Commentary: Operatic Modernism

Author(s): Carl E. Schorske

Source: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 36, No. 4, Opera and Society: Part II
(Spring, 2006), pp. 675-681
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3656351
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Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxxvI:4 (Spring, 2006), 675-681.

Carl E. Schorske

Operatic Modernism' My purpose in these informal re-

marks is to give some thought to the term "Modernism." Let me
begin by reminding us of Theodore Rabb's injunction: that we
examine opera as one of the central means of expression of an age.
I do have a complaint against him-not with his categories, but
rather with the scale that this particular panel is asked to address.
Every other panel had a rather carefully localized temporal
span and an arena that was geographically defined (often nationally
defined). Thus, Linda Colley, when commenting on the papers
about George Frideric Handel's London, had an opposite task
from mine, namely, to broaden the scope of her panel. In her illu-
minating comment, she showed us that when we talk about Lon-
don and Handel, we must really talk about Europe too: that Lon-
don was part of Europe and that its consciousness, with respect to
music, belonged to Europe. She was trying to stretch the limits
that seemed to me to attend the previous panels, when discussions
of earlier periods of history were allowed to concentrate strongly
on a composer or an opera, or the makers of an opera. Here, by
contrast, we have before us the whole panoply of European com-
plexity, from 1890 (or, using Michael Steinberg's date, 1883, the
death of Wagner) to 1930. So to pay attention to our central issue-
opera as "central expression of an age"-throughout this period is
difficult. I agree, though, that we should try to talk about Mod-
ernism just the same, and I should like first to offer a quick re-
minder of how the term first appeared. I shall then focus on the
1920s, a special moment in the cultural consciousness when the
three very different operas discussed by our panelists were written
and first performed: Arthur Honegger's Antigone (1927), Erich
Wolfgang Korngold's Die Tote Stadt (1920), and Leos Janacek's
Katya Kabanova (1921).
First I would like to say that Modernism can be taken up from
Carl E. Schorske is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Emeritus, Princeton Univer-
sity. He is the author of Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modernism (Prince-
ton, 1998); Fin-de-Sidcle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1979).

? 200oo6 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary

History, Inc.

I In accordance with Carl Schorske's wishes, this transcript retains the informal oral tone of
its presentation at the conference from which this special issue derived.

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676 CARL E. SCHORSKE

the point of view of the people who first used the term,
they used it for: what they were doing with this idea, Mo
Obviously it is not going to be the same in different plac
Charles Baudelaire says "modernism," he distinctly means
is a culture and an art and an intellection that should reflect mo-
dernity, "la vie moderne." And by that he means something othe
than the past. It is the distinction from the past that is really critica
in his definition. It's not the first time we hear about the battles of
the ancients and the moderns-they went on in the eighteenth
century-but now we've got a new chapter, and I think it de-
serves a little examination.

I890, Ted Rabb's starting date, is really a wonderful one to

pick for the development of Modernism on a wider scale. For
there was an outburst of a particular Modernist consciousness of
newness in the decade of the I89os. Just think of the terms that
were used: Jugend in North Germany; Art Nouveau, beginning in
Belgium and then spreading to France and also to the Germanys,
various Germanys. In Munich, Berlin, and Vienna, the movement
in art chose the name Secession, which really meant seceding from
the ways of our elders. The slogan in Vienna was: "to the time its
art, to art its freedom." That was the slogan, and what was meant
by it was that we should no longer confine ourselves to the cul-
tural standards that have been imposed upon us by the past. An-
other slogan in Vienna was "Wir vernichten morsches Leben," we
are going to destroy decaying life. The journal of the Secession
stressed the sense of renewal in its title, "Ver Sacrum" (Sacred
Spring).
I see the ruptures from the past as taking place across national
boundaries and at different paces in the various arts. They soon
take conscious form in the antithesis, Modernism versus
Historicism, and the case of architecture dramatizes the rupture
from the past especially well. It can also lead us into what was pos-
sible for Modernism when it found a single language across Eu-
rope. In the nineteenth century, the prevailing style was historical,
borrowing from the Gothic, from Classicism, from the Renais-
sance. All these different style-architectures were assaulted by the
pre-War pioneers of Modernism in several ways. Some of those
within Art Nouveau were narcissistic, aiming to build houses that
would reflect the client's personality down to the last ashtray.
Even Frank Lloyd Wright has resonances of this conception: If

