Forbidden Music (10 page)

Brahms's Liberal sympathies and his circle of friends and colleagues brought many important representatives of Jewish assimilation into his orbit. These included both patrons and musicians. Within this circle was the first generation of Jews who were able to participate in musical life without restriction. It is fascinating to differentiate between those who helped shape the age,
and those who merely tried to fit in. There are two principal sources associated with Brahms that facilitated or documented Jewish entry into German and Austrian musical life. One is the musical movement that grew out of Mendelssohn's Music Academy in Leipzig and which became the bastion of the so-called ‘Old German School’, as opposed to the ‘New German School’ deriving from Liszt and Wagner in nearby Weimar. The other source is from the writings and reviews of Brahms's friend and principal apologist, Eduard Hanslick. The following short excerpt by Hanslick from his obituary of the composer Robert Franz in the
Neue Freie Presse
on 1 November 1892 joins these two sources together in a single and succinct résumé:

As with the visual arts, architecture and literature that grew from the dominant, liberal middle classes, much of the music was stolid, respectable and often quite derivative. Today, re-acquaintance with the works of some of these minor composers offers frustratingly limited rewards. Yet the conventionality of much of this music tells its own intriguing tale and sets the tone for developments that would come later in the following century.

Hanslick's Musical World

Hanslick was the centre of Brahms's circle and although he was raised Christian, his mother had been born into the Kisch family, who were prominent Jewish merchants by royal appointment in Prague. Hanslick reported in his memoirs how his father was the only parent from whom he received an education, avoiding any in-depth mention of his mother's family apart from confirming that her parents were originally Viennese. He circumnavigates the issue of his Jewish ancestry by devoting an entire chapter to his mother in his autobiography where he maintains that it was through her and her parents that he developed a love of French literature. This at least indicated, if only
vicariously, the enlightened, outward-looking model of those rational ideals and beliefs typical of the age of Liberalism. He was dismissive of many of the emotive, as opposed to expressive, qualities that were beginning to define music in the latter half of the nineteenth century. His rigidly Rationalist view of art and music made him suspicious of showmanship and empty virtuosity, which, as we know from Wagner, was in itself often seen as a near diversionary tactic of Jewish instrumentalists. Hanslick's ideals harkened back to the purity of the age of classicism and had no time for the portentous matters of nation and spirit being crow-barred into music or, indeed, into opera. His book, a Hegelian aesthetic thesis from 1854 entitled
Vom Musikalisch-Schönen
,
⁹
underwent numerous reprints and, with a doctorate of law in his pocket, he was able to begin lecturing on music history and aesthetics in 1861 with a piano at his side and an auditorium full of curious students from all disciplines. As pointed out by Hanslick's English translator Henry Pleasants, it probably constituted the very first ‘music appreciation’ course.
¹⁰
It, along with his
Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien
¹¹
from 1870, became prime documents for drawing intellectual battle-lines between the Wagnerian Romantics of the so-called ‘New German School’ on the one side and the 'Old German School’ Romantics, represented by Brahms and the Conservatory in Leipzig, on the other. That Brahms was a full generation younger than Wagner only heightens the tone of the dialectic that was bandied about: the younger composer represented the old, the older composer represented the new.

Hanslick reserves special condemnation for triviality in music, the banal and the picturesque. He does not spare Jewish composers, and his acidic reviews attacking bland conventionalism highlight that he was always aware of ‘empty worthiness’ as an ever-present danger. His reviews of Wagner and Liszt are notoriously partisan, often written in a way that shamelessly basks in his own highly enjoyable and immensely readable vituperation. Yet, taking a selection of reviews from his decades of writing on music, we can discern the lines he drew between progressive and conservative, conventional and original, and often, by extension, between the assimilating Jew and the establishment Gentile.

