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SESSION THREE
MUSIC IN GERMANY/AUSTRIA, 1919-1939
March 27, 2015
TODAY’S AGENDA
GERMANY IN 1919
PLEASE NOTE: For the purposes of this course, today’s class will explore, not
only the nation of Germany, but the German-speaking composers of Austria as
well. I’ll try to make it clear when we are talking about the nation, and when
about culturally-German composers of Austria.
Germany, the largest nation of the defeated Central Powers, emerged from the
war with bleak prospects. It had lost more than 7 million soldiers and had
suffered widespread damage to its towns, cities, and industries. Even worse, it
emerged from the war highly traumatized, demoralized by its military defeat. A
relatively young nation with no history of self-governance, Germany quickly
embarked on a misguided and short-lived experiment with democracy, The
Weimar Republic, which brought social unrest and economic ruin.
In addition, Germany was enraged over its harsh treatment in the Treaty of
Versailles, under which it was forbidden to have any military forces and was
required to pay enormous reparations to the victorious nations, while trying to
recover its own damaged economy. This double economic burden led to the
most severe inflation in the history of the world. Today we will follow the
development of music in Germany between the wars.
The young German soldier Eric Maria Remarque was wounded in France and
spent much of the war in a military hospital. Ten years later he published the
most famous and influential novel of World War I. “All Quiet on the Western
Front,” published in 1929, quickly became an international best-seller. The
book’s famous opening words summarize the entire nation’s perspective about
the war and its aftermath:
“This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and
least of all an adventure. It will try simply to tell of a generation of
men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were
destroyed by the war.”
This attitude was not hard to understand: in postwar German nation
destruction was everywhere: destroyed lives, destroyed families, destroyed
cities and towns; destroyed national pride; and after a very few years, a
destroyed social fabric and economy.
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RICHARD STRAUSS PIC
In 1919 Richard Strauss was the leading German composer of the Old Guard
generation. His most famous works, orchestral tone-poems such as “Till
Eulenspiegel,” “Ein Heldenleben,” and “Death and Transfiguration,” had been
written at the turn of the 20th century. The titles themselves reflect the late 19th
century practice of combining lofty ideals of history and philosophy with
autobiographical material. Among Strauss’s works there is almost no reference
to the war, or to the issues confronting his defeated and humiliated nation.
AN ALPINE SYMPHONY, 1915
Despite the title, this is not a symphony but a fifty-minute “tone poem” - a
genre that was very much in vogue in the late 19th century. Tone poems were
popular because they always had a program – a literary story, event or
situation that the music described. Like many other late 19th century pieces,
the Alpine Symphony requires a huge symphony orchestra of 125 players.
“An Alpine Symphony” is chronologically the last of Strauss’s tone poems.
Completed in 1915, it resembles his other tone poems in having a semiautobiographical program: the story of what it is like to climb an Alpine
mountain on a single day, from dawn to dusk. This was one of Strauss’s
favorite pastimes.
And while we’re listening to it, we’ll see some representative images of Germany
during the interwar period.
GALLERY (PLAY DURING)
MUSIC IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA, 1919
So how let’s look at the state of music in Germany and Austria in more detail.
TRADITIONS
We’ve noted before that composers of every nation or ethnic group are born into
certain musical traditions. Among German-speaking composers tradition was
supremely important, since Germans believe – quite rightly, that they had
inherited a long and glorious tradition of musical excellence, from Joseph
Haydn to Mozart, to Beethoven, and then to a long list of 19th century
composers: Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, Brahms, Mahler, and, of
course, Richard Strauss. German music led the world in innovation, in beauty,
in inspiration.
And this rich heritage led German-speaking composers to wonder how, or if,
they could continue the grand tradition that was the envy of the entire world.
At certain critical moments in music history, composers come to believe that
the traditional musical style based on our familiar scales and chords had been
exhausted – that there are no possible ways to innovate within this tradition.
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Arnold Schonberg suspected this might be the case as he wrote music in the
first decade of the 20th century. Then, in 1915, he took a seven-year hiatus
from composing to figure out a new way of organizing music. His new method
of composition, the so-called “12 tone” or “serial” method, produced music that
was so different from what had gone before that most audiences were baffled.
Fortunately for Schonberg’s new idea, the music of his two great students,
Alban Berg and Anton von Webern, seemed easier to listen to.
Thus world leadership in music was the strongest and most challenging
tradition into which these German-speaking composers were born. Other
important traditions included:
1. Nationalism: the nation, its history and culture. Since the German nation
had only a short history, and Austria was a brand-new nation created by
the Treaty of Versailles, nationalism took the form of treating ancient myths,
such as those in Wagnerian operas.
2. Folk music: the traditional music of the people was not so strong a
tradition; it was too populist, and not lofty or idealistic enough, to attract
the attention of German-speaking composers.
3. 19th Century Forms: symphony, sonata, symphonic poem, song, mass,
oratorio, character pieces for piano.
INFLUENCES
The experience of the war was a major influence on German music between the
wars.
 Experiences: trauma, loss, rage

