This has to be seen to be believed

Arbeiter, Bauern, gegen Faschismus !

Arbeiter, Bauern, nehmt die Gewehre nehmt die Gewehre zur Hand! Zerschlagt die faschistischen Räuberheere, setzt alle Herzen in Brand.

Labourers, farmers, take up the guns, take the guns into your hands! Smash the fascist bandits' armies, set all hearts on fire....the war submerging all countries is the war against you, prole! Labourers, farmers, take up the guns, take the guns into your hands! Smash the fascist bandits' armies, set all hearts on fire. Plant your red Labour banner on every field, on every factory - then a socialist World Republic will rise from the ashes of the old society!

The text is from 1941, about mobilizing the proletariat of the world to defend the Soviet Union from the Nazis. Ideas still relevant today - there was an updated version of this at the time of the Iraq invasion.   The music is Hanns Eisler, originally written for the film Niemansland (1931) directed by Victor Trivas.  It's copyright free and can be dowloaded in full HERE.

In the film, five men cheerfully enlist. In the trenches, they get cut off from their own lines and shelter together in a dug out. Gradually they get to know each other as men, not as enemies. When the shelling stops, they march out together. Where to  The film doesn't say but they're marching against a common foe - war itself.  That's when the Schlussmarch comes in, beautifully, no words. This is what socialism once stood for,. Blair admired Thatcher and said she was his role model. But even she would not have sold the country down the drain to please George Bush. "No alternative" now means "you must keep voting me in because you don't want the other lot". That's why they are scared witless that the system might change. Party above democracy. Ironic?

Although the film is didactic, there are some very good moments, such as the Jewish wedding and especially Louis Douglas, a black American who worked a lot in Europe where the colour bar was less oppressive. He's wonderful, singing and dancing and relaxing everyone else, though he himself is as scared as the rest of them.  There were quite a lot of black actors in European film, even during the Nazi era. Since France and Germany had colonies in Africa, there were thousands of blacks in Europe, some of whom had served in the First Wortld War. The French had entire battalions, who became prisoners of war after the fall of France. They were badly treated and used as slave labour (including as extras in Ufa films). Many died, though one later became the president of Senegal. One German-born African lived and worked in Berlin until he died in 1954. As for Louis Douglas, he went back to the US.

Ruttmann and Eisler experimental film

Walter Ruttmann's masterpiece, Berlin: Der Sinfonie der Grossstadt (1927) can be seen in full on this site HERE.  Above, though is his op 3 from 1924, described as a Lichtspiel, a "play of light", where the action  is generated by the very process of filming itself.   Visually, they're not a patch on other experimmental films of the period, such as those by Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Hans Richter, Man Ray, Viking Egglund and so on.  Indeed, Ruttman's op 4 (1925), a symphony of black and white stripes looks static compared with Duchamp's Anémic Cinéma (1926) where the lines form psychedelic whirling spirals, inspiring many Op Art copies in the 1960's. Conceptually, though, Ruttman's films are adventurous because they are experimenting with the very idea of  using a visual medium in a non-visual way, deliberately challenging the senses.

The film above is interesting too because it was meant to be heard with Hanns Eisler's Passacaglia. No sound recording then, but I think this was meant to be screened together with live performance. Cinema musicians in the 1920's were far more sophisticated  than many assume today. Thousands of formally trained musicians worked in cinemas, hotel lobbies, restaurants, ocean liners etc. Some were of course playing popular dance tunes, but in theory there's no reason why they couldn't play art music. This film bridges the social divide. It also combines film with music. (See Leger's film, also 1924, with Antheil's music in Ballet Méchanique HERE on this site).

Thus it connects to Berlin der Sinfonie der Grossstadt,  made only 3 years later, where visual images function like musical elements, . Like a symphony, the film is structured around movements each of which develops a theme. Within each theme, images move and intertwine, creating a collage almost more musical than purely visual.  Again, conceptually, it's an altogether different way of thinking about film. It's an apotheosis of film as art.  It doesn't pull emotional heartstrings in the way that, say, The Thief of Bagdad or The Sheik whipped their audiences into a frenzy. No "movie stars", but real people going through their normal lives.

Perhaps I shouldn't read too much into this politically, but there may well be a connection between the way swashbuckling movies play on primitive emotions, and celebrity stars substitute fantasy for individual freedom.  Perhaps Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will can be seen as a type of Hollywood extravaganza. albeit with particularly evil subjects. There is a line of descent from D W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, and thus a loose connection even to Cecil B DeMille's more lurid "religious" biopics. Poor Ruttmann, whose experiments with modernsm were decidedly entartete, ended his life working at Ufa. At least, when Eisler went to Hollywood, his views on film were different. .