His review of Liszt's tone poems, and specifically
Les Préludes
from 1857, is a directory of musical values with which he challenges the very basis of the New German School. The extraneous burdens imposed on music to provide a programmatic narrative leave him particularly piqued.
¹²
In later reviews, he hands Liszt a back-handed compliment by praising his orchestration of a Schubert march – Schubert being as incapable of orchestrating in the manner of Liszt as Liszt is of coming up with ideas as original as Schubert.
¹³
Elsewhere,
he voices a suspicion that the ‘Gretchen’ movement of Liszt's
Faust Symphonie
was included in a Philharmonic concert as it was the only bit of the work worth hearing.
¹⁴
To Hanslick, Liszt was of a fundamentally unproductive nature. Hanslick's review of Liszt's
Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie
, published in the
Neue Freie Presse
on 22 November 1881, tells us as much about the critic as it does about Liszt. The book was originally published in 1859, but Hanslick is profoundly disturbed to find ten pages brimming with anti-Semitism added to the new edition. Hanslick quickly locates a pamphlet originally printed in [Buda]Pest called ‘Franz Liszt on the Jews’ written under the pseudonym of Sagittarius, in all probability the name of
Pester Lloyd
’s music critic Max Schütz.
¹⁵
Armed with Liszt's previous statements regarding Jews, Hanslick offers him enough rope to hang himself and quotes copiously from the most offensive passages of
Des Bohéhmiens
. He is outraged at Liszt's character assassinations of Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, for whom Hanslick recalls Liszt having earlier expressed the highest admiration. Most of Liszt's polemic is rehashed Wagner on the same subject, though Liszt adds the quite hair-raising practical suggestion of ridding Europe of all Jews, by force if necessary, and shipping them to Palestine. ‘Is this Wagner's influence or has the Abbé simply been spending too much time in Rome?’ Hanslick quips. He ends this review more in sadness than anger while expressing alarm at the prominent platform Liszt's writings offer for such mindless bigotry.
¹⁶

The final irony however comes with Hanslick's obituary of Liszt printed in the
Neue Freie Presse
on 8 August 1886. He reminds us that Liszt was born in the German-speaking border regions of Hungary and never spoke a word of Hungarian. ‘Furthermore, he preferred to write and speak French, even when conversing with Germans.’ He cites Liszt's formative years in Paris, where he was a supporter of equality and freedom during the ‘July Revolution’, while remaining a devotee of the aristocracy and a lover of beautiful women. Ultimately, according to Hanslick, Liszt grew to be too cosmopolitan, ‘at home everywhere and nowhere, a characteristic that ultimately undermined the profundity of his music’.
¹⁷
It is quite startling how Hanslick unwittingly uses almost the same vocabulary to describe Liszt's music as that employed by Hitler's National Socialists to describe Jewish composers some fifty years later.

It is only when Wagner's music appears on a concert programme that Hanslick is prepared to liken Liszt's ‘Gretchen’ movement to the transcendental heights of Mozart. The Prelude to
Tristan and Isolde
is compared to listening to the beginnings of sentences without ever being able to hear their conclusions. He complains of the constant repetition of chromatic motifs, meaningless seventh chords, and orchestration that is meant to inject
sensuality but instead, ‘jangles nerves’.
¹⁸
‘
Mild und leise
’ (the ‘Liebestod’) is denounced as the scrupulous translation into music of Wagner's bombastic libretto, while the trombones at the beginning of Hans Sachs's second act aria, ‘Jerum! Jerum! Hallahalohe!’ from
die Meistersinger
‘sound like cannibals who have bitten into a piece of human flesh that is still too hot to eat’.
¹⁹
In short, Wagner's near perfect depiction of the erotic in music is something that offends and unsettles Hanslick's rational sensibilities; his references to nerves being ‘jangled’, ‘confused’ or ‘disturbed’ are a pejorative swipe at Wagner's ability to wrench control over the listener's emotional reactions.

