James Cagney in Shakespeare : Midsummer Night's Dream Hollywood

James Cagney in Shakespeare? And Mickey Rooney, Olivia de Havilland and Dick Powell too, in  A Midsummer Night's Dream, the movie (1935). Shakespeare's text was cut and adapted. Mendelssohn's music revised by Erich Korngold, and extra dance sequences added, by Nijinsky's sister Bronislava.  Huge money was thrown behind the production, and all the state of the art technical resources Warner Brothers could muster.  This  was Midsummer Night's Dream as Hollywood musical extravaganza. It's compelling and repelling at the same time. Shakespeare kitsch, but kitsch on such a grand, audacious scale that you have to keep watching.  What a pity this was made in black and white and not in gaudy Technicolor !

On the other hand the special effects are so clearly "home made" that their very crudity is part of the charm.   Surfaces are splashed all over with reflecting fragments which sparkle "fairy dust". everywhere to distract the eye. The cameras lenses are heavily greased to soften focus  and many close-ups are lit from behind to soften detail.  This magic forest was clearly made in the studio workshops. The fairies are chorus girls, heavier on the hoof than ballerinas might be. But in its own gauche way this movie captures some of the wide-eyed naivety which Shakespeare found in the rude mechanicals. No one seriously believes the Wall is a Wall!

Once someone told me that he couldn't watch Shakespeare unless the costumes were "authentic" . Shakespeare and his audience would have thought he was a fool. They walked around in costumes as part of their normal lives. When they went to the theatre, they used their minds and imaginations.  The spartan simplicity of theatre practice in Shakespeare's own time is more "authentic" than glammed-up excess. In the past, audiences were accustomed to conceptual thinking, because they studied the classics and had an idea of Greek drama. They also went to church and understood the role of symbolism. Audiences now expect the literalism of TV costume drama. More than ever, we need Shakespeare's Midsummers Night's Dream to remind us of the interplay between art and reality, between outward appearances and inner meaning. Which is why it's worth watching the Hollywood Midsummers Night's Dream.  Bottom and his friends are workmen who don't know much about art, but they're funny because they improvise. Warner Brothers set out to make a 1930's extravaganza that would cost money, make money and establish their high-art credentials.  So this movie achieves Shakespeare's aims, despite itself.

So back to the actors. Victor Jory's Batman cape acts a more convincing Oberon than he does and Anita Louise is more tat than Tatiana, and her singing cuts like a rusty razor blade. Shakespeare's poetry gets so mangled that you're glad the text gets cut to breaks where armies of extras run in long lines, pretending to be fairies. Hordes of kids and dwarves (that Hollywood speciality).  Dick Powell was a matinee idol, and Olivia de Havilland box office hot, so the directors (Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle) make more of Lysander and Hermia than they might have otherwise. Mickey Rooney was 15 when he played Puck, so something of his child star impishness enlivens his acting.  When he stumbles on words, and over-exaggerates, he creates a suitably Puckish waywardness. James Cagney, though, is a wonderfully earthy Bottom. The other actors ham their way through the poetry and make it sound arch. Cagney's delivery feels like Bottom's natural growl. Bottom as con man and gangster who fools the toffs - yes, indeed! And gets fooled himself in the process. Did he realize how well he played this part?

As for the music, the sound quality on the recording is so bad that it kills a lot. Since I like Korngold,  I like the blend of corn and gold in this soundtrack, with its twittering decorations  and glamorous flourishes.  Korngold writes authentic Hollywood, and very much created the style, even before he left Vienna.  He was interested in movies even before sound.  I need a fix of echt Mendelssohn to clear my ears after watching this movie, but a fix of sugar is a guilty treat.  Below, the trailer, which  says loads about the philosophy behind this film. It is embarrassingly close to the values of present-day opera audiences.

Korngold Die tote Stadt Vogt Nylund Eiche Marzena Diakun

Erich Korngold's Die tote Stadt in Paris last night. The principals, Klaus Florian Vogt, Camilla Nylund, and Markus Eiche have been doing this opera together for at least five years, in many cities and usually with Mikko Franck as conductor. The photo above comes from the production by Kasper Holten which is rather good. Those who've been following this cast on their progress of Die tote Stadt across Europe will have had a good idea of what to expect, and the performance delivered well. A very enjoyable evening!

Mikko Franck was unable to appear last night, so the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France was conducted instead by Marzena Diakun. The OPRF chose Franck as their chief conductor because he's wonderful. Together they're a formidable team.  Franck has chronic health problems, so they're also wise to support him with an an interesting alternative conductor in  Marzena Diakun  Read more about her HERE.   Die tote Stadt is a challenge to conduct, predicating as it does on an unsettling dichotomy between lush chromatics and something more disturbing.The music is so beautiful that it can hypnotise. Paul is a psychological vampire, feeding on necrophiliac obsession. But it's not healthy!  His friend Frank recoils in horror.  Perhaps it's significant that the roles of Frank and Fritz are taken by the same singer, for Marietta and the theatre troupe jolt Paul back into the real world.  It's not hard to read the undercurrents. Julius Korngold was a domineering father who perhaps expected to shape his son in his own image. Erich didn't rebel outright, but did his own thing resolutely, marrying a woman his father didn't like, and moving to America not as an exile but because he saw where his destiny might lie. Father and son jointly wrote the libretto for the opera, under a shared pseudonym, but it's pretty clear who holds the real balance of power. Paul goes forwards, not back.

A conductor can luxuriate in the luscious Old Vienna harmonies, but ultimately almost Expressionist tensions propel the music forward. We hear the bells of Bruges toll, ominously, as if the city and its traditions were falling down on Paul, as if to suffocate him. But the finale with its brave, bold cadences suggests that Paul is waking from the psychic fog that envelops his mind.  Diakun is good - she'd hardly have that job if she wasn't - and though she's no match for Metzmacher, Franck and others, she knows that Die tote Stadt isn't regressive, but modern. Please also see my other posts on Korngold, including Into the Soul of Erich Korngold, written just over seven years ago. 

Prom Queens : Korngold Symphony Prom 31 Rubbra Bruch

Prom31 on the theme of Queens: Walton, Rubbra, Bruch and Korngold's only symphony. John Storgårds conducted the BBC Philharmonic.

Korngold's Symphony in F sharp major was completed in 1952, having germinated over a period of five years. Ostensibly it was dedicated to the memory of President Roosevelt, but there's little in the music that would really suggest that. Far stronger though is the connection with Korngold's career in film. Korngold's symphony doesn't sound like a symphony despite ts formal structure. It's so dramatic that it sounds like music for the grandest, most dramatic film imaginable.  Until fairly recently, film music wasn't considered to be as serious as formal classical music, although most composers wrote for film, including Hanns Eisler, who was in so many ways Korngold's mirror opposite. Movie music is nothing to be ashamed about unless it's bad (and much of it is) but Korngold was highly original.

