Читать книгу The New Music - Theodor W. Adorno - Страница 8

1 1. There is no document of the lecture’s opening. In the following, ellipses in square brackets indicate gaps in the recording or unintelligible speech.

2 2. The tenth International Summer Course for New Music took place in Darmstadt from 29 May to 6 June 1955.

3 3. Gertrud Schoenberg (1898–1967), Rudolf Kolisch’s sister, was Arnold Schoenberg’s second wife; he married her in 1924 after the death of his first wife, Mathilde. They had three children: Nuria (born 1932, later wife of Luigi Nono), Ronald (born 1937) and Lawrence (born 1941).

4 4. ‘The Aging of the New Music’ first appeared in the journal Der Monat, 7/80 (1954–5), pp. 150–8; then in book form in Dissonanzen: Musik in der verwalteten Welt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956); now in Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert, trans. Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 181–202. The Kierkegaard reference is on p. 183: ‘More than a hundred years ago Kierkegaard, speaking as a theologian, said that where once a dreadful abyss yawned a railroad bridge now stretches, from which the passengers can look comfortably down into the depths.’ Adorno is referring to a passage from Kierkegaard’s text ‘The Moment’:On these assumptions, the New Testament, considered as guidance for the Christian, becomes a historical curiosity, somewhat like a handbook for travellers in a particular country when everything in that same country is completely changed. Such a handbook is not to be taken seriously by travellers in that country, but it has great value as entertaining reading. While one is comfortably riding along in the train, one reads in the handbook, ‘Here is the frightful Wolf’s Glen, where one plunges 70,000 fathoms down under the earth […].’See Søren Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard’s Writings, Vol. 23: The Moment and Late Writings, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 123.

5 5. In the essay ‘Physiognomy of Krenek’, Adorno writes:Today, when all New Music is listened to with fatally respectful ears and scarcely unbalances its well-informed audiences, it is difficult to imagine the aggression radiated by the young Krenek’s works – his first two symphonies, String Quartet No. 1, or also the Toccata and Chaconne for piano, which caused a scandal. The world premiere of the Second Symphony under Laugs, which took place in Kassel in 1923, was probably no less potent in its effect than the legendary premieres before the First World War, such as Berg’s Altenberg-Lieder or Le Sacre du Printemps.See Theodor W. Adorno, Night Music: Essays on Music 1928–1962, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Wieland Hoban (London and Calcutta: Seagull, 2009), p. 178. See also the radio interview recorded in August 1965 for North German Radio (NDR): Theodor W. Adorno and Lotte Tobisch, ‘Wiener Skandale um die Neue Musik’, published in Wespennest: Zeitschrift für brauchbare Texte und Bilder, no. 117 (2000), pp. 88–100.

6 6. Rudolf Kolisch (1896–1978), leader of the Kolisch Quartet – already legendary at the time – was the violin tutor at the Darmstadt course from 1953. In 1954 it was announced that Adorno, ‘in collaboration with Rudolf Kolisch and Edward [sic] Steuermann’, would give five lectures on ‘New Music and Interpretation (with Musical Demonstrations)’. In 1955 Kolisch directed a three-day chamber music course in the form of open rehearsals of Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, op. 41, for string quartet, piano and speaker.

7 7. Ernst Křenek (1900–1991), who changed the spelling of his name to ‘Krenek’ after emigrating, taught composition at the summer course several times from 1950. In 1954 he gave the evening lecture ‘Ein Komponist gibt Rechenschaft’ [A composer gives account]. Adorno continued to use the original pronunciation.

8 8. Kol nidre, op. 39, for speaker, mixed chorus and orchestra (1938). The text is the main prayer sung on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement in Judaism, which renounces all oaths and promises made during the last year. In a letter to Paul Dessau from 22 November 1941, Schoenberg wrote on this subject: ‘From the very first moment I was convinced (as later proved correct, when I read that the Kol Nidre originated in Spain) that it merely meant that all who had either voluntarily or under pressure made believe to accept the Christian faith (and who were therefore to be excluded from the Jewish community) might, on this Day of Atonement, be reconciled with their God, and that all oaths (vows) were to be cancelled’ (Arnold Schoenberg, Letters, ed. Erwin Stein, trans. Eithne Wilkins. [London: Faber & Faber, 1964], p. 212).

9 9. René Leibowitz (1913–1972), composer, music theorist and conductor, wrote Schoenberg and His School (1947) and Introduction to Twelve-Note Music (1949). He taught composition at the summer course in 1948 and 1949. In 1954 he gave six lectures on the late works of Anton Webern and spoke about a recording of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder that he had made as a conductor. In 1955 he taught composition again. His pieces were often performed at the course. Leibowitz, not least because of his work at Darmstadt, was very significant for the reception of Schoenberg’s work after 1945. Adorno wrote of him: ‘If atonality and twelve-note music are no longer dismissed in the Western world as a German folly, and have established themselves in a very serious sense, this is to an inestimable degree thanks to his initiative. I would especially emphasize that he organized secret concerts of modern music at great personal risk during the occupation of Paris – truly an example of a heroic mentality’ (Letter to Wolfgang Steinecke, 11 February 1955, Darmstadt International Music Institute [IMD]). Pierre Boulez took private lessons with Leibowitz from 1945 to 1947 but later turned against him and the predominance of the Schoenberg school, which Leibowitz represented in Paris.

10 10. Adorno is probably thinking of the following passage from the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit:It [the conventional opinion] does not comprehend the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive unfolding of truth, but rather sees in it simple disagreements. The bud disappears in the bursting-forth of the blossom, and one might say that the former is refuted by the latter; similarly, when the fruit appears, the blossom is shown up in its turn as a false manifestation of the plant, and the fruit now emerges as the truth of it instead. […] Yet at the same time their fluid nature makes them moments of an organic unity in which they not only do not conflict, but in which each is as necessary as the other; and this mutual necessity alone constitutes the life of the whole. (G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller [Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1977], p. 2)

11 11. The works in question are short piano pieces, songs, and a four-movement string quartet in D major (1897), which ‘can be seen as concluding the first phase of Schoenberg’s development, which followed the model of Viennese Classicism, especially Brahms’ (Josef Rufer, The Works of Arnold Schoenberg: A Catalogue of His Compositions, Writings, and Paintings [London: Faber & Faber, 1962], p. 85).

12 12. See Johannes Brahms, Four Serious Songs for bass voice and piano, op. 121 (1896).

13 13. ‘Verwandlung’, from bar 320.

14 14. Adorno means the funeral march after Siegfried’s death in Götterdämmerung, Act 3, end of scene 2.

15 15. Claude Debussy, Proses lyriques for voice and piano to texts by the composer (1892–3).

16 16. Regarding the importance of Richard Dehmel (1863–1920) for Schoenberg, see Schoenberg’s letter to the poet from 13 December 1912: ‘[…] your poems have had a decisive influence on my development as a composer. They were what first made me try to find a new tone in lyricism. Or rather, I found it even without looking, simply by reflecting in music what your poems stirred up in me’ (Schoenberg, Letters, p. 35).

17 17. Trans. Richard Stokes, from The Book of Lieder (London: Faber & Faber, 2005), pp. 281f.

18 18. Regarding the concept of ‘developing variation’, see Schoenberg, Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), p. 129.

19 19. This term in its technical usage refers to the historical song structure known as ‘bar form’, in which a stanza (the Stollen) appears twice and is followed by an unrepeated element (the Abgesang, literally ‘closing song’) (Trans.).

20 20. The word for suicide used here is Freitod, which literally means ‘free death’, in the sense of a freely chosen death (Trans.).

21 21. The Book of Lieder, p. 282.

22 22. See Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, trans. Roy E. Carter (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 175–210 (Chapter X, ‘Secondary Dominants and Other Nondiatonic Chords Derived from the Church Modes’).

23 23. See Alfred Lorenz, Das Geheimnis der Form bei Richard Wagner, Vol. 1: Der musikalische Aufbau des Bühnenfestspieles Der Ring des Nibelungen (Berlin: Max Hesse, 1924), pp. 15–52; Adorno is presumably thinking of this chapter, in which Lorenz speaks at length about the function of the unity of key.

24 24. Adorno is referring to the tenth song, ‘Das schöne Beet betracht ich mir im Harren’ [I gaze upon the beautiful flowerbed as I wait].

25 25. ‘Erhebung’ (Richard Dehmel), op. 2, no. 3.

26 26. The final song from Schoenberg’s op. 2 is entitled ‘Waldsonne’ (on a poem by Johannes Schlaf). Egon Wellesz wrote in his book Arnold Schönberg (Leipzig, Vienna and Zurich: E. P. Tal, 1921), p. 72: ‘The two other songs of this opus, “Erhebung” after Richard Dehmel and “Waldsonne” after Johannes Schlaf, are, in keeping with their literary material, far simpler than the first songs in harmonic and melodic terms. “Waldsonne” in particular, with its enchanting piano accompaniment, is among the compositions with which Schoenberg gained his first supporters in the general public.’