escaping the dark time

8/9/2019 Escaping the Dark Time

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such an extensive and officially sanctioned process ofreconstruction. After all, the German Revolution wasultimately aborted. But the artistic innovations of Weimarwere just as vital, aesthetically speaking, as their Russian

counterparts. There was one area, moreover, in which theart of the Weimar Republic was far in the vanguard of thatof the Soviet Union, namely, the development ofpoliticized forms of musical composition, performance,and reception.

This development proceeded in opposition to twoestablished musical forces. On the one hand, it rejectedthe militant hermeticism, the a-political insularity of thecentral current of modernist music, epitomized by

Schoenbergs pointed declaration that: We who live inmusic have no place in politics and must regard it asforeign to our being. We are a-political, at best able toaspire to remain silently in the background. On the otherhand, the new politicized music of the Weimar years wasartistically advanced. It rejected the tepid verbalmessages and watered-down musical traditionalism ofwhat was then known as Tendenzmusik- music with aconscious social tendency - of the sort performed by theworkers choruses sponsored by the Social Democratic

Party. In both their application of musical technique andtheir handling of the relation between music and text, theWeimar avant-garde sought to employ the majorinnovations of twentieth century music to elicit forms ofemancipatory consciousness and action in the broadeststrata of the population. Now the problem faced by theproject for an aesthetically advanced form of politicalmusic was formidable. Previously, modernist music andthe mass audience had inhabited different planets. If the

project was to succeed, it would be necessary to bridgethat astronomical gap.

Hindemiths celebrated music festivals at Donaueschingenand Baden-Baden set the context in which the first seriousbreakthroughs in the new political music were to occur.

The festivals were organized in accordance with thecomposers attempt to steer modern music into two


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avenues which he named Gemeinschaftsmusik(community-music) and Gebrauchsmusik(utility-music).Gemeinshaftsmusikoriginated in his contact with anexpanding German youth movement whose original

political tenor was somewhat ambiguous, although it wasultimately to veer to the right (certainly withoutHindemiths approval). He wrote choral music for theyouth movements amateur performers, music whichtoned down the technical difficulty of new music while atthe same time familiarizing untrained ears with modernistconventions. In a similar vein, Hindemith composedLehrstuecke for his music festivals, didactic contataswhich were exercises in moral and social educationperformable by amateurs. Gebrauchsmusikmaintained

this emphasis on popular accessibility and relevance, butit differed from Gemeinshaftsmusikby exploring newtechnologies and outlets for the mass dissemination ofculture instead of embracing intimate or traditional formsof community. Thus in his festivals and associatedendeavors, Hindemiths efforts on behalf of utility-musicencouraged the development of music for radio and film,as well as miniature opera and other forms of musictheatre. Although his own attempt to reform modernist

music in a popular direction was not overtly political, itsresults were adopted and utilized by the left avant-garde.

The crucial event in the genesis of the new political musicoccurred at the Baden-Baden festival of 1927. There Weilland Brecht presented their Mahagonny Songspiel, aminiature opera which bitterly satirized bourgeois society,while Eisler contributed his Tagebuch op. 9, a cantatawhich pointed the way out of Weimars malaise andconfusion with a piano quotation from the Internationale.

The standard view of Weill as a junior partner in hiscollaboration with Brecht is decidedly false. On thecontrary, their working alliance represented theconvergence of two equally powerful artistic projects.Brecht attempted to refunction the tradition of Westerntheatre so that it could depict the major contending socialforces of the contemporary period, while at the same time


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encouraging a distanced reflectiveness in the theatreaudience. Independently, Weill tried to rework theoperatic tradition so that it could, in his own words, dealwith the monumental themes of our time, in a way that

stimulated popular understanding. Moreover, each man,of course, was committed to developing and employingspecifically modernist techniques. Brecht used varioustheatrical devices - including placards with writtenslogans, the projection of visual images on giant screens,interruption of dramatic action, and direct address byactors to the audience - in order to create aVerfremdungseffekt(alienation-effect), which forced thespectator to break with socially dominant conventions ofinterpretation. In like manner, Weill fused a serious

modernist musical language - one that he had begun todevelop while studying with Ferruccio Busoni - withpopular jazz and dance idioms, thereby creating montage-like effects designed to jolt the listener into a heightenedstate of awareness and insight. When these twoseparately conceived artistic projects coalesced in the late1920s, the result was a new form of music theatre thatwas both socially and aesthetically radical, and intendedto reach a broad, popular audience.