The first movement is jagged and angular, stabbing string, mysterious winds, turbulent "winds and sails" that remind us of Seahawk, Sea Wolf and Robin Hood, and specifically with The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) which starred Bette Davis (pictured) and Errol Flynn, for whom Korngold was to write some of his finest work. Elizabeth was growing old, terrified of losing her chance of love, but she has Essex executed because it is her duty. It's true film noir, despite the gaudy costumes. In the Adagio, we move to quieter scenes, where we pay attention to fine details, just as we might observe in a film. This movement has been described in programmatic terms suggesting references to Bruckner and Roosevelt, but strictly speaking thus is not relevant. It stands on its own perfectly well as echt Korngold. And there's a "happy ending". The long finale is expansive, extended lines suggesting vast horizons, leading away from the turbulence that has passed. It's glorious. Storgårds gave it an incisive, inspired performance that did justice to the drama in the score. Interestingly, Storgårds has extensive experience in contemporary music.There are many forms of "modern" music. The myth that everything is pro or contra Schoenberg is nonsense.

Elizabeth fell in love with Essex because he was a flatterer. But she was too good a queen to let him turn her head. Bear that clearly in mind when listening to Walton's March "Orb and Sceptre", and to Edmund Rubbra's Ode to the Queen, both written for the coronation of Elizabeth II. Walton's piece is facile, hardly his most serious work. Rubbra's Ode is more ambitious with three movements on a grand scale, designed to be a showpiece. Years ago Susan Bickley recorded it with Richard Hickox. She gave a good performance, but still not quite enough to rescue it from its self-conscious lack of spirit. When Rubbra's music was fashionable a few years ago someone described it as being "like brown linoleum". Rubbra died only 27 years ago but his music was dated even when it was new. Perhaps our present Queen Elizabeth was as sharp as her predecessor. Instead of commissioning a composer from the established Old Guard, the honour went to Benjamin Britten. Gloriana operates on two levels, first as a retelling of the story of Elizabeth and Essex and more pointedly as a satire of sycophancy and falsehood. (read more here) The Establishment just couldn't get it. Britten wasn't mocking the Queen but paying her the  compliment by suggesting she, too,  was smart enough to see through bluff.

Vilde Frang played Bruch's lovely Violin Concerto no 1. I enjoyed it a lot but I'll leave it to violin people to write about.

Hollywood's Midsummer Night's Dream Korngold

Not Shakespeare, not Mendelssohn but Hollywood's Midsummer Night's Dream. Great play, great music and the hottest stars of the day? Could the combination fail to succeed? Midsummer Night's Dream the movie (1935) combined classics with film technology attempts to create the ultimate Gesamtkunstwerk. What a pity they din't have colour or computer animation! This is a film that screams excess. Everything's pumped up. The Duke's wedding takes place in a vast baroque palace, attended by rows of Indian Princes in turbans. The Mechanicals seem more out of place than ever.

Hollywood's Midsummer Night's Dream is a strange beast which, despite its ambition, is very much a portrait of the time and place in which it was made. Dick Powell plays Lysander, for example. He was a matinee idol and a crooner, usually cast as a romantic lead who could do comedy, too. Hear him sing tunes from Mendelssohn. Because he was a such a star, the film lingers on his part more than strictly necessary. It's hard to square Powell's persona with a subordinate part: he looks and moves like a 30's screen idol. I don't think he was miscast. He's hilarious and almost steals the show.Demetrius and Helena  barely register.

 Powell's  Hermia is Olivia de Havilland. She was being groomed for stardom, so this film was her big breakthrough. The camera loves her, and her face glows, but her lines are delivered with such campiness it's hard to imagine her passionate Scarlett in Gone with the Wind, or 30 years later, Hush, hush sweet Charlotte. Puck is no other than Mickey Rooney. It's perhaps the strangest role ion his career, but he's perfect - ugly and barbaric but athletic. He makes the corny dialogue sound anarchic. He was only 15 at the time. The Mechanicals are so fake they're embarrassing.

It wouldn't be fair to blame the wooden acting on Max Reinhardt who directed in German. He was an important Weimar director and knew his Shakespeare. Something must have got lost in translation. In any case, Shakespeare was augmented by scriptwriters who ratcheted up the dialogue, adding extras in fake archaic style that ruin the flow of Shakespeare's original. Mendelssohn doesn't escape either. Not only do we get music from his Midsummer Night's Dream, we get extracts from the Scottish and Italian Symphonies and extra snippets which are pure Eric Korngold.  To throw us off still further, the Mendelssohn parts are radically re-orchestrated and clumsily played,

But this Midsummer Night's Dream is fun because it's a thirties Hollywood musical through and through. Authenticity doesn't come into the equation. Instead, we see special effects that must have been state of the art at the time. The forest is a Maxfield Parrish fantasy of undergrowth and elongated verticals. Oberon and his cohorts are clothed in myriad tinsel lights, shining like Xmas trees.  Tatyana's hair is backlit so it shines like a golden halo. Pure 30's glamour shot! The fairies fly on hidden guy ropes. Some are played by ballerinas, who dance in formation like chorus girls. No finesse in the dancing, even though the ballet was choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska, Nijinsky's sister. In 30's style, the film gave employment to dozens of dwarves. Some, however, are costumed as monstrous grotesques. But Oberon's minions can be sinister. As Bottom discovers, the night unleashes ugliness as well as dreams.

Korngold Die tote Stadt - rare first recording

There aren't nearly as many recording of Erich Korngold's Die tote Stadt as there should be, because it's an intriguing opera.   The recording most people know is the 1975 version conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, with René Kollo amd Carol Neblett. But here is the first full recording from 1952  Erich Lehmann conducts the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and chorus.

Maud Cunitz (1911-87) sings Marie/Marietta. She's a Wagnerian soprano of the old school. The role presents horribly difficult challenges which few manage properly Even when she has to leap way above the stave she doesn't sound shrill. The voice soars into the stratosphere. This Marie/Marietta is so extreme, yet so warm, that she seems like something from another world, which she is, to Paul. For a change, the "dream sequence" premise feels completely convincing.  Her Glück, das mir verblieb is as good as Lotte Lehmann (if possible). No-one else comes remotely near.

Karl Friedrich (1905-81) also has little difficulty with the tessitura but sound emotionally engaged. Richard Tauber was more beautiful, but he wasn't singing the whole opera when he recorded his excerpts. Friedrich keeps the intensity up throughout. Indeed, it's because he's so intense that he creates Paul as a complex personality, trapped in in toxic impasse. One feels his frustration, and the wildness of the alternative Marietta presents.

Orchestrally, this recording is hard to fault. Exquisite richness, lushness tinged with intense feeling. The delicate traceries which might evoke water, or shimmering reflections are magical. Bruges feels like an unspoken presence in this recording, and not just in the obvious moments like the bells: but as a spirit, at once hypnotic and suffocating.  There's nothing retrogressive about this music as it connects to the soundworld of its period,  and the emotional pathology that fascinated people at the time.  Korngold was very young when he wrote Die tote Stadt,  but the music already sounds like the mature Korngold, but with a psychological complexity beyond his years. Especially in this recording, you can imagine Schreker and Berg, still, in 1952, part of the living memory of performers and audiences. For an early postwar recording, sound quality is extremely clear, much more alive than Leinsdorf. Radio broadcasts like this were often done live. Certainly this has the immediacy of something happening in real time.

