The Unlike Pair: Impressionism, Expressionism, and Critical Reception of Schoenberg's and Schreker's Chamber Symphonies - UC Press Journals
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
The Unlike Pair:
Impressionism,
Expressionism, and
Critical Reception of
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
Schoenberg’s and
Schreker’s Chamber
Symphonies
C L A RE C A RR A S C O
158
F
or the 1918–19 concert season in Berlin, the
young conductor Hermann Scherchen organized a series of orchestral
and chamber concerts. These included the concert whose program is
reproduced in figure 1.1 Titled Die Entwicklung des modernen Kammerorche-
sters (The development of the modern chamber orchestra), the concert
was held on February 28, 1919, and proceeded chronologically through
three works: Richard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, performed in the chamber
setting used for its first performance on Christmas morning in 1870;
An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual
meeting of the American Musicological Society in Louisville, Ken-
tucky, in November 2015. I wish to thank the librarians of the
Zeitungsabteilung der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin for their kind
assistance and Abigail Fine for her helpful comments. I am espe-
cially grateful to Margaret Notley for her careful reading of several
versions of this article and for her generous, expert advice.
1
Scherchen returned to Berlin in April 1918 after spending the war years interned in
Russia, where he happened to be conducting when the war broke out. His concerts in the
1918–19 season (sometimes called his Novitätenkonzerte) were the precedent for those
presented by his Neue Musikgesellschaft in the 1919–20 season. See Martin Thrun, Neue
Musik im deutschen Musikleben bis 1933 (Bonn: Orpheus, 1995), 2:497–507.
The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 37, Issue 2, pp. 158–196, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347. © 2020
by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission
to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permis-
sions web page, www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-permissions. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/
JM.2020.37.2.158
carrasco
Arnold Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony, op. 9, completed in July
1906, though dated 1905 on this program; and Franz Schreker’s Cham-
ber Symphony, composed in 1916 for the 1917 centennial of the Vienna
Academy, where Schreker was teaching at the time. Although each selec-
tion was performed as chamber music, the Kammerorchester concert was
grouped with the orchestral rather than the chamber concerts in
Scherchen’s series.
More than a dozen critics published reviews of this concert, many of
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
whom commented on the boldness of Scherchen’s program in the cur-
rent political climate. In the preceding months, Berliners had experi-
enced tremendous upheaval: the abdication of Wilhelm II and
dissolution of the Kaiserreich, the swift creation of a fragile new republic,
the signing of the armistice that ended the Great War, and the violent
suppression of mass demonstrations and armed uprisings in the city’s
streets. Amidst these events, Berlin’s concert season—which persisted,
remarkably, despite interruptions—had been characterized by a strong
preference for the tried and true over the new and controversial.2
Scherchen had established a reputation as an advocate for the avant-
garde before the war, but although his chamber concerts had stirred
some controversy in the fall of 1918, his orchestral concerts had re- 159
mained decidedly unadventurous.3 Thus Scherchen’s inventive program
of works for Kammerorchester on his first orchestral concert of 1919
prompted one critic to observe: “a whiff of fresh air blows through the
sluggish monotony of concerts in Berlin.”4
Scherchen’s choice to perform the Siegfried Idyll in a chamber rather
than an orchestral setting was unexpected, but it was the juxtaposition of
the two chamber symphonies that proved provocative and momentous.
Although Schoenberg and Schreker were both famous composers by early
1919, their chamber symphonies were not well known in Berlin. Scherch-
en had twice conducted Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony during the
composer’s second residency in the city (1911–15), but the heated discus-
sion generated by those and other prewar performances of Schoenberg’s
works in Berlin had dissipated after the outbreak of hostilities and the
2
This was a continuation of the city’s overwhelmingly traditional programming
during the war. See Glenn Watkins, Proof through the Night: Music and the Great War (Ber-
keley: University of California Press, 2003), 218–20.
3
Notably, Scherchen had split conducting duties with Arnold Schoenberg for the
initial tour of Pierrot lunaire in 1912. The chamber works that had riled some critics in the fall
of 1918 were Schoenberg’s First Quartet, op. 7 and Scherchen’s own String Quartet, op. 1.
Scherchen’s two orchestral concerts in the fall of 1918 included works by Mozart, Beethoven,
and Bruckner alongside works by living composers, but the newer works did not engage
with avant-garde styles. For the complete repertoire see Thrun, Neue Musik, 2:598.
4
“Durch das behäbige Einerlei der Berliner Konzerte weht ein frischer Luftzug.”
Georg Schünemann, “Moderne Musik,” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (Abend-Ausgabe),
March 5, 1919.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
figure 1. Program for Scherchen’s Die Entwicklung des modernen
Kammerorchesters. British Library, Ernst Henschel
Collection, Box 10, parcel 2 (1919). © The British Library
Board
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
160Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
161
carrasco
figure 1. (Continued)t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
TABLE 1.
