Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0027/00275.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 20KB | 319 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00275}
$Pretitle{376}
$Title{Austria
Between Yesterday and Tomorrow - Music}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Federal Press Service}
$Affiliation{Embassy of Austria, Washington DC}
$Subject{music
works
composer
vienna
opera
strauss
later
mahler
musical
new}
$Date{1986}
$Log{}
Country:     Austria
Book:        Austria Land of Music
Author:      Federal Press Service
Affiliation: Embassy of Austria, Washington DC
Date:        1986

Between Yesterday and Tomorrow - Music

The Era of Gustav Mahler

     April 3rd 1897 was a day remarkable for two events: Johannes Brahms died
and Gustav Klimt chaired the constituent meeting of the "Secession" as a
public forum for the reform and renewal of the arts in Austria. A short time
later Gustav Mahler commenced his great work of reform at the Hofoper in
Vienna (later the Vienna State Opera). The artistic vision which inspired
Mahler is still looked upon today as the ideal artistic interpretation of
opera. A new age had dawned.

     The personality of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) represents a focal point for
the great cultural diversity which characterises the later decades of the
Hapsburg monarchy. Mahler's rise to fame as a conductor was comparatively
swift. After studying in Vienna, he moved from Laibach via Kassel, Prague,
Leipzig (as deputy to the celebrated Arthur Nikisch), and Budapest to Hamburg
and thence to Vienna. The Viennese Hofoper, which he directed for 10 years,
became the centre of all the efforts to renew and reform musical activity. By
virtue of his own example as an ardent and dedicated musician, Mahler inspired
the same single-minded and uncompromising devotion to music in others. A new
rehearsal system, the building up of a superb ensemble, unabridged
performances of individual works (with special emphasis on the Wagner operas)
and the conception and presentation of opera as a unification of music,
speech, and stage action, represented some of the decisive aspects of Mahler's
work of reform. Together with his stage-designer, Alfred Roller, Mahler
introduced new types of stage effects using light and colour to replace the
all too solid wood and cardboard scenery traditionally in use, thus
anticipating the methods employed by stage designers of the late 20th century.
After Mahler's departure it was not until the Thirties that the great Austrian
conductor Clemens Krauss (director of the Vienna State Opera from 1929-1934)
developed similar concepts under the influence of Richard Strauss. Krauss
himself saw his aim thus: "to transform the stage in such a way as to provide
not only a feast for the ear but also a spectacle to delight the eye. . . to
provide perfect productions of dramatic works through the combined impact of
setting, architecture, action, and the personalities of the singers who
portray the characters on stage. I was obsessed from that moment onwards with
the need to achieve this one aim". In his musical works Mahler was urgently
filled with the desire to express his own individual world in symphonic form.
He completed nine symphonies (the first sketches for a tenth symphony, of
which only the slow movement was finished before his untimely death, remain)
between 1888 and 1909. These are a monument to the tensions and contradictions
of that era. On many occasions Mahler introduced the human voice into the
scores of his symphonies, in which passages of limpid simplicity are succeeded
by music of great symphonic complexity. "Lied von der Erde" (1907-1908) is a
wonderfully descriptive portrait in music (based on poems from the Chinese)
written for two solo voices and large orchestra. Mahler also wrote songs
(inspired by poems from "Des Knaben Wunderhornp", a collection of traditional
folk lyrics). After years of malicious persecution Mahler resigned from the
Hofoper in Vienna and went to New York as conductor at the Metropolitan Opera
and director of the Philharmonic Society. In 1911 Mahler, burdened by his own
private family tragedy and already a mortally sick man, returned to Vienna and
died there in the same year at the early age of 50. During recent decades
Mahler's music has undergone a remarkable renaissance in the concert hall and
his significance for our time has been recognised by both experts on music and
the public at large. The International Gustav Mahler Society (of which
Gottfried von Einem is president) has its headquarters in Vienna and watches
over all matters concerning research and interpretation of Mahler's works.

Richard Strauss and Austria

     The close ties existing between Austria and the Munich-born composer
Richard Strauss (1864-1949) proved extremely fruitful. Through Strauss and
more especially through the great influence exercised by Strauss' operatic
works, international interest was focussed on German music of the post-Wagner
era. As a young man Richard Strauss attained fame as a conductor in both
Berlin and Dresden and "Vienna became his second home, but his secret and
fondest affection was directed towards Salzburg, mainly because of his
reverence for Mozart" (Franz Hadamowsky). As early as 1906 Strauss
participated in the Salzburg Mozart Festival as a conductor. Later, with the
writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the theatre producer Max Reinhardt, Strauss
became one of the prime movers in the Salzburg Festival, which was inaugurated
in 1920.

     Even in his earliest symphonic works, (which were strongly influenced by
Liszt's ideas) Strauss proved himself to be the greatest virtuoso of the
orchestra since the days of Richard Wagner. His first operatic work, "Salome",
which was first performed in 1905 and later went on to take the operatic
stages of the world by storm, was closely connected with Austria. Hugo von
Hofmannsthal, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Gregor and Clemens Krauss all cooperated in
writing the stage text for "Salome" which Strauss then put to music. Many of
Strauss' operas took place in a pronouncedly Austrian milieu: "Der
Rosenkavalier", "Arabella", "Ariadne auf Naxos" are all set in the Vienna of a
bygone day and transplant Viennese language and manners to the operatic stage
in a delightful manner. From 1919-1924 Strauss shared the position of director
of the Vienna State Opera with Franz Schalk and he remained closely linked
with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra until the end of his life. The final
rehearsal for Strauss' last opera "Die Liebe der Danae" marked the end of the
Salzburg Festival in 1944 when performances were suspended due to the "total
war" situation. The premiere of this opera only took place in 1952 at the
Salzburg Festival. The wellknown conductors Clemens Krauss and Karl Bohm are
considered to be the authentic interpreters of Richard Strauss' works.

Arnold Schonberg - "Ancestor" of the New Music

     The Viennese musician Arnold Schonberg (1874-1951) played a key role in
the fundamental renewal of musical idiom which set in about 1900 and later
influenced the entire future development of music as a whole in the present
century. As a composer Schonberg was at first self-taught but later became a
pupil of Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942), himself an important musician and
composer. Schonberg first tried his hand as a composer in the post-Wagnerian
style ("Gurrelieder", for large orchestra) but then progressed beyond the
bounds of tonality with his pieces for the piano, op. 11 (1909). This step,
forsaking the laws of the tonal system which had prevailed for the last three
hundred years, was of decisive importance for the music of the 20th century.
The last movement of Schonberg's 2nd string quartet announces this
development in the symbolic words of the solo soprano voice which joins the
stringed instruments: "Ich fuhle luft von anderem planeten" (I feel the air
of another planet). Among the main works written during this phase of
Schonberg's composing are "Pierrot lunaire" (21 melodramas), the monodrama
"Erwartung", the unfinished oratorio "Die Jakobsleiter" etc.

     In 1908 Schonberg commenced to paint seriously and his works were
published by Wassily Kandinsky in the "Bl