From Psychology to Music: Keller via Freud

Author(s): Christopher Wintle

Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 144, No. 1884 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 7-13
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
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From

psychology

to

Keller via
CHRISTOPHER WINTLE

music

Freud
traces the indebtedness of

the eminent emigre critic to the father of psychoanalysis

IT

IS OFTEN ASKED, what has music to do

with psychology - or more particularly with
psychoanalysis, its Freudian branch? One
of the earliest and most trenchant answers
came in 1922 from Carl Jung, father of analytical
psychology and a notable Freudian apostate. Basically, his reply was, 'very little'. 'Only that aspect
of art,' he wrote, 'which consists in the process of
artistic creation can be a subject of psychological
study, but not that which constitutes its essential
nature.'l The 'process of artistic creation' could be
observed in two kinds of artists, the extraverted
and the introverted, which he equated with
Schiller's 'naive' and 'sentimental' kinds: their job
was to throw up symbols that tap deeply and
inexplicably into the experiences and heritage of a
culture - that is to say, to engage with its 'collective unconscious'. Of course, works could be
probed for symptoms of their creator's pathology;
but this was a distraction, and the results in any
case would be merely reductive and uncover the
same sexual and familial problems that face us all:
'if a work of art is explained in the same way as a
neurosis, then either the work of art is a neurosis,
or a neurosis is a work of art.' Artists, moreover,
were at their best as vessels for communication, as
visionaries possessed by a 'divine frenzy' inimical
to cognition, and as mere players in the larger
process of 'self-regulation in the life of nations and
epochs'. All this had nothing whatever to do with
the merely conscious (or preconscious) organisation of art, even - and especially - when a
drama was overtly 'psychological'.2 The 'essential
nature' of art, on the other hand, belonged quite
simply to 'aesthetics'.
In post-war British music, as we know, Jung's
views have ruled the roost. Michael Tippett's
operas turned Mozart's trials of Tamino into rituals of 'individuation', and Robert Donington dissolved Wagner's musical transformations into the

mythic symbols of The ring before turning to

opera in general.3 Indeed, Jungian 'archetypes' that is to say, recurrent 'primordial' or 'mythic'
images thrown up by creative fantasy - still stand
behind the work of, for example, Harrison Birtwistle and Jonathan Harvey: in Birtwistle's Punch
and Judy (1965-68) Punch is the 'archetype', and

Harvey's Inquest of love (1993) includes a 'Hermes'

type, the 'Psychopomp'. The role of Jung in the
thought of Peter Maxwell Davies, moreover, requires a separate study.
So where does this leave the Freudians?
S FAR AS British music goes, the
question itself raises a paradox. For
the most articulate and best known
of them, Hans Keller (1919-85), is,
psychoanalytically, the least understood - that is,
until now. Keller fled Vienna for London in 1938,
shortly after the Kristallnacht, when he had been
'imprisoned, robbed, starved, and beaten up the
Gestapo'.4 For the rest of his life he stayed in
London. (In fact, one of the first houses he lived
in, 32 Herne Hill, had been designed around 1937
by his father, Fritz Keller, in conjunction with
Rudi Koempfner of Vienna University and later
All Souls, Oxford. Koempner was the brother of
Keller's cousin, Inge Trott.) For about twelve years
he worked as a freelance writer and fiddle-player,
before emerging in the early 1950s as a powerful
scourge of critics5 and a champion of Benjamin
Britten.6 It was only later, in 1959, that he famously joined the BBC, where he remained for twenty
increasingly turbulent years.7 Although he published prolifically on music from about 1947,
most of his papers from the early 1940s were
unpublished, and hence unknown. This work is
nothing if not voluminous. The papers were discovered soon after his death in 1985, sorted into
preliminary bundles and acquired by Cambridge
University Library in the mid-1990s. They were
then catalogued by a specially appointed archivist,
Alison Garnham, and after a period of digestion,
edited by the present writer in 2002. Finally they
were printed in June 2003 with a grant from the
Jewish Music Institute (SOAS, London) using
funds from the National Lottery. What is important and startling about this work is that it reveals
for the first time the scale and character of Keller's
In British
involvement with psychoanalysis.
music this was unique.
The work basically comprises three types of
material: (1) first reactions to British culture,
along with views on topical Jewish, sexual and

THE MUSICAL

TIMES / AUTUMN

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2003

A new collection of
writings by the late
Hans Keller, Music

andpsychology:
from
Viennato London,
1939-52, edited by
Christopher Wintle,
is published by
Plumbago Books at
?20. MT readers may
obtain a copy for
?15 by contacting
<plumbago@
btinternet.com>.

Notes
1. CG Jung: 'On the
relation of analytic
psychology to
poetry' (1922),
trans. RFC Hull in

Thespiritin man,art
andreligion(1967)
(London: Routledge,
2001), p.76.
2. For example,
Kurt Weill's Lady in
the dark (1941).
3. Robert Doning-

ton: Wagner'Ring
andits symbols
(London: Faber
& Faber, 1963),

and Operaandits
symbols(New
Haven & London:
Yale, 1992).
4. Hans Keller:

Musicandpsychology:from Viennato
London1939-52, ed.
Christopher Wintle
(London: Plumbago,
2003), p.xi.