Vienna to Weimar -Study Day, New Directions arising

The mark of a good conference is the amount of new ideas it generates. The Vienna to Weimar study at Kings Place on Saturday 30/1 should keep anyone interested in the period busy for ages.

As Prof Erik Levi said in his opening speech, the period was marked by many new directions and possibilities. Just as society was adjusting to change, so did music. Douglas Jarman spoke about the new mood in Vienna at the turn of the last century. He elucidated the relationship between Schoenberg and Eisler. Peter Franklin focused on three depictions of Paradise in opera of the period: Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane , Pfitzner's Das Herz and Schreker's Der Schmeid von Gent. Racism is nuts because it pigeonholes composers by their origins, not their music. Then, Gudo Heldt showed clips from various films (including Kuhle Wampe) to illustrate different ways of writing music for film. Watch the bicycle symphony in part 1, where the men stand still in expectation while the music whizzes madly. Once they start off: silence. The music's not background but commentary.

What are the directions I'm thinking in terms of ? For one, the role of Munich, whose Secession movement started five years before Vienna. Indeed the very term Jugendstil derives from the radical Munich magazine Jugend. (as does the word kitsch!) More artists, designers radical social politics and writers in Munich but that's where the aesthetic developed. And remember there were almost as many articles about music in the journal of the Blaue Reiter movement as about painting. And of course Schoenberg was heavily involved. Lots of reasons why Vienna captures the public imagination but it wasn't the full story.

Over Xmas I spent ages listening to K A Hartmann's Simplicissmus. See analysis HERE. Hartmann sends up Nazism while ostensibly writing "medieval" music that should have appealed to retrogressive tastes. Subversive! This puts Carmina Burana into a different context: the jury's still not completely out on Carl Orff. And the idea of Hollywood arising from Weimar. Franz Waxman, for example who conducted The Blue Angel and went on to write the music for The Bride of Frankenstein. (1935). He was both jazz and classical: blending genres and stereotypes long before Korngold, Eisler and the post Anschluss emigration. See "David Weber". And then: the whole effect of American and Anglo culture. Brecht and his "international" names, exotic themes injected into Germanic culture. Even the hero of The Testament of Dr Mabuse bears the incongruous name of "Tom Kent". (I'll upload the movie soon as it's the best of the Lang Mabuse triology)

The photo shows Hannah Hoch's 1919 collage Cut with the Dada Kitchen knife, the Weimar Photomontage. Hoch, who was an all-round remarkable character. really unusual personality, disrupts the idea of"formal" painting. She's using the idea of disconnected images to create a new whole. Think musique concrète, think Varèse. To understand the future of classical music, it's essential to properly understand the past. And that won't happen if the 20th century is ignored. PLease see my other posts about Vienna-Wrimar, including a way of recreating the song recital for yourself, a comparison of Weimar and Chinese films and a detailed review of Hartmann's Simplicius Simplicissimus. PLus lots and lots of related topics -- use search facility.

The Cripple Brigade bear witness

Most politicians are crooks but every now and then one’s so delusional as to lurch beyond criminality into utter unreality. A few years ago an interviewer asked Tony Blair if he’d thought through the implications of invading Iraq. He replied: “I asked God, and he agreed I must be right.” Perhaps that pact with God (or some other supernatural power) will shield bLiar from retribution. But there are many who'll stand witness.

Hanns Eisler set this text by David Weber. Weber was born Robert Winterfeld but used "David Weber" for left wing cabaret, poetry and music. He used the name "Robert Gilbert" when working in operetta and musicals. Besides writing texts like this, he wrote the lyrics of O mein Papa and collaborated on the notorious Im weissen Rössl (White Horse Inn) with Robert Stolz (whose equally amazing life story is HERE) Later in life he translated hits like Hello Dolly and Oklahoma! while simultaneously apprearing in cabaret in Munich. As a young man, Weber/Winterfeld/Gilbert was very left wing and linked to the Spartakists. He was a close friend of Hannah Arendt. And in addition to radical agit prop he wrote music more likely to appeal to the Right. So much for easy generalizations. Read more HERE

Ballade von der Krüppelgarde

Wir sind die Krüppelgarde,
die schönste Garde der Welt;
wir zählen fast eine Milliarde,
wenn man die Toten mitzählt.
Die Toten können nicht mitgehn,
die müssen im Grabe sein
und wir können nicht im Schritt gehn,
die Mehrzahl hat nur ein Bein.

