chapter 6 The General German Music Association

In 1859, the organizers of a Tonkünstler-Versammlung in Leipzig distributed 3,000 tickets for a performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, to be con- ducted by Liszt in the Thomaskirche.1 In his review of the event, Richard Pohl reminded his readers that this very church had been the site of J.S. Bach’s com- positional activity in Leipzig, drawing a historical connection to one of the first great German composers. While for some the church represented a unified German culture that hearkened back for centuries, for others it represented a portion of that culture, one that was becoming increasingly dominant: north- ern Protestantism. The organizers of the Tonkünstler-Versammlung sought to reconcile two deep rifts in German musical culture: the confessional gap (to be bridged with a Catholic conductor leading a Catholic Mass in a Protestant church and city), and the divide between autonomists and New Germans, in offering a “classic” work from the musical canon that had been taking shape over the past decades. Through this event, Franz Liszt and Franz Brendel sought to unite German musicians on a national level. Regional music associations abounded across the German lands, in cities such as Dresden, Berlin and Leipzig; they had served an important purpose of strengthening local and regional communications and participation in the public sphere. None of these had attempted thus far to unite musicians into one organization. Now, Liszt and Brendel argued, was the time to join these groups together on a national level. Between 700 and 800 people attended the 1859 meeting.2 The Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein (ADMV), formed at the Tonkünstler-Versammlung, was in part a response to the War of the Romantics that had created a rift in German musical life. Its founders and members believed that the Association could resolve that conflict and ameliorate condi- tions for German musicians, as well as bring cultural unity to the nation. Liszt became the symbol of what the ADMV wanted to achieve. As Peter Cornelius said, “Liszt’s fierce struggle for his own hard-won dignity

1 Richard Pohl, “Die Leipziger Tonkünstler-Versammlung am 1–4 Juni 1859,” NZfM 51, no. 1 (1 July 1859): 3. 2 Louis Köhler, “Die zweite Tonkünstler-Versammlung zu Weimar,” NBM 15, no. 37 (11 September 1861): 291. See also Irina Lucke-Kaminiarz, “Die Tonkünstlerversammlungen des ADMV—ein internationale Forum zeitgenössischer Musik?” in Liszt und Europa, 63–75, for more details about membership, meeting locations, and programs.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004279223_008 The General German Music Association 221 inspires others to emulate him.”3 Articles regarding the Association frequently described Liszt as its spiritual father. Indeed, he was so central to the Association that he was named Honorary President in 1873, the year of his artistic golden jubilee. Liszt participated in the annual Tonkünstler-Versammlungen until the end of his life, taking an active part in their planning and production. His own compositions formed a cornerstone of the ADMV’s musical offerings. Historians see the posthumously named Gründerzeit, the era immediately preceding the establishment of a unified German state, as one when regional and confessional identities became more contentious. In the ADMV, I see instead a rhetoric of tolerance and cosmopolitanism as well as real efforts to transcend regional, political, confessional and aesthetic divides. The ADMV’s founding coincided with other German attempts to unite people into larger institutional frameworks, and faced many of the same thorny questions as did political activists. The fact that the ADMV was a cultural and professional organization, however, lent it a different possibility for the articulation of German nationhood. For these musicians, German identity still rested on a cosmopolitan understanding of the German nation, an understanding that necessitated their active outreach to each other and to the broader Volk at large. In doing so, musicians confronted each other’s regional, confessional and aesthetic loyalties, often projected onto Liszt himself, that threatened to trump their national mission.4 Historians portray associations in the 1860s onward as exclusive gather- ings of like-minded individuals; even when associations claimed to be neu- tral in terms of confessional identity, their membership rarely bridged the Protestant/Catholic divide.5 While it’s true that the ADMV did represent the Honatorien, it did seek to actively improve the lot of young musicians, to unite formerly divided groups and spread the appreciation and love of music to a broader audience. Musicians were aware of the associational activities of other professions and social classes. A music critic called upon his readers, “may [musicians] always succeed in belonging to a whole. . . . Or do they want to be shamed by the handworkers and day laborers, who see in the idea of

3 Peter Cornelius, “Das Fest des Allgemeinen Deutschen Musikvereins in Meiningen,” Alm I (1868): 180. 4 Musicologists have paid little attention to the organization. However, James Deaville is cur- rently working on a monograph about the Association. 5 Smith, 98.