Then there's interpretation. Is this possibly a psychological portrait of the composer and his dominant father. or can it be heard as a statement of a rapidly changing society and its effects on music?  Perhaps the Korngold family's friends were onto something when they suggested the subject. Julius Korngold didn't give up control easily, and wrote the libretto, his presence, like the portrait of Marie, bearing down on his teenaged son. Erich Korngold acknowledges the glorious past, even as far back as Meyerbeer, but with special regard for the music of his father's era. Nonetheless, like Paul, he seems to know that survival means heading for uncharted territory. Already in Die tote Stadt, we can hear a foretaste of how he would make his name. Film was the avant garde art form of the 20th century, and Erich Korngold embraced it almost from the start. And in doing so, he helped create a completely new genre in music. Like Paul, Erich Korngold did move forward.

There's a lot on this site about Korngold and music of the period, and also about film and music for film. Please see Bruges la morte 1 and 2,  Also, Into the soul of Erich Korngold and much else, including music for film, experimental and Weimar movies, other downloads etc.

Erich Korngold Die Kathrin - rare clips

Many thanks to Brendan Carroll for these clips from Erich Korngold's last opera Kathrin.  They come from an extremely rare recording issued only in Austria, featuring a Viennese tenor Walter Anton Dotzer. This Serenade comes from near the beginning, when Francois, the hero, serenades Kathrin outside her bedroom window. .Gorgeous set piece but the story isn't quite as simple as it sounds. The opera is set in 1930 for one thing, in the "present", and the subject is not quite as sugary as one might assume. Interestingly, the librettist is Ernst Decsey, Hugo Wolf's devoted follower and first biographer.

Kathrin is a servant and Francois is a soldier. He seduces her by moonlight and ships out, as soldiers do.  She gets pregnant and loses her job - grim reality. As happens to destitute girls, she ends up in dangerous situations, which involve lust, deception and murder. Francois turns up unexpectedly - he's now a freelance musician.  He thinks she's killed the villain and goes to jail on her behalf. Years later he's free and goes wandering in the mountains and sings the Wanderer Lied below. He gets a job serenading a woman who turns out to be Kathrin ! All's well after all.  Please see my numerous other posts on Korngold and related composers.

Roderick Williams Korngold Mahler Wigmore Hall

Roderick Williams and Helmut Deutsch gave an interesting programme last week at the Wigmore Hall, London. I didn't go (I was at Eschenbach) but my friends did. Here's a review in Opera Today. Roddy as they call him, sings English par excellence and took a while to perfect singing in German but now he's mature and has the idiom right. Lots more to singing Mahler than just sounds. Read about his early Mahler concert a few years ago and above all his English song. No-one but no-one does English better than he. Butterworth, Finzi, Elgar, etc etc follow labels

Horenstein conducts Korngold Violanta

Thanks to Brendan Carroll, Korngold's biographer: "An unreleased and unknown test recording of the climactic love duet Reine Liebe (Pure Love) from Korngold's early and highly precocious opera VIOLANTA . It features the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jascha Horenstein."

"The recording presents the orchestra alone (no voices) and was made on June 2, 1965 at the Kingsway Hall, London. This gorgeous music is one of the most remarkable examples of Korngold's prodigious gifts, a sumptuously erotic duet by a teenage composer (he was not quite 17) who had barely experienced his first kiss, let alone the passion depicted here."

"The Prelude and Carnival music (from the same sessions) was briefly available on an LP from Quintessence in the early 1980s, but this unique performance of Reine Liebe was not included."

Insightful Mahler 7 Metzmacher Prom 34

Interpretively, Mahler's Seventh Symphony is intriguing. Ingo Metzmacher's Mahler 7 at Prom 34 penetrates depths rarely accessed. If "a symphony contains the world", contradiction is fundamental. Metzmacher goes straight for the contradiction and reveals so much about the innate nature of Mahler's idiom that it bears thoughtful, careful relistening.

Of all Mahler’s symphonies, Symphony no 7 is controversial because there are many scattered clues as to its interpretation, some wildly conflicting. It 's emotionally ambivalent,  hence the variations in performance practice. This is not a symphony where “received wisdom” has any place.

The opening bars were inspired by the sound of oars, on a boat being rowed across a lake. Immediately an idea of duality is established,  bassoons paired with horns, their music echoed by strings and lighter winds. The "oars" gently give way to a slow march which will later develop in full, manic force. If the horns sounded slightly sour, this was no demerit, for distortion pervades this whole symphony, where all is heard under cover of night. Beneath the gentle surface flow disturbing undercurrents.

Metzmacher conducts with real aplomb, rather, I suspect, like Mahler did himself (see picture). He smiles, and rounds his fist in huge, expansive gestures, and the musicians  respond with richer, rounder playing.

Despite the nightmare aspects of this symphony, humour keeps breaking through.  Cowbells in a sophisticated orchestra? Perhaps Mahler is reminding us that life is about other things than being too serious. Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin's cowbells are wonderfully resonant, truly Wunderhorn-like, evoking associations, either from some recess in Mahler's memory, or from his earlier works (which is why knowing Mahler's whole output assists appreciation of individual works). Yet this nostalgia is neither cosy, nor comforting. The sharp pizzicatos, dark harp chords and almost jazz-like dissonances are meant to disturb, and the DSO Berlin players do them with whip-like savagery.  This is “night music” after all, the stuff of dreams and nightmares. Resolution is not going to come until the blazing end, when the work is complete.

Just as the first and last movements form an infrastructure, the core of the symphony is the scherzo Schattenhaft, literally “shadow-like”.  This is no gemütlich Viennese waltz but one which harks back to a much more ancient, and darker, concept of dance as of demonic possession. It reflects the subversive Dionysian aspects of the 3rd Symphony. The strings, of course, take pride of place. Remember Freund’ Hein, the fiddler of death, though death is by no means the only interpretation in this bipolar symphony.  Metzmacher lulls us with the gentler aspects of this music, so the eerier depths sound all the more unsettling. Just as in the best horror stories, the scariest bits are those you can’t quite identify at first.

The famous horn dialogues of Nachtmusik 1 exemplify the contrasts that run throughout this symphony. Mahler shifts from major to minor, from upfront, blazing fanfares to shadowy cowbells heard from a distance. Strident trombone calls contrast with intricate trills in the strings. In contrast, the mandolin and guitar of Nachtmusik 2 are embedded in the orchestra, so they arise even more mysteriously into the consciousness,  as if from a distance. They function much as the cowbells did before. Metzmacher makes the connection.

Thus the contrast with massed strings. But the simplicity is sympathetically reinforced by a superb solo by the orchestra's Leader (Wei Lu). The humble troubador's music is private, not meant to be heard by the slumbering masses, a "ferne Klang". The first violin, however, makes it clear how important the image is. Then the cellos pick up the concept, their deeper, more sophisticated sounds echoing the mandolin and guitar. The Rondo-finale is magnificent, but Metzmacher and his players understand the crucial human-scale pathos that runs beneath.

And what a finale Metzmacher creates! its fanfares, alarums and crashing percussion drive away the ambiguities of the Nachtmusiks like brilliant sunshine drives away the shadows of the night. Dominant major keys return. The solemn march of the first movement becomes a blitzkrieg stampeding wildly forwards. The deceptive patterns of Rondo repeats seem to contradict the forward flow, until, at the end, the trajectory surges forth again, triumphant.