Unser Leutnant kommt von den Toten
unser Hauptmann hat einen Stumpf
Unser Feldmarschall knecht am Boden,
und ist nur noch ein Rumpf

Wir sind die Garde der Krüppel und jedem zweiten Mann
schnallt man solide Knüppel direct an die Knochen an.
Sie sagten: Es sind die Prothesen
viel schöner als Arm und Bein.
Sie sagten: die Blinden lesen mit den Fingem,
noch mal so fein.

Wartet ab, wenn wir auch hinken,
gegen euch werd’n wir stramm marschier’n.
Was tut’s, wenn wir zum linken das rechte Bein verlier’n.
Wir sind die Krüppelgarde, das stärkste Bataillon,
die allererste Reihe in der Front der Revolution

We are the Cripple Brigade, the most beautiful Brigade in the world. We number close to a billion, if you include the dead in the count. The dead can’t march with us, though. They’ve got to stay in their graves. And we can’t march in step because most of us have only one leg.

Our Lieutenant comes from the ranks of the Dead, our Captain has a stump for a leg, Our Field Marshal crawls on the ground. He’s a torso.

We are the Brigade of Cripples and every second man gets a wooden leg strapped onto his knees. They said to us: Prosthetics are better than arms or legs. They said: Blind people can read better with their fingers ….

Just watch out! Though we are limping now, we’ll march again strong against you even if we lose to the left our right legs. We are the Cripple Brigade, the strongest battalion, the front of the revolution.

Vienna to Weimar, Kings Place

This week's theme at Kings Place is "Vienna to Weimar" a subject I'm passionately interested in. As usual with Kings Place, top performers are the exception rather than the rule, but there'll be a rare chance to hear the Artis-Quartett Wien on Friday in Berg's famous Lyric Suite and a Zemlinsky String Quartet plus, really interesting, Wellesz and Weigl String Quartets. There's a story behind the Wellesz but let them tell that.

The other big concert for me is the song recital on 27th with Christian Immler, whom I have heard before, but what a wonderful programme. My beloved Eisler! And not the most famous songs, either. If I have time I'll wrote more about this programme because most of it isn't generally familiar, and each of the composers is very different. Lots and lots to talk about. Even the two Goldschmidt songs (Ein Rosenweig and Nebelweben) carry "stories". The Krenek songs come from a cycle I've written lots about over the years. It's one of his best works and should be heard more frequently, but in many ways doesn't really fit into the "Vienna/Weimar" concept though it deals with Schubertian Austria on the verge of Hitler.

There'll also be movies, the new art form of the period. Most of these films are classics, which most people will have seen before, like Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Unfortunately there are many clashes, so if you go to the song concert you'll miss the film of Die Dreigroschenoper. But on the other hand maybe that's not such a loss as the film is softer than the original. There are clips of the film HERE and a commentary.

Ssssh I shouldn't say this if you're buying tickets, but several of the other films have long been available on this site as full downloads, with commentary.

For Die blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) see HERE.

For Berlin : Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt, please see HERE, with a long commentary. At present I'm doing something on black people in France and Germany at the time, There were thousands. A number were fairly successful professional actors, who made movies well into the Nazi period. Not all voluntarily, but still they should be remembered.

There are also films from the Fritz Lang triology about Dr Mabuse. In many ways these are even more fascinating than the more famous Dr Caligari, because the storylines are more complex and Dr Mabuse is a kind of symbol of evil.

Because film was such a new form, there weren't many models to copy, so many films in this era were pioneering. From the start Germans seemed to realize that films could be art as well as short term entertainment. Also on this site you can see Nosferatu, the greatest vampire movie of all, made in 1921/2 when the 1840's were within human memory. Click HERE.

And, of course the very important Kuhle Wampe, with music by Eisler and text by Bertholt Brecht, which is HERE. This is an amazing movie, take time to savour it.

Lots more to come!

London live in January - multiple clashes

London comes back to life in January. Everything starts to happen again. So much is happening that I'm splitting it in two parts. Please see HERE for what's happening until middle of the month - lots of good thing esp the Henze weekend and several big name starry concerts, that lots of people will want to hear. The second part of the month is interesting too, but beware, multiple clashes, many things on at the same time, all good.

