"Courage has grown so tired, and longing so great."

I recently promised to devote special attention on this site to Entartete Musik (music deemed “degenerate” in the Third Reich).

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My first subject is the Czech/German composer Viktor Ullmann, a student of Schoenberg, a conducting protege of Zemlinsky, and a leader of musical life in the Terezin concentration camp before being murdered in Auschwitz in September 1944.

Holde Kunst’s Ullmann Resource Guide is still taking shape, but I wanted to offer this unique preview from my YouTube travels.

This production of ARBOS - Company for Music and Theater is presented at the former frontline of World War I (a frequent source material for Ullmann) between Italy and Austria at the Valentinalm near the Plöckenpass. In This video clip Rupert Bergmann performs the character of the Cornet and Alfred Melichar performs the music of Ullmann on the accordion (from the YouTube listing)

Video: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke

(The Lay of Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke) - Excerpt

Spoken song cycle by Viktor Ullmann · Text by Rainer Maria Rilke · Written 1944 in Terezin

Listen to Whole Cycle Free

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau speaks the Ullmann-Rilke cycle on his album “Melodramas”.

Get the German and English for all five movments

here

.

Text for video excerpt

im Falle sein Bruder Christoph (der nach beigebrachtem Totenschein als Cornet in der Compagnie des Freiherrn von Pirovano des kaiserl. Oesterr. Heysterschen Regiments zu Ross …. verstorben war) zurückkehrt….

Reiten, reiten, reiten, durch den Tag, durch die Nacht, durch den Tag. Reiten, reiten, reiten. Und der Mut ist so müde geworden und die Sehnsucht so groß. Es gibt keine Berge mehr, kaum einen Baum. Nichts wagt aufzustehen. Fremde Hütten hocken durstig an versumpften Brunnen. Nirgends ein Turm. Und immer das gleiche Bild. Man hat zwei Augen zuviel. Nur in der Nacht manchmal glaubt man den Weg zu kennen. Vielleicht kehren wir nächtens immer wieder das Stück zurück, das wir in der fremden Sonne mühsam gewonnen haben? Es kann sein. Die Sonne ist schwer, wie bei uns tief im Sommer. Aber wir haben im Sommer Abschied genommen. Die Kleider der Frauen leuchteten lang aus dem Grün. Und nun reiten wir lang. Es muß also Herbst sein. Wenigstens dort, wo traurige Frauen von uns wissen. 

In the case of his brother Christopher (who, according to the death certificate, was killed while serving as a Cornet in the Compagnie des barons of Pirovano The kaiserl. Oesterr. Heysterschen cavalry regiment

…. Riding, Riding, Riding, through the day, through the night, through the day. Riding, riding, riding. And courage has grown so tired, and longing so great. There are no more mountains, hardly a tree. Nothing dares to stand up. Foreign huts squat thirstily at muddied wells. Nowhere a tower. And always the same picture. One finds that one has two eyes too many. Only at night does one sometimes believe one knows the way. Perhaps at night we always return to the stretch of road that we gained so painfully under the foreign sun? It may be. The sun is heavy, as it is during the depth of our summer. But it was summer when we took our leave. The dresses of the women shimmered for a long time among the green. And now we are riding along. So it must be Autumn. At least in the place where sad women know of us.

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What's So Degenerate About Korngold?

While blogging about Renee Fleming’s performance of “Ich ging zu ihm,” I mentioned in passing that Korngold’s opera was considered Entartete Musik (“degenerate music”). What does this mean? 

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Entartete (“degenerate” or “decadent” in English) was Nazi epithet for art and music the regime considered objectionable for racial or ideological reasons. Korngold, as a Jewish composer, was automatically in this category, but race was not the only way to be designated decadent. Ties with Jewish friends and colleagues would do it, as Anton Webern (somewhat a Hitler supporter in the early years) would learn. Content (like the black characters in Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf) would do it. Being too modern or too jazzy (i.e. “African”) qualified as well. (See our recommended books.)

The Nazi campaign against many of its best musicians was part of a larger, more notorious campaign against modern art, which in 1937 climaxed in a multi-city exhibition of “degenerate” art selected from thousands of pieces stolen from museums. The following year, an exhibit on degenerate music opened in Düsseldorf. An image of the Entartete Musik exhibition catalog can seen here. (Warning: it’s pretty offensive.)

Decca released an Entartete Musik CD series beginning in the 1990s, with special emphasis on more rarely performed works.  

“From a purely musical point of view, the “Entartete Musik” series has, with unanimous international critical acclaim, brought back to life more than 30 forgotten key works from the first half of this century by composers such as Braunfels, Goldschmidt, Haas, Korngold, Krása, Krenek, Ullmann and Waxman. These recordings may help the listener imagine what the musical life in Europe was before its destruction by the Nazis, and what it might have been if these great branches had not been abruptly cut off.” (Decca press release)

Korngold was among the lucky ones — he made it to Hollywood and wrote several popular film scores. But some of the composers mentioned in this Decca press release (Pavel Haas, Hans Krása, Viktor Ullman) died in the Holocaust.  I will try to get together a list of the “degenerate” composers and performers along with their main works and fates. For now, I just have a great

reading list on degenerate music