Comentariu realizat de Costin Tuchilă – La adresa lui Paul Hindemith

7/31/2019 Comentariu realizat de Costin Tuchil La adresa lui Paul Hindemith

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Comentariu realizat de Costin TuchilLa adresa lui Paul Hindemith, de la moartea cruia se mplinesc astzi

45 de ani, au curs valuri de reprouri.

Fr intenie, o bun parte a operei sale are o component provocatoare. Pe de o parte, subiectele alese i

tratarea lor n partiturile destinate teatrului liric confirm asemenea imagine; pe de alta, Hindemith i nsuete cu

dezinvoltur, prin aspectul general derutant al muzicii sale, eticheta de copil teribil.

Paul Hindemith n 1923

Dirijor de oper la numai 20 de ani (la Frankfurt), virtuoz al violei, compozitorul german provoca un imens scandal

n anii tulburi de dup primul rzboi mondial cu cele trei opere ntr-un act, de factur expresionist, ocante

pentru morala burghez: Morder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Uciga, sperana femeilor) pe un libret al pictorului

Oscar Kokoschka, Das Nusch-Nuschi (comedie erotic pentru marionete birmaneze) i Sancta Susanna.

Aceasta din urm, povestea unei clugrie erotomane, agit puternic spiritele n 1922,fiind necesar intervenia

poliiei pentru desfurarea spectacolului, considerat obscen. Evident, nu numai subiectele, i ele de extracie

expresionist, atrgeau scandalos atenia asupra tnrului compozitor.


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Paul Hindemith

Contestarea wagnerianismului, la mod i tentativa de eliberare a operei de orice clieu romantic mbrcau n anii

20 formele cele mai zgomotoase, asimilnd lacom elemente de jazz, muzic de cabaret, experiene atonale,

toat gama de disonane. Muzica lui Hindemith, sprgtorul de geamuri numrul unu al Germaniei muzicale,

cum l-a numit Antoine Gola, rmne n bun msur ilustrarea activ a acestor cutri din primul deceniu

postbelic.

Hindemith pulveriza violent orice regul a tonalitii, agresa brutal urechea cu disonanele s ale, era indiferent la

orice form de exprimare frumoas. Aceast obsesie a expresiei, aceast asidu cutare pndit de paradoxuri

i soluiile cele mai neateptate pe care le va gsi revoluionarul anilor 20, l -au urmrit toat viaa. Operele sale

de actualitate (Zeitoper) i aduseser proteste dintre cele mai bizare, precum cel al companiei de gaz care i

vedea atinse interesele de o arie din Neues vom Tage (tirile zilei, 1929), pe care eroina, Laura, o cnt n

baie ludnd avantajele nclzirii electrice! Opera, satir aprig a presei, mpinge estura dramatic (tribulaiileunui cuplu n pragul divorului) la grania absurdului, aspect de o modernitate subneleas, susinut de un limbaj

insolit inclusiv prin distana dintre text i muzic.


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HindemithiStravinski

Paul Hindemith (16 noiembrie 1895, Hanau 28 decembrie 1963, Frankfurt pe Main) este un spirit al contrastelor.

Iconoclast, el are totui capacitatea de a-i ngdui ntoarcerea la tradiie. Sau, poate, i acest lucru devine

modalitate protestatar. Cochetnd la nceput cu dodecafonismul, ajunge n deceniul al patrulea s-l considere

arbitrar, opunndu-i un sistem bazat pe serii armonice, cu relaii decurgnd din legile naturale, sistem pe deplin

susinut n opera din 1957, Die Harmonie der Welt (Armonia lumii), al crei personaj principal este astronomul

Kepler. Premiera mnchenez a reprezentat un eec.