5. MusicSurvey:
newseries,1949-52,
edd. Donald
Mitchell & Hans
Keller (London:
Faber, 1981).

6. BenjaminBritten:
a commentary
on
his worksfroma

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ar
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underanalysis pluscomprehensive
OnthecouchwithKeller/ Seeingdouble:Schubert

A Handel-Beethoven
link?I The rise of WilliamBoyce
at 60 / Anthony
Powers
at 50
GavinBryars
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

listingofundergradua

musiccourses

AUTUMN2003

lection of cross-disciplinary writings (Freud was

famously unmusical), but a demonstration of
their backgrounds in contemporary sociology and
psychology underpinned by Keller's political and
cultural views. The mixed presentation would
have been unfashionable a quarter of a century
ago; but now, in our age of critical theory, it is
essential. Indeed, it is the same format Keller
adopted for his 1975.8
To return, then, to our opening question.
Keller's 'answer' comes in a lecture to the British
Psychological Society of 1950:
It is psychoanalysis in particularthat is destined,
in my considered conviction, to get the psychology of music out of its present embryonic state
by shedding light on the psychology, not only of
the composing process, but of the actual elements
of musical structure and texture.9
That his expectations exceeded Jung's would
not have concerned him: he might even have sympathised with Edward Glover, the distinguished
Freudian, in describing the 'collective unconscious'
as 'transcendental spinach'.10 Yet we should also
note similarities. Keller, like Jung, believed that
'an artist needn't know what he has to say as long
as he says it';" he would have recognised how
close Freud came to Jung in seeing myths as 'distorted vestiges of the wishful phantasies of whole
nations, the secular dreams of youthful humanity;l2 and, as a connoisseur of 'creative character',
he might have savoured Jung's individualistic remark that 'a secret connection does exist between
the heroics of the Nibelungs and a certain pathological effeminacy in the man Wagner', notwithstanding the rider that this tells us nothing about
'the work itself'.13

Hans Keller in 1948 (Milein Cosman).

WE

9. Keller (2003),
p.197. Schoenberg
thought in the same
way: 'One day', he
wrote, 'the children's
children of the
psychologists and
psychoanalysts will
have deciphered the
language of music.'
(Arnold Schoenberg:

political questions; (2) extensive work with an

older British sociologist, MargaretPhillips, on the
small social and military groups that sprang up
over England following the outbreak of war:
Keller interpretedPhillips'sfindings according to
his fluent understanding of mid-century psychoanalysis;and (3) a transferof such understanding
to music, largelyprecipitatedby hearingBenjamin
Britten'sPeter Grimes for the first time in 1946:
Keller investigated composers, players, listeners,
aesthetics, film music, creative character and
genius, as well as everydaydealings with teachers,
opera managementand broadcasters.In particular
there are psychological studies of Britten'sAlbert
Herring,The rape of Lucretia,The little sweep and
above all Peter Grimes. For this last, indeed, he
lavished praise on Peter Pears, the first, 'unsurpassable',Grimes. There are also some stories, an
OscarWilde-like play on British antisemitism and
a host of aphorisms. What all this adds up to in
Music and psychologyis not merely a novel col-

THE MUSICAL

group of specialists,
edd. Donald
Mitchell & Hans
Keller (London:
Rockliff, 1952).
7. See Alison
Garnham: Hans
Keller and the BBC
(London: Ashgate,
2003).
8. Keller: 1975: 1984
minus 9 (London:
Dobson, 1977).

TIMES

/ AUTUMN

SHALLEXPLOREthese issues

in due course. But for now let us

return to the BPS lecture of 1950
and Keller's remarks on the 'composing process'. 'Musical self-contempt in Britain'
begins with a report on two British composers
known to him.14 These he calls Brown and White.
In Brown's music he can find no trace of anything
English; but he does find Austro-German techniques. When he points this out, Brown's face
lights up as if he were being praised 'in the most
glowing terms.' With White, on the other hand,
Keller finds at least one work that is 'so quintessentially English as to be quite unexportable';
yet White also proudly claims that he is 'not an
English composer'. Keller concludes that 'White's
contempt of musical Englishness must carry a
greater amount of in-turned aggression than
Brown's.'
Fuelled by the sobriquet 'das Land ohne Musik'
- the country without music - Keller then transfers his inquiry to listeners and critics, and

2003

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especially to those who 'resist'Britten. Although

(the provocatively named) Britten is English in
preferringvocal to instrumental music and tends
to avoid sonata form, his 'crime' in their eyes is
to presume 'up to Gustav Mahler's symphonic
station'. At this point Keller makes his first appearance in his own witness box. For as both an
Austrian and a naturalised Briton he is keenly
aware of cultural differences (the Germans are
'sentimental',he writes, the British 'naive')15and
finds himself caught up in the 'artistic conflict'.
Even more, it was not just musicians that had
prompted his inquiry: he had alreadynoted 'selfcontempt' as a social characteristicbeforelooking
at it culturally.He writes:
A group is dominatedby another group in
superior position: women by men, Jews by
Gentiles, prostitutes by society, and so forth. The
dominated group inevitably feels the dominating
group to be in loco parentis.The members of the
dominated group thus project part of what might
loosely be called their common superego [their
internal moralising agency] onto the dominating
group. As a result, the dominated people turn
part of the aggression that they would, but can't
release towardthe dominatinggroup back against
their own group.16