This final movement is carefully scored with no less than seven ritornellos and several secondary themes. Trumpets, drums and bells normally evoke sounds of triumph, but what is really in this triumph? Not bluster, according to Metzmacher, for his Mahler isn't brutalist. Contradictions again. He keeps control of the intricate architecture even when the music explodes in exuberance. A Messiaen dawn chorus, each bird distinctly clear in the cacophony.

This turbulent, life-enhancing energy is more indicative of Mahler’s personality than conventional wisdom allows. Dionysus, the god Pan, the subversive Lord of Misrule has broken loose again, intoxicated with love of life.

Easily this was the finest Mahler Prom this season, though there hasn't been any real competition. It's probably not a "first Mahler", since it's not superficial and needs a basic understanding of the composer's work as a whole, but there is a lot in it, and it's a genuine contribution to Mahler performance practice.

Metzmacher has long championed "suppressed music", composers banned by the Nazis for various reasons. His approach is important, because he hears the music in its true beauty. My friend and I had come for Franz Schreker's Der ferne Klang – Nachtstück. Wonderfully lustrous performance, the strings particularly luminous. This matters, for Der ferne Klang is a much deeper opera than its plot might suggest. "The Distant Sound"  is literally heard from afar as it's played offstage by an invisible musician. It's seductive, ravishing, hypnotic but dangerous, for the composer who hears it sacrifices all.

Although the opera has just been premiered in the US, it's had quite a few performances in recent years in Europe.  Indeed, Metzmacher conducted the whole opera earlier this year, please read a review in Die Welt. There is a lot more to Schreker than ultra-late Romantic, the cliché which he's been saddled with. Please see what else I've written about Schreker for example Die Gezeichneten, and Der Geburtstag der Infantin) him, and come back because I'll be doing more, esp on Christophorus.

The Royal Alberrt Hall went wild for Leonidas Kavakos because he's wonderful. He took three bows and did an encore. But I'd come for Korngold's Violin Concerto, and Kavakos exceeded all expectations. He brings out its European intensity, very rigorous, incisive playing. Because Kavakos treats it stringently as the serious music it really is, you appreciate how interesting Korngold really was, behind the surface glamour of Hollywood.

Korngold improvises Wagner

For a change Erich Korngold didn't write the music for the film Magic Fire, a biopic of Richard Wagner. But he adapted Wagner's music for the film, and played it on piano. Because he really knew how to conduct he could coach the star, and act the part of Hans Richter. The CD is a compilation of different bits of Wagner adapted for the film by Korngold, no dialogue, no actors. Korngold plays five pieces himself, transcribed freely for piano. For example a bit where "Wagner" plays Der fliegende Holländer to Meyerbeer, and then a bit of Tristan und Isolde. It's so lush, I want to see it in full technicolor. Imagine, Peter Cushing as Otto Wesendonck. 

One of the things I like about Erich as opposed to his father, Julius, was that he didn't seem to take himself too seriously. Here he is playing around with his masterpiece Pierrots Lied from Die tote Stadt

Eleven year old's opera premieres in Vienna

Eleven-year-old Erich Korngold wrote Der Schneeman, which was premiered this month 100 years ago in a version for two pianos and dancers. Aged 13, he played one of the pianos. It caught the attention of the Emperor Franz Josef who ordered a fully orchestrated version to be created for the Hofopernhaus. where it was played by the Vienna Philharmonic in October 1910   Read more HERE

and below
a snippet
from an even earlier Korngold piece written aged 6 !

Vienna to Weimar - Song recital

The real star of this recital at Kings Place on 27th January, part of the Vienna to Weimar week, was Erik Levi, who compiled the excellent programme. It was erudite and intelligent, an excellent introduction to that era in song. You can replicate the recital with recordings. It's almost impossible to describe the programme fully here, but maybe this will give some background.

Starting with Franz Schreker's Die feurige Männlein put the whole theme of Vienna to Weimar in context. It's a violent, dissonant song about a horseman cloaked in flames who brings havoc and death to the world. Written in 1915, it's fairly obvious what Schreker's getting at. In this Apocalypse the horseman's a miserable troll. Perhaps it was a mercy that Schreker died before the Holocaust. This song relates to Die Gezeichneten, of which I've written HERE.

Hans Gál escaped early to Scotland and livd to be 97. His Five Songs (1917-21) are beautiful. Listen to audio samples HERE. Der Weissenbach is a lovely miniature. I also love Gál's Das Vöglein Schwermut, more lyrical than Zemlinsky's setting. These were Christian Immler's finest moments in the recital. It's him on the sound clip, with Erik Levi on the piano! Very evocative postludes and preludes, in the recital well played by Helmut Deutsch. And Drei Prinzessinnen (Bethge), with a delicate, refined mood of melancholy. Yet the line expands zu den Ufern, wo die Freiheit wohnt. Immler sings the world Freiheit with fullness and feeling, for it's the goal the princesses will never reach.

Hearing these Berthold Goldschmidt songs, Ein Rosenweig and Nebelweben, made me feel Sensucht too, because I used to have a recording of them with Goldschmidt playing. Even if I replace the one I gave away, it won't be quite the same. The CD I had belonged to Goldschmidt himself. It's a long story which I'll save for another time. Goldschmidt led the Matthews brothers in their performing version of Mahler's 10th, but was a fairly self-effacing man, whose music didn't get into the repertoire until fairly late in his life. Incidentally he himself was taught by Franz Schreker, among others.

Hanns Eisler gets a bad press because he's mostly known in the US for being kicked out of Hollywood by the Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947. His political music is extremely important. In many ways it was he who gave Brecht more backbone than Weill did. his political songs tie in with the Brecht belief in direct communication, which is why they're simple and can be sung by untrained voices. and performed in non-concert-hall situations. That's how to reach the masses. But there's a lot more to Eisler.

Here we heard some of Eisler's Galgenlieder, much closer to the sophisticated, exquisitely crafted art songs and chamber pieces that Eisler's reputation really should be based upon. They're literate, whimsical songs. Die beiden Trichter, for example, needs to be read from the page because the visual shape of the poem, as written, is crucial to its meaning. Two funnels pour into a single source til the last drop fades away. The poem's shaped like a triangle, wider at the top, ending with just a "w". As does Eisler's music, ending with a single note.  HERE is a link to Eisler's song Cripple Brigade. LOTs of Eisler on this site.

Eisler also wrote quirky little pieces based on snippets from the newspapers, ideas condensed to haiku-like extremes. Not at all populist in the usual sense, but if you like cryptic crosswords, you might like this other aspect of Hanns Eisler.

One of the myths about Erich Korngold popular on the internet is that he was only "forced" into writing for the movies by the Nazis. In fact, he was smart enough to realize long before the Anschluss that film had a future, the "opera" of the New World. Surprisingly, there aren't all that many settings of Shakespeare, so Korngold's Songs of the Clown have a place in the repertoire. It's interesting to think about Korngold adapting to Anglo culture, writing music for Robin Hood, Elizabeth and Essex and of course adapting Mendelssohn's Midsummer's Nights Dream.

It's also interesting to think of Hanns Eisler writing hits in Hollywood, though he began with uncompromising Kuhle Wampe (watch full download HERE) and continued to write art music for documentaries like Resnais's Night and Fog, one of the best films about the Holocaust.