Ideals: capitalism, communism, mechanization, ancient cultures

Styles: impressionism and jazz

Organizing Principles: serialism.
GENERATIONS
Let’s review again the generations of composers active in the inter-war period:
Old Guard Generation, age 50+
Middle Generation, age 35-50
Young Turk Generation, age 25-35
Rising Generation, age 15-25
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COMPOSERS IN 1919
The Old Guard: Richard Strauss (Gustav Mahler and Max Reger deceased)
The Middle Generation: Arnold Schonberg, Alban Berg, Anton Webern
The Young Turks: Paul Hindemith, Karl Orff
The Rising Generation: Kurt Weill, Stefan Wolpe
THE OLD GUARD IN 1919
The Older generation of German (and Austrian) composers had been reduced
by the early deaths of Gustav Mahler and Max Reger, leaving only Richard
Strauss. Since we just heard some of his music, let’s focus instead on two great
middle-generation composers.
THE MIDDLE GENERATION
In 1919, middle-generation composers were dominated by Arnold Schonberg
and his two brilliant students, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. After twenty
years of very productive composing, Schonberg took a self-imposed, seven-year
hiatus from composition from 1915 until 1921, during which time he developed
the 12-tone” method.
As these three began to write music using the 12-tone method, the method
itself became a divisive issue among composers world-wide. Some composers
embraced it as opening totally new methods of musical expression; others
dismissed it as putting the method of composing above music’s expressive
qualities. Still others tried it briefly and found it wanting, or used it
intermittently along with other methods of composition.
I’ve given you links to two of the most famous and successful 12-tone works by
written by German composers, one by Berg and one by Schonberg.
ALBAN BERG PIC
Alban Berg is surely the most popular of the 12-tone composers of this era,
more so than his teacher and mentor Schonberg. The reasons for this have to
do more with personality than with the technique of composing. Berg’s music
sounds fuller, more like 19th century romantic music, and to some it seems
more expressive than that of Schonberg.
Berg was born into a middle class Viennese family in 1885. He did not study
music as a child, but started to compose on his own at age 15. He studied with
Arnold Schonberg from 1904 to 1911. He did not live to the end of the interwar
period but died of an insect bite in Vienna in 1935.
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VIOLIN CONCERTO, 1935
One of Berg’s most popular and beloved works is his Violin Concerto, which
has for many years been a staple in the concerto literature.

The mood is elegiac throughout, sorrowful and expressive of loss.

In some ways it sounds like an old-fashioned 19-the century concerto:
big orchestra sound, soulful, expressive, flowing, mellow solo violin.

In other ways it sounds like something quite different: no distinct
melodies, dissonant harmonies that never resolve into familiar-sounding
chords. This lack of resolution results in a heightened sense of tension
and little sense of resolution. Thus the 12-tone method was an excellent
way of portraying the anxiety and unsettledness and chaos of the period.
PLAY
ARNOLD SCHONBERG
Arnold Schonberg was one of the most influential of the entire 20th century. As
a composer one could say that he had three careers:

Up until 1908, Schonberg was a prolific and well-established composer of
large-scale, post-romantic works, in all genres: orchestral pieces, songs,
piano works, and chamber music.

From 1908 to 1915, he wrote in a new style, which he called “a-tonal,”
meaning without a tonality or familiar chord progressions.

From 1915 to 1921, Schonberg wrote no new compositions, but used this
period to develop a new method of composition, generally known as “12tone” or “serial,” based on:
A. a pre-determined pattern of the 12 tones rather than on any
familiar scale or mode
B. The principle of “continuous development,” in which the 12tone pattern was used continuously in different ways to provide
continuity and variety.