Joint performances of Schoenberg’s and Schreker’s
chamber symphonies, 1919–23
Date City, Venue Conductor
February 1919 Berlin, Singakademie Hermann Scherchen
May 1919 Mannheim, Sternwarte Max Sinzheimer
January 1920 Frankfurt, Neue Gesellschaft Max Sinzheimer
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
für Kunst und Literatur
January 1921 Leipzig, Konzertverein Hermann Scherchen
April 1922 Munich, Residenztheater Robert Heger
June 1923 Darmstadt, Musikfest Josef Rosenstock
composer’s subsequent departure for Vienna.5 Schreker’s Chamber
Symphony had never before been performed in Berlin, nor had—much
to the aggravation of many critics—any of the operas that had secured his
fame elsewhere.6 Scherchen’s back-to-back performance of these two
chamber symphonies thus sonically realized the reputations that had pre-
162 ceded this pair of Viennese modernists. And it did so with such elegant
symmetry and concision that Scherchen’s pairing sparked a series of imi-
tations throughout Germany. As shown in table 1, the two chamber sym-
phonies were performed together at least five more times in the following
years, making it something of a “fashion,” as one contemporary commen-
tator observed, to program them as a pair.7
The rationale for pairing the two works was based on their obvious
similarities: in addition to representing the same novel genre, both
chamber symphonies employ single-movement, multisectional forms of
5
In addition to the Chamber Symphony and the famous premiere of Pierrot lunaire,
the other works performed in Berlin during Schoenberg’s residency included the First
String Quartet, op. 7; Second String Quartet, op. 10; Drei Klavierstücke, op. 11; Fünf
Orchesterstücke, op. 16 (arranged for two pianos); Das Buch der hängenden Gärten, op. 15;
and Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, op. 19.
6
See, for example, W. A. [Wilhelm Altmann], “Konzerte,” Die Post, March 5, 1919;
and Herm[ann] Springer, “Konzerte,” Deutsche Tageszeitung, March 8, 1919. At this point it
was all but unimaginable that Schreker would be appointed director of the Berlin Musik-
hochschule in 1920.
7
“It appears to be the fashion to couple these two fundamentally different experi-
ments with one another (Es scheint gleichwohl Mode zu werden, diese beiden grund-
verschiedenen Experimente aneinander zu koppeln).” Unsigned, “Kleinere Mitteilungen
von hier und dort,” Signale für die Musikalische Welt 77 (June 4, 1919): 374. Two recent
writers have discussed the performance in Frankfurt without mentioning the other joint
performances. See Matthias Henke, “Schönbergs Quartenakkord: Die ‘Wiener Rakete’ als
Emblem der Moderne,” Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 62, no. 7 (2007): 29–38; and Martin
Kapeller, “Zweierlei Kammersymphonien: Über Schönberg und Schreker,” Österreichische
Musikzeitschrift 65, no. 1 (2010): 14–21.carrasco
comparable length. Nonetheless, critics writing about these postwar per-
formances invariably portrayed them not as similar but as fundamentally
different—an impression listeners today may well share. In a striking turn
of phrase, Walter Niemann, writing about the joint performance in Leip-
zig, dubbed these works “the unlike pair of the most modern chamber
symphonies.”8 And critics writing in the postwar period often chose to
frame this “unlike pair” in a distinctive way: contrasting Schoenberg’s
“expressionist” Chamber Symphony with Schreker’s “impressionist”
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
Chamber Symphony.
Scholars today would be unlikely to name either work as a particularly
representative example of the respective “ism.”9 For early twentieth-
century critics, it seems not to have been a concern that neither composer
actively associated himself with the relevant term.10 The compositional
chronology of the chamber symphonies was likewise irrelevant. Although
critics often portrayed expressionism as a reaction against impressionism,
reviewers did not see it as a problem to present Schoenberg’s earlier work
as an example of the former and Schreker’s work from a decade later as
an example of the latter. What critics perceived—or were primed to
perceive—as impressionist or expressionist overrode chronology or con-
cerns about either composer’s self-image.11 163
This article reconstructs the postwar context that enabled German
critics to portray these chamber symphonies as exemplary of a distinc-
tion between impressionist and expressionist music. Although both
works had been composed before 1918, numerous performances made
8
“das ungleiche Paar modernster Kammersymphonien.” Walter Niemann, “Leipzig,”
Signale für die Musikalische Welt 78 (July 27, 1921): 752–56, at 754.
9
Although scholars have noted impressionism as one of several important influences
on Schreker’s music, he hardly factors in general discussions of musical impressionism.
Because Schoenberg completed the Chamber Symphony before his so-called “free atonal”
period, scholars do not usually count it among his expressionist works. One notable excep-
tion is Reinhold Brinkmann’s interpretation of this work as proto-expressionist. See “The
Compressed Symphony: On the Historical Content of Schoenberg’s Op. 9,” trans. Irene
Zedlacher, in Schoenberg and His World, ed. Walter Frisch (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1999), 141– 61. See also Walter Frisch’s comments on Brinkmann’s essay in “The
Refractory Masterpiece: Toward an Interpretation of Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony,
Op. 9,” in Constructive Dissonance: Arnold Schoenberg and the Transformations of Twentieth-
Century Culture, ed. Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey (Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1997), 87–99, esp. 91.
10
Schoenberg appeared to dismiss the label “expressionist” in “Gewißheit,” in
Schöpferische Konfession, vol. 13 of Tribüne der Kunst und Zeit: Eine Schriftensammlung, ed.
Kasimir Edschmid (Berlin: Erich Reiß Verlag, 1920), 73–76, at 76. Schreker expressed
dismay over a host of labels in “Mein Charakterbild,” Musikblätter des Anbruch 3 (1921): 128.
11
The situation is similar with many other “isms” in twentieth-century music criticism.
See, for example, Scott Messing, Neoclassicism in Music: From the Genesis of the Concept through
the Schoenberg/Stravinsky Polemic (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1996); and
Marianne Wheeldon, “Anti-Debussyism and the Formation of French Neoclassicism,” Jour-
nal of the American Musicological Society 70 (2017): 433–74.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
them present and relevant in a specifically postwar context, during
which impressionism and expressionism were still fraught terms. An
investigation of critical reception of these chamber symphonies thus
brings contextual specificity and historical nuance to two terms that—
although deeply entrenched in music historiography, music history
pedagogy, and the vocabulary of the concertgoing public—are typically
regarded as problematic by musicologists.12 Rather than pursuing the
meaning of this elusive pair of terms, this type of investigation focuses
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
on recovering a meaning, or, more precisely, a constellation of mean-
ings particular to a time and place.
