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In Interview with Anton Weinberg
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
Extract
The following text is a transcript of the last interview given by the Austrian-born British musician and writer Hans Keller (1919–1985), the 10th anniversary of whose death fell on 6 November. The interview – which gives a remarkably wellrounded summary of Keller's life and activities – was given in the Summer of 1985 in support of Anton Weinberg's Channel 4 documentary ‘The Keller Instinct’ (first shown 23/2/86, repeated 28/6/88). While the moving sight of a frail and obviously very ill (but still chain-smoking!) Keller will no doubt be remembered by many viewers, the programme in fact used only a small proportion of what was recorded; most of what follows, therefore, is being made available for the first time. In any event, the programme itself seems not to have been preserved, making future re-broadcast unlikely. The interlocutor is Anton Weinberg himself; the tape has been transcribed and edited by Mark Doran.
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References
1 I am most grateful to Mr Weinberg for providing a copy of the tape, and to Milein Cosman Keller for permitting the publication of this transcript.
2 Keller's relatives recall diat his mother had been a composition pupil of Franz Schreker (private communication from Milein Cosman Keller).
3 Presumably the story was ‘Inge's Cloud Journey’, which Christopher Wintle describes as having been published in ‘an Austrian children's newspaper’ (‘Hans Keller: An Introduction to his Life and Works’, Music Analysis, 5/2–3, 1986, 345)Google Scholar. weinberg probably had in mind another early publication: a philosophical essay which Keller would speak of as having been written in his teens, and which – on account of his extreme youth – had to be published under the name of his schoolteacher (private communication from Buxton Orr).
4 Schoenberg describes his childhood friendship with Oskar Adler (1875–1955) in his 1949 essay ‘My Evolution’ (see Style and Idea, ed. Stein, Leonard (London, 1975) pp. 79–80 Google Scholar; a number of letters from Schoenberg to Adler are reproduced (with Keller's translations) in ‘Unpublished Schoenberg: Letters’, Music Survey, 4/3, 06 1952, 449–71Google Scholar.
5 Michael Graubart's recollections of post-war quartet sessions with Adler and Keller can be found in ‘Hans Keller: A Memorial Symposium’, Music Analysis, 5/2–3, 1986, 382 Google Scholar.
6 It also presented the opportunity for ‘pocket-score-reading on the way up in the lift’! ( Keller, Hans and Cosman, Milein, Stravinsky Seen and Heard (London, 1982), p. 52 Google Scholar.
7 Keller related the horrific story of his imprisonment and escape in a radio talk in the BBC's “The Time of My Life' series; this gave rise to a magazine article (‘Vienna 1938’, The Listener, 91/2348, 28 03 1974, 397–9)Google Scholar and was transcribed ‘virtually unchanged’ as the first chapter of the book 1975 (1984 minus 9) (London, 1977), pp. 28–48 Google ScholarPubMed.
8 Keller was invited to teach at the Yehudi Menuhin School in 1981; in spite of his illness he continued to coach chamber music there until a few days before his death.
9 Keller may be mistaken here: several short pieces may be found in earlier issues of The Psychologist. Of course, the paper to which he refers might still have been the first to be written or accepted for publication.
10 ‘Male Psychology’, British Journal of Medical Psychology, 20, 1946, 384–8CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
11 An invaluable (but far from complete) bibliography compiled by Atcherson, Renée (with Celia Duffy) can be found in Music Analysis, 5/2–3, 1986, 407–40Google Scholar.
12 For more detailed discussion of diis topic the reader is referred to the chapter ‘Description, Analysis and Criticism’ in Keller, Hans, Criticism, ed. Hogg, Julian (London, 1987), pp. 134–48Google ScholarPubMed.
13 Keller, Hans, The Need for Competent Film Music Criticism: a Pamphlet for Those Who Care for Films as Art, with a Final Section for Those Who Do Not (London, 1947)Google Scholar.