Limbajul din Mathis pictorul, jucat n 1938 la Zrich, este mult mai auster, foarte ndeprtat de cel al primelor

opere.Autoritatea lui Furtwngler fusese inutil, dirijorul nereuind s o impun n 1934 la Berlin, cnd

reprezentaia a fost anulat de naziti. n urma incidentului, Furtwngler a demisionat din toate funciile. Aceast

evocare a vieii pictorului Matthias Grnewald este o muzic eminamente german, n care compozitorul revine la

surse strvechi, la teme i forme populare, la hieratismul coralului ntr-un limbaj accesibil. Fr a avea

expresivitatea unui Prokofiev sau elaborarea savant a lui Carl Orff, Hindemith nu refuz aici ntru totul tratarea

melodic. Muzica instrumental extras din Mathis der Maler, care se cnt mai des, ca i cea a baletului

Nobilissima visione, e o dovad de perfect stpnire a mijloacelor armonice pe care le elimina cu ndrj ire n

tineree. Spiritul arhaizant care culmea! i s-a reproat, acel aer sticlos i ngheat, impermeabil la dezvluireavreunei profunzimi, sunt judeci pripite.


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Nadine Weissman, Hans-Hermann ErichiMichael Baba nMathis,pictorul

n mai vechea partitur Cardillac (1926, revizuit n 1952), inspirat de o povestire de E. T. A. Hoffmann

(Domnioara de Scuderi), cu o orchestr de camer din 18 instrumente cu coarde, stilul e linear i

contrapunctic, forma baroc, tema tratat, relaia dintre artist i societate, drama creatorului devenit aproapeobsesie n Mathis, aflndu-se ntr-un subtil conflict cu formele rigide ale ariei, passacagliei, duo-ului sau cu

tehnica fugato. Dar i ntoarcerea la barocul muzical, realizat aproape n paralel cu experienele moderniste,

avea s genereze noi acuze. Hindemith fu etichetat drept reacionar. Fr a fi evreu sau comunist, se gsi n

fruntea listei artitilor degenerai, alctuit de naziti, fiind obligat s se exileze n Turcia, iar n 1940 n America.

Ultima perioad de creaie aduce i o cristalizare a limbajului, cu tot mai accentuata ndeprtare de experienele

tinereii. Epitetul de academism care i-a fost atribuit ndeosebi pentru lucrrile din ultima parte a vieii este la

rndul lui exagerat. Probabil c e un fel de compensaie pentru alura de revoluionar de la nceput i o explicaie a

izolrii din ultimii ani, a lipsei de audien a muzicii sale.

Cum am vzut, experienele muzicianului german sunt n bun msur paradoxale. n paralel cu tentaiamodernist, cu negarea violent a tradiiei, Paul Hindemith scrie muzic de camer, n care neoclasicismul este

evident. n cadrul larg al acestei orientri, vizibil la muli compozitori ai secolului XX, Hindemith ilustreaz

tendina neobaroc, ispit comun unor Stravinski, Honegger, Bartk, Martin sau ostakovici. Numai c

neobarochismul lui Hindemith vdete, la rndul su, demonstraia modern, de la asimilarea timbral la forma n

care se toarn o substan diferit de cea a muzicii baroc e.

Violist, compozitorul readuce un instrument arhaic, foarte rspndit n secolul al XVII-lea, viola damore, cu 6-7

sau 8-9 corzi, cu sunet cald i amplu. l mai folosise, n secolul al XIX-lea, Meyerbeer n Hughenoii, l-au folosit

Puccini i Prokofiev. Hindemith nu l trateaz ns ca pe o pies de muzeu, ci ca pe un instrument viu, aezndu-l

n combinaii timbrale contemporane. Primul concert din ciclul Kammermusik, op. 46 e dedicat violei damore i

unui ansamblu compus dintr-un octet de sufltori,trei violoncele i doi contrabai.


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n Septetul pentru sufltori (flaut, oboi, clarinet, clarinet bas, fagot, corn, trompet), se resimt ecouri expresioniste

rsfrnte n forme baroce. Ironia, destul de strin sensibilitii baroce, i face loc cu naturalee n aceste partituri

camerale, n care nu ntotdeauna ngemnarea timbral e plauzibil (viol i saxofon tenor n Trio op. 47).