With roots in prewar German critical and historical writing, impres-
sionism and expressionism functioned as multifaceted, contextually con-
tingent concepts in postwar music criticism. They bore not only stylistic
and aesthetic but also psychological, national, and racial implications,
thus serving as important mechanisms through which critics could
engage music in broader cultural and political debates. Certainly, the
politicization of these terms was one reason some postwar critics disliked
and avoided them, but the very same reason motivated other critics to
use them for widely divergent purposes. The sometimes puzzling contra-
164 dictions that arise might be taken as evidence that these “isms” had little
substantive meaning in postwar musical culture. But I shall argue the
contrary: inconsistencies emerge because a great deal was at stake in the
definition and application of these terms.
Even as postwar critics almost universally—if certainly reductively—
aligned Schreker’s chamber symphony with an impressionist aesthetic
and Schoenberg’s with an expressionist aesthetic, they fiercely disagreed
about the relative cultural value of these contrasting orientations. Schoen-
berg and Schreker were thereby implicated in discussions that related
their music to pressing contemporary questions of political radicalism,
national identity, and Jewishness. As a result, this “unlike pair” of cham-
ber symphonies came to instantiate an impressionist/expressionist
dichotomy that linked music-aesthetic and social-political concerns of the
immediate postwar period. Critical reception of these chamber sympho-
nies thus documents a distinctive, consequential, yet neglected chapter in
the conceptual history of musical “impressionism” and “expressionism,”
12
For summaries of the problems these terms present in music historiography, see
Ronald L. Byrnside, “Musical Impressionism: The Early History of the Term,” Musical
Quarterly 66 (1980): 522–37; Leon Botstein, “Beyond the Illusions of Realism: Painting and
Debussy’s Break with Tradition,” in Debussy and His World, ed. Jane F. Fulcher (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 141–80; David Fanning, “Expressionism,” Grove Music
Online, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.09141 (accessed July 27,
2018); and Christopher Hailey, “Musical Expressionism: The Search for Autonomy,” in
Expressionism Reassessed, ed. Shulamith Behr, David Fanning, and Douglas Jarman (New
York: Manchester University Press, 1993), 103–11.carrasco
a chapter in which German-language critics first connected the two terms
in a complex, politically laden relationship.
Impressionism as Weltanschauung
The term impressionism first appeared in print in the 1870s, initially in
reference to paintings by Claude Monet and his associates; in the 1880s,
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
French critics began to apply the term to literature and music as well.13
Writers in the Austro-German sphere were not far behind. Brief, scat-
tered discussions of impressionism appeared in German-language pub-
lications already in the late 1870s. These discussions came into their own
about a decade later, after which German-language discourse about
impressionism took a distinct path. Even as German writers consistently
acknowledged the French provenance of impressionism, in the period
between approximately 1890 and the outbreak of the First World War
they elaborated impressionism as a Weltanschauung characteristic of
fin-de-sie`cle German culture and its artistic products, including music.14
The controversial cultural historian Karl Lamprecht (1856–1915)
helped to solidify a distinctively Germanic understanding of impression- 165
ism.15 Lamprecht’s idiosyncratic methods were highly suspect among his
fellow historians, particularly with regard to his magnum opus, the massive
Deutsche Geschichte (published 1891–1909 in twelve volumes and two sup-
plemental volumes).16 True to its name, Deutsche Geschichte presented an
all-encompassing narrative of German history. Lamprecht divided this
history into an orderly series of Kulturzeitalter (cultural epochs), each
defined by a distinctive socio-psychic disposition.17 He identified the
13
See James H. Rubin, Impressionism (London: Phaidon, 1999), 9–16; Julia van
Gunsteren, Katherine Mansfield and Literary Impressionism (Atlanta: Rodopi, 1990); and By-
rnside, “Musical Impressionism.”
14
See Lothar Müller, “The Beauty of the Metropolis: Toward an Aesthetic Urbanism in
Turn-of-the-Century Berlin,” in Berlin: Culture and Metropolis, ed. Charles W. Haxthausen and
Heidrun Suhr (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 37–57, at 43; Evelyn
Gutbrod, “Die Rezeption des Impressionismus in Deutschland, 1880–1910” (PhD diss., Lud-
wig-Maximilians-Universität, 1980); and Frederic J. Schwartz, The Werkbund: Design Theory and
Mass Culture before the First World War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 92–93.
15
Lamprecht was a central player in the Methodenstreit among German historians in
the 1890s. See Roger Chickering, Karl Lamprecht: A German Academic Life (1856–1915)
(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993), 175–253; and Kathryn Brush, “The
Cultural Historian Karl Lamprecht: Practitioner and Progenitor of Art History,” Central
European History 26 (1993): 139–64.
16
Karl Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte, 12 vols. (Berlin: R. Gaertner, 1891–1909); and
Lamprecht, Ergänzungsbände: Zur jüngsten deutschen Vergangenheit, 2 vols. (Berlin: R. Gaert-
ner, 1902–4).
