Marcus Maroney - Sounds Like New

Blacher and Blocking

Somebody questioned my use of the term "internal exile" to describe Boris Blacher's position during the war.  That commenter has been blocked - if you read the comments on that previous post and check out the other blogs I've linked, I think you'll see why.  Google his pseudonym (poor Debussy....) and you'll see just how many people have reached the same conclusion.  And it extends beyond the blogosphere, as several of my colleagues outside of the internet sphere would attest to.  Here's a good article pertaining to this issue, which basically validates my decision. 

I'm all in favor of an open forum, but it's obvious to me why some people post anonymously, and I hereby proclaim my right to block and/or delete such comments.  I want the atmosphere here to be positive.  I'm definitely not afraid to be called to task if I've provided false information, indeed it's great to know when I've made a mistake.  Let's just keep it adult.

Ok, so now that that's out of the way, I'd just like to provide some material that prompted my conclusion about Blacher's situation during World War II.  My added emphases are in bold. 

There are certainly hugely varying degrees of severity of prosecution of artists by the Nazis during World War II.  Blacher certainly got his share of problems, and they certainly weren't as severe as others, but I would still say that Blacher was an internal exile.  It's not my intention to in any way discount the horrible atrocities that other German composers suffered during this period. 

I've already quoted a passage that uses the exact term "internal exile" to refer to Blacher in the comments to my post on his Paganini Variations. 

I'd like to quote from notes by Leon Botstein, certainly someone who I consider well-versed in this area:

"...Blacher was not forced to flee when the nazis came to power, but managed to keep working in Germany...He was not entirely "Aryan" but he had the support of powerful individuals, among then the conductor Karl Böhm, who used his influence in the Nazi regime to protect the composer. Blacher continued to explore his own modernist aesthetic credo (which included a special affection for jazz), but at the same time, he struggled to exist under the Nazis. Some of his music continued to be performed until 1940. That year, the facts about Blacher’s maternal grandmother, the daughter of baptized Jews, were confirmed and Blacher’s tenuously peaceful co-existence collapsed. He lived out the war in Germany in fear. His music disappeared from German programs."

My objector mentioned the premiere of Fürstin Tarakanowa in Wuppertal in 1941 as one piece of evidence against my inclusion of Blacher in the group of composers who suffered as internal exiles under the Nazi party.  I'd like to quote at length from an essay by Habakuk Traber, program annotator for the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin:

"...Blacher remained in Germany during the National Socialist era, but refused to enter into any compromises with the officially-ordained cultural policy of the time.  As a result, he lost his chair in composition at Dresden's Academy of Music in 1939, a post which he had taken up just a year earlier.  Instead of opting for open resistance, Blacher sought for and exploited loopholes in the system of 'state censorship'.  The story of the opera Fürstin Tarakanowa serves as an illustrative example here.  Premiered in February 1941 in the town of Wuppertal, the work is set in the Russian émigré community in northern Italy at the time of Catherine the Great.  The background to this story of intrigue, love and crime concerns the relationship between Russia, Poland and Germany, which in February 1941 - at a time when the Hitler-Stalin Pact was still in force - was a highly topical subject.  The composer himself, along with his librettist and a number of critics, cited Berg, Bartók and Stravinsky as the closest and most influential contemporaries shaping Blacher's operatic style.  Although difficult to believe today, being associated with such figures was potentially very dangerous at the time.  The Expressionism of an Alban Berg was classified as decadent or degenerate music par excellence and his work was blacklisted.  In 1937, Béla Bartók announced his refusal to allow his compositions to be broadcast on German Radio.  On October 8, 1940 he left his native Hungary in protest at the pro-Nazi policies of the Horthy government.  From February 1, 1940, performances of Stravinsky's music were also prohibited in German-occupied territories - following the failure of previous campaigns to completely purge the works of the exiled Russian from German concert programs.  It is indeed difficult to conceive of a work less reconcilable with the objectives of National Socialist cultural policy than this opera.  Even the reviews dispensed with their obligatory obsequious platitudes in praise of Hitler and the Reich."

Eckart Schwinger, in his notes to Blacher's oratorio Der Großinquisitor of 1942, comments further on Blacher's Dresden dismissal:

"In 1938, Karl Böhm engaged him for a lecturing post at the Dresden Conservatory.  Within a year or so Blacher was back in Berlin because the Nazis, who had viewed him with suspicion anyway, were not amused by the fact that he was studying 'degenerate' composers such as Hindemith with his students."

and on the oratorio itself:

"...he composed 'Der Grossinquisitor'....based on a novel by Dostoyevsky.  The choice of such a text during the Nazi era says a good deal about Blacher's commitment to human ideals...[I]n the choral passages [...] Blacher, clearly alluding to the present, condemns the wholesale murder committed by the Inquisition..."

