Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn's Revival of the "St. Matthew Passion"
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Bach in Berlin Mendelssohn’s instrumentation (music for the first violin) of the 1829 performance of the St. Matthew Passion: Evangelist’s recitative, “Und siehe da, der Vorhang im Tempel zerriss in zwei Stück” [And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in two]. From 200 Jahre Sing- Akademie zu Berlin: “Ein Kunstverein für die heilige Musik,” by Gottfried Eberle (Berlin, 1991), by permission of the Preussische Kulturbesitz. Bach in Berlin Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of the St. Matthew Passion CELIA APPLEGATE CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON Copyright © 2005 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2005 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2014 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Applegate, Celia. Bach in Berlin : nation and culture in Mendelssohn’s revival of the St. Matthew Passion / Celia Applegate. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-4389-3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8014-4389-X (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-7972-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Bach, Johann Sebastian, 1685–1750. Matthäuspassion. 2. Bach, Johann Sebastian, 1685–1750—Appreciation. 3. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix, 1809–1847. 4. Music—Social aspects—Germany. 5. Music—Germany—19th century— History and criticism. I. Title. ML410.B13A7 2005 780'.943'09034—dc22 2005013205 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fi bers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cover art: Eduard Gaertner (1801-1877), “Unter den Linden, Berlin.” 1852. Oil on canvas, 75 x 155 cm. Inv. A II 880. Photo: Joerg P. Anders. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museum zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Photo credit: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/ Art Resource, N.Y. To my mother CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 Chapter One: Great Expectations: Mendelssohn and the St. Matthew Passion 10 Chapter Two: Toward a Music Aesthetics of the Nation 45 Chapter Three: Music Journalism and the Formation of Judgment 80 Chapter Four: Musical Amateurism and the Exercise of Taste 125 Chapter Five: The St. Matthew Passion in Concert: Protestantism, Historicism, and Sacred Music 173 Chapter Six: Beyond 1829: Musical Culture, National Culture 234 Bibliography 265 Index 281 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book has taken shape over a number of years, in the course of which I have benefited beyond measure from the generosity of music historians in opening up their field to such an outsider as myself. My greatest debts are to Ralph Locke and Pamela Potter, who must be counted two of the finest ambassadors of musicology. Their work has exemplified for me the interdis- ciplinary study of music; their friendship has fed and sustained my enthusi- asm for this field of research. Colleagues in both musicology and German studies have provided encouragement and opportunities for me to cross these music-historical disciplinary borders; I would like particularly to thank Michael Beckerman, James Retallack, Michael Kater, Albrecht Riethmüller, Geoff Eley, Jan Palmowski, Philippe Ther, Kerala Snyder, Peter Hohendahl, David Barclay, Jonathan Sperber, and David Blackbourn. My graduate adviser, Paul Robinson, showed me many years ago how music might be made part of our study of European history. I have been following his example ever since. Support, in the form of fellowships, leaves, and publication subsidies, from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Stanford Humanities Center, the Office of the Dean at the . ix . Acknowledgments University of Rochester, and the Department of History at the University of Rochester, made it possible to complete this book. Thanks also to John Ackerman and Ange Romeo-Hall of Cornell University Press, to the two readers, and to John LeRoy, each of whom brought more clarity to this work. Beyond scholarship are music and life. Beginning with the former, my appreciation for the work of Felix Mendelssohn, Carl Friedrich Zelter, and the members of the Berlin Singakademie, who in the spring of 1829 were scrambling to learn a lot of notes in a very short time, comes from many re- warding experiences in similar organizations, all heirs to the tradition the Singakademie began. I express particular thanks to the California Bach So- ciety, to which I belonged in 1995–96, the first year I spent researching this book. Participating in its performance of the Bach motets Komm, Jesus, Komm and Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied under the baton of guest conduc- tor John Butt, musician and Bach scholar extraordinaire, taught me much. I owe another debt of gratitude to the Rochester Bach Festival Chorus and its director, Thomas Folan, whose work in bringing Bach’s cantatas to a