And, from 1921 until his death, he wrote a large number of pieces using
the 12-tone or serial method of composition. With the rise of the Nazi
Party, by 1938 Schoenberg's works were labeled as degenerate music
because he was Jewish; he moved to the United States in 1934 and lived
in Los Angeles until his death in 1951.
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SUITE FOR PIANO, 1923
Schonberg’s Piano Suite, completed in 1923, is the very first work written using
the 12-tone method. This and other serial pieces of the time differ from earlier
compositions in several ways:

Brevity: six short pieces, each less than 3 minutes long

Discontinuity: short, fragmentary bits of music rather than familiar
melodies –an excellent way to express chaos

Extreme contrasts: constant change from very high to very low, very
think to very thin; very loud to very soft. – an excellent way to express
the strong, sometimes violent emotions of this period in Germany.
PLAY
THE YOUNG TURKS
Not all the younger German-speaking composers embraced Schonberg’s 12tone method of composition – it became far more popular with composers of
other nations. The best-known German composer of the Young Turk generation
was Paul Hindemith, who seemed preoccupied in the 1920s with American jazz
and the music of Stravinsky; and Karl Orff, who focused on what he called
“elemental” music, really a fusion of music, visual art, dance, and literature
pattered after that of ancient Greece. He is best known today for “Carmina
Burana,” a work that combines all the arts in this way.
PAUL HINDEMITH PIC
Paul Hindemith’s father had been killed in action in 1915, and when he himself
was conscripted in August 1917 he determined that the only way to deal
personally with being in the war was to immerse himself in composition.
Immediately after the war he tried to write an opera as a way of wrestling with
the question of war. But he gave this up in favor of a series of chamber works,
all labeled “Kammermusik” (Chamber Music). These pieces were irreverent,
caustic lampoons of traditional chamber music and became very popular in
decadent, war-weary Berlin of the 1920s.
Hindemith also became immersed in the latest American popular music styles,
and had a standing order for every new recording of the Original Dixieland
Band. His most famous work of the 1930’s, the opera, “Mathis der Mahler,”
(about Matthias Grünewald, the painter,) focused on the subject of the role of
the artist in war time,
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CARL NIELSEN WOODWIND QUINTET, 1922
To indicate how “new” Hindemith’s music seemed in its day, I’ve given you a
link to another famous woodwind quintet by the “old guard” Danish composer,
Carl Nielsen, written in the very same year. This piece is characterized by:

Long, melodies

Blended sound

Smooth rhythms

Traditional harmonies
PLAY
KLEINE KAMMERMUSIK, 1922
This satirical work pokes fun at traditional chamber music like Carl Nielsen’s
using a familiar combination of instruments – the woodwind quintet, but
having the instruments play modern-sounding music very much in the style of
Stravinsky:

satiric, dry, fragments instead of long, flowing melodies that the
woodwinds do so well

lots of ostinatos (fast repeated patters) and fast repeated notes.

Non-blended sound of contrasting instruments.
PLAY
THE RISING GENERATION
As for the Rising Generation of German-speaking composers – born around the
turn of the Century – most of them left Germany when Hitler came to power.
The best-known members of this generation were Kurt Weill and Stepan Wolpe,
both of whom lived much of their lives in the United States.
The works of these two composers reflect the major influences of the interwar
era: Weill’s music is highly influenced by leftist politics, populism and jazz; the
style is that usually encountered in a cabaret (bar or night club) rather and a
concert hall; Wolpe’s, by the Serial techniques of Schonberg, Berg and Webern,
with whom he studied in Vienna.
KURT WEILL PIC
In the mid- and late 1920s, Kurt Weill created a sensation throughout the
musical world with his strident, populist operas; the leading characters are
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mostly shady lower-class people powerless to improve their lives and frequently
bent on revenge – in short, a metaphor for German itself during the interwar
period. The music combined elements of classical music, jazz, and cabaret.
These enduringly popular works include “The Three-Penny Opera” (1928) and
“The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahoganny” (1930).
The Three-Penny Opera is a play with music, adopted from an 18th century
English work called “The Beggar’s Opera.” It describes the lives (and deaths) of
a group of seedy lower-class people on London’s waterfront. The two leading
characters are “Mäckie Messer” (Mack the Knife), who seduces young women
and kills them with a knife, and Pirate Jenny, a low-class woman employed as
a housekeeper in a seedy hotel, who dreams of getting revenge for her terrible
life by being a pirate who kills all the cruel gentlemen who torment her. Pirate
Jenny’s ambitions played into the fantasies of a defeated and impoverished
nation.
Although Weill’s operas were very successful in Europe, the rise of Hitler led to
his emigration to the United States in 1935, where he wrote several more
acclaimed musical dramas, including “Knickerbocker Holiday” (1938), which
contains one of his best-known works, “September Song.”
“MACK THE KNIFE” (MÄCKIE MESSER), 1927
 Dark mood and threatening, even murderous, characters
 Sung by a street musician accompanied by an accordion
 Text contrasts the rich and the poor
 Revenge of the poor upon the rich,
PLAY
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