Pentru muli comentatori, creaia cameral a lui Paul Hindemith rmne partea cea mai rezistent a operei sale,

probabil pentru c i scutete de teribilele i oarecum inexplicabilele sale cltorii ntre extreme.

domeniu:

Kurt Weill

Article by Gregg Wager

Despite the relative brevity of his life, composer Kurt Weill forged a far-reaching career that challengedthe purity of preexisting styles. As a famous German Jew, he fled Nazi Germany, fending for himself inforeign countries such as America, where versatility of styles, unlike anything in Germany, interested himthe most. That these varied styles music and theater, American and Europeanin which he workedwere (and sometimes still are) hostile to one another, places him less in the role of a unifier, and more inthe role of a crossover artist.

Many who unconditionally praise Weill's output typically pick only one of his musical personalities andcontrive ways of dismissing whatever other body of his work might offend them (whether his Germanmusic, Broadway music, lowbrow songs or highbrow works). Critics and scholars are presented aperplexing task when called upon to classify or evaluate Weill's importance to music or theater of the20thcentury, since their critical versatility rarely matches Weill's creative versatility.

As he was sometimes outspoken, attacking with flare what he declared to be outmoded prejudices, Weillprovided many quotable statements that lend support to many of his adherents, as well as hisdetractors. At other times he seemed to maneuver with stealth, using these very same prejudices tocleverly keep his career vital, nonchalantly but deftly pressing the political buttons of the internationalmusic world of the 1920s, 30s and 40s.

He was deceptively shrewd with business, socially charming, despite his shyness, and, above all, plannedeverything he did with equanimity and without impetuosity. In all these ways, he was the direct oppositeof his most famous collaborator, Bertolt Brecht.


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Early Life

Born in Dessau March 2, 1900, Kurt Julian Weill was the son of a Jewish cantor. Despite his religiousupbringing, he did not ostensibly practice Judaism throughout his life, although these roots came intosubstantial play at opportune and inopportune moments of his career.

In 1918, he traveled to Berlin and studied philosophy and music, including a brief period with the operacomposer Engelbert Humperdinck. A few years later, he took up lessons with Ferrucio Busoni, who wouldbe his primary composition teacher. During these student years, Weill worked industriously on manypurely instrumental works and songs, mostly in Post-Romantic style, as well as his first attempts atopera.

As the distinctively chaotic culture of Berlin between the wars began to thrive, Weill found his way intothe Novembergruppe, an organization of progressive artists from different disciplines that includedmusicians such as Hanns Eisler and Stefan Wolpe. In this progressive environment, Weill foundcollaborators who would help mold his innovative vision of modern music theater, including Yvan Golland Georg Kaiser (whose assistant, Lotte Lenya, became Weill's wife and a powerful force in his career).

Weill Finds Brecht / Brecht Finds Weill

While Weill was working as a writer/critic for Der Deutsche Rundfunk, he glowingly reviewed a 1927radio performance of Bertolt Brecht's Mann ist Mann. Brecht was so impressed by the review, and by thefact that a composer could have such insights into theater, that he invited Weill to dinner.

Weill must have been further enticed when Brecht presented to him a lengthy published book of poetrywith the title Bertolt Brechts Hauspostille (Bertolt Brecht's Household Breviarya reference to a work byMartin Luther). In a foldout appendix glued to the back lid of the book, notated melodies and lyrics forfive songs, known as the Mahagonny Lieder, demonstrated Brecht's interest in putting words to musicand evidenced unmistakable influence by cabaret poet and singer Frank Wedekind. In those days, Brechtcarried a guitar with him wherever he went, belting out songs, which were often in pidgin English (one ofBrecht's many prophecies was that a form of pidgin English would be the first world language). Someacquaintances even insist he was quite accomplished on the guitar.