Prof Levi's programme thus turned to America. Zemlinsky didn't write for film, though he might have done great things given his feel for lushness. But he was interested in American music, meaning jazz. Quite a liberating thing for him, I think, a pity he died relarively young. Like many intellectuals of the time, he was interested in the Harlem Renaissance and the poetry of Langston Hughes. Grollen die Tomtoms, rollen die Tomtoms, grollen, rollen wecken das Blut. This is Hollywood Africa, exotic and louche, but it's fun music anyway. Which is perhaps why there are so many different recordings of Afrikanischer Tanz, and it's sometimes used as an encore. Listen to Michael Volle with James Conlon, definitely quirky and "lowdown".

More "Black America" seen through German eyes/ears in Eisler's Ballad of Nigger Jim. This is closer to the bone because Nigger Jim bucks Jim Crow and gets lynched. Eisler's ending parodies popular song but the message isn't funny. Similarly, Ballade von der Krüppelgarde,(op 18 1929/31) is a march, but the marchers are cripples. led by a Field Marshal who is a crawling torso. They've been maimed in war but no-one cares. So the rhythms are off centre, like the movements of men who can't march in line. It's horrific stuff despite the pretend insouciance. There's a truly biting recording by Ernst Busch (of course). Wir sind die Krüppelgarde, das strärkste Batallion, die alleresrtes Reihe in der Weltrevolution. So what if the sentiments are left wing? It's a very good song. And in any case, things have not changed in this world.

An aside - strange how Weimar people were fascinated by things English/American. Brecht goes on and on about exotic places which really live in his mind. Nigger Jims abound in various forms.

Which leads to Ernst Krenek. After his smash hit Jonny Spielt Auf, with the iconic black musician, Krenek took a sabbatical in the Salzkammergut insteade of capitalizing on his success in Vienna. Krenek travelled light because he wanted to probe deeper into what shaped the Austrian psyche (as opposed to the Viennese).

The Reisebuch aus den Oesterreicheschen Alpen is a panorama of unforgiving mountain landscapes and the harsh lives of peasants before modern utilities. In 1927, they were just finishing the D numbers, and Schubert wasn't quite so ubiquitous as he is now. So Krenek's pilgrimage was also a means of engaging with what made a city boy like Schubert respond to the countryside as he did. Krenek's cycle (to his own poems) isn't High Romantic although it's beautiful. There are songs about rich Bavarians burning down the roads in leathers on motorbikes, and a mention of Hitler, not long after Hitler got out of prison. But then, Schubert set contemporary poetry, too.

Krenek's Reisebuch aus den Oesterreicheschen Alpen is such an important work that it really deserves to be written about in more detail than this, so I'll do something more on it later. Shockingly, there's only one recording, by Wolfgang Holzmair, made in 1998. It's beautiful, the CD cover designed to look like a 1920's photo album. Holzmair passionately champions the cycle and toured with it for several years. He also devised a concert programme where he mixed Krenek's songs with Schubert's. That too, he recorded, but on a small label, almost impossible to find. Since wrfiting this I've found Julius Patzak's even earlier recording, which is wonderful, too.

Please see my other posts on the Kings Place Vienna to Weimar event – lots of links. Also to full movie downloads. There's a lot on this site about the music of this period, one of my special interests.

Gluck, das mir verblieb

Sheer indulgence! Marietta's Lied from Die tote Stadt. It's such an immortal piece. The song infuses the whole opera with a kind of glow. One day perhaps it will be appreciated for what it is, wonderfully balancing on the precipice of the modern. A bit like Strauss, linking past to future. Friends of Korngold père et fils, suggested the novel Bruges La Morte as a good subject. Perhaps they were trying to tell them something? The novel's about a man trapped in an unhealthy relationship that holds him back. It must have been uncomfortable reading, a bit too revealing. for comfort. Not really a surprise then that Julius had so much control over what went into the opera. How much of the libretto and ideas were his? what might Erich have written had he been older and more independent? In the adaptation lies a story. Indeed, it could be the subject of a drama in itself, but it would need to be written by someone with real psychological insight. It's quite deep! Read about the original novel HERE and HERE.

The tragedy of Erich Korngold is that in life and death he was pigeonholed. Far from being "forced" into film music, it was in film music that he found hiis outlet. Film music was a new art form in the 30's and 40's and there was EK in the vanguard. Along with Hanns Eisler. What odd bedfellows they make.

Das Lied vom treuen Lieb,das sterben muss. Ich kenne das Lied. Ich hört es oft in jungen, in schöneren Tagen. Es hat noch eine Strophe --weiß ich sie noch?
The song of true love that must die. I know that song, I heard it often in younger, lovelier times. It has but one verse - do I know it still?

Mußt du einmal von mir gehn, glaub, es gibt ein Auferstehn.
Must you once again depart from me? Believe, the time will come, we'll meet again.

There's a great version of the song by Joseph Schmidt HERE How high and clear his top notes are, even if it sounds like he's holding his nostrils tightly together. Schmidt's an interesting man, I might write more about him.

Erich Korngold rarity with MANIC video

Mahler connection. Erich Korngold's father was Julius Korngold, the formidable music critic who dominated Vienna in Mahler's time. Naturally when little Erich showed signs of being a prodigy everyone who was anyone in town knew about it, including Mahler, who called him a genius. Hardly surprising, for his piano sonatas (written when he was 11 and 14) are wonderful. Having such a powerful father was perhaps not entirely a blessing, but Erich seems to have been much too nice a guy to do a Mozart to his dad. Now Brendan Carroll, author of the famed "Erich Korngold : the Last Prodigy" (1997, 464pp) has created a tribute to Korngold, so we can all share. The sound comes from a very rare test recording made in the course of making a film. It's accompanied by photos from private collections, some of which haven't been seen before.

Lots of movies for which Korngold wrote music appear on Youtube, and also snips of his other music. But the clip below is worth singling out because it is a total scream! "It's NEW! It's DARING! It's from WARNER BROS!"

Die Herzogin von Chicago Kálmán Korngold

To understand the music of the 1920's and 30's it helps to listen to the music of the time. This might sound obvious, but a lot of what is written these days follows assumptions that don't reflect how music was actually heard and made. These sanitized assumptions in turn change the way we hear things, not for the best.

That's why Emmerich (Imre) Kálmán's Die Herzogin von Chicago is such an important piece. Kálmán was a student of Bartók and Kodály, so his credentials are legit, even though Die Herzogin was an immense popular success. In this crazy, witty operetta, Kálmán integrates conventional "serious" music with jazz, and also draws on the long-standing Austro-German tradition of satirical cabaret (which Schoenberg knew about). The opera is a trenchant comment on the impact of America and social revolution on a Europe just emerging from the First World War. It's hilarious, but no less significant for that.

In 2004, the opera was revived in Vienna to great acclaim. The original 1928 version was five hours long with lots of dialogue, much of which was topical controversy at the time. Some of the savage social edge remains, for when the editors condensed the original script they created a scene where corrupt politicians discuss "expediency" while dividing the spoils. Some things don't ever change!

An impossibly wealthy American heiress, Miss Mary, makes a bet with her Chicago friends that she can bag a prince when she goes to Europe, because anything can be bought with money. In fact it's really not all that different in Europe, for in the tiny kingdom of Sylvania, Prince Sándor Boris and his Ministers are trying to keep the cheering natives happy while the King is off to Paris. Then, as now, there’s nothing like a Royal Wedding to please the locals. They even have "Prince" dolls! The Prince's fiancée is in on the act, for act it is. Neither has illusions.