14 Keller's contributions to this – and many another – publication remain to be investigated.
15 Presumably that which started out as Eros (1915) and later became Das Ziel (‘The Aim’) (1928/9; rev. 1970); the Klemperer literature includes mention of other operatic projects, however (see Heyworth, Peter, Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times, Vol I (Cambridge, 1983 Google Scholar). Milein Cosman Keller's recollection that the encounter occurred just after the death of Artur Schnabel (private communication) places it in August 1951.
16 i.e. the protracted hetero-analysis which a prospective analyst is required to undergo.
17 Psycho-analytic ‘depth’ is, of course, measured in terms of penetration into the Freudian ‘unconscious’, bringing to consciousness material previously subject to ‘dynamic repression’. However therapeutic, the experience is guaranteed to be far from pleasant.
18 For Keller, , these discoveries were ‘the dynamic unconscious, repression … in the strictly analytic sense, infantile sexuality and its consequences, the Oedipus complex (at least in Western civilizations), and the validity of free-association technique’ (1975, p. 87 Google Scholar).
19 From Keller's description of the book's contents in 1975 (p.87) one may tentatively identify it as Farrow, E. Pickworth, A Practical Method of Self-Analysis (London, 3 editions: 1942, 1943, 1948)Google Scholar.
20 Willi Hoffer (1897–1967) came to London with Freud, in 1938 and was one of the editors of the 18-volume collection Sigmund Freud: Gesammelte Werke chonologisch geordnet (London, 1940–1968)Google Scholar. He also edited the International Journal of Psycho Analysis and became president of the British-Psycho Analytical Society (see ‘Obituary: Willi Hoffer’, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 50, 1969, 261)Google ScholarPubMed. Hoffer, who worked as a training analyst in Vienna and London (see Orr, W.F., ‘Introduction’ to Hoffer, Willi, Psychoanalysis: Practical and Research Topics (Baltimore, 1955))Google Scholar, was sufficiently impressed by Keller's psycho-analytic acumen that he actually placed a schizophrenic patient with him (see 1975, pp. 125–6).
21 This ‘two-dimensional’ approach – which, starting from premises not unlike those of the American aesthetician Leonard B. Meyer nevertheless arrives at more compelling conclusions – is outlined in greater detail in ‘Towards a Theory of Music’ (The Listener, 83/2150, 11 06 1970, 795–6Google Scholar; reprinted in Hans Keller: Essays on Music, ed. Christopher Wintle (Cambridge, 1994), pp.121–5). An exhaustive investigation of the approach is contained in Mark Doran, ‘Two-Dimensional Analysis: The Concepts of “Foreground” and “Background” in Hans Keller's “Theory of Music ”’ (Music Review, forthcoming).
22 At the time of writing five of Keller's wordless Functional Analysis scores have been published. FA No. 1 (Mozart, String Quartet in D minor, K.421) appeared in The Score and IMA Magazine, 22, February 1958, 56–64; the (un-numbered) fourteenth (Mozart, String Quintet in G minor, K.516) in Music Analysis, 4/1–2, 1985, 73–94 Google Scholar. FA No.13 (Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No.3 in G major) appeared in facsimile in The Musical Times, 135/1818, 08 1994, 489–91Google Scholar; while FA No.9 (Mozart, Piano Sonata in A minor, K.310) is included in the Essays on Music collection (pp. 129–38). FA No.2 (Beethoven, String Quartet in F minor, op.95) is available in Keller, Hans and Wintle, Christopher, Beethoven's String Quartets in F minor, Op.95 and C sharp minor, Op. 131: Two Studies (Nottingham University, 1995)Google Scholar.
23 BBC Third Programme, 5 June, 1961. Besides the ‘Zak’ work (‘Mobile for electronic tape and two partially improvising percussion players’) the concert included Nono's Polifonica Monodia-Ritmica, Webern's Six Songs, op. 14, Petrassi's Serenata and Mozart's Serenade for 13 wind instruments.
24 The critic's exact words were that ‘such recognizably musical events as did occur seemed trivial’ (The Times, 6 06 1961, 16)Google Scholar.
25 Jeremy Noble suggests that he may have said that he couldn't always tell whether something was music or not (private communication); certainly his review contains no trace of enthusiam for the ‘work’, even describing it as one of the BBC's ‘occasional lapses’.