broader public would have impressed both Mendelssohn and Adolf Bern- hard Marx. To Celia and Henry Weaver go thanks for distractions, comedy, and wondrous love and to Stewart Weaver for that and more. I dedicate this book to my mother, Joan Strait Applegate, musician, musicologist, and hu- manist, who makes music intelligible and beautiful. x . ABBREVIATIONS AMZ Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung (Leipzig) BAMZ Berliner Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung BMZ Berliner Musikalische Zeitung Charlton Charlton, David, ed. E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings: Kreisleriana, The Poet and the Composer, Music Criticism. Trans. Martyn Clarke. Cambridge, 1989. Coleridge Coleridge, A. D., ed. and trans. Goethe’s Letters to Zelter, with extracts from those of Zelter to Goethe. Lon- don, 1892. Forkel-Hoffmeister Stauffer, George B., ed. The Forkel-Hoffmeister and Kühnel Correspondence: A Document of the Early 19th- Century Bach Revival. Trans. Arthur Mendel and George B. Stauffer. New York, 1990. Geck Geck, Martin. Die Wiederentdeckung der Matthäuspas- sion im 19. Jahrhundert: Die zeitgenössische Dokumente und ihre ideengeschichtliche Deutung. Regensburg, 1967. xi . Abbreviations Hensel Hensel, Sebastian. Die Familie Mendelssohn 1729–1847. 1879. Reprint, Frankfurt am Main, 1995. New Bach Reader David, Hans T., and Arthur Mendel, eds. The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents. Rev. ed. enlarged by Christoph Wolff. New York, 1998. Schröder Schröder, Cornelia. Carl Friedrich Zelter und die Akademie: Dokumente und Briefe zur Entstehung der Musik-Sektion in der Preussischer Akademie der Künste. Berlin, 1959. xii . Bach in Berlin Introduction What used to appear to all of us against the background of these times as a possibility that could only be dreamed about, has now become real: the Passion has been given to the public, and has be- come the property of all. —Fanny Mendelssohn to Karl Klingemann, March 22, 1829 On February 21, 1829, a prominent notice in the leading musical journal of Berlin, the Berliner Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, invited readers to “an important and happy event,” a performance of “The Passion According to St. Matthew by Johann Sebastian Bach” under the “direction of Herr Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.” The notice, written by the editor, Adolf Bern- hard Marx, and reprinted with additional commentary over the next few weeks, described the Passion as the “greatest and holiest work of the great composer.” The performance, Marx wrote, “would open the gates of a temple long shut down.” “We are called,” he continued, “not to a festival of art, but to a most solemn religious celebration.”1 And Berliners answered the call. On March 11, 1829, the date of the first performance, the hall of the Berlin Singakademie was filled; close to a thousand people were turned away. Many prominent Berliners came, from King and Court to Hegel and Schleiermacher. Goethe, unable to travel all the way from Weimar, still 1 Adolf Bernhard Marx, “Bekanntmachung,” Berliner Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 6, no. 8 (21 Feb. 1829): 57; hereafter BAMZ. 1 . Introduction commented on the event in his correspondence with Carl Friedrich Zelter, director of the Singakademie, the amateur group that provided singers for the Passion’s double chorus. In the next months, more performances took place in Berlin and Frankfurt. In the next years, the score was published for the first time, and groups in Breslau, Stettin, Königsberg, Cassel, and Dres- den performed it. Revivals and publications of Bach’s other large-scale vocal works—notably the B-minor Mass—followed. By 1850 and the founding of the Bach Gesellschaft, an association dedicated to producing a collected edition of Bach’s complete works, the revival of Johann Sebastian Bach had become a defining feature of the musical landscape of both Eu- rope and the United States, shaping private and public performances, estab- lishing music associations and publications, influencing composers, inspir- ing teachers and students, and reaching broad segments of the music-loving public. Mendelssohn’s revival, more than any other single event, laid the foundation stone for the “imaginary museum” of musical works of the past and made music, Bach’s music, German music, as essential to what it meant to be German as the language itself.2 The book that follows does not, however, trace the aftermath of the 1829 performance through the nineteenth century and into our own times, fas- cinating though such a journey would be. Instead, it places the performance at the end, not at the beginning, of a historical evolution, understanding it as the convergence of cultural and social developments, all of which made possible a performance of such contemporary resonance and long-lasting influence. The years before 1829 brought into existence an array of institu- tions, both state and private, and attitudes, some abstract and intellectual- ized, others more everyday and assumed.