This topic is central to Kellerand continues on

from Freud'sobservationthat group - or crowd membership - encourages its members to regress
to a primitive dependence upon an omnipotent
'parent'and 'his' ideals. Freud writes: 'the object
[the person of the leader] has been put in the
place of the ego ideal' since 'the leader of the
group is still the dreadedprimal father;the group
still wishes to be governedby unrestrictedforce;it
has an extreme passion for authority.'17
Keller'sgroups, moreover, were not chosen at
random: they are what might be expected of an
emigre from the Vienna of Freud and Otto Weininger (author of Sex and character(1903)). Yethis
work was still striking. His first formal article, on
'Malepsychology' (1946), was an original attempt
to distinguishbetween the sexes without discriminatingagainsteither of them, even if it fell short
of positing outright 'female self-contempt'. Although he related Jewish 'self-contempt' to his
experiences with the Gestapo, he was sufficiently
objective about the dynamics involved as to be
able to transferhis findings. For when in 1947 he
proposed a study of Jews to the BritishJournalof
Medical Psychology, the editor, John Rickman, re-

plied: 'papersalmost exclusively devoted to antiSemitism would not readily be absorbedby readers because there have been quite a lot of them
and they areall much the same'.18So Kellerturned
to the self-contempt of prostitutes. At the time, of
course, the whore was a powerful icon. Keller
himself wrote on Sartre'sThe respectableprostitute
in a film-music essay from 1954 and would surely

?;
ZEITSP1EGEL

Seite 10.

Ni4 43

Roda Roda im
. Weltkrieg

HANS KELLER:

Schonend, weil in Kuerze

Die Trigheit entsteht aus der Erkenntnis der unheilvollen Ergebnisse des
eigenen Fleisses. Faulheit ist Unlust,
etwas zu gestalten, Trigheit ist Unlust,
etwas zu verderben.
Das Gewissen mahnt, das Gesetz
droht.
Pessimist ist der, der anderen eine
Grube grub und sich wundert, dass er
nicht selbst hineingefallen ist. Optimist
ist der, der anderen eine Grube grub
und sich wundert, dass er selbst hineingefallen ist. Pessimismus.und Optimismus haben dies gemeinsam: immer
das Verkehrte vorauszusehen.
Zuweilen erweist es sich als nitzlich,
offene Turen einzurennen: damit auch
alle merken, dass sie offenstehen.
-*
Es ist nicht leicht, der Intoleranz
gegenuber tolerant zu sein.
Der Gleichmutige bildet sich ein,
langmutig zu sein. Langmutig aber ist
nur der Geduldige, und geduldig nur
der, der die Ungeduld kennt.
Gott behite uns vor einem Verfolgungswahnsinnigen,der verfolgt wird.
Der Phantast sieht die Dinge, wie sie
nicht sind und niemals sein k6nnten.
Der Dichter sieht die Dinge, wie sie
nicht sind und' immer sein k6nnten.
Nicht-Vorhandenes traumt jener in die
Ereignisse; Nicht-Vorhandenes liest
dieser aus den Ereignissen. Beide
verachten den Schein, doch nur der
Dichter weiss von der Wirklichkeit des
Nicht Erschienenen.
Virtuosentum: Je geringer die Ausdrucksfahigkeit, desto starker die Sucht
nach- Mannigfaltigkit der -Ausdrucks-'
'
mittel- . ?
\
Der Kleinliche im Geist-findet im
Roman verehrungswurdig, was . er im
Leben verabscheuungswindig fande.
Ohne Mozart hatte man niernals
gewusst, was eine Oper ist, ohne Wagner
hatte man niemals gewusst, was eine
Mozartoper ist.