Jewish composers hardly fare any better. Anton Rubinstein is warned against trying to inject too much originality into every bar, creating what Hanslick calls a ‘Baroque and unmusical’ effect. He is also cautioned against writing too much music too quickly. Hanslick noted that Rubinstein had already composed ‘half-a-hundred’ works, many of which weren't significant. Later, when reviewing Rubinstein's
Ocean
Symphony, he criticises what he calls Rubinstein's inability to maintain his originality.
²⁰
Hanslick writes that he cannot recall a single work by Rubinstein, including his first two operas, in which quality was sustained throughout, or where it even improved as the work progressed. Reviews such as this, along with reviews of countless piano recitals, indicate that Vienna was hearing a lot of Rubinstein, both as performer and composer. His performances of Mendelssohn and Schumann are praised as sublime re-creations: Hanslick uses the word ‘nachdichten’, meaning to re-compose as a poet. An indication of Jewish musical assimilation can be inferred from the 1871 appointment of Anton Rubinstein as artistic director of Vienna's Musikverein, or ‘Society of Music Friends’. His successor from 1872 was Brahms.

It is worth recalling that Hanslick was reviewing Wagner before he began reviewing Brahms – indeed, reviewing Wagner positively. Yet as Hanslick commented in 1862, ‘Brahms is already a significant personality, possibly the most interesting among our contemporary composers.‘
²¹
It is fascinating that the first thing Hanslick praises in the young Brahms is his individuality and his finely organised musical nature. This highlighting of ‘organised’ is telling. He praises Brahms in his D major Serenade for avoiding sumptuous orchestral effects. His respect for Brahms is seemingly boundless, bearing in mind that Hanslick is the older of the two (Hanslick was eight years older than Brahms and twelve years younger than Wagner). Taking the position of the senior statesman, he still managed to criticise Brahms in several important works such as the G major Sextet, describing parts of it as abstract music-making and complaining of headaches, caused by its restless mixing and brooding. He found no sensual beauty, rhythmic life or melodic pliancy and thought the finale reminded him of Schumann's staler, later works.
²²

Moving from Brahms to his immediate circle, however, we gain an even clearer understanding of Hanslick's ideals. Hanslick's reaction to the young Goldmark's overture
Sakuntala
reveals a number of points that shed light on Hanslick's values: the work is ‘fresh and characteristic in inventiveness'; ‘clearly structured and with the finest details’. Only a few places remind him of Goldmark's ‘earlier sentimentality’ and ‘dissonance’.
²³
Of Joseph Joachim, Hanslick writes that ‘even in the enviable position of being the most important violinist of our day, he plays with the embodiment of transfigured virtuosity’. He goes on to say that the appreciation of Joachim's musical insight only reminds one later of his staggering technical command. ‘How easy and sweet it is to enjoy this utter perfection, yet how difficult it is to describe.‘
²⁴
He also loves Joachim's ‘purity and discipline of style’. The recital reviewed here must have been an exceptional experience as Joachim was accompanied by none other than Brahms. They played Schubert's Fantasy in C major and Beethoven's A major Sonata in addition to solo works by Tartini and Bach. ‘No third person stood either between them or beside them. Bound together by artistic closeness and close friendship, here were two artists, whom Germany must joyously count among its noblest!‘
²⁵
Hanslick regrets that no works of Brahms were played and despairs of Brahms's own reluctance to shine as a virtuoso. He then goes on to suggest that Rubinstein is the better pianist of the two. Joachim as a composer leaves Hanslick unimpressed: his music is too reflective, ‘his creative flow is neither swift nor rich; his inventive powers are honourable, but lacking in sensuality and elementary strength.‘
²⁶

For Brahms's close friend, the Jewish pianist-composer Ignaz Brüll, Hanslick has few words of encouragement, despite the popularity his operas enjoyed at the time, mounted with the best casts that the Imperial Opera could provide. In his review of Brüll's opera
Bianca
, Hanslick mentions that the music remains as unoriginal as Brüll's previous works: