Current Chronicle

Author(s): Richard F. Goldman, W. H. Mellers, Frederick Goldbeck and Everett Helm

Source: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Oct., 1951), pp. 578-597
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/739612
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Musical Quarterly

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 CURRENT CHRONICLE
UNITED STATES

New York

The two concerts presented (on May 8 and I o) by the New Mu

Society afforded comparatively large audiences a chance to hear some
oddments of the past and future of "modern music", interspersed amo
pieces less determinedly original, and perhaps more seriously musical
A peculiar hodgepodge, but refreshing in its way, and full of materi
for profound reflection on the part of anyone who likes his music wi
a dash of sociology, or vice versa. Modernism for its own sake being,
as we know, so much a matter of intent, dead-pan humor or dead-en
earnestness, comedy or hatred, clarification or destructiveness, dedicat
or artistic amorality, what matters in concerts like these is that
audience is given no clue; and this was a wise, if perhaps accident
disposition on the part of Frank Wigglesworth and his associates of t
Society. Audiences are, in a vital respect, at least as fair game for th
critic as what they listen to; the beginnings of an illuminating cultu
history may well lie in the camouflaged tape-recorder planted square
in the middle of the parterre. At some concerts (and those of the Ne
Music Society lead the list) one would, in addition to the conversation
for its own sake, have recorded a counterpoint to the stage performan
which one could then present to John Cage, who would almost surely
find a use for it. But this is a project that I humbly propose for anoth
critic, another year.
There was much pleasure in hearing again at these concerts suc
pieces as Ruggles's Lilacs, Cowell's Sinfonietta of the early 1920's,
Thomson's Capital Capitals. These works have, in various ways, surviv
being "modem", and cannot now be described as quaint, which i
one feels, a circumstance rather disappointing to many people. O
missed hearing representative pieces of Varese, and perhaps of Charl
Seeger and Rudhyar, to round out the picture; Varese's Offrand
was originally scheduled, but unfortunately withdrawn. Ruggles's gif
has always seemed to me a small, though distinctive, one; Lilacs soun
very much like Angels or another of his compositions, but there
recognizable and personal feeling in all of these. At the risk of bringi
578

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 Current Chronicle 579

down wrath from all quarters, I

end rather more pretty than rugg
sonance in Ruggles's pieces is, aft
auditory excitement. If one misses
these works caused in the '2o's, on
better for the lack of it.

Cowell's Sinfonietta is to my mind one of his most interesting and

satisfying scores; it stands up more than remarkably well after an
absence of twenty-five years. To 1951's younger musicians it explains,
better than Cowell's recent works, the composer's reputation and position
as an experimenter, innovator, and ornament of the avant-garde. Webern
thought highly enough of the Sinfonietta to perform it in Vienna in
1926, as representative of new American music; the score was pub-
lished in 1931 by Adler, in Berlin. Its neglect in America is hard to
explain; it is not a period piece, or in any sense a curiosity, except in
one respect: it contains an interpolated third movement in which a
cantilena for solo 'cello is accompanied by the whirling of thundersticks.
(This movement does not appear in the printed score.) The thunder-
sticks, I suspect, represent an experiment, not in sound, and not even
in mystification, but simply in seeing how far the audience will let
itself be distracted; this, I am sure, is just the sort of comedy that
might appeal to Cowell as a wry commentary on certain aspects of
fashion and modernism. It is perhaps ironic that the comedy succeeds
too well, and that the solid musical substance of the three conventional
movements is apt to suffer a lessening of attention. The Sinfonietta has
resource and invention, in addition to thundersticks; it is skilfully con-
trapuntal and almost constantly at a maximum dissonance. In many
ways it is unique. Nowhere has Cowell, or anyone else, given more bite
and brilliance to the tone-cluster; and I think that nowhere else in
his work is there so much freedom and elegance in the interweaving
of rhythmically interesting contrapuntal lines.
If Cowell uses thundersticks, his disciple Lou Harrison advances
technologically through the ages to the employment of brake-drums,
iron pipes, packing-boxes, bells, wood-blocks, assorted drums, along with
a guitar and an ocarina. Using these not as an interpolation in a larger
piece, or as added "effects", but as the entire orchestra of his Canticle
No. 3, Harrison miraculously succeeds in producing a succession of
charming and obviously well organized sounds. One does not at once
think of the word "sensitive" as a likely one in connection with so
much old metal, but that is precisely the word to describe Harrison's

