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Operatic Modernism1 Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxxvi:4 (Spring, 2006), 675–681. OPERATIC MODERNISM Carl E. Schorske 1 Operatic Modernism My purpose in these informal re- marks is to give some thought to the term “Modernism.” Let me begin by reminding us of Theodore Rabb’s injunction: that we examine opera as one of the central means of expression of an age. I do have a complaint against him—not with his categories, but Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/36/4/675/1697180/jinh.2006.36.4.675.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 rather with the scale that this particular panel is asked to address. Every other panel had a rather carefully localized temporal span and an arena that was geographically deªned (often nationally deªned). Thus, Linda Colley, when commenting on the papers about George Frideric Handel’s London, had an opposite task from mine, namely, to broaden the scope of her panel. In her illu- minating comment, she showed us that when we talk about Lon- don and Handel, we must really talk about Europe too: that Lon- don was part of Europe and that its consciousness, with respect to music, belonged to Europe. She was trying to stretch the limits that seemed to me to attend the previous panels, when discussions of earlier periods of history were allowed to concentrate strongly on a composer or an opera, or the makers of an opera. Here, by contrast, we have before us the whole panoply of European com- plexity, from 1890 (or, using Michael Steinberg’s date, 1883, the death of Wagner) to 1930. So to pay attention to our central issue– opera as “central expression of an age”—throughout this period is difªcult. I agree, though, that we should try to talk about Mod- ernism just the same, and I should like ªrst to offer a quick re- minder of how the term ªrst appeared. I shall then focus on the 1920s, a special moment in the cultural consciousness when the three very different operas discussed by our panelists were written and ªrst performed: Arthur Honegger’s Antigone (1927), Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt (1920), and Leos Janacek’s Katya Kabanova (1921). First I would like to say that Modernism can be taken up from Carl E. Schorske is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Emeritus, Princeton Univer- sity. He is the author of Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modernism (Prince- ton, 1998); Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1979). © 2006 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc. 1 In accordance with Carl Schorske’s wishes, this transcript retains the informal oral tone of its presentation at the conference from which this special issue derived. 676 | CARL E. SCHORSKE the point of view of the people who ªrst used the term, and what they used it for: what they were doing with this idea, Modernism. Obviously it is not going to be the same in different places. When Charles Baudelaire says “modernism,” he distinctly means that this is a culture and an art and an intellection that should reºect mo- dernity, “la vie moderne.” And by that he means something other than the past. It is the distinction from the past that is really critical Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/36/4/675/1697180/jinh.2006.36.4.675.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 in his deªnition. It’s not the ªrst time we hear about the battles of the ancients and the moderns—they went on in the eighteenth century—but now we’ve got a new chapter, and I think it de- serves a little examination. 1890, Ted Rabb’s starting date, is really a wonderful one to pick for the development of Modernism on a wider scale. For there was an outburst of a particular Modernist consciousness of newness in the decade of the 1890s. Just think of the terms that were used: Jugend in North Germany; Art Nouveau, beginning in Belgium and then spreading to France and also to the Germanys, various Germanys. In Munich, Berlin, and Vienna, the movement in art chose the name Secession, which really meant seceding from the ways of our elders. The slogan in Vienna was: “to the time its art, to art its freedom.” That was the slogan, and what was meant by it was that we should no longer conªne ourselves to the cul- tural standards that have been imposed upon us by the past. An- other slogan in Vienna was “Wir vernichten morsches Leben,” we are going to destroy decaying life. The journal of the Secession stressed the sense of renewal in its title, “Ver Sacrum” (Sacred Spring). I see the ruptures from the past as taking place across national boundaries and at different paces in the various arts. They soon take conscious form in the antithesis, Modernism versus Historicism, and the case of architecture dramatizes the rupture from the past especially well. It can also lead us into what was pos- sible for Modernism when it found a single language across Eu- rope. In the nineteenth century, the prevailing style was historical, borrowing from the Gothic, from Classicism, from the Renais- sance. All these different style-architectures were assaulted by the pre-War pioneers of Modernism in several ways. Some of those within Art Nouveau were narcissistic, aiming to build houses that would reºect the client’s personality down to the last ashtray. Even Frank Lloyd Wright has resonances of this conception: If OPERATIC MODERNISM | 677 you design for living, for modern life, you should be yourself— your individuality should be reºected. And then there was an opposite current—very important, too—that was manifested in Adolph Loos or other modernists who wanted to strip away the historical textures. If you looked upon nineteenth-century Vienna as Loos did, it was a Potemkin city: a city with a lot of old costumes that ought to be thrown Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/36/4/675/1697180/jinh.2006.36.4.675.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 away to ªt the demands of modern times. I don’t want to go into the details of this, but I do want to leap forward from the begin- ning of this protest against the past, which was the background for the 1920s, to that decade. For then there was born what we now call modern architecture. It swept Europe. It was absolutely amaz- ing: one so-called international style that could serve quite differ- ent social systems. Whether it was a Bata plant in Czechoslovakia, or a communal factory housing development in Soviet Russia—as a result of the Vkhutemas art schools and the constructivist archi- tects of that era—or the Frankfurt Siedlungen: All these different building types were executed in a style that was seen to be, and felt to be, modern—simple, designed for living, designed to function. There was even a wonderful organization, the ciam, the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne, where all the luminaries came together: Charles-Eduoard Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer, avant-garde architects from France to Eastern Europe. They were all, through their congresses, committed to developing further their international language. If we had had that in music, we could have an easier session here today. Now I would like to take another tack entirely. It is not the spatial approach that is possible in this one art, architecture, which can serve many social or political masters because it can function quite clearly and easily as a lingua franca. What, I would like to ask, is there in the opera that would correspond to this? Well, of course, there is no equivalent. But there is a way of organizing op- era that might be seen as corresponding in a modernist mode, and for that I would like to turn to Berlin for just a moment to exem- plify it in the Kroll Opera. My example comes from the beginning of the 1920s, when, through the German Revolution, the Socialists and the Independ- ent Socialists gained control of the Prussian government. There was no overall Reich cultural authority over the opera houses, only that of Prussia. That was the cultural authority that governed 678 | CARL E. SCHORSKE the operatic scene in Berlin. There were three houses. The old opera house, the State Opera Unter den Linden, normally pre- sented a conservative repertoire with conservative methods. There was one great modermist breakthrough in that house: the staging of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck (1925). The premiere of that opera was mounted just when the old head of Berlin’s State Opera, Max von Schillings, was ªred and Erich Kleiber came in and did this mar- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/36/4/675/1697180/jinh.2006.36.4.675.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 velous work. There was also a municipal opera house, intended originally for somewhat lighter fare, and that was turned over to Bruno Walter. Then there was a new, experimental house, the Kroll Opera, with its imaginative conductor, Otto Klemperer. The Socialists, who had command of the cultural ministries in Prussia and Berlin, supported all three, for in their democracy, both tradition and innovation were to be respected. But their most enthusiastic support went to the Kroll. I would like to dwell for a moment on the Kroll Opera be- cause there you ªnd one phenomenon that is very characteristic of Modernism at its best, perhaps, and that is multiculturalism.
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