Cut to Miss Mary's arrival. "Cut" is the right word because one of the sub-texts of this operetta is the influence of Hollywood and the movies. Miss Mary’s best friend is Bondy, a film director, who sees all life as an unfolding movie. Throughout the opera there are references to movies. Kálmán creates hyper coloured music for the music sequences, which is surprisngly perceptive as movies at that time were silents. It's worth listening to this opera for the music alone as it tells something about the way film music germinated. Film music didn't just appear from nowhere. So much nonsense is written about composers and film that this opera is an antidote. Kálmán was a near contemporary of Erich Korngold, and they would have known of each other. Interestingly, both moved to California, and back to Vienna where they both died in the early 50's.

The Prince doesn't want to marry the American so gets his aide to play him while he plays the aide. We've all seen this plot device before, and here it's hilariously well done. Miss Mary must know the device too as she pursues the "aide" and dumps the "prince". The Sylvanians want her money and she wants status. Cue for a great party scene with Viennese waltz on gypsy violin, and songs about Schubert and Johann Strauss, who "shall return one day". There's a nightclub scene where Miss Mary does the charleston, and a bizarre parody of Beethoven's Fifth as foxtrot, danced by two bald women. There’s a takeoff of Ernst Krenek’s Johnny Spielt Auf which had been the sensation of Vienna in 1926 – Kálmán steals Krenek’s central image of a black man with a golden saxophone! Krenek’s operetta, incidentally, was also revived in Vienna in 2003, so there are in-jokes within in-jokes.

Of course Miss Mary falls for the Prince in disguise and Princess fiancée falls for Bondy, the movie director. To jazz up the old story, part of the staging involves a backdrop on which scenes from movies are projected. In fact they show the same four characters, got up as fantasy. It's a scream. The Prince and Mary dissolve into a cartoon cowboy and an Indian Princess, called Morgenrot, and cruise along in a canoe in the moonlight – modern eyes might see references to Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald, especially as Bondy is schmoozing Princess Rosemarie! It’s also a great excuse for more wonderful "Indian" dancing that gets progressively more bizarre, because as we know real Native American culture was already being parodied in Hollywood. It makes a surprisingly powerful point about cultural imperialism and what might face Europe if Europeans didn’t hold their own. As one of the directors said, "it’s still relevant".

Despite the whimsy, there is serious stuff. America was showing the Old World a completely different way of living, much more shocking to Europeans then than we realize, after eighty years of familiarity through TV, mass media and cheap travel. That was still the age when European peasants emigrated, never to return. This operetta makes a strong point that, for all their exoticism, Americans are, at heart, dislocated Europeans. Bondy reveals that his grandfather was a Jewish nobody from some tiny hamlet in the middle of nowhere. How shocked the old man would be to see his grandson hobnobbing with royal Sylvanian families!

Then the King comes back, with two Parisian floozies, and tries to put the make on Miss Mary who isn’t falling for that Kuss die Hande nonsense. It is hard to describe just how wild the jokes are from now on, parodying French operetta and German, wordplays and wit, with references to Viennese culture, current events (like monkey glands and Viagra). And of course, everything ends up "happily ever after", though it's like whistling in a graveyard.

Die Herzogin von Chicago is available on CD and DVD - I'd recommend the DVD for the fabulous sets, staging and acting. "Opera archaeology" may have dug the score up and revised it, but this is a fabulous, important moment in music history.

Korngold Die tote Stadt, London ROH 1/09

Die tote Stadt is Korngold’s masterpiece in the old sense of the word, when a craftsman would produce a dazzling work to show the world what he could do. This is Korngold’s manifesto, so to speak. It displays his virtues beautifully. But his vices, too, are part of the mix. In Die tote Stadt we hear both the promise of his youth and echoes of what was to come.

The virtues are clear – this is delightful music full of action and romance. Korngold weaves genres together with ease and freedom. The Meyerbeer segment is a joy. He connects a tradition of popular opera while alluding to the most recent incarnation of the Pierrot story – Pierrot Lunaire, Schoenberg’s greatest hit, a sensation before the First World War. He references Wagner, the Strausses (Richard and both Johanns) and plenty of Puccini, particularly Madama Butterfly, another tale of obsessive love and death. Korngold is no ignoramus. He knows his music history and knows his audiences will relish the allusions. The good moments in this opera are superb, torrents of chromatic colour, sonorities so luscious one could almost drown in their gorgeousness.

“O Tanz, O Rausch!” sings Marietta, who loses herself in the ecstasy of dance. This mindless, instinctive surrender to sensuality animates the opera. Marietta symbolizes life and vigour. Only she dares confront the overpowering portrait of the dead Marie. Marie may have her moment of vengeance but ultimately, it’s Marietta who lives on. When Frank, Paul’s alter ego, suggests they leave Bruges, Paul sings a reprise of Marietta’s Lied – it becomes a song of triumph, not regret.

The message in Die tote Stadt could not be clearer. Paul must move on if he is to survive. The past can be treasured but cannot take priority over the future. Metzmacher perceptively said that the opera was “like an old photograph. You like to keep it and look at it. But reality is different”. The original novel, Bruges la Morte, by Georges Rodenbach, was illustrated with photographs of the city, preserved forever in one moment in the 19^th century.

This performance, at the Royal Opera House, under the baton of Ingo Metzmacher, was perhaps truer to the spirit of the original than many others, for Metzmacher sees it as fresh, daring and modern. This is important because Korngold has, in the last ninety years, acquired a reputation for backward-looking sentimentality. Audiences do like what they assume to be tradition. In 1920, Die tote Stadt was cutting edge. Wozzeck and Jonny Spielt auf were years away. There are shockingly daring harmonies and clashes of key, especially in the Prelude to Act 3. Metzmacher’s clear, incisive style doesn’t cloak the modernity in a slush of sugar, but makes us realize just how aware and innovative Korngold could be. Orchestrally this was infinitely more lucid than the Leinsdorf recording, which, while lovely, hasn't quite the pungency to cut through the prettiness.

Korngold, like Richard Strauss in Elektra, seems to pull back from the edge. However much his admirers may champion his later work, it is Die tote Stadt that is his masterpiece. There isn’t place in this review for an assessment of Korngold’s career as a whole, but the very fact that he chose this ambivalent narrative is revealing. The libretto was written jointly by Korngold and his father, the domineering Julius Korngold, but this was concealed until 1975. How far did Julius’ arch-conservative hand hold sway over what the son did, consciously or otherwise ? Since the hero’s dead wife holds vampire-like control of his life, the relevance may not be purely accidental.

The original novel is far more sinister and disturbing. Korngold instead avoids facing the dilemmas by turning murder and madness into a dream, from which his protagonist can walk away without reflection. Yet reflection occurs again and again in the music and textual images. Willy Decker’s staging makes much of mirrors, portraits, of transparent glass surface that throw light back on the action. The “parallel reality” scenes in Act 1 are excellent as theatre, expressing the ambiguous, multi-layered duality that pervades the music and plot. The procession scene is designed to match the Meyerbeer scene – white costumes, masks, stylized ensembles. This is perceptive for it expresses visually the fundamental contrast in the opera between real life and artifice, between actors and characters.