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580 The Musical Quarterly
calculation of his effects. The ocarina, floating me
the rather muffled percussive sounds, becomes, m
substitute for a flute or a recorder, but the beautif
for the occasion. This music of Harrison's may
without disparagement as a gentle variety of V
overtones. It is extremely subtle, refined, and ful
nation.

A good deal of the more conventional music heard at the

Music concerts had notably fewer enduring qualities than Har
But Ellis Kohs's Chamber Concerto for Solo Viola and String
is made of good stuff, and is convincing enough evidence th
(born 1916) is one of the younger American composers who is ar
at maturity and is worth hearing. This Concerto is a work of cons
distinction, warm, full of virtuosity, well-designed. Its style is a p
composite, free from marks of any one school, synthetic like th
Kirchner and others of the rising generation, an individual resh
of the variety of main forces that 20th-century music has produ
The second of the New Music concerts (at which the Koh
Harrison works were heard) went on far into the night. Some
more interesting exhibits, coming at the end, were regrettably tel
Toch's Fuge aus der Geographie and McLaren's experiments in wr
sound directly on film were inadequately presented, but both de
extended comment on another occasion. Neither represents p
experiment, and McLaren's is distinctly ominous. The climax
evening, John Cage's composition for 12 radios, 24 players,
discussed in the next issue. Suffice it to say now that this work
to me highly symptomatic, and I am sure that its presentation con
one of the most pointedly desperate comments ever made o
narrowing world in which the intellect is still permitted freely
Cage's opus, itself a consequence, should bear interesting fru
can tell where this will end? To what obsolescence is dexteri
demned by ingenuity? In what progressive nursery school w
radios (four hands) first be used to teach counterpoint?
RICHARD F. GOLDMAN

ENGLAND

The central event of the last quarter has been the production of
Vaughan Williams's long-awaited opera on Bunyan's The Pilgrim's
Progress. The fact that the work has been so long awaited may explain

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 Current Chronicle 581

the somewhat confused and contradict

for when a piece has been on the stocks
the critic is prone either to decide before
of things be the composer's masterpiece,
fall short of his cherished image of it. F
disturbing the manifold relationships that
representative of various phases of Vau
The Fifth Symphony is for me one of th
it says what it has to say with the maxim
Unavoidably therefore, the considerable s
appear, modified and expanded, in Act
an anticlimax. At the time of the first
I seem to remember hearing-I don't
authority-that the symphony was the
liams's long brooding on the theme of
he had intended to treat in operatic te
The Shepherd of the Delectable Moun
resolved in symphonic terms. Whether th
still seems to me the masterpiece, the fir
very beautiful) redundancy.
The same point crops up " propos of wh
formal weakness. In the development sect
movement and slow movement an elem
implicit; and although it may be program
tussles with the powers of darkness it
part of the symphonic structure. The d
lution are one, as they should be in al
Curiously enough in the opera, where the
less inherently musical but more dramati
unconvincing in both musical and dram
evil is so inadequately represented. Bot
seductions of Vanity Fair are notably infe
tation of Satan and the honied deceits of
mention the terrifying turmoil of sect
Symphonies; and still more damaging t
is the fact that it is so short-winded.
generated because the fight is over alm
depriving Satan of the Miltonic splend
ficently endowed him in Job, Vaughan
opera's moral and dramatic backbone. I
shape; it has no "beginning, middle, an

