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Atonality, 12–Tone Music and the Third Reich

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Erik Levi
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Extract

These extensively quoted statements, emanating from two of the most vociferous cultural ideologists of the Third Reich, give the impression that the Nazi regime formulated a highly consistent attitude towards ‘modernist’ trends in contemporary music. In reality, however, perceptions of the exact nature of ‘atonality’ and the ‘atonal’ movement in music remained notoriously imprecise. Six months before Rosenberg's address, for example, Hitler's Propaganda Minister Goebbels had erroneously denounced Hindemith as an ‘atonal musician’ who had succumbed to the ‘biting dissonances of musical bankruptcy’. Similarly, in 1938 Hans Severus Ziegler, organiser of the Degenerate Music Exhibition, had singled out the unequivocally tonal music of Hermann Reutter for particular criticism, claiming that it manifested severe symptoms of constructivism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 178 , September 1991 , pp. 17 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 Ziegler, Hans Severus, Entartete Musik. Eine Abrechnung (Düsseldorf), p.24Google Scholar.

2 Rosenberg, Alfred, Gestaltung der Idee (Munich, 1939), p.337Google Scholar.

3 Goebbels, Paul Joseph, ‘Dr Goebbels auf der Jahreskundbegebung der Reichsmusikkammer’, Berliner Lokal Anzeiger, 12 12 1934Google Scholar.

4 Ziegler remained implacably opposed to the music of Hermann Reutter (1900–1985), and managed in the process to encounter the wrath of Peter Raabe, Strauss's successor as President of the Reich's Music Chamber. Despite such controversy, the young composer enjoyed official status during the Third Reich as director of the Frankfurt Musikhochschule.

5 Welter, Friedrich, Musikgeschichte im Umriss (Leipzig 1939), p.237Google Scholar.

6 ‘Die un-deutsche abstrakte Linie’ in Wulff, Joseph, Musik im dritten Reich (Gütersloh, 1963/1966), p.45Google Scholar.

7 The most surprising example of bureaucratic oversight occurred at the First Reichsmusiktage held in Düsseldorf in May 1938, organized under the auspices of the Ministry of Propaganda, in which Boris Blacher's dissonant Geigenmusik received its first performance.

8 Stuckenschmidt, H.H., Arnold Schoenberg (London, 1959), p.82Google Scholar.

9 Stengel, Theo/Gerigk, Herbert, Lexikon der juden in der Musik (Berlin, 1943), p.246Google Scholar.

10 Stengle, /Gerigk, , Op. Cit., p.247Google Scholar.

11 Stengle, /Gerigk, , Op. Cit., p.248Google Scholar.

12 One of the major musical scandals of the Nazi era was the first performance of Berg's Lulu Suite given by Kleiber, Erich and the Berlin Staatskapelle in 11 1934Google Scholar. Its reception was unusually controversial, bringing out into the open the defiance of critics such as Stuckenschmidt and Oboussier who refused to tow the party line. As a result of this, Stuckenschmidt was forbidden to continue working in Germany and Kleiber resigned his post at the Berlin Staatsoper.

13 Amongst those who left Berlin in 1933 for both racial and political reasons, undoubtedly the most important was Hanns Eisler (1898–1962) who had originally studied with Schoenberg in Vienna, following his master to Berlin in 1925. It is interesting to note that although Eisler had rejected 12–tone writing in his works written during the final years of the Weimar Republic (e.g. Die Massnahme), he returned to the technique in his most trenchantly anti-fascist composition, the Deutsche Symphonic, upon which he began work very soon after his exile.

Mention should also be made of Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905–1963), one of the few German composers who went into so–called ‘inner exile’, remaining in his country during the Third Reich. A staunch anti-fascist, Hartmann wrote works such as Miserae for orchestra (1935) which openly attacked the regime. Later during the war, Hartmann studied composition and analysis with webern, but although his music was influenced by expressionism and was strongly dissonant, he never embraced 12–tone music.

14 Another victim of the war, but under very different circumstances, was the Schoenberg pupil Viktor Ullmann (1898–1944) who wrote 12–tone music in Czechoslovakia during the 1930s, including the Variationen und Doppeljuge uber ein Klavierstück von Schönberg for Orchestra. After the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, Ullmann was sent to concentration camp in Theresienstadt and was murdered at Auschwitz.

15 For more details on Hannenheim's career see Acker, Dieter: ‘Norbert von Hannenheim’, Melos, xxxvi, 1969, p.6–8Google Scholar.

16 Stuckenschmidt, H.H., Schoenberg. His Life and Work. (London, 1977), p.319Google Scholar.

17 Ritchie, J.M., German Literature under National Socialism (London and Canberra, 1983), p.109Google Scholar.

18 See extracts from contemporary critiques of Zillig's opera quoted in: Schmidt-Faber, Werner, ‘Atonalitat im Dritten Reich’ Herausfortterung Schönberg (ed. Dibelius, U.) (Munich, 1974), p.131Google Scholar.

19 Herzog, Friedrich W., Die Musik, 04 1934, p.541Google Scholar and Stege, Fritz, ‘Musik in Berlin’, Zeitschrift fir Musik, 04 1934, p.402Google Scholar.

20 See in particular von Klenau, Paul, ‘Über die Musik von meiner Oper “Michael Kohlhaas”’, Die Musik, 01 1935, pp.260–262 and ‘Wagners “Tristan” und die “Zwölftönemusik”.’ Die Musik, July 1935, pp.727–733Google Scholar.

21 ‘Zu Paul von Klenaus “Michael Kohlhaas”’, Zeilschrift für Musik, May 1934, p.531.

Music examples by kind permission of Bäaireneiter Verlag (Ex. 1), Schott & Co. Ltd. (Ex. 2) and Universal Edition (Ex. 3).

22 For a more detailed appraisal of the ideological ramifications of 12–tone music in the Third Reich see Werner Schmidt–Faber, Op. Cit. and Hans–Günter Klein, ‘Atonalität in den Opern von Paul von Klenau and Winfried Zillig – zur Duldung einer im Nationalsozialismus verfemten Kompositionstechnik’, lnternationaler Musikwissenschaftlicher Kongress Bayreuth 1981 (Kassel, 1983), pp.490–494Google Scholar.

23 Klenau later referred to his compositional technique as ‘totalitarian’: see the preface to his two volumes of Preludes and Fugues for Piano, (Vienna, 1939 and 1941)Google Scholar.

24 Moldenhauer, Hans, Anton Wetiern (London, 1978), p.474Google Scholar.