At the Royal Opera House, The Rake's Progress from 22/1, and Così fan tutte from 29/1. The latter is a revival of the Jonathan Miller production and the former the first revival of last year's premiere. Robert Lepage sets The Rake's Progress in 40s' Hollywood which is fair enough. The Rake is about artifice, stylized neo-classicism that isn't quite what it seemed. Hollywood is an excellent simile for Georgian London - both societies high on excess and false appearances, acting as an alternative to life. The First Act is excellent - the devil appears mounted high above on a camera crane. Theatre within theatre. Baba The Turk is Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard - also a good allusion. Although the Second Act runs short of ideas, it will be worth seeing this for Patricia Bardon who stole the show last time in the role - she's magnificent!

Voice people are in for fun - after Henze's Phaedra (17th) and Gergiev's Strauss Elektra (12th and 14th), Netrebko and Hvorotovsky do a big gala at the RFH on the 18th. Joyce DiDonato's doing an all-Italian gala (even Beethoven in Italian) at the Wigmore Hall on 26/1 which is almost certainly sold out. The one I'd dearly love to get returns for is the 31/1 concert with Angelika Kirchschlager and Simon Keenlyside. Every year the Wigmore Hall celebrates Schubert's Birthday with something special, so tickets for this disappeared ages ago. Paul Lewis is also part of the celebration, playing Schubert piano pieces the night before.

Orchestrally, more big hitters. Daniel Barenboim brings the Berlin Staatskapelle to the South Bank with Schoenberg though of course the crowds will be out for his Emperor Concerto and rightly so. An odd clash with Ashkenazy conducting The Philharmonia in Elgar and Mendelssohn on the exact same night, but I guess they can meet up for coffee the next day.

Susanna Mälkki conducts the BBCSO at the Barbican on 30/1 - Webern Passacaglia, Ravel's Concerto for Left Hand (Pizarro) and Zimmermann's Photoptosis. It's a super programme and she's one of the best modern music conductors out, which is saying something. Perhaps everyone else will be flocking to the other concerts that weekend, but this is an important event, too, an excellent introduction to the 20th century. I'll be going for Zimmermann alone.

That day I'll be at a conference on Weimar music at the impossible-to-park-on-Saturday Kings Place so I'll park at the Barbican and bus/taxi. The conference is part of a short series on composers I care about intensely - Eisler, Zemlinsky, Krenek, Schreker, Goldschmidt etc. and it's supported by films of the Weimar era. Most of these films everyone knows but it will be good to see them again in context with the music. I've been doing a lot of Weimar and related cinema lately, though I don't write it all up on this blog.

Then there's the big Sibelius series at the South Bank at the same time. Osmo Vänskä conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The first concert on 27/1 is unusual, not the usual symphonies but the rarer Wood Nymph and Humoresques. On 30th he conducts symphonies no 3 and 2 but interspersed with songs - Sibelius songs are wonderful, and Helena Juntunen the soloist, is very good. Trouble is, there are at least five things on this same evening. The series (like the Barenboim/Berliner Staatskapelle) continues into February. In the midst, handing the LPO baton to Vänskä, Jurowski conducts period instrument Beethoven symphonies with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightment!

And Rolf Hind's series of new music at the Roundhouse , early opera and lots else besides! And of course tons of mainstream and chamber music, and even a piano transcription of Mahler's Tenth symphony! And I have clear forgot to include something booked ages ago - Luke Bedford at the Wigmore Hall, 24th !

Alternative Xmas - anti war Lieder

Just because it's Xmas we don't all want supermarket soundtrack muzak. So I'll be doing a few alternative seasonal offerings, with original translations if possible. (Please also see what I did last December, especially the wonderful Dem Revolutinär Jesus vom Geburtstag. This is another song by Hanns Eisler, and sung by Ernst Busch, but this time a setting of a poem by Kurt Tucholsky. It's 1918. Germany has been defeated, there's been a revolution, people are suffering, many of them displaced.This is a reminder that war isn't glory and also that the British western front didn't get all the good songs. Eisler's glittery flittergold piano trembles and then disintegrates like broken glass. In this 1950's performance, Busch updates the text to say that he'll hang the Adenauers in the branches of the tree, and blames racism. As for Tucholsky, he committed suicide in 1933. He saw what was coming.

"I'm standing in front of the rubble of Germany, singing a Christmas song. What's round me was once the envy of the world. It's different now, we grumble. I hum, quietly, hardly noticing the refrain of my childhood, O Tannenbaum!"