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 582 The Musical Quarterly
I know that the composer does not call The Pilgr
opera, but a morality; and that he presumably int
devotional atmosphere. Yet you cannot change the
of musico-dramatic presentation on a stage simply
name; I doubt whether stage music can afford to
of dramatic realism and psychological interest. I was
point afresh by Jan6Zek's incisively exciting Kati
we have seen for the first time in this country
Janacek's opera has its allegorical overtones; yet
its allegory on its musical and psychological concrete
wisdom is precipitated out of a particular situati
dramatically realized. So I cannot help thinking t
grateful to Bunyan and The Pilgrim for having provi
for practically all Vaughan Williams's finest music
thirty or forty years; while considering the opera
by-product of the composer's creative fires. This i
modified with greater familiarity, and I need ha
score contains much genuinely impressive and dist
do not think, however, that it has the at once clas
perennially youthful quality that characterizes those
Williams that put him among the few great compo
Perhaps thirty years is too long to be tampering
the grandest old man might seem a little tired.
Another new work, which resembles Vaughan Willi
and directness of utterance though not in particulari
is Rubbra's Festival Te Deum, commissioned by the
first performed in the Festival Hall on June 30. This
for chorus, orchestra, and organ in the warm yet
Rubbra's recent church music; it achieves a festiv
without descent to banality. Like the Vaughan W
sings nobly but not nobilmente.
The Te Deum is massively diatonic throughout;
exultant glow is the tremendous sweep of the musica
oscillating ambiguity between the major and minor
flowing cross-rhythms, and the flexibility of the mo
all of which are produced by melodic means-by ex
shifts in the parts. Most of these features are reveale
transition to the cry of Holy, holy, holy:'
1 Example copyright by Alfred Lengnick & Co. Ltd., Londo
by permission of Mills Music, Inc., Sole Selling Agents for t
America.

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 Current Chronicle 583

Ex. I (moderaso eitmetne)

ME-..

PI
Ho- _U_ _ _ _ _ _ _
4V4'a e.va 2d a .. ..w-.rUt
"C-r: .orug ,. AL

It will be observed that all these technical features occur too in i6th-
century polyphony, especially that of the English school. The fact
points to Rubbra's intuitive relation to the English tradition-intuitive
because there is never any suggestion of pastiche about this music.
Most of the Te Deum is powerfully homophonic, however gratefully
lyrical to sing, the sonorous homophony being obviously suited to a
ceremonial occasion. The final Magnificat however flowers into the
ingenious counterpoint that has always been typical of Rubbra's
thought; while the ingenuity in no way hampers the music's direct
simplicity.
Technical ease and emotional continuity have not been achieved

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584 The Musical Quarterly
in Rubbra's music without struggle, as the recent revi
complicated and still, after fourteen years, overwhelm
First Symphony proved. Michael Tippett has never ye
and that may be partly because the philosophical solut
has come to accept is for Tippett impossible. Yet Tippe
Rubbra's First Symphony, moves one because of its ho
its problems; the pressure of experience behind it is s
very feeling of strain becomes, in a sense, an indic
His music sounds-to use an old-fashioned phrase-i
often by a particular event. His manner is as instan
as Rubbra's; and although, as one would expect fro
more sophisticated temperament, his originality is rela
yet it too owes much to the great days of the English
relation and cross rhythm reflect the tension and also
his mind; they run riot by I6th- and I7th-century
control the riot is of course the problem of which
acutely aware.

His new song cycle, The Heart's Assurance, is diffic

difficult to listen to, and (I find) difficult to make up
It does not seem to me so consistently successful as
which he wrote for Pears and Britten, the cantata
In that setting of a passage from W. H. Hudson
Tippett found a subject perfectly attuned to his te
melismatic treatment of the voice, the liltingly irreg
tingling quality of the harmony and texture of th
these were the perfect complement to the yearning ecs
In the new work the poems of Alun Lewis and Sid
hardly up to the level of Hudson's prose; and while th
has obviously meant much to Tippett, I feel that t
hold its own against the fantastic complexity of the p
achieves an extraordinarily rich sonority even whe
tenuous. A passage such as Ex. 2' is vocally and pianisti
but so tense a line and so highly wrought a texture
sustained for anything like as long as the compose
if both composer and performers can make it (wh
the case) the listener can't take it. And yet, though
off, the bigness of the imaginative conception is
Tippett's strength. One hesitates to say that the eag
2 Example copyright 1951 by Schott & Co., Ltd., London, pri
of Associated Music Publishers, Inc.

