rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (08/21/85)
Musical Life Under the third reich
======================
Well, I've managed to posthumously defame Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz
Melchior. I guess I should "first research, then post."
So here's the results of brief research on composers & musicians who
lived under the third reich (plus a few Italians, to fill out the pic-
ture of general resistance), taken from the 1985 edition of The Oxford
Dictionary of Music by Michael Kennedy and The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians (all quotations are from the latter).
Despite my previous impression, gleaned from the semi-avoidance of the
subject I detected in some music-lovers & musicians I know, the actual
record of the conduct of most musical figures under nazism is quite
honorable. There's no need to have misgivings when you next buy yet
another legendary recording by X, unless X = Herbert von Karajan, and
perhaps Elizabeth Schwarzkopf or Karl Boehm.
Regards,
Ron Rizzo
-----------------
(almost alphabetical; baddies at the end)
Boris Blacher (1903-1975), worked from 1931 on as a composer and arranger
in Berlin, until 1938 when he was appointed director of the Dresden
Conservatory, a post he was "obliged to relinquish the following year
because his teaching was not in accord with Nazi cultural policy."
Composer Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975) turned to political protest via
the theme of liberty in his works of the late 30s: the invasion of
Ethiopia & the Spanish Civil War jolted him. His wife was Jewish.
"Dallapiccola's refusal at this time to bow to the dictates of fascism
or (in due course) of the occupying Nazis inevitably handicapped his
career." For nearly a year (43-44) he had to go into hiding. "Other-
wise he managed to go on giving recitals, though only, as a matter of
principle, in countries not occupied by the Nazis, notably Hungary
and Switzerland. He nevertheless seized the opportunity, when passing
through Austria in 1942, to meet Webern [see Webern below]." After
1945, he suffered some obstruction in his career because of his explicit
anti-fascism.
Composer Wolfgang Fortner (1907) founded the Heidelberg Chamber Orchestra
in 1935; he had ties with the Lutheran Church.
Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer (1886-1960) settled in Berlin in 1905, and
succeeded Arthur Schnabel at the Hochschule fur Musik. In 1942 he
returned to Switzerland.
Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925) studied in Berlin with Georg
Walter before being drafted into the German army; he was taken prisoner
in 1945 by the British in Italy.
Conductor Wilhelm Furtwaengler (1886-1954) "like many German liberals...
was slow to take Nazism seriously. In a sense he never really did. Yet
he was never remotely an adherent of the Hitler regime, and he disassoci-
ated himself from it and opposed it in all kinds of ways, great and small:
for example, by always refusing to give the obligatory Nazi salute at
public concerts, even when Hitler was present, by constantly using his
influence to save the lives of Jewish musicians, obscure as well as
famous, by rejecting numerous commands to conduct in occupied countries
during the war, and by speaking his mind quite openly. In 1934, when
Hindemith's opera MATHIS DER MALER was banned, Furtwaengler resigned
all his posts and, though wooed by the Nazis, never resumed them."
"All this required courage, even in a man of Furtwaengler's
eminence. Indeed, when he finally escaped to Switzerland in January
1945 he was within a few hours of being arrested. He could have emi-
grated long before, as many non-Jewish musicians did; it would certainly
have made life easier for him. But he thought that art could be kept
apart from politics, and he saw it as his responsibility to stay. There
were those who felt he was right to do so: Arnold Schoenberg, for
instance (`You must stay, and conduct good music'), or the Jewish
theatre director Max Reinhardt: `People like Furtwaengler MUST stay,
if Germany is to survive.' But, for the vast majority of people outside
Germany, Furtwaengler, by continuing to live there and make public
appearances, was identifying himself with the regime. There was, in
the context of the time, a naivety in his attitude; his position was
equivocal, and the Nazis were adept at taking advantage of it."
"In consequence, the last ten years of Furtwaengler's life
were darkened by controversy. Whereas German artists who had actively
sympathized with Nazism or cynically run along with it were quite
quickly cleared, he had to endure a long period of delay and vilifica-
tion. The American Military Government did not finally denazify him
until December 1946, and it was only in the following April, when the
decision was ratified, that he was able to conduct again. In America
the anti-Furtwaengler movement continued. It culminated, in 1949, in
a propaganda campaign involving some of the leading musicians in the
country, a compound of high-mindedness, ignorance and professional
jealousy, aimed at keeping him out and in particular preventing him
from becoming director of the Chcago Symphony Orchestra, to which he
had been appointed. The Chicago board was forced to withdraw its
offer." A musicians strike had been threatened, including among others
Vladimir Horowitz and Artur Rubenstein.
Part of the opposition had its genesis in the 20s: "In 1925
and in the two following years Furtwaengler went to America as a
guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic. His impact on audiences
and musicians alike was momentous. Yet these visits sowed the seeds
of future conflict between Furtwaengler and the USA. His highly
individual interpretation of the German classics offended one or two
important critics dedicated to the cult of objectivity which was
later to be associated with Toscanini. At the same time his failure
to pay court to the orchestra's board members (whose power and influence
was something unknown in Europe) tended to make him personally unpopular
with them. The result was that, despite his public following and his
immense prestige with the orchestra, a pretext was found for not re-
engaging him. Instead, Toscanini became associate (with Mengelberg),
and later principal, conductor, and the event Furtwaengler never again
conducted in America. When, nine years later, in 1936, he was invited
to become Toscanini's successor (at Toscanini's own suggestion), there
was such a storm of protest that he wiothdrew and Barbirolli was appointed."
After the war, Furtwaengler "was welcomed everywhere" in Europe.
"Casals spoke for many when he called him `the greatest conductor I have
known.'" "His controversial position under the Third Reich has been
gradually forgotten, in admiration of the revelatory splendour of his
music-making at its best. Yet the two things were in a deep sense one.
His social unworldliness, his inability to deal with people with whom
he felt nothing in common, his indecisiveness before the practical
problems of life, his profound sense of Germanness, his obstinate
belief that art had nothing to do with politics -- all these and the
grand idealism of his interpretations were expressions of the same nature,
the same exalted philosophical outlook; they reflected the sheltered,
highly civilized upbringing he had received. `With music we enter a
new world,' he said, `and are delivered from the other.' But, for him,
music was the real world." (page 38)
CONTINUED