Talks on Blacher have also been included on many panels dealing with German artistic society during World War II, such as the February 28, 2002 Musica Reanimata presentation "Surviving in dark times.  Boris Blacher and his friends in the 1940s".  Musica Reanimata is a "Society for the Promotion and Re-discovery of Composers Prosecuted by the Nazi Regime and Their Works."

By internal exile, I'm referring to Blacher's being forced to give up a job on political grounds, return to the only city in Germany where one could possibly hide from prosecution and somehow continue to compose music.  As the situation in Germany deteriorated more and more, Blacher essentially removed himself (voluntarily and forcefully) from German musical life.  I was accused of trying to conceal "Blacher's modest but undeniable successes in the musical life of National Socialist Germany", though I don't think it's correct to call his career during this period successful.  There's no point in trying to conceal something that simply doesn't exist.  Protection and promotion of 'degenerate' music by the likes of Böhm and Jochum during this time was not uncommon and does not really indicate 'success' for those artists during occupation.

I take Merriam-Webster's definition of "exile" at face value:

"a : the state or a period of forced absence from one's country or home b : the state or a period of voluntary absence from one's country or home"

A combination of forced and voluntary decisions caused Blacher to become "absent" from his "home" (i.e., his established social, political and musical life) while continuing to live in Germany (thus, "internal").  For those reasons, I think it is valid to refer to Blacher during WWII as an "internal exile."

Heady

Update #2: A.C. Douglas wraps up the discussion by claiming that everyone but one is missing his point, which he again rephrases:

"My question was framed specifically to provoke an exploration of the difference between live theater and film in terms of the realization of the artwork itself, not in terms of why and how that realization is experienced differently in live theater versus in film, and the relative merits of each."

I'm wondering how it's possible to remove the "realization of the artwork itself" from the experience of that realization.  Is A.C. suggesting that the interpreter of the artwork him/herself is not experiencing it as he/she interprets it?  Is there some way we can be 100% objective while experiencing/evaluating the realization of an artwork and separate the two (realization and experience) to discuss them separately?  If yes, what exactly would be the point of doing so?  Do interpreters really not take into account how their audience is going to experience their realization?  (I suppose some do--or claim to.)  But we're human beings and, in essence, unable to completely separate the realization of an artwork from our experience of that realization. 

Update: A.C. Douglas replies to several responses.  I find there the essence of the problem with this discussion.  A.C. writes (in response to John Shaw):

"The correct statement of that case, using Mr. Shaw's example, would posit the realizing of the Goldberg Variations on the double harpsichord for which it was written, or on the modern concert grand. In both cases, the text would remain precisely the same, and the question would be: Of the two instruments, which is better able to do the work justice?"

It's a fallacious statement through and through.  The two instruments are not what are doing "justice" to the work, it's the quality of the performer manipulating the instrument.  Likewise, an ingenious director working with live actors on a stage can do things that a mediocre director can't do in film (or any other medium, most likely).  In the end it comes down to the quality of the text, the quality of the performers and the quality of the director.  The argument doesn't lie in the quality of the medium, which none of us really has the ability to measure.  Honestly, who cares whether it's on a movie screen or in a musty theater as long as it's well-done?       

My original post:

A.C. Douglas rants in three posts (one, two, three) about the validity of live theater as an artform:

"A film of, say, Beckett's Godot (i.e., made as a film, not a filmed record of the stage play) is potentially, inherently and in itself, capable of producing a more convincing aesthetic product in terms of the play itself than the play presented live on stage (not the case in a recording of a piece of music versus a live performance of that same piece), and that capability has nothing whatsoever to do with "the Collective Other" which is a function of audience response alone, that same response experienced with film just as with live theater."

Well, if that's true then one must wonder why a wildly successful film of Waiting for Godot hasn't been made.  It is, after all, one of the most reliable ticket-sellers in the theater world.  And I further wonder where one can find this universal scale of "convincing aesthetic product[s]" to which A.C. seems to refer. His entire argument seems to hinge on the premise that everyone shares (or ought to share) his aesthetics. 

He later supports his position with the argument that a film director has "almost infinite control of all aspects of the realization of the text possible."  Since when is infinite control automatically better?