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 Current Chronicle 585

( lx. 2 l o giocosc)

The beas

itiiRd -1 AIu-

r w Apr pie t
40 - 1 . . . .. . I I f

ll==4

wings, when the musical air is c

starlings.
W. H. MELLERS

FRANCE

Almost unnoticed, and even its promoters being quite unaware of

promoting it, a Roussel tradition has evolved in France. Roussel, indeed,
is an inspiring example - a most efficient interceding saint for com
posers unwilling to be either academicists or radicals.
The French academicists' equipment generally consists of Debussyism
blended with outmoded Romantic and modish neo-Classic elements:

not seldom it sounds, rather awkwardly, like Debussy-cum-Ravel re

ciled with C6sar Franck. The radicals, on the contrary, accept o
French tradition, or blend of traditions; they are never French
malgrd eux, dodecaphonism being an international movement,
ultimately, a Teutonic creed whose adepts proceed on the symph
highroad leading from Beethoven, by way of Wagner, to Schoenber
and Webern's narrow path: from Sinfonia eroica to Sinfonia hermet
and eremitica - exactly the line of highly idealistic musical con
Debussy rejected in the name of melodic and harmonic realism
epicureanism. But Roussel secured and held, between the camps
admirably independent position. Among Debussy's followers he was

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 586 The Musical Quarterly
first to write symphonies - and among Beethoven
to write symphonies that owe nothing to the Eroic
After Debussy's fluid, sensuous, and improvisa
reinstated angular, bony, architectural structures
rights. Yet his symphonies are most pleasantly lack
they are so to speak non-psychological: tightwoven
but rather like carpets-colorful, geometrical, and a
tale to tell about man and destiny. No frigidly "ob
About a really beautiful carpet there is always so
and magical, even though the weaver himself may
of its esoteric meaning. And, in fact, the abandoni
Eroica principle did not mean, in Roussel's case,
I8th-century patterns. His technique excluded squa
proach to polyphony is hardly less original than
day, as disturbing as, Debussy's approach to harmon
point is, as it were, counterpoint of the second pow
lineam instead of punctus contra punctum. "Pedal l
Roussel's favorite devices -, replace the old peda
melodic arabesques are handled as chords used to
are, not suppressed, but spaced out - widely enou
often than not, an impression of elusive tonality; f
clusters contain many a chord defying "vertical" a
German and conservative critic once naively bu
remarked, deceptive innocent parts make a pervers
In other, less conservative, words: Roussel's carpets
the tonal floor, turn out to be flying carpets. And
indeed befits the expressive content of Roussel's m
a sailor and exoticist.
* *x

Certain risks, of course,

have never -in the flesh
flying-carpet symphony: t
tive where Roussel was e
Roussel's Sheherazade. Bu
whomsoever's followers. M
seldom lack a sense both
fancy. And if they appear
such an attitude should
musical and other fanati

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 Current Chronicle 587

capism. At any rate, without Rou

composers like Henry Barraud, li
probably be, not freer and bolder
than they are. And in the case of H
his early mastery and his Rome p
cocious Membre de l'Institut, this i
able - and Dutilleux's choice of b
for once, academic upbringing had
and a composer's openmindedness.

Dutilleux's Symphony, none of wh

form, sets off with a passacaglia up

Ex. Andae d60

Cb. pp
- .... i . . . -! I . ...., " i

- remarkable for its sophisticated simplicity: metrical

plain A minor with an allusion to B-flat minor (3rd measu
which has a fair chance of being mistaken for a C-sharp;
dominant of the dominant (B-flat, in tritone relation to t
E) and a "Lydian" subdominant (D-sharp), both acc
chromatic appoggiaturas. A most promising theme indeed
to be treated as a Rousselian "pedal line", in a contrap
that displays similar (poly) tonal ambiguities and enharmo

E .2[ e--
AIA '"A - ..-" ,I-I. , ... d -,'F. ',= .. - : ,.