Roda Roda erzihlt von der Ostfront

in Weltkrieg:
"Ich stand mit dem Kommnandanten
des K.u.K. X. Korps aufdem Hauptplatz
in Mes6labortz.
Da zog ein furchtbarer Gansemarsch
Nur Mut: Es gibt mehr reuige
voruber durch den Schnee: abgehirmte
Sunder als gefallene Heilige.
Bosnier mit zerrissenen, brettsteif geAuch der Pedant verliert seinen frorenen Manteln-ein endloser Zug
Federhalter. Aber immer dort, wo er. des Elends.
Der eine hatte sich die Waden in
ihn aufzufinden wunscht.
Zuckerpapier gewickelt und stitzte sictr
Der Gemeinplatz von heute ist der auf das Gewehr wie auf eine Krucke.
Witz von vorgestern. Manche erkannten Der andere stiitzte sich auf einen Ast
und zog die leblosen Beine hinter sich
ihn schon vorgestern als Gemeinplatz.
her. Der Dritte trug den Kopf einTheater
oder Lichtspieltheater: gebunden-ihm waren Ohr und Nas'
Dinge, die im lebendigen Verkehr erfroren; er f_ihrte einen Kameraden:
zwischen Menschen verstanden werden, dem brannte vor Frost das Kreuz.
Ich wollte weinen. "Die Armen"
ohne gesprochen werden zu mussen,
werden auf der Buehne dem Zuhorer,
sprach ich "wohin gehen sie, Exzellenz?
zuliebe-gesprochen und daher nicht Wie weit ins Spital?"
Darauf der Kommandant:
verstanden. Das Unwahrscheinliche der
"Sp;tal? Das sind 600 Mann, meine
Handlung kommt nicht von der Unwirklichkeit der Vorgange, sondern von linke Fligeldivision. Sie rucken retabder Wirklichkeit des Zuhorers, dem liert an die Front."
gleichsam Tellnahme an der Handlung
Um den 1. Dezember rollte endlich
gestattet wird.
deutsche Hilfe an fir das osterreichische
Heer: die 47. Reservedivision, 20,000
*
Feuergewehre.
Damals las ich auf dem Bahnwagen
eines suddeutschen Transports die stolze
Kreideaufschrift:
"Russland muss badisch werden."
Nur sich selbst darf;manunterordnen,
nur einen Anderen- iberordnen. Der
sich selbst uiberordnet, ist dem Untergeordneten unterlegen.

DieseWoche

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'
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Samsta.
Leutnant der spanischen Armee Alfed Reisenauer :-Der spanishe Volskrieg'
.
Sonntag, 2. November, 6.30 p.m:
"DieVetriebenen," das kInstlernsche Schaffn
der Enmiratioro Vorlesunr au de. Gedichtband
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abends ab 1/2 8 Uhr im TheatersaaL Alle. die
sich dafir interessieren, sind herzlichst eingeladen. Wir brauchen noch eine ganze Anzahl
von Leuten, nicht nur Schauspieler und Tinzer,
aondemrauch technische Hilfskrafte. Jeder kann
dabei mittun. besonderes Talent ist nicht erforderlich.-DieSpielgruppenleitung.
SEKRETARIATSSTUNDENMontag von 0 Uhr abends an in Ilubzimmer .
des Hostels, 132, Westboum Terrace, W2.
.
_..-:
.
.. .._:
.:
....
VERSAMMLUN-G DER JUEDISCH-POLNISCHEN EMIGRATION aus- Frankrech
und Belgien
Sonntag, 26. Oktober, 1941, 3 Uhr:
5, Arundel Gardes. Kensington

W.II.

Sonntag. 26. Oktober, 1941. 3 Uhr:

"Die Aufgaben der jdisch-polnischen Emigegen Hidtler." Redner:
gration im apfe
Der bekannte Dichter I. Manger.
Du Andere Deutschland Spricht.'
Redner: Karl Holtermann, Oberst Hans:
Kahle, Hans r. Rehfisdc. Holbomn Hall GraysInn Road W.C.1- Zu
nten des.'Fight Hitler Fund" des
Zeitspiegels 8 Novenber in: der Holborn Hall,
GrayIn n Road, W.C., 1/2.6-Uhr.- Taoifest
'Vieon calliog." ErstklasilageJazzband kinst-

laeisch prooramm,Wien
tiBQg Eitnto.93a"s

-:s.
. w.hai
..

'Shielding you with brevity': aphorisms by Hans Keller from the emigre journal
Zeitspiegel (25 October 1941).

have known of Glover'smonographon Thepsychopathologyof prostitutionfrom 1945. His own findings, too, are now there to read.19Yethe remained
keenly aware of the oedipal component of selfcontempt in general and how the fears involved
could unite differentgroups:'Probablygroup selfcontempt is favoured by the castration complex,
especially by the female or quasi-female (Jewish)
one,' he wrote.20This awareness- of the fatherwho
threatens the vita sexualis of the child - in turn
derived from Freud, who said of Otto Weininger's
combined antisemitism and misogyny: 'Being
a neurotic, Weininger was completely under the
sway of his infantile complexes; and from that
standpointwhat is common to Jews and women is
their relation to the castrationcomplex'.21
Thus, as Jung noted, the origins of Keller's
'group self-contempt' lay in Freud'sperception of
sexuality, gender and family dynamics, and these
origins applied as much to British music as to
women, Jews or prostitutes.
However, Keller also matched this platonic inquiry with an historical one of a kind. The domi-

THE MUSICAL

TIMES

/ AUTUMN

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

2003

'Human rights'
(1947), in Style and
idea, ed. Leonard
Stein (London:
Faber & Faber,
1975), p.511).
10. Edward Glover:
Freud orJung?
(London: Alien
& Unwin, 1950),
p.173. Keller owned
this book. See also:
Hans Keller: Jung:
Man and Myth by
Vincent Brome', in
Spectator 241/7845
(11 November
1978), pp.19-20.
11. Keller (2003),
p.18.
12. Sigmund
Freud: 'Creative
writers and
daydreaming'
(1908), in
Standard edition 9,

The Editor,
Time & Tide.

Hans Kellert
30 Herne Hill,

-2-

S..E.24.

