and Friedl Dicker, Weimar, 1921–1923. Photographer unknown. Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel. Stefan Wolpe Collection. 103 2.7 Stefan Wolpe and Ola Okuniewska, at the home of Else Schlomann, Berlin-Dahlem, 1927. Photographer unknown. 106 3.1 Stefan Wolpe and Irma Schoenberg Rademacher, Jerusalem, late 1930s. Photographer unknown. Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel. Stefan Wolpe Collection. 141 3.2 Stefan Wolpe and Irma Schoenberg Rademacher with students, Jerusalem, 1938. Photographer unknown. Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel. Stefan Wolpe Collection. 160 4.1 Stefan Wolpe, Rhythmic Study (Animal Study) from Johannes Itten’s Preliminary Course, 1920. Charcoal on paper. 67.7 × 48.1 cm. Bauhaus Archive, Berlin. Photo: Markus Hawlik. Permission Katharina Wolpe. 250

x Illustrations and musical examples

Musical examples

1.1 Enactments for Three Pianos (Movement 3, “Held In”), mm. 1–8. Permissions PeerMusic Classical. 41 1.2 Sonata for Violin and Piano (Movement 1), mm. 1–9. Permissions PeerMusic Classical. 44 2.1 Zeus und Elida, mm. 1–28. Permissions PeerMusic Classical. 110–117 2.2 Zeus und Elida, mm. 591–601. Permissions PeerMusic Classical. 124–127 3.1a “If it be my fate ...,” mm. 1–23. Songs from the Hebrew. Permissions Alfred Publishing. 172–174 3.1b “If it be my fate ...,” Hebrew version, voice part. 175 3.2 “Epitaph,” mm. 1–39. Songs from the Hebrew. Permissions Alfred Publishing. 196–198 4.1 Piece for Oboe, Cello, Percussion, and Piano (Movement 1, “Early Morning Music”), mm. 22–36. Permissions McGinnis & Marx Music Publishers. 204–205 4.2 Piece for Oboe, Cello, Percussion, and Piano (Movement 4), mm. 90–105. Permissions McGinnis & Marx Music Publishers. 230–231 4.3 George Russell, “Odjenar,” mm. 1–5. Transcription by the author. 241 4.4 Quartet for Saxophone, Trumpet, Percussion, and Piano (Movement 2), mm. 1–13. Permissions PeerMusic Classical. 243 5.1 Piece in Three Parts for Piano and Sixteen Instruments (Part 1), mm. 80–93. Permissions PeerMusic Classical. 286–287 5.2 Piece in Three Parts for Piano and Sixteen Instruments (Part 1), mm. 26–31. Permissions PeerMusic Classical. 288 5.3 Piece in Three Parts for Piano and Sixteen Instruments (Part 1), mm. 129–137. Permissions PeerMusic Classical. 289 5.4 Piece in Three Parts for Piano and Sixteen Instruments (Part 1), mm. 1–8. Permissions PeerMusic Classical. 292

Acknowledgments

A great number of individuals and institutions contributed to the research and writing of this book. Several chapters of this study originated in my PhD dissertation at Harvard University, and I am grateful for the support of my advisor Anne Shreffler and readers Martin Brody and Kay Kaufman Shelemay. Anne Shreffler brought her immense knowledge of modernist repertories and communities to bear in her guidance. Martin Brody triggered my interest in Wolpe, and our ongoing conversations have animated this study. Kay Shelemay provided meticulous readings and constant mentor- ship, while suggesting paths toward new lines of inquiry. Other teachers at Harvard had a formative influence on the work I have done here: Homi K. Bhabha, Virginia Danielson, Christopher Hasty, Ingrid Monson, and Carol Oja. I owe a special debt to the late Reinhold Brinkmann, who advised and encouraged me in the earliest stages of this project. From the very beginning he insisted on the value of my topic, and I have often turned to our conversations as a source of inspiration. I would also like to thank those individuals who, at various stages, read and provided thoughtful comments on this book’s contents and related writings: Carolyn Abbate, Michael Beckerman, Andrea Bohlman, Philip V. Bohlman, Austin Clarkson, Ryan Dohoney, Lydia Goehr, Glenda Goodman, Tamara Levitz, and Roger Parker. An anonymous reader also provided helpful feedback. Special thanks are also due to Victoria Cooper, Rebecca Taylor and Thomas O’Reilly for shepherd- ing this project at Cambridge University Press. I am grateful to Andrew Shackleton for his thoughtful suggestions and meticulous advice during the copy-editing phase. Halie Morris and William Robin also provided excellent copy-editing and bibliographic assistance. Research and reproductions for this book have been enabled by many people and organizations: Felix Meyer, Heidy Zimmermann, and Henrike Hoffmann at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel; Nancy Perloff at the Getty Research Institute; Jonathan Hiam at the New York Public Library; Jeffrey Katz at Bard University Library; Randy Kaufman at the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin; Heidi Frautschi at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern; Werner Grünzweig at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin; and Gila Flam at the Jewish National and University Library. I would also thank the staff at the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh and the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center in the

xii Acknowledgments

University of Connecticut Libraries. My deepest gratitude extends to those who generously provided interviews and written communications about Wolpe and his historical contexts: Judith Adler, Ora Ardon, Ursula Mamlok, Yoko Ono, Rainer Riehn, Michal Smoira-Cohn, Katharina Wolpe, Michael Wolpe, and the late Heinz-Klaus Metzger. This project would not have taken shape as it did without the support of a UNC University Research Council travel grant, an Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Dissertation Year Fellowship, a Paul Sacher Foundation Fellowship, a Getty Research Institute Library Grant, a Krupp Foundation Grant from the Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies at Harvard University, a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities, and Paine, French, and Slim travel grants from the Department of Music at Harvard University. The later stages of my research benefited from the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Wesleyan University Center for Humanities and the Berlin Prize at the American Academy in Berlin. I am also grateful to the American Musicological Society for a generous subvention toward publication costs. Portions of this book were written at the Wesleyan University Center for Humanities, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the American Academy in Berlin. I would like to thank my colleagues at Wesleyan for their support and feedback, especially Barry Chernoff, Fernando Degiovanni, Joseph Fitzpatrick, Ron Kuivila, Jill Morawski, Mark Slobin, and Elizabeth Willis. At UNC, I am grateful to those who provided a uniquely supportive environment for my research, including Mark Evan Bonds, Tim Carter, Annegret Fauser, Jon Finson, David Garcia, Mark Katz, John Nadas, Jocelyn Neal, Severine Neff, Marzanna Popolowska, Phil Vandermeer, Hana Vlhova-Woerner, and Felix Woerner. The Fall 2010 fellows at the American Academy in Berlin brought vital support during the last stages of my writing and revisions. For sharing their perspectives on historiography, I feel especially indebted to Laura Englestein, Catherine Gallagher, and Martin Jay. Many thanks to Jennifer Chbeir, Stanley Corngold, Aaron Curry, Anne Hull, Kirk Johnson, Han Ong, James Wood, and John Wray for their singular encouragement and company. Finally, I want to thank my family for their enduring support. Martin Cohen and Mary Burns raised me in a musical household, as we underwent our own migrations. They nurtured the desire to imagine things otherwise. Matthew, Michael, and Brianne Cohen have been the most faithful compan- ions. Gwen and Dick Steege provided a haven for peaceful work and calm encouragement. The greatest debt is owed to my husband Benjamin Steege. This book would be inconceivable without his intellectual partnership over years of critical discussion and good humor. It is to him that I dedicate this book.