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The Radio 3 Boards > The Radio 3 Boards > Radio 3 Favourites > Composer of the Week > Webern - CotW 10-14/12/07
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Author Topic: Webern - CotW 10-14/12/07  (Read 430 times)
Andy D
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« on: 22:01:10, 14-12-2007 »
I've been listening to the repeat of Friday's CotW - Webern. I have great difficulty with him - the music I've liked for a long time, but his alleged Nazi sympathies cause me many problems. Donald Macleod, while not condemning him out of hand, made Webern's support for the Nazis clear. What do you make of him? Was he naive, self-interested, confused, a fascist, or what?


Webern in 1940
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C Dish
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« Reply #1 on: 22:12:11, 14-12-2007 »
Outrageously naive. Musical sophistication is at best imperfectly correlated with political sophistication.
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inert fig here
oliver sudden
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« Reply #2 on: 00:02:30, 16-12-2007 »
As I understand it, both Webern and Berg seem to have welcomed Nazism at first; perhaps like many simply welcoming the likelihood of someone stopping the drifting of the '20s. Once Goebbels had in 1934 denounced atonality as 'Jewish intellectualism attacking the national body' (or words to that effect) they both had second thoughts on the matter, I suspect.

A couple of years ago, Douglas Jarman found in the sketches for the Berg violin concerto an indication that the ground plan of the concerto (before Manon Gropius died giving the concerto its 'to the memory of an angel' subtitle) was originally conceived as an echo of the slogan of a nationalist sporting group. Strange but true.
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #3 on: 01:18:36, 16-12-2007 »
Webern's support for Nazism went much further than that (I need to check on whether Berg ever had any sympathies - certainly he was warning Adorno in 1933 about how ominous the situation looked). Webern wrote letters to Joseph Hueber in the early 1940s, which were uncovered by Moldenhauer in his 1970s book on Webern. After reading Mein Kampf, Webern wrote to Hueber, on 4th March 1940:

The book has brought me much enlightenment. . . What I believe I see at present makes me supremely confident! I see it coming, the pacification of the entire world. At first east of the Rhine as far as - yes, how far? This will depend on the USA. But probably as far as the Pacific Ocean! Yes, I believe this, I do believe, and I cannot see it any other way!

After the occupation of Denmark and Norway, Webern wrote, on 2nd May 1940:

though this is called unification, it also absolutely indicates a process of inner purification. That is Germany today! But only under National socialism!!! No other way! This is the new state, for which the country has been preparing for over twenty years! Yet it is a new country, as it has never existed before! It is a new creation! A creation of this singular man!!! You see, you sense my concern: one might (in the end) accept as commonplace what could occur only once, what is possible only though precisely this nature, this unique creator.


(full details in Hans Moldenhauer, Anton von Webern (London: Gollancz, 1978), or a summary in Kathryn Bailey, The Life of Webern (Cambridge: CUP, 1998)).
« Last Edit: 01:38:07, 16-12-2007 by Ian Pace » Logged
'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
oliver sudden
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« Reply #4 on: 01:20:39, 16-12-2007 »
The Jarman article on the Berg violin concerto sketches is in the Cambridge companion FWIW.
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C Dish
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« Reply #5 on: 11:27:43, 16-12-2007 »
Quote from: Ian Pace on 01:18:36, 16-12-2007
The book has brought me much enlightenment. . . What I believe I see at present makes me supremely confident! I see it coming, the pacification of the entire world. At first east of the Rhine as far as - yes, how far? This will depend on the USA. But probably as far as the Pacific Ocean! Yes, I believe this, I do believe, and I cannot see it any other way!
This word 'pacification' is what makes me say he was extraordinarily naive, simply failing to see the malicious side of this brand of fascism. That does not excuse him, just shows him to be incredibly blind. Also, such words as purification (in the other quote) have rightly launched aesthetic debates during serious discussions of his music.
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inert fig here
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