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OPERATIC MODERNISM 677

you design for living, for modern life, you should be y

your individuality should be reflected.
And then there was an opposite current-very imp
too-that was manifested in Adolph Loos or other mo
who wanted to strip away the historical textures. If yo
upon nineteenth-century Vienna as Loos did, it was a Po
city: a city with a lot of old costumes that ought to be
away to fit the demands of modern times. I don't want
the details of this, but I do want to leap forward from t
ning of this protest against the past, which was the backgro
the I920s, to that decade. For then there was born what
call modern architecture. It swept Europe. It was absolut
ing: one so-called international style that could serve qui
ent social systems. Whether it was a Bata plant in Czecho
or a communal factory housing development in Soviet R
a result of the Vkhutemas art schools and the constructivist archi-
tects of that era-or the Frankfurt Siedlungen: All these different
building types were executed in a style that was seen to be, and felt
to be, modern-simple, designed for living, designed to function.
There was even a wonderful organization, the CIAM, the Congrbs
International d'Architecture Moderne, where all the luminaries
came together: Charles-Eduoard Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer,
avant-garde architects from France to Eastern Europe. They were
all, through their congresses, committed to developing further
their international language. If we had had that in music, we could
have an easier session here today.
Now I would like to take another tack entirely. It is not the
spatial approach that is possible in this one art, architecture, which
can serve many social or political masters because it can function
quite clearly and easily as a lingua franca. What, I would like to
ask, is there in the opera that would correspond to this? Well, of
course, there is no equivalent. But there is a way of organizing op-
era that might be seen as corresponding in a modernist mode, and
for that I would like to turn to Berlin for just a moment to exem-
plify it in the Kroll Opera.
My example comes from the beginning of the 1920s, when,
through the German Revolution, the Socialists and the Independ-
ent Socialists gained control of the Prussian government. There
was no overall Reich cultural authority over the opera houses,
only that of Prussia. That was the cultural authority that governed

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678 CARL E. SCHORSKE

the operatic scene in Berlin. There were three houses.

opera house, the State Opera Unter den Linden, norma
sented a conservative repertoire with conservative method
was one great modermist breakthrough in that house: the
of Alban Berg's Wozzeck (1925). The premiere of that op
mounted just when the old head ofBerlin's State Opera, M
Schillings, was fired and Erich Kleiber came in and did t
velous work. There was also a municipal opera house, i
originally for somewhat lighter fare, and that was turned
Bruno Walter. Then there was a new, experimental ho
Kroll Opera, with its imaginative conductor, Otto Kle
The Socialists, who had command of the cultural ministr
Prussia and Berlin, supported all three, for in their dem
both tradition and innovation were to be respected. But th
enthusiastic support went to the Kroll.
I would like to dwell for a moment on the Kroll Oper
cause there you find one phenomenon that is very charact
Modernism at its best, perhaps, and that is multiculturali
repertoire represented all classes, all chapters in the histor
era, but with particular stress on avant-garde work. Let m
just a few of the operas that were performed there to g
sense of the variety. There was Igor Stravinky's Oedip
(1927). I know that's not quite opera, but it was staged as
There was Giacomo Puccini's Trittico (II Tabarro, Suor An
and Gianni Schicchi); Paul Hindemith's Cardillak (I926)
und zuriick (1927); four different operas by Ernst Krenek; a
triple bill with Maurice Ravel, Darius Milhaud's The Po
(1927), and Jacques Ibert; an Arnold Schoenberg double b
Erwartung (1924) and Die Gliickliche Hand (1913). These w
cal of the 1920s: They were written before that, but the idea
ducing opera to monodrama, getting it down to size-that
reductionist revolt against grandness-was characteristi
early postwar cultural way of Modernism. It wanted t
things to make them simple to bring them to the public
So this was the scene. I could go on with a listing of t
ferent operas that were given. There was, for example, o
Leos Janacek, based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's The House of
(1861/62). But with all these currents at work in the Kr
house, there was also the problem of the new relationshi
public. The idea here was that opera should be for the or

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OPERATIC MODERNISM 679

man: the workers and the like, with the stress on the w
Kroll managed to do that by keeping a huge block of seat
for people who were related to working-class organizatio
sought to create an alliance, so to speak, between the ava
in opera and the avant-garde in politics, if we can call it
chael Steinberg would call it the emancipation-not the r
tion, but the emancipation-of the lower classes through
stitutional device.
Beyond these ambitions I detect (and I am being a bit more
traditionalist here) two strands. Both were already present at this
time, and they are dramatized (for me, at least) by the tension with
a Modernism that tries to establish an international community of
discourse and cannot manage it. We remain pluralized whatever
we do. If the dodecaphonic movement had managed to establish
itself-and it hoped it would-as the language of music hereafter,
that would have been one thing. But nobody could get to the top
of the pile; it wasn't possible, there were too many differentiations.
And the national dimension wasn't the only problem: There was
also a cultural divide, a kind of fragmentation (another characteris-
tic of the modern age if you like, certainly in intellectual life, a
process which Friedrich Nietzsche was very good at catching).
This was a fragmentation for which no uniform discourse could be
established, with the exception of architecture. And in opera, the
alternative Modernisms had already crystallized before the 1920os.
If we go back even before 1914 and into Austria, I believe
there are two operas that dramatize how a historistic survival, tem-
pered by modern musical idiom, could be managed, alongside the
rejection of that kind of discourse by people who went truly mod-
ernist. The cases I have in mind are Hugo Hofmannsthal and
Richard Strauss' Rosenkavalier (I 91 i) in contrast to another kind of
opera, Berg's Wozzeck. Alternatively, one could cite Rosenkavalier
and Salome (1905), or Electra (1909), for Hofmannsthal and Strauss,
and on the other hand Wozzeck and Lulu (1937) for Berg.
Both composers tackled huge issues for the age-issues that I
think were pervasive. One was the return of the repressed: the
emergence of a rather overt preoccupation with Eros and
Thanatos. They are an unholy pair, and they emerge in the con-
sciousness very strongly together. The other issue was a concern
for the social problem, for the forms of social power and how to
relate to them. If you look at Rosenkavalier, you see the most amaz-