"If I was Knecht Ruprecht ( the chimney sweep that follows St Nicholas) come to this Brimborium (jumble), I'd show the German public, I'd sweep it all away. The last crumb onto the snow, the alley brushed clean. I'd festoon it with your branches, O Tannebaum!"

"I look at the Knisterkerzen (paper decorations) . Whose fault is this misery? Why have we had such blood and pain? Germans with the patience of lambs now live as brothers of the cannon. I dreamed my old dream: strike down the the warmongers, don't believe those brutes anymore! Then sing in freedom the Christmas song O Tannenbaum ! O Tannenbaum! how your leaves shine !"

The photo shows "Ostpreussiche Flüchtlinge" on their arrival in Elbing during the First World War. See the carts pulled by horses, farmers fleeing from the east. Click to enlarge. Soon afterwards, Elbingers would be refugees too.

Franz Schreker - Die Gezeichneten Salzburg DVD

In the early 90's Decca did a series of recordings of Entartete Musik, music suppressed by the Nazi regime. It was an act of great commercial foresight because at the time much of this music wasn't known outside specialist circles. The Decca series, created by Dr Albrecht Dümling, was truly visionary, extremely well curated, and the performances often so good they remain classics even now the genre is pretty much mainstream. This series is the benchmark by which all else is measured. Probably there won't be another series of this breadth and quality.

Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten was part of the series, conducted by Lothar Zagrosek and the Berlin Radio Symphony who were behind many of the recordings. Entartete Musik was cherished in East Germany, where there was a performance tradition. On one disc there's Matthias Goerne, barely out of his teens. Worthy as that recording is, it's outclassed by the performance in Salzburg in 2005, when Peter Ruzicka was director. So a visionary performance, unmissable for anyone, interested in the genre or not. This puts Die Gezeichneten firmly in the mainstram repertoire.

The Salzburg production is so good that topping it will be a challenge no one has yet dared attempt. It was conducted by Kent Nagano, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (where many East Berliners went to). The cast is absolutely top notch : Anne Schwanewilms, Michael Volle, Wolfgang Schöne and Robert Brubaker in what must be the ultimate performance of his career. The director was Nikolaus Lehnhoff.

Lehnhoff's penchant for massive constructions works wonderfully to express the meaning of the opera. The stage at first looks like it's strewn with formidable boulders. Alviano Salvago has built Elysium, a secret world on a remote island off Genoa. These boulders are like the bastions of a frightening fortress, which is what Elysium really is, despite being dedicated to art, love and beauty. There are prisoners here, and unspeakable crimes which don't get revealed until the end. Salvago himself is a fortress. He's a hunchback, "the ugliest man in Genoa", crippled by self-loathing. He's built Elysium as an escape. It's so perfect that it makes everything beautiful. It's used by aristocrats for exquisite orgies, in which Salvago himself doesn't participate despite the magical aura which makes hideousness beautiful.

As the lovely Overture unfolds, Brubaker is carefully putting on elaborate makeup. He's dressed in a flimsy negligee. but his cropped hair and butch features make him look like a caricature drag queen. Immediately, the staging and acting conncet to the idea of psychic dissonance that is so much the soul of this opera. The boulders on stage are formed by a giant statue of a woman, but a statue collapsed and destroyed, only one arm, on hand still raised in a futile gesture to heaven. Most of the action in the opera unfolds on the statue's body, so watch carefully how the body becomes part of the action. Sometimes its rounded curves nurture, sometimes they allow a place to hide, but they remain opaque, inpenetrable, unlike the island's victims. The stage too extends to the walls around the auditorium, arches representing the many secret rooms in the grotto, yet also look sinister, like catacombs. The statue does not foretell the ending. It's clear in the music and text all along that Elysium is an unsustainable delusion in the first place, and Salvago is not deluded. This is important because there are moral and social values in this opera. Elysium is a prototype of an ideal society, corrupted by people who don't have ideals.

Salvago announces he's giving Elysium away to the City of Genoa. An altruistic act, perhaps, but Salvago knows that the girls used in the orgies were kidnapped from the town. Schreker's dwarf is an altogether more complex person than any of Zemlinsky's. Zemlinsky's dwarves fall in love with beauties, but accept their rejection on a relatively straightforward fairy tale level. Schreker's Salavgo (note the name) is so screwed up he doesn't dare look beyond himself and or even conceive of love. Fortress Elysium blocks out vulnerable feelings.