16.2.46.
tired"
Peter

Pears'

Peter

is

of somewhat minor importance.

Grimes.

I am,
Sir,

Sir:
I am suggesting

in another

among the greatest

I will

living

add here that

The invalidity

Pears'

that

himself

mentions

continuity,

An unbroken line
his

interpretation,

docissimo

objections

needed)

(if

of creative

the work will

powers inherent

personality.
that

the opera is

durch-

Hans Keller,
30 Herne

S.E.24.

regarding

Hill,

it is durchgesungen by Pears.

of development

runs throughout
leading

inevitably

"What harbour

which is offered

to

such circuitous

when one realizes

One is bound to add that,

komponiert,

artistic

musical

original

Your critic

'tours faithfully,

must have been considerably

by the wealth

in Pears'

is
and

artists,

of your critic's

are really

Britten

reproductive

Pears

Grimes is unsurpassable.

becomes probable

rendering

considerations

stimulated

his

that

place

shelters

in a way that

understand

that

to the
et seq.

peace,..."
a listener

not knowing

here are Grime's

last

words.

Against

this

the question

whether Pears

"sounded

Typescript letter by Hans Keller from 1946 (Reproducedby permission of the Syndics of the CambridgeUniversity Library).

pp.141-53;
reprinted in
Sigmund Freud:
Art and literature
(London: Penguin,
1985), p.140.
13. CGJung:
'Psychology and
literature' (1930), in
Jung (1967/2001),
p.101.
14. Keller (2003),
pp.197-209.
15. Keller (2003),
pp.3-6.
16. Keller (2003),
p.200.
17. Sigmund Freud:
Group psychology
and the analysis
of the ego (1922),
trans. James
Strachey (London:
Hogarth, 1967),
pp.45 and 59.
Keller also
acknowledged
JC Flugel:

10

nating 'group'in British music was, of course, the

'old Austro-Germantradition'of Haydn to Brahms
(not forgetting Mendelssohn), with an extension
to Mahler, Strauss, Pfitzner and Schmidt: thus
'dead'composers dominated the living. (In 1950
the new dodecaphonic group headed by Schoenbergwas still 'persecuted'ratherthan 'persecuting'.)
The tradition came into being as a result of 'three
interrelatedfactors':
First,the foreigndominationof musicalEngland
priorto the rise of the classicalsonata;second,
the relationof Englishmusicalthinkingto the
thoughtprocessesrequiredfor the creationof a
sonataform;andthird,the stateof Englishmusic
itself during the 18thand 19th centuries.22

That is to say, foreign domination dated from the

time of Charles II; the English were better at impromptu solutions than long-term planning; and
English music was in such a poor state by the
middle of the nineteenth century that its composers not only concurred with Austro-German
contempt by 'studying in Germany',but reacted
against it with their own (national) renascence.
Thus group self-contempt went hand in hand

with group self-love, and especially that aspect of

it that tried to 'externalise'its altruistic tendencies. For its ideals, the self-love returned to the
'golden age' of Tudor polyphony (and ideals can
be leadersas much as people): hence the vocal character of mid-twentieth-century English music.
Another component was folk-song, since 'German
folk-songs are usually bad; British folk-songs are
usually good'.23
What Keller knowingly advances is, of course,
'psycho-genetic' hypothesis more than proven
'fact':no composer in 1875 appears to, or need
have declared self-contempt. From this point of
view, Keller stands close to the 'phylogenesis' of
Jung.24Indeed,psychogeneticismcomes to the fore
in Keller'sdiscussion of Elgar.If, as Wilfrid Mellers suggests, Elgar 'is the culmination of a [British] symphonic tradition that never happened',
then Elgar's'psychicreality'- to use Freud'sterm is more significant than any 'factualreality'. (The
point is crucialfor creativetheory:composersoften
invent their epiphanies retroactively or falsify
their debt to 'professionalparent(s)'.) This kind of
psychic reality,moreover, is logical and straightforward by contrast with that of dreams, which

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positively needs psychoanalysisto unscramblethe

'displacement of affects'. Keller likewise ascribes
the eighteenth-centurymodels behind the music
of Alan Rawsthorne - Corelli, say, or Bach - to a

determination to 'make amends' for 'the failureof

early eighteenth-centuryBritish music to attain a
stability of instrumental architecture' - an
expiation by a 'son' for the shortcoming of a
collective 'father'.25
Keller ended his talk by predicting a 'reverse
spectacle: Austrian group self-contempt with the
renascentEnglish traditionas dominatinggroup'.26
But has this happened? Hardly - though this is
not the fault of Brittenwho had it both ways: his
operas have earned their place in the international
repertoryby evincing an 'un-English',Strauss-like
ability to conceive and pace works as a whole;
at the same time they invented (or re-invented)
English Operaas if they too were 'the culmination
of a tradition that never happened'. The tradition,
moreover, reconciled the family quarrel between
Italy (Verdi)and Austria (Bergand Mahler),while
embracing Stravinsky,exoticism and much else
besides. Nor did Britten fail to acknowledge his
Englishness by adducing a new 'father'- Purcellwhile retaining 'old' folk-song (OwenWingrave).
Keller could not have foreseen that the 'dominated' Schoenberg School would become in Britain, Europe and America a 'dominatinggroup'in
a two-edged sense. Its admittedlyidealistic aim, to
remint the Austro-German tradition, was as we
know castigatedby post-war composers and analysts (Boulez, say, or Babbitt), who preferredthe
new dodecaphonic wine to the old lyric, dramatic
and symphonic bottles. Its composers, that is to
say,were father figures- in Webern'scase a rather
small one - simultaneously admitted and destroyed. So much so that only now, when new leaders
have emerged, is it possible to situate each
member of the Vienna circle in a realisticaesthetic
environment.27