17
For a concise, accessible explanation of his methods, see Karl Lamprecht, What Is
History? Five Lectures on the Modern Science of History, trans. E. A. Andrews (New York: Mac-
millan, 1905), 25–26.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
period since 1870 as an age of Reizsamkeit (excitability or irritability) char-
acterized by a heightened sensitivity to sensory stimulation; in its extreme
form, Reizsamkeit was recognizable as the pathological Nervosität (nervous-
ness) of modern urban living.18 According to Lamprecht, Reizsamkeit man-
ifested itself in the arts as impressionism.19
Lamprecht found musical evidence of Reizsamkeit in both the listen-
ing habits and compositional practices of the modern age.20 He noted in
particular the significance of Liszt’s symphonic poems and Wagner’s
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
music dramas, acknowledging the latter repertory as “one of the most
important—if not the most important—early manifestations of the period
of excitability [Reizsamkeit].”21 As Lamprecht explained, Wagner had
heightened music’s special ability to affect the nerves not only by simul-
taneously stimulating multiple senses but also by increasing the volume
and timbral variety of the orchestra, intensifying the piquancy of chro-
maticism, and significantly delaying resolution of dissonances.22 But
although Lamprecht described Wagner’s works as an “early” manifesta-
tion of Reizsamkeit in music, his discussion of it—indeed, his entire history
of German music—culminates in Wagner. Thus, in contrast to his exten-
sive discussions of a connection between Reizsamkeit and the specific term
166 Impressionismus in both visual and literary art, Lamprecht at best implied
such a connection in relation to music.23
A few years later, the art historian Richard Hamann would make this
connection clear. Hamann’s 1907 book Der Impressionismus in Leben und
Kunst (Impressionism in life and art) was the first extended study of
impressionism in the German language. Hamann’s foreword directly
acknowledged a debt to Lamprecht, and he followed Lamprecht in treat-
ing impressionism as a phenomenon relevant to all aspects of modern
18
Lamprecht, Zur jüngsten deutschen Vergangenheit, 1:59–60. See Michael Cowan, Cult
of the Will: Nervousness and German Modernity (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2008), 24–31.
19
Lamprecht’s conception of impressionism was particularly indebted to Hermann
Bahr, especially Die Überwindung des Naturalismus (Dresden: Pierson, 1891). Bahr, in turn,
was strongly influenced by Ernst Mach’s ideas about sensory perception in Beiträge zur
Analyse der Empfindungen (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1886). See Cowan, Cult of the Will, 32–34 and
272n34; and Leon Botstein, “Time and Memory: Concert Life, Science, and Music in
Brahms’s Vienna,” in Brahms and His World, ed. Walter Frisch and Kevin C. Karnes, rev. ed.
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 3–25, at 17–19.
20
Lamprecht devoted considerable attention to aligning music with his broader
historical narrative, but with the notable exception of Leon Botstein’s scholarship, Lam-
precht’s writings have received little attention from musicologists; see especially Botstein,
“Schubert in History,” in Franz Schubert and His World, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs and Morten
Solvik (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 299–348.
21
As quoted in Cowan, Cult of the Will, 53 (Cowan’s emphasis); original in Lamprecht,
Zur jüngsten deutschen Vergangenheit, 1:62.
22
Lamprecht, Zur jüngsten deutschen Vergangenheit, 1:31–35.
23
Discussions of visual and literary art make up the bulk of the first volume of Zur
jüngsten deutschen Vergangenheit.carrasco
German culture.24 But far from championing impressionism, Hamann
expressed deep misgivings about this Weltanschauung. In Hamann’s view,
impressionism was closely related to the cultural decline he associated
with Wilhelmine imperialism. It was bound up with a constellation of
modern conditions he considered pathological and even specifically
Jewish, including urbanization, industrialization, laissez-faire liberalism,
and individualism.25
Hamann’s unease, however, is not as readily apparent in his chapter
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
devoted to the topic of musical impressionism. Following Lamprecht,
Hamann considered impressionism to be a symptom of Reizsamkeit and
suggested that in music, as in other art forms, an impressionist orienta-
tion resulted in a weakening of classical forms, requiring only Reizbarkeit
of the ear and not the ability to draw logical connections between pre-
vious and subsequent musical events.26 After making a rather blunt anal-
ogy between impressionist painting and impressionist music—“just as in
modern painting the final goal is light and color, so in impressionist
music the final goal is sound [Klang] and sound-color [Klangfarbe]”—
Hamann describes the expanded timbral palette of the modern orches-
tra, the cultivation of “colorful” harmonic effects, the dissolution of clear
rhythmic and melodic profiles, and even extremely fast tempos as symp- 167
toms of an impressionist aesthetic.27
Like Lamprecht, Hamann privileged programmatic orchestral works
and music dramas as ideal vehicles for an impressionist aesthetic, and he,
too, restricted his examples to an Austro-German repertory. Liszt,
Wagner, Mahler, and Richard Strauss make significant appearances in
Hamann’s chapter, which does not include a single French composer, not
even the apparent arch-impressionist Debussy.28 This is perhaps not sur-
prising. Performances of Debussy’s music, especially the orchestral works,
were still rare in German-speaking Europe in the years before Hamann
published his book.29 Still, the implications of this chapter are striking:
24
Richard Hamann, Der Impressionismus in Leben und Kunst (Cologne: M. Dumont-
Schaubergschen, 1907), 6.
25
Hamann, Der Impressionismus, 213–16; see also related ideas in Georg Simmel, “Die
Großstädte und das Geistesleben,” Jahrbuch der Gehe-Stiftung zu Dresden 9 (Winter 1902–3):
185–206. Decades later, without the anti-Semitic tinge, Hamann solidified the idea of
a connection between impressionism and imperialism in Richard Hamann and Jost Her-
mand, Impressionismus (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1960).