Schreker's drama is more than fairy tale in other ways. Listen to the way Anne Schwanewilms creates Carlotta Nardi, the wayward daughter of the Podestà (Wolfgang Schöne). She's a liberated woman, an artist who doesn't follow rules, the personification of Der ferne Klang, the elusive melody in physical form. She paints souls. Listen to that wonderful passage where she sings about her dream. She sees a "small wretched wanderer" walk into the sunlight, and a miracle happens - he grows larger and larger. "So male ich eure Gestalt, Signor Alviano". Watch Brubaker's face twitch. This is truly masterful acting. He's pouring out a flood of dammed up emotions, too powerful for Salvago to contain. Then she says, she still needs to see "trunkene Auge, darin all die Schoenheit sich gespeigelt".

This line is critical. Can Salvago give her the "drunken eye" that mirrors beauty ? Brubaker pulls his butch black overcoat on again, hiding his soft pink negligee, and for a moment stands alone on the harsh boulders. The scene ends with poignant strings, the film projecting the statue's blind stone eyes.

Salvago's mirror image twin is Graf Vitelozzo Tamare, given a tour de force performance by Michael Volle, another high point in his career he deserves to be very proud of. Tamare is handsome, tall, virile. What body language! Yet listen to the music behind his description of Elysium, and its "Ein künstliche Grotto auf jenem Eiland", the Eiland soaring, swelling lyrically. So it makes sense that Tamare, Alpha male that he is, unlke the other men, the one who discovers love. "There are men who see only the light, and darkness "ist ihrem Fremd". Since he's set eyes on the Carlotta with her mysterious, challenging smile, no longer can he be careless and uncaring, no longer can he be the prankster hero he used to be. Think Tristan. Pity Volle isn't a tenor. Listen to the way Schreker builds echoes of horn calls into the music, as if he did hear the parallels. But it's distinctively Schreker's voice, "Ferne Musik und leise Gesänge" further invoked in the orchestral interlude that follows, where Lehnhoff has Schwanewilms start to seduce Brubaker.

Both Schwanewilms and Brubaker are encased in transparent black chiffon on naked flesh. When Schwanewilms talks off Brubaker's hard, heavy boots it's erotic and yet extremely tender. Watch Brubaker's expressions carefully as he doesn't have much to sing but his reactions are extremely important - thank goodness for close-ups in film! Yet seduction is just a simile for deeper intimacy. Carlotta sings of going out on s a sunny day, feeling sad without knowing why. Salvago realises someone has at last broken down his emotional walls. But that means he has to learn to give tenderness in return, for she, too is "ein gar gebrechliches Spielzug" She pulls off his pink dress, exposing him, but that's it.

The most striking scenes in this production occurs as the interlude is played. Suddenly the auditorium is bathed in blue light, a reference to the light that makes the Grotto magic. The arches around the stage light up, and figures appear, in black capes. These reference the men of Genoa in their black, beetle-like attire and also longer dramatic traditions. Carlotta's sensitivity is up against something too hard and too ingrained in society for her and Salvago to stand up to. Figures like vultures encroach on the stage as the Duke, representing power, persuades Carlotta that Salvago isn't the man for her. Eventually, it's Tamare she succumbs to, not unwillingly.

These groups of elegant but sinister figures, sexually ambiguous, with masks and feathered headresses, are Lehnhoff trademarks, but here wonderfully evoke things that can't rationally be expressed - mystery, evil, death, power, perhap ? They prepare us for the terrible trial scene when Duke Adorno and the Council of Eight denounce Salvago, blaming him for kidnapping and corrupting the girls of Genoa. It's a horrifying moment. Salvago squirms, helpless. The aristocrats who used Elysium are rounding on him for trying to end it. He must take the blame so they won't. And he is to blame, even though he never laid a finger on anyone. His crime was trying to upset the natural order of things where beauty is beauty and ugliness ugliness. Salvago's attempts to end the orgies on the island by giving it to the city are cruelly punished. Perhaps real ugliness is so powerful that dreams like Elysium can't possibly work and Salvagos are destined to fail. And the rescued girls themselves blame him, for it was in his Elysium they were corrupted.

Then in the final interlude, the ground itself opens up, as Elysium is destroyed, revealing lots of children, half naked, some dead, their haunted eyes captured more accusingly on film than you'd ever see in the opera house. It's horrible. In a corner, Carlotta and Tamare lie together as if dead. Then Volle sings. Even if he's killed, it won't change the fact he's had the most blissful moment of his life. "Die Schönheit sei Beute das Starken". In their final confrontation, Tamare tells Salvago in no uncertain terms why he's failed. "Du sahst nur das Dunkle, die Scahtten, Gefahr und Sünde". What's worse, "ein freudlos Leben, ein langsam Seichen, oder ein Tod in Rausch und Verklärung rauscher in brünstg’r Unarmung ein selig Sterben!". A death in rapture and transfiguration? Carlotta found the ecstasy, the "drunken eyes" she dreamed of so she died happy. Definitely, Tristan und Isolde, with a dash of Tannhauser.