But where, in the post-war situation, was the

undisputedleadership?The times saw what Ernest
Jones called a 'reversalof generations'dynamic:28
the sons became the fathers'fathers. Once the generation of Boulez, Berio and (even) Cage had
thrown down the gauntlet of a 'tradition of the
new', few of the 'traditionof the old', from Messiaen to Stravinskyand beyond, could resist the call
of the young. Once again, their music perpetuated
the condemned traditions whilst absorbing the
creativeresistancesto them: this tension certainly
provided the context of Britten'slater music. A
furthercase of reversalfinds an older and revered
'father' - Stravinsky - preying upon - or, as Keller
put it, 'devouring' - the subjects and manner of an

envied 'son', Britten,who for his part dreamed of

the 'castrator'as a 'monumentalhunchback,pointing with quivering finger at a passage in the Cello
Symphony:' "how dare you write that bar!".'29

Sibling-theorysuggests that a brother or sister

may also act as a parent of a kind. In other words,
when a young composer is more influenced by a
member of his peer group than by his teacher,as
is often the case, 'leadership'passes from a musical 'father'to a musical 'brother'.In the 1950s, influence within and between groups of 'siblings'in Paris, Darmstadt or Manchester - was at its
height. Yet the influence has sometimes stuck. At
a recent pre-concert talk in London, for example,
Alexander Goehr (b.1932) said that even at the
age of seventy he was aware that Pierre Boulez
(b. 1925) - an 'older brother' -'might not like this

bar'. (In Goehr'scase paternityis compounded by

the influence of a real father,WalterGoehr,whose
professional and historical fathers (Schoenberg
and Monteverdi) also became his; nor is this to
mention other fathers,say, RichardHall or Hanns
Eisler, or even his 'musical uncle', Keller.)30
In our modern ('post-post-war')Europeansituation, we might think that British musical-selfcontempt belonged to history. Keller himself
wrote (italics added):
British musical group formation itself, as distinct
from musical creativity, may again weaken or
cease, owing partly to the internationalisinginfluence of group self-contemptitself and partly to
the wider development of musical history.In that
case we would come to be confronted with the
dialecticalprocess of group self-contempt making
for its own dissolution.31

But is this true? Does internationalism Europe, the West, a confluence of East and West really dissolve a sense of origins? Does internationalism not foster regionalism, with all the
self-contempt and self-love that that involves (as
we see in, say, international tennis)? Harrison
Birtwistle may describe himself as 'not British'
and may have found an early epiphany in Robert
Craft's recording of Boulez's Le marteau sans
maitre,32but he is perceived as such on the Continent, draws on British dramaticsources (Gawain,
Punch andJudy) and is feted by our national institutions - the opera houses, the Proms, and even
the opening of the Tate Modern. Similarly,Peter
Maxwell Davies may have 'studied in Italy' with
Petrassi, drawn heavily on the German expressionists, created a new paternity in medieval
music (like Webern) and turned to the 'absolute
forms'of the Austro-Germantradition(symphony,
concerto and quartet);but he has also written an
opera on Taverner,songs for a British 'MadKing'
(George), retraced Vaughan Williams's steps to
the Antarctic,and been deeply absorbed into the
fabricof musical life in England, Scotland and the
Orkneys. Nor is this to mention the relation of
George Benjamin to France, Oliver Knussen to
America, or Judith Weir to the exotic.
Such cases, rather, confirm what Keller said
of Alan Rawsthorne, that 'British group self-

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2003

Men,moralsand
society (London:
Duckworth, 1945).
18. Keller (2003),
p.93.
19. See: 'Prostitutes
wear marriagerings', in Keller
(2003), pp.83-94.
20. Keller (2003),
p.92.
21. Sigmund Freud:
'Analysis of a phobia
in a five-year-old
boy', in Collected
papers 3 (London:
Hogarth Press,
1925), p.179.
22. Keller (2003),
p.203.
23. Keller (2003),
p.207.
24. In his
writing on 'creative
character' Keller
also differentiates
between the
'extra-historical and
typological', as in
his comparison of
'Britten and Mozart'
of 1946, and the
'historical', as in
his essay on 'Mozart
and Boccherini'
of 1947. See Keller
(2003), pp.164 and
176.
25. Keller (2003),
p.208.
26. Keller (2003),
p.206.
27. See:
Christopher Wintle:
'Webern'slyric
character', in Webern
studies, ed. Kathryn
Bailey (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP,
1996).
28. Ernest Jones:
'The phantasy
of the reversal
of generations',

in Paperson
psychoanalysis,
fifth edition (1948)
(London: Maresfield
Reprints, 1977),
pp.407-12.
29. See Michael
Kennedy: Britten
(Master Musicians
Series) (London:
Dent, 1981).
30. Alexander
Goehr: 'Hans Keller,
a memoir', in Music