A young composer working for Brecht named Franz Servatius Bruinier (1905-1928) is credited with firstwriting out the melodies of the Mahagonny Lieder, and an extant recital program for a vocalistsuggests he also arranged them for voice and piano, along with several other songs attributed toWeill/Brecht, including Seeruber-Jenny (Pirate Jenny) and Surabaya-Jonny. Weill claimed he neverconsidered these (or any other melodies presented to him by Brecht) when writing out his own melodiesand arrangements, but these ur-melodies by Brecht or Brecht/Bruinier are definitely the seeds fromwhich many of Weill's early theatrical songs evolved.

The origin of the word Mahagonny is unclear: one possible source is a 1922 song by Leopold Krauss -Elka and O. A. Alberts, Komm nach Mahagonne!, which was made into a hit by the Norwegian croonerHenry Erichsen; or it could have also been inspired by the Biblical city of Magog. Mahagonny, as a run-amok town in Alaska, partly symbolizes Berlin during its hyperinflation of the 1920s, but draws influencefrom Jack London's stories and Charlie Chaplin's The Goldrush (1925).

Weill added a sixth song to the Mahagonny Lieder, provided a stridently dissonant accompanimentwhile maintaining the cabaret feel, and created the first of the Brecht/Weill collaborations with thetitle Mahagonny Songspiel. The word Songspiel parodied the German tradition ofSingspiel, replacingthe word sing with the American word song.Mahagonny Songspielwas staged for the 1927Donaueschingen Festival (held in Baden-Baden that year), which was organized by Paul Hindemith andemphasized new music theater.

The relationship between Weill and Brecht was famously not a warm friendship, although Brechtfrequently avoided overt friendly contact with collaborators (with some exceptions). Nonetheless,Brecht's influence on Weill must have been enormous, from his ideas on epic theatre (i.e., an anti-escapist approach to theater attributed to Brecht's friend Erwin Piscator that allowed the audience to seestagehands and the mechanics of theater while they functioned) to the prophecies of America's cultureladen with unostentatious gangsters overtaking European culture. Later dubbed The New Objectivity

(die neue Sachlichkeit), the overall theatrical approach emphasizes gesture by the actors/singers andserved as a reaction against German Expressionism via realistic, non-distorted images (such as innewspapers). There is also a concerted attempt to put relevant social and political commentary into theproductions, no matter how old or exotic the source material is.


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Die Dreigroschenoper / The Threepenny Opera

A successful revival in London of John Gay's 1728 The Beggar's Opera caught Brecht's eye, and heinstructed his assistant, Elisabeth Hauptmann, to prepare a German translation of it. A Berlin actornamed Ernst Josef Aufricht had recently acquired a theater (Theater am Schiffbauerdamm) and offeredits premire production to Brecht. Brecht agreed and proposed the German version of The Beggar'sOpera, also insisting on discarding the original 18th-century songs and replacing them with new, originalsongs.

From this simple idea, Weill set new lyrics by Brecht to new songs (one original song from TheBeggar's Opera was retained), and they called the concoction Die Dreigroschenoper(now popularlytranslated as The Threepenny Opera, even though a Groschen is actually a dime). The overwhelmingsuccess of this 1928 production (with Lenya playing one of the minor roles) made celebrities out ofBrecht and Weill.

Unlike Mahagonny Songspiel, Weill's music in Die Dreigroschenoperdid more than demonstrate influenceby the hit songs (or Schlager) from America's then infamous Tin Pan Alley and jazz: it genuinelycreated a craze (referred to as Dreigroschenfieber or Threepenny fever). Although a simplifiedarrangement of The Alabama Song fromMahagonny Songspielwas published in sheet music form andpromoted as if it could be a hit song (it would 40 years later), many songs fromDie

Dreigroschenoperbecame hits without much promotion shortly after they were performed, especially theopening number Die Moritat von Mackie Messer, which would become one of the biggest hit songs ofthe 20th-century after both Weill and Brecht had died.