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680 CARL E. SCHORSKE

ing historical construction. It is a conservative

but it is concerned with the formation of the so-called zweite
Gesellschaft, the "second society," composed of an alliance
tween the old aristocracy and the new bourgeoisie who f
themselves together in the household, and surround t
Marschallin and Baron Ochs in Rosenkavalier.
The opera's story is the story of how to let go: how to let go
of power when a new form of power is arising. It is just a contra
tion of power, but in the middle of it is Maria Theresa (that's th
name of the Marschallin). She is not a creature of Joseph II, al-
though, in line with the Enlightenment, she is of a different or
der-still in many ways Baroque. Everything comes together a
Hofmannsthal elaborates her character.
The entire opera is built on tremendous historical accretions.
The scenery, which was done in the first instance by Alfred
Roller, one of art nouveau's first artists in Vienna: those scenes are
based on William Hogarth. The singer is somebody from Venice,
who would be found in an aristocratic household, and the two
main characters are an accretion of the sort of historical constitu-
ents that created the development of the High Baroque, with
Maria Theresa on the crossover from Enlightenment to Baroque.
You have a right way and a wrong way for an aristocrat to let go:
The wrong way is Baron Ochs; the right way is the Marschallin.
You have a dramatization of the issue through a female character,
who is fully competent erotically (so to speak) and who knows
how to reconcile, to blend, and to make the transition from one
era to another, even at the sacrifice of herself. It is a historicism of
letting go, but allowing something new to come up in the way of
the bourgeois-aristocratic alliance that is formed by Octavian and
his Sophie. There is something a little elegiac about the whole op-
era, but it is also rich in a history that is now being put to new pur-
poses. The problem of the passing of aristocracy to the zweite
Gesellschaft is an allegory for the twentieth century, when the
zweite Gesellschaft in turn must learn to yield power to the new
forces of democracy in the twentieth century.
Now let me turn to the other side. I am not going to deal
with Salome, because you know how that work takes care of our
instinctual life, and does it in spades. Electra gives it all a classical
gloss, and that is where Hofmannsthal comes in and provides a li-
bretto that makes it not so dissimilar from Honegger's use of

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OPERATIC MODERNISM 681

Sophocles. If, on the other hand, you look at W

and at Berg, you see that he took up two enormo
One was what we might call the military-scient
Wozzeck: this oppressive machine which turns W
of the people, the poor man, into an object of s
that is ruthless, heartless, and just as oppressive as
pline under which he lives and has to make h
turned on by the play, George Biichner's Woyze
this as a central issue in the thwarting of the h
machine is driving someone into insanity throug
pression that the modern state can generate and
can support. It is a liberating impulse that leads
totally infatuated with the theme.
The other opera is Lulu, and that comes from
Frank Wedekind. Berg's espousal of this extraord
dora's Box, makes him really deal with the distor
nine. And you can see how turned on were not
erybody else in his circle: Schoenberg, Karl Kra
who belong to this circle, who want a new Mode
speaking Modernism as opposed to those who w
Modernism, the reconciling Modernism whic
rooted in the manner of Hofmannsthal and Strauss in Rosenkav-
alier.
It seems to me here we have two strides forward. Berg con-
fronts frontally, as part of our modernity, the legacies of Wedekind
and Biichner. Biichner was an anachronism, providing Wozzeck
with a libretto from 1838. When the opera was written, it was to-
tally off the wall in terms of its perceptions, which belong so
deeply to the contemporary era. What we have, then, is a con-
frontation between two Modernisms: first, a Modernism that re-
jects its prehistory in favor of exploring in depth, frontally, the
new issues as they present themselves to us now (this is the case of
Berg); and a second Modernism, which addresses the issues
obliquely, nuanced, and deeply respectful of the historical legacy
that provides the material and the means with which the contem-
porary situation can be faced metaphorically (the case of Strauss).
By looking at all these strands, we can indeed find operatic Mod-
ernism.

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