11

Analysis 5/2-3

(1986), p.330.
31. Keller(2003),
p.207.
32. Private
communication.
33. Keller(2003),
p.207.
34. WilfredR.
Bion: Attention and
interpretation (1970)

(London:Karnac,
1993), p.82.
35. Private
communication.
36. 'StephenPruslin
and Harrison
Birtwistlediscussing
their Punch and Judy
(1965-68)' (18

November1997), in
IAMSAnnual Report

(King'sCollege
London,October
1998), pp.7-11.
37. Private

communication.
38. Hugh Wood:
'MatyasSeiber',in
The new Grove

vol.17, p.110.
39. 'Dreamsand
fictions',in AS Byatt
& Ignes Sodre:
Imagining characters:
six conversations
about women writers

(London:Vintage,
1995), p.230.

40. SigmundFreud:
'Psychopathic
characterson
the stage',in
Standard edition 7,

pp.309-10.
41. Keller(2003),
pp.121-46.

42. Keller(2003),
pp.74-79.
43. Keller(2003),
p.123.

44. Keller(2003),
pp.130-31.
45. Keller(2003),
p.136.

46. Keller(2003),
p.136.

47. Keller(2003),
p.138.
48. Keller(2003),
p.138.

49. Keller(2003),
p.125.

50. Keller(2003),
pp.229-32.

12

contempt has not only an obviously harmful, but

also a highly beneficial aspect'.33The benefits,
moreover,requireauthority to turn self-contempt
to advantage. As the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion
remarked:the function of the group is to produce
a genius; the function of the Establishmentis to
take up and absorb the consequences so that the
group is not destroyed.'34
In other words, both the aggression and its
targetshave to be protected. This is especially the
case when a composer who is 'not British'is recast by the group as 'British'.In 1950, for example,
Brittenwas still a 'closet gay'who had been denied
the opportunity of 'studying in Austria' with
Alban Berg but nevertheless associated with the
voices of liberal conscience, socialism and pacifism - WH Auden, MontaguSlater,MichaelTippett
and Pears. For other members of the composing
group, however, he came to represent 'Establishment' itself, and 'Aldeburgh'the Heartof England.
Birtwistle recounts arriving for an early performance of William Walton's Troilusand Cressida(a
work whose ostentatious heterosexualitychallenged the 'gay'sadism of, say,Billy Budd)in the hope
of finding 'anythingbut Britten'.35His own operas
duly eschewedBritten'scentralingredient('psychology') and reinvented tradition anew: 'Although
Punch and Judy was written after the operas it
refers to, it feels as if it is the source of them all.'36
Even Tippett defined himself by opposition. He
bewailed the fact that Brittenhad the command of
Covent Garden yet only wanted to do 'costume
drama'and rigorously eschewed the genre.37
The aggressionwas even more acute as members
of the 'dominatinggroup' could alreadybe found
in Britain as a result of emigration. Why 'study
abroad'when 'abroad'could alreadybe studied at
'home'?Of various teachers, including Goehr, the
Hungarian-bornMatyasSeiber (1905-60) 'created'
a generation of composers some of whom also
became teachers - Don Banks, Peter Racine Fricker, Anthony Gilbert,David Lumsdaineand Hugh
Wood among them. Significantly,Wood remembers
Seiber as fastidious, moral, and always being 'in
closer touch with continental musical life than
most of his Englishcontemporaries'.38
Since Britten
recommended Harvey to study first with Erwin
Stein, and then (afterStein'sdeath) with Keller (as
others had done), Kellertoo became an icon of the
very malaise he diagnosed.
O MUCH, THEN, for the 'process of creation'. What of Jung's spilt between process and work? Is art 'a neurosis' after all,
or not? Writing about dreams - for Freud,
prime evidence in the case of neurotics - the
Brazilian-trainedpsychoanalystIgnes Sodreposits
a common source for differentaffects:
A dreamis verydifferentfroma workof art- it
emergesspontaneouslyIts meaningis intensely

personal, it tends to disappear almost instantly;

and yet, at the most basic level, it must come from
the same 'place'in the mind [as 'a work of art'].39