As Jonathan Shaw artfully posted, film flattens everything to two dimensions.  Theater occurs in three.  It's bizarre that A.C. fails to understand what opportunities this simple fact affords the audience and/or doesn't get any aesthetic pleasure from those opportunities.  It's even more bizarre that he is unable to acknowledge the fact that many audience members do get aesthetic pleasure from these opportunities and therefore enjoy theater as an alternate artform to film.  Just because A.C. Douglas doesn't means that the theater is somehow an inferior artform to film?  Hogwash.  I feel sorry for him.  With such a bull-headed anti-theater stance he will likely never be able to actually enjoy a good or great theatrical production.  I wonder if he always sits in the theater and thinks about how much better each scene that's being performed could be on film. 

In his response to Jonathan Shaw, A.C. wrote:

"Everything you describe can be done in film, and done better than in live theater."

Hm.  How can a person watching a film focus on a character who's involved in a scene but isn't on the screen?  Well, a person watching a staged version can.  The audience member in a theater has the freedom to focus on any object in an entire scene that he or she chooses.  When watching a film, that same audience member's available objects are limited by what the director has made visible.

Imagine repeatedly viewing a film of Romeo and Juliet.  The balcony scene.  A close-up of Juliet speaking, her face filling the giant screen.  I want to see Romeo's reaction to what she's saying.  His facial expression.  His stance.  But I can't.  The film director has removed this option.  The scene is frozen in one interpretation, shot at one angle.  The director manipulates my focus to a certain character. 

Imagine the same scene in a live theater.  One night I focus on Juliet's face as she delivers the same lines.  The next night I revisit the theater for the same performance and focus exclusively on Romeo's reception of those words.  The director may indeed have staged the scene so that Juliet is intended to be the focus but I choose to look elsewhere.  The stage director can't suddenly remove Romeo from the set of possible objects that I can focus on.  Yes, the director perhaps has less than "infinite control over all aspects", but that actually affords the audience more freedom.  Does A.C. really find it odd that some audience members at some plays might prefer and indeed get greater aesthetic fulfillment from that freedom than they would from being limited by the film director's "infinite control"?  Has he truly never had such an experience at the theater?

Again, this aspect might not necessarily appeal to A.C. and it's probably among his ever-growing list of caveats that are his way of rebutting other bloggers' completely valid responses to his question, but who really cares?  He's one audience member.  Nothing will be lost if he stops going to the theater.  There are millions of others out there who obviously derive pleasure from the lesser degree of manipulation and control present in the theater.  I'm one of them.

Vielen Dank!

Many thanks to Lisa Hirsch at Iron Tongue of Midnight for including me in her San Francisco Classical Voice article on classical music blogs! 

Confused?

After the horrible Messiaen review at classicstoday.com, here's a horrible, whiny review of a San Francisco Symphony performance of John Adam's Naive and Sentimental Music (a magisterial, immense work). Hasn't the obligatory use of "fuck" in reviews gone out of style yet? He further goes on: "you should listen to Salonen's recording of Naive & Sentimental to determine for real whether it's a good piece and not just go on prejudice." Isn't he equally going on prejudice saying this piece was ruined by an uninvolved conductor? Could it be possible that the piece isn't really that good? I won't commit myself to either answer here, but if you're going to write an irritating, boringly abrasive review like this and then go on to call others prejudiced, that says enough about your own viewpoint. How about this - a "piece" itself isn't really "good" or "bad" divorced from a performance of it. I like that view....

This awkwardess is further evidenced by his view of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Three Screaming Popes, which he calls "neither all that nor even a bag of chips..." (isn't that cliché out of style yet, too?) based on a live performance. He should should listen to Simon Rattle's recording of Three Screaming Popes to determine for real whether it's a good piece and not just go on prejudice. Ugh - I just feel disgusting writing a sentence like that. For what it's worth, I think both pieces are excellent and am open to the possibility that both could be ruined by a lackluster live performance. And I don't even have to use the F word to express that view. Luckily, the concert is given a solid, level-headed assessment by Joshua Kosman, who seems to realize that there's more than one way to perform a piece successfully. I guess this is why some critics get paid and others don't (not that I have room to talk...).

The disappearance of explosives in Iraq gets even crazier. I'm actually getting scared of what's going to happen in the coming week.

Oh, and if you're still confused whether to vote for Kerry or Bush, here's some help.

On a positive note, I've decided to join the "concept" bangwagon with my blog and offer, from time to time, writeups called "Musical Miracles". These will be discussions of pieces and their recordings that I think are absolute gems in the repertoire. I have a few pieces lined up in my mind and will hopefully start this after Halloween weekend.