26
Hamann, Der Impressionismus, 57. In this passage and elsewhere, Hamann seems to
use Reizbarkeit interchangeably with Lamprecht’s Reizsamkeit.
27
Hamann, Der Impressionismus, 62.
28
Karen Painter briefly touches on ideas about Mahler as an impressionist in “The
Sensuality of Timbre: Responses to Mahler and Modernity at the Fin de sie`cle,” 19th-Century
Music 18 (1995): 236–56.
29
See Elke Lang-Becker, “Aspekte der Debussy-Rezeption in Deutschland zu Lebzeiten
des Komponisten,” Cahiers Debussy 8 (1984): 18–41; and Christopher Hailey, Franz Schreker,
1878–1934: A Cultural Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 336n23.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
initially, in at least some German contexts, musical impressionism and the
Weltanschauung that gave birth to it were not categorically French.
Over the next few years, as Debussy’s music became more widely
known, German-language music critics and musicologists began to discuss
him as an impressionist composer. Even so, Lamprecht’s and Hamann’s
conception of musical impressionism continued to be influential. Take
for example Walter Niemann’s 1913 Die Musik seit Richard Wagner (Music
since Richard Wagner), perhaps the most detailed discussion of musical
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
impressionism published in German before the war.30 Referring directly
to Lamprecht, Niemann described Reizsamkeit as fundamental to musical
impressionism; he also identified stylistic markers of impressionist music
in terms nearly identical to those used by Hamann, noting in particular
that an emphasis on coloristic effects resulted in a loosening of both the
logic of traditional forms and the clarity of melodic contours. Most telling
of their influence, however, is that Niemann first discusses musical
impressionism not in reference to French composers, but in a chapter
concerning Strauss and German impressionism.31 Only in a later chapter
does Niemann depart from Lamprecht and Hamann by locating genuine
musical impressionism in a French cultural realm, at which point he
168 names Debussy as the primary purveyor of painterly Stimmungsmusik.32
Building on long-standing biases surrounding the supposed shallow-
ness and superficiality of French culture, Niemann expressed strong re-
servations about both French and German impressionism. 33 He
suspected that an impressionist orientation toward sensory perception
might leave the soul empty since “modernity, in the overemphasis of
physiological processes, represents a psychological impoverishment, and
thus not progress but rather regression.”34 The national-racial aspect of
this line of thinking becomes evident in his chapter on French impres-
sionism where, following a discussion of Debussy’s Nocturnes and La mer,
Niemann concludes: “the purely sonic translation of the outer impression
becomes the sole ruler. Out of the musician comes the musical painter,
out of the musical full-blood comes the musical half-blood, out of the
full-musician comes, although certainly not always, an impressionist
30
Walter Niemann, Die Musik seit Richard Wagner (Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler, 1913).
Postwar editions of Niemann’s book appeared under the title Die Musik der Gegenwart.
31
“Richard Strauß und seine Nachfolge. Die Anfänge eines deutschen Impressio-
nismus” (Richard Strauss and his succession. The beginnings of a German impressionism).
Niemann, Die Musik seit Richard Wagner, 145–82.
32
“Der französische Impressionismus. Claude Debussys malerische Stimmungsmu-
sik. Seine Jünger und Zeitgenossen” (French impressionism. Claude Debussy’s painterly
mood music. His disciples and contemporaries). Niemann, Die Musik seit Richard Wagner,
211–34; this chapter was also distributed as “Der französische Impressionismus,” Die Musik
12 (1913): 323–40.
33
See Hailey, Franz Schreker, 41–45; and Botstein, “Beyond the Illusions,” 145–46.
34
Niemann, Die Musik seit Richard Wagner, 153–54.carrasco
half-musician.”35 Niemann went on to note that although he felt he
should avoid using the “hackneyed” word Dekadenz (decadence), “it can-
not be denied that this type of delicate psychic and musical organization
represents in a certain sense an Entartung [degeneration], even if it is an
Entartung full of possibilities of new stages of development.”36 For Nie-
mann, as for earlier German writers, impressionism was by no means
a neutral descriptor.37
When other German-language music critics discussed impressionism
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
in the 1910s, they tended likewise to associate it with an emphasis on
sensory stimulation, although they did not always express the same mis-
givings about impressionism’s French—and possibly decadent and degen-
erate—nature. This basic aesthetic-stylistic conception of impressionism,
wherein Strauss was the model German impressionist and Debussy the
model French impressionist, remained intact in German criticism after
the war, though with an ever-decreasing sense that impressionism repre-
sented an innovative compositional style.38 Thus, by the time Schoen-
berg’s and Schreker’s chamber symphonies were paired in concerts
beginning in 1919, German writers had established a foundation for dis-
cussing impressionism in music, usually without engaging in the more
nuanced debates that characterized French writings on this topic. As 169
a multifaceted concept that encompassed but also extended beyond musi-
cal style, critics readily described as “impressionist” works by composers of
both French and German origin. Among the latter group of composers
was Franz Schreker.
Schreker’s “ Impressionist” Chamber Symphony
Christopher Hailey has described how critics were quick to claim the
influence of Debussy and Strauss in their reviews of Schreker’s first
operatic success, Der ferne Klang (1912). Even though Schreker most
35
Niemann, Die Musik seit Richard Wagner, 216. See also Karen Painter, Symphonic
Aspirations: German Music and Politics, 1900–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2007), 95.
36
Niemann, Die Musik seit Richard Wagner, 216–17.
37
Max Nordau had already connected impressionism with the word Entartung before
the turn of the century in Entartung (Berlin: Carl Duncker, 1893), 2:376–84.