Freud goes further.When in drama or opera,

he writes, a central characteror group falls ill as a
result of conflict, the artisthas to induce in us 'the
same illness' stage by stage if he is to make his
intentions clear and encourage empathy:'this will
be especially necessary where the repression does
not alreadyexist in us but has first to be set up.'40
However, if there is a repressed impulse in the
character(s)that accordswith a repressedimpulse
in the audience but, most importantly,is never
identified as such, then the spectator 'finds himself in the grip of his emotions instead of taking
stock of what is happening'. In both cases repression comes from the same 'place'; only in the
second is psychoanalysis necessary. Thus to
answer Jung: art is not intrinsically neurotic, but
may have a neurotic dimension that, far from
being a distraction, may strike a deep chord.
In his Three psychoanalytic notes on Peter
Grimes (1946),41 Keller likewise moves effortlessly between the depth psychology of the drama
and the conscious or unconscious intentions of
the creators (including Pears). The Notes address
in turn, Grimes, his 'mother' and his 'father'- a
family model that extends his work with Phillips
on 'Individual psychology and its relation to
group psychology'.42 The first Note presents
Grimes as a Freudian'anal'type, known for parsimony, obstinacy and orderliness. Importantly,
Keller shows that the 'exposition' of these traits
extends well into Act Two, far beyond the purely
dramatic exposition of Act One. Moreover, the
fishing community (or 'group') shares the traits.
Following Freud's remark that, the devil is
nothing less than 'a personification of repressed
unconscious instinctual life', Kellerwrites:
thuswhen [...] thechorussingsat theappearance
of Peter,'Talkof the devil and therehe is/Anda
devilhe is, and a devilhe is,' theyareprojecting
theirown repressedanalsadismonto him, andit
is on account of this projectionthat Peter's
manifestsadismis far strongerin the Borough's
opinion than it is in reality.43

The second Note 'splits' 'Grimes'sMother'between the widow Ellen Orford (for whom Grimes
feels ambivalently), the sea (a traditional site of
pre-natallife, birth, death and rebirth), the earth,
and, in Act Two, the three prostitute figures
(Auntie and the nieces) - an association of mother
and whore again derived from Freud. In Grimes's
final 'mad-scene' Keller distinguishes between
Ellen as person and Ellen as idea (imago):
As Peter'send draws near, his two principal
mother-substitutes,Ellen and the sea, draw

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nearertogether [...] Peter does not notice [Ellen]

though he urgently needs her: what he needs of
her now is but the mother imago, and that he has
inside himself [...] His last reminiscence [...] does
not include the words 'With her there'll be no
quarrels,/With her the mood will stay' [...]
perhapsbecause these apply to Ellen as partnerin
life rather than to Ellen as womb, or as an element in the mother image relating to a very early
phase of Peter'slife (breast).44
The third Note likewise splits the function of
father between the omniscient Balstrode ('a retired
father' who issues the oedipal order to his 'son' to
kill himself), the storm, and the two apprentices.
This last split is the most startling. The apprentices, in effect, stand for Grimes's own father,
because, as, Ernest Jones's 'reversal of generations
fantasy' shows once more, 'an individual may
identify his children with his parents and then
direct upon the former the hostility aroused in
connection with, the latter.'45 To support this,
Keller cites an early version of Montagu Slater's
libretto for Act II, Scene 2 that openly links
Grimes's father and the first apprentice:
I hear my father and the one that drowned
Calling, there is no peace, there is no stone,
In the earth'sthickness to make you a home,
That you can build with and remain alone.46
When the second apprentice goes on to commit
'unconscious suicide', he prepares the way for
Grimes's 'conscious suicide assisted by an unconscious murder on Balstrode's part': 'Peter, having been twice involved in the father's [i.e.
apprentices'] death, finally welcomes the father's
[i.e. Balstrode's] order to die in turn.'47
When Keller refers to the 'process of creation'
he points to Britten's 'productive empathy' with
'need for punishment, nemesism, rebirth- and
death-phantasies':48 Britten's attraction to a story
of life in a Suffolk village evinced 'an intense
feeling of nostalgia', a feeling that unlocked 'deep
unconscious resources of phantasy, resources
which all of us harbour'. More still, 'wherever, in
the course of the opera, the music is at its deepest,
it is linked with "home" or with what has an intimate psychological connection with "home".'49
As these topics were to pervade Britten's oeuvre,
eliciting responses of equal intensity, Keller's
analysis was astonishingly prescient.
INALLY, we must still ask, has psychoanalysis come to illuminate 'the actual
elements of musical structure and texture' as Keller predicted? Do composers
the opaque operations of dreamtransform
really
work - condensation, displacement, secondary revision and representation (e.g. by the opposite) into communicable affects? Or are musical
processes the province of aesthetics after all? In

Benjamin Britten conducting at the BBC'sMaida Vale studios, c.1946 (Milein Cosman).

1950, Keller could only give the kind of preliminary 'replies' found in 'Manifestations of the
primary process in music':50 within the context of
classical sonata form these address the relation of
the development section to the exposition and recapitulation, with emphasis on 'repetition' and
'distortion'. And although later he referred to
Freudian operations in his teaching,51 his eventual
'theory of music', based on unity and contrast and
intra- and extra-musical expectations, emerged
mainly under the aegis of Schoenberg's 'idea' and
'developing variation'.52
That is to say, Keller's claim remains, paceJung,
tantalisingly unfulfilled.

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2003

51. See Alan

Walker: 'Memoir
of Hans Keller',
in 'Hans Keller
(1919-85):
a memorial
symposium', in
Music Analysis
5/ 2-3 (1986),
pp.393-96.
52. See: Hans Keller:
Essays on music,
ed. Christopher
Wintle (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP,
1994), pp.121-232.

13