First Night nerves may have accounted for lapses in the singing, though both Paul (Stephen Gould) and Marie/Marietta (Nadja Michael) are demanding roles that keep the singers on stage nearly the whole evening. The range in Marie/Marietta is fearsomely wide, so if Michael was more comfortable in the lower register, it was understandable. Gerald Finlay was luxury casting even though he only appears intermittently. As always, the Royal Opera Chorus was superb.

This Die tote Stadt made a convincing case for Korngold’s reputation. Glorious as it is, though, there are elements in it which make us realize in retrospect why the composer would later excel in music for film. Early movies were a kind of “extreme opera”, where music intensified dramatic action, where emotions were whipped up even if the plots were thin.

Korngold was writing for film long before the Anschluss, which caught him already in Hollywood. The colourful, episodic nature of Die tote Stadt, with its evocation of feeling, despite the weakness in the text, is a foretaste of where Korngold was to find himself. Only a few years previously, all movies were silent. Film music was the cutting edge of modernity, and Korngold was in the vanguard, creating a whole new genre. Please read the other posts on this blog about Die Tote Stadt, Korngold, Metzmacher and Bruges. There's more on this blog than most places on the net and it's totally original, too. Music of this period, and exilmusik in particular, is one of my special interests, explore a bit on this site. Special requests welcome.

see this for production pix
http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/02/die_tote_stadt_.php

Korngold, modernist ? Metzmacher

Ingo Metzmacher, who is conducting Korngold’s Die tote Stadt at the Royal Opera House tomorrow, is a specialist in new music – listen to his Henze, Hartmann and Messiaen, and the German series “Who’s afraid of 20^th century music?”, one of the best antidotes to the idea that modern music is scary. So why is he conducting Korngold, whose reputation is ultra rich and retro ? “Because it is a modern opera”, he says “on the verge of modernism….It is like an old photograph. You like to keep it and look at it, but you know that reality is different”.

Read the full interview at

http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/01/anne_ozorio_int.php

When Korngold wrote Die tote Stadt the First World War had only just ended. Naturally, Viennese minds turned to past glories. There’s a theory that in tough times, people need escapist art. Perhaps that’s why the opera was such a hit, for it reminded people how good the past could be. Korngold built into his music heavy hints that the vision was a “photograph”, just like the illustrations in Bruges la Morte, which are photographs, not drawings. In 1920, Wozzeck and Jonny spielt auf were years in the future. By the standards of the time, Die tote Stadt was ground breaking. As Metzmacher says, it is modern, and Erich made sure the hero moved on.

What was Vienna really like in the 1920’s ? From February 28^th, the South Bank is hosting a series, Vienna, 1900-35, City of Dreams. The concerts focus on big sellers like Mahler, Zemlinsky and Berg but there was a lot else going on besides. The big names are there to lure audiences to explore deeper and find out gradually about Schreker, Krenek, Eisler, Webern, Pfitzner, Braunfels, Hindemith and others. Plus about the literature, philosophy, art…. And remember Hitler was hanging out too and picking up ideas. There's that photo of him standing in the crowds in the Ringstrasse, and rumours he went to school with Wittgenstein. In any society, there are many different spheres operating simultaneously. Schoenberg may not have grabbed audiences but the ideas he created had far reaching influence. Indeed, it is interesting to compare Die tote Stadt with Gurrelieder.

So where does Korngold fit in? Die tote Stadt may be his masterpiece but where does it stand in context of other things going on? where does it stand in relationship to his other work? How does he develop, as people usually do? What is his lasting influence? There will always be segments of the audience who resolutely prefer the past, but what is the past anyway? The inescapable fact is that people often do prefer "the photograph" to reality, fossilization to ongoing life.

It would be interesting to see into young Korngold’s mind. He was intelligent, well aware of what was happening around him. But he was also surrounded by conservatives like his father. Mozart rebelled and did his own thing regardless, but Erich Korngold just seems too nice a guy to have done to Julius what Wolfgang did to Leopold ? Perhaps he bottled up his inner tensions. leading to his early death ? Or he channelled his creative needs in a different direction, ie the movies. It’s poignant listening to the Violin Concerto again. It’s famous because it’s relatively easy to schedule (unlike an opera) and is always popular with audiences. It’s instantly accessible because the themes are so familiar. They come from the films, though the films themselves recycled themes he was working on prewar.

Into the soul of Erich Korngold

Who really was Erich Korngold? We know the facts of his life and lists of his opus numbers, but who was the man, what made him tick? I’ve never swallowed the “more Korn than Gold” epithet. He was no fool, but genuinely talented, and smart enough to know what was going on around him.

As a young man he had everything going for him. Music flowed out of him as easily as from a young Mozart. Like Mozart, he had a powerful and pushy father whose contacts could have advanced anyone’s career. Vienna was thriving, culturally. It must have been exciting to be where so much was going on, in so many different circles.

This is certainly not to suggest that Korngold “should” have taken on new developments. He moved in much fancier circles than the Schoenberg set and probably wouldn’t have given them much time, even though he worked with Zemlinsky, who obviously knew all about them. But Schoenberg wasn’t the only modernity in town – even Zemlinsky moved ahead: His Lyric Symphony is strikingly “modern” in its own way. Nobody is going to do "new" the same: music doesn’t work in neat little boxes. The current fashion for dividing music into tonal and atonal is schoolboy shallowness.

So there’s young Korngold born with a silver spoon in his mouth and everything going for him. Listen to the first two String Quartets and dream of what might have been. Die tote Stadt, for all its high Romantic lushness, has a lot more going for it than the sometimes ultra suss treatments it gets. With Ingo Metzmacher, a specialist in the avant garde, we should hear a much more incisive approach. But if Die tote Stadt is such a masterpiece, where does it lead ? Korngold was only 22, 23 when he wrote it. It was an instant success, so the pressure to top it must have been intense. Hence, perhaps Das Wunder der Heliane, which received a drubbing last year even with a sympathetic audience and Jurowski conducting. So how did young Korngold respond to the pressure ? It can’t have been easy for a gifted young man used to having things go smoothly. 

Lots of child prodigies don’t go on to be Mozart. There’s nothing to be ashamed of about that. What is interesting, to me anyway, is to try to understand the way things happen and how people develop inside. Having a father like Julius might have been an advantage but it was also inhibiting. The old man wanted things his way and couldn’t deal with Erich marrying a woman who most parents would have been delighted with. 

Then there’s Erich’s personality, harmonious, accommodating, none of the obsession that seems to drive some composers. The reason I’ve been doing so much on Bruges-la-Morte is that it may reveal something about Erich and Julius by default. Obviously composers completely change their sources. An opera is a whole new work. But the differences are telling. In the novel, Hugues is totally dominated by the memory of his dead wife, who exerts a vampire-like paralysis on his life. Hugues is a creepy loner, living in an emotional desert unpopulated by anyone other than his servant, who leaves him. He doesn’t touch Jane but keeps her like a statue, like the piece of his wife’s hair, in a glass box never to be touched. In the opera, Paul is a reasonably sane fellow who has friends and real life relationships and isn’t nearly so screwed up by religion. In the novel, Hugues kills Jane and goes mad, repeating mechanically “Morte, Bruges la morte”. In the opera, it’s all just a dream. If most of us dreamed of killing a friend, we’d worry. Not Paul, who simply goes on to a new life.Also significant is that Erich and Julius concealed their joint authorship of the libretto for many years. A shrink might think, what's going on? 