Dreigroschenfieber spread throughout Europe and spawned a popularized version of the work throughearly sound movies, including G. W. Pabst's filmed version ofDie Dreigroschenoper(1931). Elsewhere,songwriters such as Friedrich Hollnder and Rudolf Nelson wrote popular songs for singers such asMarlene Dietrich, creating a culture that the Nazis referred to as Jewish Bolshevism. At least one ofthese famous singers, Kurt Gerron, who played Tiger Brown in the original cast ofDie Dreigroschenoper,was murdered along with his family in Auschwitz in 1944. [He had been forced to direct the infamousTheresienstadt propaganda movie for the Nazis.]

Brecht/Weill and Beyond

The next Brecht/Weill collaboration, Happy End, utilizes less music than Die Dreigroschenoper, but isstylistically similar. An attempt to expand the Mahagonny Lieder into a full-length opera, Der Aufsteigund Fall der Stadt Mahagonny(The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny), met with many obstacles,including ongoing demonstrations by the Nazis. A radio cantata called Der Lindberghflug and a schoolopera in two versions based on Japanese Noh drama (Der Jasager/Der Neinsager) were collaborations ona smaller scale.

Despite Weill's plunge into his own sophisticated version of popular music, he apparently still held on toambitions of being a more conventional opera composer. While still in Berlin, he composed such anopera, Die Brgschaft, working with Brecht's childhood friend and scenic designer Caspar Neher (withwhose wife, Erika, Weill was having an open affair).

Georg Kaiser's and Weill's Die Silbersee is more a musical, but Weill also considered it an opera. Onemonth after its simultaneous opening in three different German cities in 1933, Weill decided to leaveGermany for Paris with little more than a suitcase.

In Paris, Weill collaborated again with Brecht in a ballet chant (i.e., a ballet with singing) called Diesieben Todsnden (The Seven Deadly Sins), starring dancer Tilly Losch and Weill's then estranged wifeLenya. The production served as part of the first and only season of George Balanchine's short-livedtroupe known as Les Ballets.

The widely held myth that Weill's relationship with Brecht had by this time deteriorated beyond repair isnot consistent with the evidence that they stayed in contact for the rest of Weill's life (Brecht outlivedhim by only six years). In fact, they would make another attempt to collaborate one evening in 1943 atWeill's house with Schweyk in the Second World Warand The Good Woman of Setzuan.

Weill's American Career


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Weill arrived in New York City in 1935, expecting to only work on one gigantic pageant of Judaism withthe title The Eternal Road. The enormous Meyer Weisgal production brought together a dream team ofdirector Max Reinhardt, librettist Franz Werfel and Weill.

Because of its huge scope, The Eternal Roadmet with many financial and production setbacks, and Weillhad a chance to settle into New York and rub elbows with some of the most influential Americantheatrical talents of that time. By the timeThe Eternal Roadbegan its limited run in 1937, Weill hadalready premired on Broadway his first American collaboration,Johnny Johnson, with playwright PaulGreen (produced by the Group Theatre, led by Cheryl Crawford, Lee Strasbourg, and Harold Clurman).

His friendship with writer Maxwell Anderson (who would also become Weill's neighbor) ledto Knickerbocker Holiday(1938), which included the hit September Song. A collaboration with MossHart and Ira Gershwin earned him a genuine Broadway hit with Lady in the Dark(1941), followed byanother hit with Ogden Nash and S. J. Perelman, One Touch of Venus (1943), at a time when the mostrenowned Broadway musicals, such asOklahoma! and South Pacific, were becoming standard fare. Someof the more successful late Weill productions includedStreet Scene (1947), Love Life (1948) and Lost inthe Stars(1949).