... ................... A I
1? . ...EL110L - - - _. . -. -,, ...
, a m Geslip

Out of context, this looks rather like abstract design. But in

the whole passacaglia is not only clad, but invented, in symp
colors, every variation being devised to allow a different gro
instruments to shine out:

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588 The Musical Quarterly

Ex-'3
? ..L

--- ==- f M

This example is typical of Dutilleux's approac

He never looks for the fantastic or ghostly sound: h
fiddles, his brass and woodwind regular trumpets
technique of blending the timbres is the art of kee
again the polyphonic, not the harmonic, princi
glassy, of agreeable slimness even when led up to
passacaglia a most entertaining parade of orches
to dandified counterpoint. With a few t's and
elegantly crossed and dotted, it would be super
as it stands, it cannot but win the approval both o
of those who disagree with the professors - a m
in the field of contemporary composition. (By the
among the Paris critics had a faint suspicion of
they approved, but not quite wholeheartedly.)

The Scherzo, too, and the Intermezzo, and th

owe their merits to this post-Rousselian polyph
technique of counterpoint, the sense of musical in
to have shifted: melodic, and other, elements ar
juxtaposition, their clash, provides them with life
stereoscopic style is not the Rousselists' invent
Berlioz and Mahler, it is to be found in not a few
posers, e.g. Louri6 and Britten. But in general the
two differently evocative ideas. Whereas the origi

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 Current Chronicle 589

de force, of a Dutilleux lies in his comb

halves into a significant whole. For exa

Ex. 4 Mo1tovivace, J.=84-88

K ;::I-i- I, _ _ 1 Harp - --.

-. , " '- . .. : ... ,.IMIM--

Cb. Vln~ii Vh.ll f

Ex. 5 Intermezzo

,Al VZ . l,.l- ,. J
cot8a i Tres calme

I ,- a.. A -. -4,,- .
"Y.IIF O I" a" ?I 11 7
. ,,_ .,r..--, = -i 1 f, . ,
Cr b. CLA " Ir
Ti1.Pi. Bs,. P==

with a sideglance at Ba

Ex. 6 J.1n6 Finle

etc.
- Ir F 1 " "1p1 1 1e1 34 ' 1' 9
$ts~

-a finale who
caglia's, displa

Ex. 7f Lrg e

I'Do FI Or

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590 The Musical Quarterly
Uncompromising stamp-collectors, and other sin
of some dryish pursuit, are not seldom charming s
in quest of perfection. Likewise, listening to the sy
less and tireless choirmaster of contradictory voic
aftertaste of "right or wrong, my counterpoint".
of being as it were haunted by its technique whic
this work interesting - at least for its present rev
For it is always the sorcerer's prentice, overw
spell, that matters - never that old prig, the perf
FREDERICK GOLDBECK

GERMANY

On April I8, I951, the artistic division of Germany, long in t

making, became a fact. On this date, a long article entitled "T
Fight Against Formalism in Art and Literature, for a Progres
German Culture" appeared in the Tiigliche Rundschau, official d
of the Soviet Government in Germany. In this article the issu
mixture of artistic and political considerations, was squarely join
and the new cultural policy of the Deutsche Demokratische Repu
(Russian zone of Germany) was unequivocally promulgated. The tene
and dicta that are henceforth to measure and rule artistic productio
in all fields in Eastern Germany grew out of the Congress of
Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party (SED), which m
on March 15, 16, and 17, 1951.
The situation of music in Germany is so little understood (or
grossly misunderstood) abroad, that a report on recent developm
appears to be definitely in order. I recently received a letter from
Italian musician in which the cities of Wiesbaden and Weimar were
entirely confused, without the political consequences thereof being
drawn. Wiesbaden is in federated Western Germany, Weimar in So-
vietized Eastern Germany; the difference is one of day and night, of
West and East. Then a conversation with the American conductor
Alfred Wallenstein, who recently appeared in a very successful concert
as guest director of the RIAS (Berlin) Symphony Orchestra, confirmed
the fact that Americans were on the whole dismally uninformed re-
garding the German situation.
In order to dispel this confusion at least partially, I propose to quote
salient passages from the article of April I8 that appeared in the