38
Although after the war impressionism was primarily a pejorative term in French
discourse (see Wheeldon, “Anti-Debussyism,” 433n2), in German contexts it could still be
used in a variety of senses. See Heinz Tiessen, “Der neue Strom, III: Impressionismus in der
Musik,” Melos 1 (1920): 73–82; Kathi Meyer, “Das Stilproblem in der Musik,” Melos 1 (1920),
369–71; Ludwig Riemann, “Impression und Expression in der Musik,” Hellweg 1 (1921):
430–34; Walter Niemann, “Musikalischer Impressionismus und Expressionismus,” Zeit-
schrift für Musik 88 (1921): 201–2; Siegmund Pisling, “Der Stil der impressionistischen
Musik,” Die Musik 15 (1922): 44–49; and Adolf Weissmann, Die Musik in der Weltkrise
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1922), 56–57.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
likely had limited familiarity with Debussy’s music and would have been
unlikely to adopt Strauss as a model, from the first public reception of
his music, impressionism was recognized as an element of his unique,
eclectic style.39 Critics continued to describe several of Schreker’s sub-
sequent works—including Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin (1913), Vor-
spiel zu einem Drama (1913), and Die Gezeichneten (1918)—as connected
in some way to an impressionist aesthetic. Schreker’s reputation as an
impressionist thus worked in tandem with notable features of his Cham-
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
ber Symphony to facilitate critics’ portrayal of this work as exemplary of
musical impressionism.
In reviews of the Chamber Symphony, critics unfailingly drew atten-
tion to Schreker’s adept handling of coloristic effects, often suggesting
that these stemmed from his background composing for opera orches-
tras. The idea that impressionism was closely related to programmatic or
illustrative stage music is clearly relevant to the way critics evaluated the
Chamber Symphony, despite its apparent identity as purely instrumental
music. For some critics, it was so visually evocative that they claimed to
“see” a drama unfolding with the music. Georg Schünemann, for exam-
ple, suggested that while listening to Schreker’s Chamber Symphony
170 “one involuntarily imagines a little scenic development to the music.”40
Similarly, Siegmund Pisling wrote that it was “as if I had seen a compelling
music drama. Schreker’s Chamber Symphony is a symphony with an
omitted opera.”41 Although critics were not aware of it at the time, the
Chamber Symphony bore some relation to the opera project titled Die
tönenden Sphären (The sounding spheres) that Schreker had recently
discarded.42 The title page of the autograph suggests that even at a late
stage Schreker considered the music to have some kind of dramatic or
scenic basis, for it bears the crossed-out title Tondichtung (tone-poem).43
Keywords indicating the sensual emphasis of impressionist music—
Klang (sound) and Farbe (color)—are also ubiquitous in the early recep-
tion of the work, although critics did not always intend them as praise. In
response to its Viennese premiere, Julius Korngold was probably not
commending the composer when he wrote that “with Schreker the
39
Hailey, Franz Schreker, 40–53. A more proximate “impressionist” influence may have
been Paul Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe-bleue, which Alexander Zemlinsky conducted at the
Vienna Volksoper in 1908.
40
“Unwillkürlich denkt man sich eine kleine szenische Entwicklung zu der Musik.”
Georg Schünemann, “Moderne Musik.” On this basis, Schünemann suggested that
Schreker stood in close relation to Strauss and Mahler.
41
“als hätte ich ein fesselndes Musikdrama gesehen. Schrekers Kammersinfonie ist
eine Sinfonie mit weggelassener Oper.” Siegmund Pisling, “Musikalische Gänge,” 8 Uhr-
Abendblatt, March 6, 1920.
42
See Gösta Neuwirth, “Vorwort” to Franz Schreker: Kammersymphonie (Vienna: Uni-
versal Edition, 2008), v–vi.
43
See Kapeller, “Zweierlei Kammersymphonien,” 21n13.carrasco
mysteries of instrumental color-chords step into the foreground.”44 There
is similar ambiguity in a review of the joint performance in Darmstadt in
1923. In what could be a compliment or a slight, the critic described
Schreker’s Chamber Symphony as “a true Klangbad (sound bath)” and
suggested that the composer displayed “a Klangsinn (sense for sound)
exceeding even Richard Strauss’s virtuosity.”45 There were other critics,
however, who expressed genuine enthusiasm about this aspect of
Schreker’s music. A critic who covered the premiere admired the music’s
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
“flickering and glowing in opalescent colors,” as did Schünemann two
years later when he described the work as “a joy in iridescent and glowing
tones of color, which catch the most delicate transitions, as in a prism.”46
Critics also frequently used the specific term “impressionist.” Already
in response to the premiere one critic praised Schreker’s “impressionist
conception,” the music’s “flickering and shimmering and glistening and
glowing, as if one would see music immersed in a sea of sun simulta-
neously through blue and green and yellow and red glasses!”47 Richard
Robert later described it as “an impressionistic mood painting of the
Debussyian type,” and James Simon, too, wrote of “Schreker’s impression-
ist, suggestive mood painting” in this work.48 In some cases, critics
invoked impressionism simply by likening Schreker to Debussy. Josef Fligl 171
dubbed Schreker the “Austrian Debussy”; Helm suggested that Schreker
was conducting himself like a “German Debussy”; and Erich Urban
claimed: “Schreker thinks and feels in coloristic ideas. Like Debussy, only
German, Viennese.”49
44
“bei Schreker treten die Mysterien des instrumentalen Farbenakkords in den
Vordergrund.” Julius Korngold, “Feuilleton: Musik,” Neue Freie Presse (Morgenblatt), March
21, 1917. For more on Korngold’s attitude toward Schreker, see Hailey, Franz Schreker, 75.