In addition to the wildly successful Threepenny Opera -which was performed more than 4200 times within oneyear of its opening - the most important products ofWeills collaboration with Brecht were the MahagonnySongspiel and the full-length opera based upon it, theRise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. The Songspieloriginated in a group of five poems that Brecht hadincluded in his Hauspostille (Domestic Breviary), avolume of verse appearing in the form of a leather-bound

prayer book that mocked the piety and hypocriticalmoralism of the German middle class. With a minimaloverall narrative structure, the set of Mahagonny poemscapitalized on Weimars obsession with everythingAmerican by presenting depictions of life in a mythicalboom-town, located somewhere in the Old West, devotedto satisfying the needs of its rough male inhabitants for


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gambling, whiskey, and sex - at the appropriate price. Anumber of innovations characterized the musicalinterpretation of the five poems, along with aprogramatically concluding sixth poem written by Brecht

at Weills request. First, there was Weills unusual,variously colored instrumentation - 2 violins, 2 clarinets, 2trumpets, saxophone, trombone, piano, and percussion -which was inspired, perhaps, by Stravinskys LHistorie dusoldat, and which was perfectly suited to the Songspielssurrealist pastiche of serious and popular idioms. Then,there was Weills decision to give one of the two femaleparts to his wife, the actress Lotte Lenya, whoseuntrained, childlike voice contrasted appealingly with theoperatic proficiency of the other singers. The most

significant of Weills innovations, however, was hisdevelopment of the genre of song (he explicitly chose theEnglish word in order to avoid the traditional connotationsof the German Lied and Gesang). The Songspiel, whosename is a word-play on Singspiel (operetta), consists ofthe six Mahagonnypoems set as independent songsconnected by orchestral interludes. Each song has someof the qualities of the popular jazz tune, but these arecontrasted with other musical elements which leave no

doubt that Weill is not competing with the writer ofconventional hits. In particular, each song has acomprehensible melody and rhythmic clarity which anchorthe naive ear in what is otherwise a difficult musicalexperience, replete with double-tonic constructions andnon-tonal sets. The disquieting juxtaposition of disparatemusical elements contributes to what Weill calls theintellectual bearing of the music, which is thoroughlyserious, bitter, accusing. At the Baden-Baden festival,this general musical attitude was re-enforced visually byCaspar Nehers staging, which placed the singers, whocarried placards with provocative slogans, inside a boxingring that also enclosed an American bar. Directly behindthe ring, there was a screen upon which disturbing imagesof violence and greed were projected.


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Weills music plays a different role in the Rise and Fall ofthe City of Mahagonnythan it does in the Songspielbecause the former is a full-length opera that integratesmusic with spoken dialogue. But the principles that guide

such integration also represent a break with the dominantoperatic tradition, especially in its late romantic,Wagnerian form. That is to say, the purpose of music inthe larger Mahagonnyis not illusionistic; it is neither toprovide supportive psychological characterization nor toadvance the plot, but, conversely, to stop the dramaticflow in order to present an autonomous musicalequivalent - in Weills neologism, a gestic representation- of the meaning of the plays events. This clash of musicand spoken language contributes to that general

alienation-effect which Brechts aesthetics placed at thecenter of music theatre. Still, the basic musical formwhich Weill carries over from the little Mahagonny,namely, the parody of the popular hit tune, jibes withBrechts dramatic intentions at a deeper level. The mainpurpose of the text of the Rise and Fall of the City ofMahagonnyis to reveal the inner contradictions ofbourgeois society through a critique of the concept of fun.At the center of Mahagonny, the Here-You-May-Do-

Anything Inn, all human needs can be met through theexchange of money. But this universal commodification,which makes need-satisfaction possible, also distinguishesit from substantive fulfillment. The sole crime inMahagonny is failure to pay ones bills, for which thepunishment is death. This ultimate sanction, which isapplied to one of the plays central characters, JimmyMahoney, shows up the hollow nature of all gratificationthat is not freely offered. The threat of death that hangsover the competitive performances of bourgeois societyendows the experience of fun with a desperate quality.And it is precisely this desperation that Weillsfragmented, unnerving parody of the hit tune evokes onan emotional plane.

While the political content of Kurt Weills music wasfocused on a critique of bourgeois society, Hans Eislers


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music was more positively directed to rallying the forcesnecessary to effect its revolutionary transformation. LikeWeill, Eisler was squarely located in the modernist musicaltradition, but in Schoenbergs free atonal and twelve-tone

techniques rather than in Busonis neo-classicism. In fact,Schoenberg considered Eisler to be his most promisingstudent after Webern and Berg, but their relationshipfoundered on a deep politico-aesthetic disagreement.While still in the process of mastering the avant-gardemusical language of the Second Vienna School, Eislercame to feel that it represented a regression into an artfor arts sake posture. The inaccessibility of the newmusic, the fact that it was intelligible only to experts, wassupposed to be an indication of its advanced,

revolutionary character. But, for Eisler, this elitistisolation meant that Schoenberg and his students hadturned a deaf ear to the momentous social confrontationsthat were inexorably determining the fate of humankind.Eisler argued that music exists only in its reception by anaudience. The pseudo-radicalism of the new music wouldbe converted into a genuinely revolutionary orientationonly if it succeeded in making contact with the politicallyactivated masses.