But this is Schreker. Tamare recounts a tale about killing a funfair fiddler with his own violin. Carlotta awakes from her swoon and screams at Salvago in revulsion . "Gebt mir Wasser" she cries, "Nein, gebt mir Wein!" Salvago crumples into a ball as the music explodes into conflagration.

Often the more you love something, the harder it is to write about it, because it's sort of disappointing to dash off something superficial. Maybe one day I'll finally get around to setting out the critique of Eisler's Hollywood Liederbuch I've been making notes on for years. But with a new production of Tristan und Isolde coming up at the Royal Opera House it's a good time to be thinking about the ideas in Die Gezeichneten. Get the DVD, because this production was fantastically expensive to mount and was designed for the specifics of the Felsenreitschule and could never be quite the same again. PLEASE see my other posts on Franz Schreker, use the search button or labels on right.

Complete movie to download - Kuhle Wampe

You can see the WHOLE FILM intact below. It is over 1 hour long (not a clip), and can be viewed full screen. Perhaps in times like this we don't need to be reminded how soul destroying it is to be unemployed. How do people keep going? Kuhle Wampe was made in Berlin in the summer of 1932, several years into the last Depression. It's an amazing film, so even though the first part is desolate, it "needs" to be seen again, especially now in difficult times. The full title is Kuhle Wampe oder: Wem gehört die Welt, "Who owns the world". Think about that. Do politicians and crooked bankers own the world or can ordinary people do anything?

Bertolt Brecht wrote the text and Hanns Eisler the music (and a lot of the political rigour). Eisler's music is wonderfully atmospheric. He's completely underrated as a writer of music other than agitprop. This film was made only 5 years after the movies became "talkies", so Eisler's music really is cutting edge invention for its time. Movie music does not have to be sentimental drivel, it can be art. Notice how little dialogue there is : so much is expressed through subtle gesture. No need for translation. This speaks whether you're German, Russian, Spanish. That's the socialist ideal, but it's also profoundly sensitive to how real people function. It's cinéma vérité by instinct, long before the concept was formulated. No wonder Eisler wasn't impressed when he worked in Hollywood.

Even more exceptional is the cinematography. It's outstanding. The first part of the film is a masterpiece, an overwhelmingly moving study, like an elegaic poem told in visual images and music. A young man searches for work. But everyone is unemployed, men everywhere on their bikes, searching for any glimmer of hope. The film shows the bicycle wheels turning endlessly, all that hard work leading nowhere. Long shots of cobbled streets, the tall, forbidding tenement where the man lives. For a moment he pauses to watch street musicians play an eerie mournful melody. We don't know yet but it's his last contact with the world.

Up he trudges to the cramped apartment he shares with his sister, his brutal father and downtrodden mother. Every frame is poignant, even the homily painted over the kitchen stove. The young man looks out of the window, where a shrivelled pot plant struggles to survive. He looks at his watch, his only possession of value, and carefully puts it aside......his mother walks up the endless flights of stairs. The window is open, the flimsy curtain blowing in the breeze. A crowd gathers round the young man's broken body. When I first saw this film as a teenager it was devastating. Now, when the situation has become real to so many, it is physically painful to watch, but steel yourself. It's important. Politicans, bankers and those who think unemployment is a lark should be tied and forced to watch.

The second part of the film focuses on the young man's sister. The family become destitute and get no help. So they move to Kuhle Wampe, a tent city for the homeless on the banks of a lake outside town. Surprisingly, life is not so bad. People stick together, sort of. Real life squatter camps are not much fun. The girl then starts hanging out with socialist idealists. There's a long sequence shot at a real life rally, with sports and music. Helene Weigel, Brecht's wife, appears with her theatre troupe, singing through megaphones. She's the short dumpy brunette. The girl's boyfriend is played by Ernst Busch (who sings the Jesus Revolutionary song in an earlier post). This is historic documentary not simply "film".

Interesting how the golden Aryan physiques on display presage other kinds of party rallies to come in later years, but that was the fashion at the time, nothing sinister.