A few years ago, the late Stuart Feder wrote an excellent analytical biography of Charles Ives, examining his relationship with his father and the effect on his creative work. Feder was a child psychologist as well as a musician, so his book is full of perceptive insights, much too detailed to go into here. Interestingly, when Charles retired, as a millionaire, having achieved what his father's family wanted of him, he stopped writing music. Like Sibelius, something held him back just when he seemed to find good conditions in which to work. It’s not enough to blame Ives’s late career on depression, or the Silence of Järvenpää on alcohol. Similarly. it's not enough to "explain" Korngold by simply saying that fashions in music had changed. 

Korngold’s facility came easily and he was no fool. Perhaps his real achievement isn’t so called “serious” music but in another genre. There still is far too much prejudice about film music. Not long ago a major newspaper ran an article which baldly stated that any composer who wrote for film should not be taken seriously. Evidently written by someone who’d never heard of Britten, Prokofiev, or many others. This attitude hinders a more enlightened appreciation of Korngold’s achievements.
 

Only a few years before Korngold went to America, all films were silent. Music for film was an entirely new genre, cutting-edge modernity in its own way. It was different because music could no longer be through-composed, but instead had to be written in conjunction with film. Sort of "extreme opera". Had Johann Strauss or, for that matter, Wagner, lived into the movie era, they'd have had a ball. Movie music was created to pull heartstrings, not for intellectual analysis, so judging it in the same terms as ordinary music doesn't work. Indeed, it's almost a reversion to the pre 19th century approach to music, that it should be either religious or entertainment, not "high art".

Moreover, Hollywood was a lot like the old image of Vienna, only much richer, much brasher, much more opulent. So Hollywood composers, most of whom had known the old world, felt quite at home despite the sunshine and strange customs. In many ways, Hollywood carried on the Vienna image when it died in war-torn Europe. Even Hanns Eisler, surly old communist that he was, wrote music that won Oscar nominations. So maybe Korngold found his voice in a medium other than what his father dominated. There’s a lot about Korngold and about modern music we haven’t yet thought about.

Bruges-la-morte 2 Die tote Stadt

Hugues keeps locks of his first wife’s hair in a crystal box. It never changes, but Jane is getting older. She gets wrinkles, starts having new friends, goes shopping, doesn’t stay passive. So Hugues resolves to leave her. “You’re kidding” she mocks. She knows he can’t face “un second veuvage”. That night he goes home, filled with free floating anxiety. Death seems to have returned, “emmaillotée en linceul dans le brouillard.” The swans, so normally calm, are screaming. It’s a bad omen.

Soon it’s the Feast of the Holy Blood, when there’s a procession in the streets, Barbe, Hugues' pious old servant decorates the sombre mansion with masses of flowers, so it’s perfumed like a sacristry. Into the house pour sounds of bells from all round town. She’s exalted, as if in the presence of angels. Then Hugues rings, and says a lady is coming for dinner. Barbe is in shock, for she knows about her master’s secret “concubinage”. Then she leaves. Moments later Jane arrives. She wants to open the shutters but Hugues is afraid it will attract attention. Meanwhile, the procession draws close. People are singing, Hugues visualizes the ancient knights of Flanders, smells the incense, sees the massed crowd in the street, falling to their knees as the Reliquary approaches. Jane and Hugues sit together on the sofa. Then

La musique des serpents et des ophicléides monta plus grave,
charria la guirlande frêle,
intermittente, du chant des soprani.

Jane looks round the strange mansion with its portraits of Hugues' dead wife. Then she spots the crystal box with the dead woman’s hair, opens it and laughs. To Hugues, it’s a “profanation”. He’s never dared touch it, all these years. He goes berserk and strangles Jane with her own hair, wrapped around her neck. Jane’s cadaver turns pale, like his dead wife, long ago. Outside, the procession has passed, the streets are empty, silence descends once more.

Et Hugues continûment répétait: «Morte... morte... Bruges-la-Morte...» d'un air machinal, d'une voix détendue, essayant de s'accorder: «Morte... morte... Bruges-la-Morte...» avec la cadence des dernières cloches, lasses, lentes, petites vieilles exténuées qui avaient l'air--est-ce sur la ville, est-ce sur une tombe?--d'effeuiller languissamment des fleurs de fer!

This novel was the inspiration behind Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt, who used the pseudonym Paul Schott to write the libretto. I do wonder how Freudian it must have been to young Erich, utterly dominated by his father's personality. The tales differ, of course. But the original is worth reading because it’s so atmospheric and beautifully written. Long out of copyright, it can be read in full at

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14911/14911-8.txt

Interestingly, one of the features of the original novel is that it was illustrated by actual photographs, so the reality of the setting blends into the unreality of the narrative. Maybe there is a house on the quai du Rosaire. Maybe it’s still stuffed with 19th century furniture and dusty mirrors ? Maybe Hugues and Jane remain suspended in time and space in a different dimension ? After posting this I received a message from someone who knows Bruges well. There really is a Quai du rosaire and there really are ancient houses there. Uncanny! see
http://www.pbase.com/francist/image/2840795

Bruges-la-Morte 1 Die tote Stadt

C'était Bruges-la-Morte, elle-même mise au tombeau de ses quais de pierre, avec les artères froidies de ses canaux, quand avait cessé d'y battre la grande pulsation de la mer.

Bruges-the-dead, cut off from the sea, the waters in its canals turgid like the blood in dying arteries…a surreal city of silence. In the novel, by Georges Rodenbach, a man called Hugues Viane has lived in limbo since his wife died five years before. Nothing is changed, everything as she left it. He doesn’t even like to move the dust on the mirror. He wanders the empty streets, desolate, numb. Then one day he sees an apparition, a woman with the same hair, the same eyes…. Agitated, he follows her, losing her in the crowd, like clouds hiding the moon. Since his wife died, Hugues had feared music. Even the wheezing, asthmatic strains of a street accordion reduced him to tears. In this city of church bells and organs, Sundays were hell. At last he sees the woman again. She’s the exact image of his wife “Le miroir vit”.

Jane is a dancer, she lets him set her up in a silent apartment where he stares mutely at her, wanting her never to change. He dresses her up in his dead wife’s clothes. “I look like an old portrait” she says, innocently. In the novel the quasi-religious kinkiness is implicit. “En cette Bruges catholique surtout, où les moeurs sont sévères!..... À tous les coins de rue, dans des armoires de boiserie et de verre, s'érigent des Vierges en manteaux de velours, parmi des fleurs de papier qui se fanent,tenant en main une banderole avec un texte déroulé, qui de leur côté proclament: «Je suis l'Immaculée.» Chapter 6 is particularly evocative of the city and its mysteries. The prose flows like a journey through the streets, through the widower’s soul. He has “une âme grise, de la couleur de la ville”. Spring comes, and Easter, then winter descends once more. Read Chapters 10 and 11 too, like poetry. Hugues wants to become like the towers that stand immobile, frozen above the city, as if suspended in the time of Memling. He wanders in at the end of Mass where the priest is talking about death. Hugues is anguished, torn between his need for Jane and his fear of damnation. To be continued.....