45
“ein wahres Klangbad . . . , einen noch über Richard Strauß’ Virtuosität hinausge-
henden Klangsinn.” F. N., “Musik-Fest. VI Konzert,” Darmstädter Tagblatt, June 26, 1923.
46
“Flimmern und Leuchten in opalisierenden Farben.” Review originally published
in the Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt, March 12, 1917, and reprinted without attribution in
“Kammer-Symphonie,” Musikblätter des Anbruch 2 (Franz Schreker Sonder-Nummer,
1920): 60–63, at 61. “eine Freude an schillernden und leuchtenden Farbtönen, die die
zartesten Uebergänge wie in einem Prisma auffängt.” Schünemann, “Moderne Musik.”
47
“Flimmern und Flirren und Gleißen und Leuchten, als ob man die in ein Son-
nenmeer getauchte Musik durch blaue und grüne und gelbe und rote Gläser zugleich
sehen würde!” M. S., “Wohltätigkeitskonzert der k.k. Akademie für darstellende Kunst,”
Reichspost (Morgenblatt), March 15, 1917.
48 “ein impressionistisches Stimmungsbild Debussyscher Art.” rbt. [Richard Robert],
“Viertes Philharmonisches Konzert,” Wiener Sonn- und Montags-Zeitung, January 7, 1918.
“Schrekers impressionistischem, suggestivem Stimmungsgemälde.” James Simon,
“Musikalischer Expressionismus,” Musikblätter des Anbruch 2 (1920): 408–11, at 409.
49
“Der ‘österreichische Debussy.’” Josef Fligl, “Aus Budapest,” Zeitschrift für Musik 88,
no. 1 (January 1921): 15–16, at 16. “spielt sich Schreker immer mehr auf den deutschen
Debussy hinaus.” Theodor Helm, “Aus Wien,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 85, no. 13 (March
1918): 78–79, at 79. “Schreker denkt und empfindet in koloristischen Vorstellungen. Wie
Debussy, nur deutsch, wienerisch.” Erich Urban, “Musikalische Spaziergänge,” B.Z. am
Mittag, October 22, 1920.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
TABLE 2.
Instrumentation of the two chamber symphonies
Schreker Schoenberg
Woodwinds Flute Flute/Piccolo
Oboe Oboe
A Clarinet English Horn
Bassoon D Clarinet/E-flat Clarinet
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
A Clarinet/B-flat Clarinet
A Bass Clarinet/B-flat Bass
Clarinet
Bassoon
Contrabassoon
Brass Horn 2 Horns
C Trumpet
Trombone
Strings 4 Violins 2 Violins
172 2 Violas 1 Viola
3 Cellos 1 Cello
2 Basses 1 Bass
Harp
Percussion Celesta
Harmonium
Piano
Mixed Percussion (Timpani,
Triangle, Cymbals,
Xylophone, Glockenspiel,
Tam-tam)
Total 23 Players 15 Players
In describing the Chamber Symphony as impressionist, reviewers
tended to dwell above all on the opening section, a “motto” that returns
twice more in the single-movement form (Appendix A presents a basic
formal outline of the work). Schreker achieves a radiant, coloristic effect
in these passages through his use of the rich palette of timbres in his
ensemble of twenty-three players. In addition to winds, brass, and strings,
Schreker calls for harp, celesta, harmonium, piano, and mixed percus-
sion (see table 2). Perhaps the most obvious, but also arguably the mostcarrasco
example 1. Schreker, Chamber Symphony, mm. 1–8, reduced (Vienna:
Universal Edition, 1917)
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
173
important, aspect of the “iridescent Schrekerian sound”—as Theodor
Adorno described it—has to do with the timbral possibilities of the
instrumentation.50
In the opening version of the motto (ex. 1), Schreker deploys the
available timbres to create a distinctive texture: high, floating, but rela-
tively indistinct melodic lines in the flute (mm. 1–4) and two muted
violins (mm. 3–7) are overlain with tremolos in the celesta, isolated
flageolet plucks in the harp, flowing arpeggios in the piano, and sustained
sonorities in the harmonium.51 Except for the descending chromatic
line in the violins, the pitch content of the first four measures consists
of two octatonic collections: C s –D octatonic in mm. 1–3 and D–E f
50
Theodor W. Adorno, “Schreker,” in Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music,
trans. Rodney Livingstone (New York: Verso, 1998), 130–44, at 139. Hailey discusses
Adorno’s complex attitude toward Schreker in Franz Schreker, 316–20.
51
As postwar critics sometimes mentioned, Schreker employed similar textures
elsewhere, e.g., at Rehearsal 99 in Der ferne Klang or in the opening measures of the prelude
to Die Gezeichneten (performed independently as Vorspiel zu einem Drama).t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
example 1. (Continued)
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
174
octatonic in m. 4. Sustained triadic harmonies appear in the strings in
subsequent measures, but nonharmonic tones in the moving lines of the
texture result in a sense of functional ambiguity. In m. 5, for example,
a sustained D-major triad sounds over a G in the bass, but figuration
elsewhere in the texture includes the triad’s minor and major third.
Likewise, in mm. 7–8, after a resolution to a sustained E-major triad in
the strings, arpeggiated figuration in the flute includes a C n while an
oscillating figure in the horn features C s s.