At the end of this lovely day out, everyone goes back to town. They pour back into the world singing the Solidaritätslied, the now famous "Solidarity Song". Vorwärts und nicht's Vergessen! Forwards, don't forget! Heiner Goebbels (see posts below) has been a huge Eisler fan since his youth. In fact it was Goebbels who introduced Eisler to me ! A few years back Goebbels created a work called Eislermaterial, a composite of Eisler pieces against a wider background.

Nowadays we know about Stalin and Hitler, so we know the solution Brecht and his friends proposed is not quite that simple. But in those difficult times, the dream sustained people as a statement of faith and hope.

See the complete Kuhle Wampe by clicking HERE


OR HERE

Heiner Goebbels - Songs of Wars I have Seen

This is a short clip from Heiner Goebbels's Songs of Wars I have Seen. It's badly recorded so make huge allowances. The reality is much better. Reality and image are good ways through which to enter Goebbels's world. For nearly 40 years now he's experimented with different ways of expressing ideas. Most of us are conditioned to thinking more or less in boxes: what Goebbels does is that mysterious space between boxes, where ideas overlap and change.

Most cross-genre hybrids don't work because they're approached as self-conscious novelties, from outside in rather than from within. In Songs of Wars I have seen, the duality comes from the very meaning, or possible meaning of the piece and thoughtfully worked through.

The texts come from Gertrude Stein's wartime diaries, where she jots down random thoughts. Her words seem embarrassingly banal. Why is she rambling on about honey when people just like herself are being murdered all round Europe? You want to scream in protest. But that's exactly why Songs of Wars I have seen works so effectively. It overturns your assumptions about what it's like to live in such situations. War turns Stein inwards, as if she can only escape the horror of reality by burrowing into trivia. "People go mad" she says, "quietly and slowly".

Goebbels recreates the claustrophobia of Stein’s world by shrouding the stage in darkness, lit only by fragile table lamps, which look as if they might go out at any time. The female musicians are huddled together, as if in a domestic prison. They’re musicians, not singers or actors, so when they read Stein’s texts they sound indistinct, but that’s the point. They, too, are in a world not of their own making. If they sounded polished or “thespian”, the impact would be lost. When they play, though, they create the poignant depths Stein dares not articulate".

Above the women are ranged a menacing counterpoint of percussion and brass, and above them all float eerie sounds like the crackling of radio waves or the rumbling of machines. It’s like bombardment, distant but persistent, creating the tense anxiety Stein tries so hard to suppress. Sometimes it does overwhelm, and the voices are silenced. A trumpet calls out from the background, deliberately distorted.

Stein ruminates on Shakepeare and on the Middle Ages. History seems to come round and round in endless repeat. Is barbarity part of the human condition? How do decent people cope?
Hence Goebbels's seamless blend of early music and modern, theorbo with sound desk. At the end words cease. The musicians leave their sophisticated instruments and turn to Tibetan prayer bowls, which make eerie, circular sounds, while behind them the whirring electronic background drones on.

Dem Revolutionär Jesus zum Geburtstag

Du sahst Gewalt und Polizei. Du wolltest alle Menschen frei und Frieden auf der Erde. Du wußtest, wie das Elend tut und wolltest alle Menschen gut, damit es schöner werde!

Du warst ein Revolutionär, und machtest dir das Leben schwer....Du hast die Freiheit stets beschützt und doch den Menschen nichts genützt, du kamst an die Verkehrten!

Du kämpftest tapfer gegen sie, und gegen Staat und Industrie. Bis man an dir weil nichts verfing Justizmord, kurzerhand beging...Es war genau wie Heute.

Der Menschen wurden nicht gescheit. Am wenigsten die Christenheit trotz allem Händgefalten. Du hattest sie vergeblich lieb. Du starbst umsonst. Und alles blieb beim alten.

The organ accompaniment sets the context but this isn't really Bach! Ernst Busch, the singer, was a total revolutionary. Growing up in Kiel, he was aware first hand of the naval rebellions that marked the end of the Kaiser's rule. He acted, sang, appeared in cabaret and on the barricades. He was a completely hands-on revolutionary, no armchair dreamer. Busch escaped from Berlin in 1933, the Nazis hot on his trail, and joined the International Brigade in Spain. Eventually the Nazis got him but he survived and became a revered figure in the DDR.

The text is by Erich Kästner, who became famous for kid novels like Emil and the Detectives and Lotte und Lisa (which Disney turned into The Parent Trap) . He wrote lots of poems like this, socially observant and trenchant.