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 Current Chronicle 591

Tidgliche Rundschau and that la

composers, painters, architects, scul
directors, radio writers, film produc
artists, actors, and critics of Easter
The main task of cultural policy
third congress of the SED:
In regard to cultural policy as well, th
unity of Germany, and for the guarante
the center of our entire work. Through
to become true democrats, independent
fied professionals, who place their entir
peace, progress, and democracy.
This education can only be carried out
the cannibalistic teachings of the imper
describe these enemy ideologies objectiv
these ideologies. Therefore it is the decis
radical reversal in all phases of cultural
warmness and compromise.
The article mentions a number of
and films that deserve special pr
parison with Western Germany.
In contrast to the cultural success of t
Germany and Western Berlin has reach
the ruinous influence of American mono
ness of Americanism shows itself for ex
artistic creation, in the persecution and bo
It is the task of progressive cultural wo
the referendum against the rearmament
of a German peace treaty in 1951I, and [t
ment, for the creation of a unified, dem
many, not only through personal actions
artistic production.
In the next section, headed "Wea
Work", the article points out what i
in Eastern Germany up to the presen
Party Member Johannes R. Becher s
be as senseless as it would be shameful t
cultural workers, in our cultural achiev
demands of our day and our epoch. Wha
compare with the success of the Activis
lag in the arts behind the demands of th
in art as well as the lack of clarity re
cultural creation in the DDR.

1 The Activist movement involves a system of special awards and citations for
workers, farmers, etc. who achieve an especially high production record.

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 592 The Musical Quarterly
Formalism means disintegration and destruction of a
deny that the decisive worth of a work of art lies in
in the thought. According to them the worth of a work of
but in the form. Whenever the question of form is giv
art loses its humanistic and democratic character.
In order to prepare the peoples of the American satellite countries to pu
the chestnuts of the American capitalists out of the fire in a third world w
and in order to weaken the resistance of those peoples who are in the camp
peace and democracy, the representatives of imperialism make every effort
destroy their national pride and national consciousness.
Capitalistic production is the enemy of certain spiritual branches of produ
tion, such as art and poetry.2 In the imperialistic epoch, capitalism destroy
true art.

Because formalistic art does not transmit the perception of reality but
separates art from the people and leads to abstraction, it objectively serves
imperialism.
A series of examples of formalism follows: the wall-paintings in
the Friedrichstrasse railroad station in Berlin; the cover of a calendar
by Max Lingner; several examples of architecture; Orff's opera, An-
tigone; the opera by Brecht and Dessau, The Trial of Lucullus, which
was prohibited after the dress rehearsal in Eastern Berlin; the staging
of Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmilla in the Berlin State Opera (the
occasion of sharp attack by the Soviet-controlled press and subsequent
self-incriminations by the theater-director); and various other works.
Theater, operetta, variety, puppet shows, and cabaret are then criticized
for their "formalistic" tendencies.

The next section of the long article is entitled "Against Kitsch".

Kitsch is pseudo-art. Kitsch is also artistic form with falsified content. The
imperialistic culture-destroyers employ the weapon Kitsch to poison the con-
sciousness and lower the taste of the masses . . . The most important question
for the development of art in the DDR is the continuation of the great achieve-
ments of the past, the classical heritage.
Under the heading "The Fight for Realism in Art and Literature":
To overcome the domination of formalistic art, it is necessary to develop
realistic art. In order to develop realistic art, we take our orientation from the
great socialistic Soviet Union, which has created the most progressive culture of
the world.