After a dramatic personal break with Schoenberg in 1926,Eisler placed his musical skill at the service of the radicalwing of the workers movement. He became composer,pianist, and conductor for Berlins Young Communist agit-prop group, Das rote Sprachrohr(the Red Megaphone),which directed its efforts principally to working classyouth. In writing incidental music, militant songs(Kampflieder), and ballads for the group, Eisler addressedsuch issues as unemployment, strikes, solidarity, peasant

rebellion, and so on. Employing a dialogical workingmethod, he developed ideas for compositions indiscussions with workers, and refined his creations bysubmitting them to listeners for critique. In this way, hewas able concretely to gear himself to the musicalexperience of his audience. Yet his purpose was not toleave that experience unaffected. It was, rather, to


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transform it through the application of modern technique.In Eislers view, the resources of new music, whenadapted to the needs of a formally uneducated audience,were uniquely capable of furthering political awareness

and enlightenment. They enabled the composer to rejectthe popular songs emphasis on musical charm andindividual expressiveness, in favor of an emotional tonesuited to cognitive analysis, which is in turn the key toeffective action. By resisting lyrical identification with thesinger, and serving instead as an independentcommentary on the text, music was to encourage thedevelopment of knowledge in the context of a deepeningcollective experience. In this way, it was to contribute tothe formation of a subjective agency capable of

revolutionizing society.

Eisler brought the results of his agit-prop work into hisown collaboration with Brecht, beginning in 1930. Inmany ways, the most successful product of theirassociation was its first fruit, the didactic play, TheMeasures Taken. This was a sort of Brechtianrefunctioning of a piece of music theatre that he hadalready produced with Kurt Weill, The Yea-Sayer. Theearlier work was adapted from a Japanese Noh story about

the killing of a boy who endangers an importantexpedition. In the version with Eisler, the plot concernsthe execution of a Young Comrade, whose adventurismand lack of discipline while on an undercover missionthreaten catastrophe to the Chinese revolutionarymovement. As Albrecht Betz points out, The Measures

Taken has the form of a Christian oratorio that has beenput to political purposes. The play depicts a Party tribunalin which an examining committee, represented by the

chorus, sits in judgment over the four agitators who havekilled their compatriot. The internal structure of the play,the sequence of scenes that are evoked as evidence, is akind of inverse Christian Passion, with the career of the

Young Comrade held up as a life that is not to beimitated. That life is portrayed as ending in an avoidablefatality; it therefore functions as a vehicle of political


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education. Eislers homophonic choral writing, which aimsat the transmutation of feeling into a distancedobjectivity, underscores this inversion of the Christianmodel. His rehearsal suggestion that the singing be

extremely taut, rhythmical and precise, like a report ata mass rally, was intended to break with the traditionaloratorios beautiful performance, and its identificationwith the sacrificial victim. The point of the music is toencourage insight rather than pathos.

The evident vitality of at least some of Eislers and Weillscompositions in the 20s and 30s, their success in fusingmodernist forms with low genres, and their ability toreach a mass audience, ought to settle once and for all

the question as to whether aesthetic quality in music iscompatible with politicization. But these undeniableachievements do not mean that the political music of theWeimar years was successful. For the task that music setitself was to advance the process of social emancipation,and it could do this only by means of an extraordinarilydifficult cultural intervention. Its creators had to utilizethe most sophisticated achievements of so-calledbourgeois music in order to help break the subjectivebonds that attached vast numbers of people to the

dominant social order, as well as to develop theircapacities for effective historical action. Thus the fate ofavant-garde political music was tied to that of therevolutionary movement as a whole. With the triumph ofHitler in Germany and Stalin in the Soviet Union, thatmovement failed disastrously. So did those musical forceswhich saw themselves as part of the larger struggle forsocial renewal.

As a result of these failures, Eisler and Weill were driven

into exile in the comparatively depoliticized UnitedStates. It is now common for left-wing cultural theorists tocondemn Weill for having accommodated himself to thecapitalist entertainment industry, while praising Eisler forhaving maintained his revolutionary orientation. But thetruth is that the objective circumstances of exile requiredboth men to make compromises. Just as Weill became a


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celebrated creator of Broadway musicals, so did Eislerbecome a successful writer of movie scores: in fact, hewon an Oscar for the music for Fritz Langs 1943 studiofilm, Hangmen also Die. Still, it was Eisler rather than

Weill who converted the experience of exile into acompelling musical statement. His revival, during the1940s, of the tradition of German and Austrian Lieder on anew dodecaphonic basis can be seen as the final and mostprofound incarnation of Weimars musical experiment.Written in Hollywood, that factory of illusions in whichEisler was forced to labor, these songs reflect upon thesignificance of struggle, defeat, and resolve. They are likemessages in bottles cast from a shipwreck in the hopethat they will be discovered by future generations. One of

them is the setting of an elegy by Brecht:

You who will emerge from the flood

In which we have gone under

Remember

When you speak of our failings

The dark time too which you have escaped.

For we went, changing countries oftener than our shoes

Through the wars of the classes, despairing

When there was injustice only, and no rebellion.

And yet we know:

Hatred, even of meanness

Contorts the features.

Anger, even against injustice

Makes the voice hoarse. Oh, we

Who wanted to prepare the ground for friendliness

Could not ourselves be friendly.

But you, when the time comes at last

And man is no longer a wolf to man

Think of us


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escaping the dark time

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