Weill's Posthumous Career

When Weill died of a heart ailment one month after his 50 thbirthday (3 April 1950), his legacy and estatewent into the hands of Lenya, who continued to nurture his career up until her death in 1981.Unexpected prosperity came in 1954 with an English-language version in New York City ofBrecht/Weill's The Threepenny Opera, with help (including a stylish translation) from composer MarcBlitzstein. This production distinguishes itself as one of a handful of productions that became thecornerstone of the phenomenon known as Off-Broadway. A few years later, Louis Armstrong made thesong Mack the Knife into a hit single, followed by a version by Bobby Darrin (1959) that became one ofthe most famous Grammy-winning hits of all time. Many American television and movie stars, includingJerry Ohrbach, Bea Arthur, Jerry Stiller, and Ed Asner, appeared in this Off-Broadway production,which ran at the Theatre de Lys (today, the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Greenwich Village) for almost adecadeone of the longest running shows in New York City history.

Some other cultural barrier crisscrossing addenda to Weill's career include the fact that Lenya starred asthe villain Rosa Klebb in the James Bond film From Russia With Love (1963) and was no doubt theinspiration for the female villain Frau Farbissina in comedian Mike Myers's successfulAustin Powerstrilogyof movies (1997, 1999 and 2002). In 1967, The Doors recorded a simplified version of Brecht/Weill's

Alabama Song which became a big hit, inspiring other rock stars to cover the song including DavidBowie and Marilyn Manson.

In many ways, Weill had just as much, if not more, influence on the second half of the 20th-century thanthe first. This influence is still widely taken for granted.

Crossover and Its Confusion Xenophobia between European and American cultures inevitably produceoversimplified viewpoints of Weill's music, whether assessing it positively or negatively: the Germans(especially Berliners) tend to look upon his American career as less important; and many Americans(especially New Yorkers, such as author Foster Hirsch) insist his German career is less important thanwhat he did on Broadway. In a similar way, the traditional rift between high and low culture (which in

Germany is commonly specified as E-Kultur and U-Kultur) is illustrated, for instance, by opera puristslooking down at Weill's work as selling out to popular culture, and pop culture purists often treating thenotion of high culture altogether as some sort of malicious snobbery. Such oversimplifications suffernot only from myopia, but double-vision: a clichd two-Weills approach to assessing his career iscommon.

Included in this confusion is how to classify Weill's innovative theatrical works in light of the fact thatuniversal definitions of opera and musical do not exist. Weill himself called Street Scene an

American opera almost as a nuance to distinguish or elevate it.

Michael Feingold, drama critic for The Village Voice, calls Weill the most influential composer of the[20th] century, and this goes beyond a theater critic's admiration of Weill's indispensable contribution tothe Off-Broadway scene in New York. Feingold uses Weill to articulate the view of many pop culture

enthusiasts that, in the 20

th

century, American pop culture became the heir of European classical musicof the 18th and 19th centuries within a universal musical language that resonates with and withinimportant historical events.


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More doctrinaire critiques, such as Virgil Thompson's, have dismissed Weill's work as dabbling in popularmusic, although Thompson typically mitigates this with guardedly positive statements about Weill'smusic. Weill's own composition teacher Ferruccio Busoni, despite their close friendship and mutualadmiration, criticized Weill's work in music theater as a poor man's Giuseppe Verdi. Theodor Adornodismissed Weill altogether as a mere tunesmith and arranger.

Kim Kowalke, who has served as the President of the Kurt Weill Foundation since Lenya's death in 1981,strongly asserts that Weill's significance lies beyond his collaboration with Brecht. He further points outthat all of Weill's works are some sort of hybrid, unrelated to one another. He points to DieBrgschaftand Street Scenes as Weill's true legacy as an opera composer.

In all these ways, assessing and reassessing Weill throughout the years produces many differingopinions. Perhaps the difficult task of fairly assessing Weill's career as a whole will never yield a definitiveview. If the multifarious culture of the 20th-century requires such a versatile crossover artist, thenperhaps Weill is a quintessential representative of this era. Undoubtedly, much of his versatility rested inhis ability to adapt, something many of his fellow German migrs could not do as well.

Comentariu realizat de Costin Tuchilă – La adresa lui Paul Hindemith

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