Therefore a true, historically accurate description [of the times] must be

bound up with the task of educating the people in the spirit of the fight for a
unified, democratic, and independent Germany, for the fulfillment of the five-
year plan, and for peace.
It must be stated that literature and art criticism has not yet demonstrated
its capacity on the one hand to help writers and artists in their development
and on the other to attract workers to literature and art.

2 Karl Marx, Theorien iiber den Mehrwert.

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 Current Chronicle 593

Then follows the concluding sect

in Art and Literature." The Central Committee deems the following
nine measures to be necessary:
i. Founding of the State Commission for Artistic Matters, to supervise theater,
music, dance, and art, as well as to support the development of amateur art
and develop the artistic side of social organizations.
2. In order to improve artistic production in the DDR, it is necessary to preserve
the closest relationship of literature and art with the current tasks, especially
the five-year plan. The five-year plan provides not only countless themes
which demand an artistic presentation, but its fulfillment demands also out-
standing artistic achievements in the realization of various single projects.
The greatest aid to the artistic presentation of today's problems is the study
of how such problems were presented by the classical artists and authors in their
times.

Theater, film, radio, puppet theater must present current problems. In

fight against Kitsch the radio, too, has an important function, particularly i
fight against the decadence of dance music. [The reference here is clearly to
3. Education must be improved and systematized. The students must be in
duced to the classical heritage, and the classics must be given special atten
The study of the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin on dialectic
historical materialism as well as on art and literature is the most importa
prerequisite for the proper understanding of the role of art in the developm
of society.
4. It is recommended that the party members in the Cultural Association for
the Democratic Rehabilitation of Germany place the emphasis for their work
on obtaining active participation of all cultural producers in East and West
Germany, in the fight for peace, the intensive support of the fight against
rearmament, and the fight for the conclusion of a German peace treaty in
1951. It is important to organize the fight against American cultural barbarism,
in order to create a democratic culture that stems from our classical cultural
heritage.
5. The authors' organization is directed to concern itself with current problems,
and it is suggested that a periodical be founded.
6. The artists' organization should publish a magazine including reproductions of
suitable pictures, and concentrating on the problems of modern art; an exhi-
bition of new works should be organized this year.
7. The composers' organization is directed to carry on a constant discussion
and criticism of formalism in order to overcome the present musical back-
wardness. Folksongs should be widely used in compositions.
8. For all branches of art it is necessary to organize the study of Marxism and
Leninism, in order that artists can better portray life "in its upward develop-
ment". Since the active participation of artists in political life and in the
democratic reconstruction (for example in the work of the Peace Committee,
the National Front, the social organizations, and through close, direct contact
with activists, workers, etc.) is the condition for a successful portrayal of
today's problems, the leaders of artistic organizations must see to it that
their members take regular part in this work.

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594 The Musical Quarterly
In order to fulfill their task, these organizations must
works, theoretical treatises, and discussion from the So
Peoples' Republics.
9. The Central Committee recommends that the SED m
of Artists (stage, film, music, vaudeville, radio) enco
literary and artistic questions.
The Central Committee of the Socialistische Einhe
states that all producers of art in the Deutsche Demokrat
every support of our party, in order to overcome cultu
order to transform literature and art into a mighty w
people in its fight for the solution of its problems.
I have not changed the order of ideas of the
have I regrouped them for the sake of clarity o
which the article appeared is typical of current jo
Eastern Germany. Its import can be grasped f
against the background of current policy and pract
falling within the Soviet sphere of influence.
* *

On March 18 the n
Communist compo
formed for the firs
Berlin. During the w
lation were flying:
bidden entirely and
as to whether this m
Brecht campaign by
or whether the perf
end of the State O
under fire for his s
Communist Germa
optimism and joie
Demokratische Rep
tellectual circles tha
would be likely to a
The interest and t
when it became clea
German press was
turned over to the F
of the Soviet zone),
the performance b

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 Current Chronicle 595

not interested; the majority of th

tickets on the street, and the enti
proved to be a boomerang. Wher
invited (and even though some E
were not allowed to write about
present to a man. After a few spor
the opposition subsided completely
triumph. The applause mounted c
ovation. The next day Lucullus w
the State Opera.
All the reasons why Lucullus has
the East German press and governm
no explanations. Only one short
Neues Deutschland, and that onl
extensively in all West Berlin p
Trial of Lucullus, an Unsuccessfu
Opera." A number of passages from
since they throw direct light on th
theories that prevail in East Germa
A highly gifted dramatist and a talen
intentions are unquestionable, have m
to fail, and did fail, for ideological an
Berthold Brecht wrote the text twel
time he found it right to have the fig
to predict the fall of all aggressors in
thinker, however, he should have reco
interpretation no longer corresponded
trend of developments. The camp of w
persons under the leadership of the So
tribunal, but it has real power to try
tribunal. That which was understandab
the expression of the unsure position
pression in 1951 . .. of a relapse into d
long since have overcome.
The music is thin and fragmentary
talent. But he will have to work with h
his cabaret-like faults, if he wants to
than a composer of interesting songs a
that he must avoid may become clea
Tagesspiegel [a West Berlin paper]: "Des
of Western music that Stravinsky has
Igor Stravinsky, who lives in the USA,
musical tradition. As the head of the f
can have no other content than rhythm

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 596 The Musical Quarterly
an example destroys his own talent. Thus Dessau robs him
of attracting the masses, through his music, to figh
aggression. Music that overwhelms its audience with wron
riddles only encourages the backward listeners to suppo
away the progressive ones. [To understand the apparent
paragraph, written, incidentally, by the leading critic of
to read it against the background of the artistic-politic
Russian models, that prevail in the Soviet zone. The prem
Hindemith, Schoenberg, et al., are decadent, backward t
servatism; "progressive" music is that which is immedia
the masses (preferably employing folksong). Most "progr
out, sounds a great deal like Tchaikovsky.]
It is not understandable why the State Opera rehearse
have known that our people are becoming constantly m
Hitler war and five years of fighting for peace. Apparen
State Opera listens less to the progressive circles of our
minority of stagnating intellectuals.

This article in Neues Deutschland is the only off

date regarding the "unsuccessful experiment". Th
had quite different ideas about this one-time per
schmidt, Berlin's leading critic, wrote in the Ne
musical form, related in some respects to Jeanne d
Honegger. A strong impression; a work that will no
cussions in opera production of the future."
The Tagesspiegel wrote:
The only element of continuity is the ceaseless drivin
come shreds of melody-concentrated, short formulas th
suffering, marches and signals, shouts or songs. But in so
succeeds in molding the fragmentary into a unity. The ex
strengthened by loudspeakers, attacks the listener, and the
takes his breath away. This music depicts in its painful,
emptiest inner vacuum, just as it reflects the measur
suffering.

Thus the matter rests for the moment, surrounded by the curious
contradictions of East-West politics: a poet who is a hero in his own
land is attacked by his own press and praised by the opposition. His
opera is forbidden by the same propaganda ministry for whom he
writes the most fulsome type of Communist verse, as witnessed by his
recent contributions to the August World Festival in East Berlin. It
is clear that the subject matter of Lucullus, dealing with the fate of a
dictator and aggressor, is not pleasing to the Russian authorities. But
up to now, Brecht has been immune from criticism, even though he
has not always toed the party line in every detail. It appears possible
that the axe is being sharpened and that Brecht, who is somewhat

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 Current Chronicle 597

suspect because of the years he spe

the meantime, however, Lucullus
production in the State Opera, in
revision consists solely in the additi
forbidden again. Then the chips w
tolerate the kind of artistic dictator
increasingly subjected is a moot q
in, what then?
To make matters all the more in
nounced for production in Munich (
season. We may have the curious ano
good Communists being presented u
bidden at home. It would not be th
by Prokofieff and Shostakovitch are
EVERETT HELM

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