In the large-scale unfolding of the work, the opening motto is
identifiable more as a timbral-textural-harmonic complex than as tra-
ditional thematic material. Each time it returns as a whole—even if
reorchestrated—it is immediately recognizable. But when the melodic
line first presented in the violins in mm. 3–6 returns without any other
elements of the opening texture in the midst of the scherzo (mm. 296–
301 in the violins, mm. 303–309 in the cellos and bass), it is not easily
heard as a thematic reminiscence. Even before the war critics had identi-
fied a loosening of clearly shaped melodic-thematic lines as characteristiccarrasco
example 1. (Continued)
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
175
of impressionist music. Schreker’s motto thus exemplifies what Helm
observed in 1918 as specifically “impressionist” in the Chamber Sym-
phony: “dissolution of the purely melodic into a vague flickering, spar-
kling, shimmering, whispering.”52 One reviewer went so far as to claim
that “actual melodies never allow themselves to be perceived, but more
a buzzing and shimmering, a murmuring and whispering whir.”53
52
“die Auflösung des rein Melodischen in ein unbestimmtes Flimmern, Funkeln,
Schimmern, Flüstern.” Helm, “Aus Wien,” 79.
53
“Eigentliche Melodien lassen sich nie vernehmen, wohl aber ein Sirren und Flir-
ren, ein raunendes, wisperndes Rauschen.” H. G., “Neue Musik in Wiesbaden,” Die Post,
March 4, 1920.Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
example 1. (Continued)
176carrasco
example 1. (Continued)
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
177
As insightful as these types of observations are, they are also highly
reductive. It is an exaggeration, for example, to argue that melodies
are not clearly perceptible in the scherzo section of the work.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
Nonetheless, these critics describe the most striking characteristic of
Schreker’s motto: to the extent that it is possible to separate the two
attributes, the passage is “colorful” more than it is “thematic.” In the
late 1910s and early 1920s this quality marked Schreker’s Chamber
Symphony—whether negatively or positively—as an impressionist
work. Although critics readily drew this conclusion when they heard
Schreker’s music performed on its own, they appear to have been
especially inclined to this conclusion when his work was juxtaposed
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
with Schoenberg’s “expressionist” Chamber Symphony.
Impressionist/Expressionist
Like impressionism, the term expressionism has a complex history in
German-language discourse, especially in relation to music. The term
emerged around 1910 to describe the work of radical Parisian painters
whose art was understood to represent a break with impressionism.54
German critics quickly began to elaborate expressionism as a broad con-
cept with relevance to plastic and literary arts. Discussions of the mean-
178 ing and value of expressionism were thus fully underway before the
outbreak of the World War, yet it was only near the end of the war, in
the early months of 1918, that published discussions of expressionist
music began to appear with frequency.55 Some of these discussions were
penned by critics who were enthusiastic about the possibility of expres-
sionist music, others by critics whose attitudes ranged from skepticism to
outright antagonism.
Whether individual critics promoted, condemned, or even doubted
the existence of a specifically musical expressionism, they typically did so
with awareness of an idea that circulated widely in the immediate postwar
period: that expressionist music represented a reaction against, and thus
an opposite to, impressionist music.56 This idea solidified above all in the
54
See Donald E. Gordon, “On the Origin of the Word ‘Expressionism,’” Journal of
the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 (1966): 368–85; Geoffrey Perkins, Contemporary
Theory of Expressionism (Bern: Herbert Lang and Peter Lang, 1974); and Ron Manheim,
“Expressionismus—Zur Entstehung eines kunsthistorischen Stil- und Periodenbegriffes,”
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 49 (1986): 73–91.
55
See especially Michael von Troschke, Der Begriff “ Expressionismus” in der Musikli-
teratur des 20. Jahrhunderts (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1988). Discourse
about expressionism in music thus blossomed as critics writing about other art forms
were beginning to proclaim the “death of expressionism” circa 1919; see Joan Weinstein,
The End of Expressionism: Art and the November Revolution in Germany, 1918–19 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990), 229–32.
56
Variations of this mainstream idea were also in circulation. Some critics claimed
that although the terms impressionism and expressionism had been coined recently,
these opposing tendencies had always been present in music, coming in and going out
of style at various times and places. Others described a historical progression fromcarrasco
writings of critics who supported musical expressionism. Following the
lead of critics writing about other art forms, they set about distinguishing,
often too sharply, an expressionist compositional aesthetic from an
impressionist one.57 The opposing music-stylistic traits they theorized as
resulting from these opposing aesthetics—the broader cultural and polit-
ical implications of which I will return to—consistently figure in concert
reviews that portray Schreker’s and Schoenberg’s chamber symphonies as
an “unlike pair.”
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
When art and literary critics began to write about expressionism
around 1910, they often described it as an almost literal opposite to
impressionism: as rooted in stimuli originating within the artist rather
than in sensory impressions of stimuli external to the artist. In his influ-
ential account of expressionism, Hermann Bahr thus described expres-
sionist painters as choosing to see not by means of an outwardly directed
“eye of the body” but by means of an inwardly directed “eye of the
spirit.”58 This “eye of the spirit” provided access to a supra-personal,
metaphysical reality inaccessible to the physical senses. For Bahr and
many other writers in the 1910s, this tendency to look inward rather than
outward reflected a wide-ranging shift in culture, a shift away from the
sensual Reizsamkeit that characterized the age of impressionism and 179
toward a reembrace of immaterial, spiritual values.59
Although before 1918 music critics contributed very little to pub-
lished discourse about expressionism, music was nonetheless vitally
important to that discourse. Indeed, almost from the beginning, art and
literary critics suggested that music, with its (reputedly) singular ability to
bring an obscure metaphysical reality to outer expression, was an ideal
paradigm for expressionism in other art forms. Music critics were very
much aware of this when their discussions of expressionism started to
appear toward the end of the 1910s. Giving nuance to writings by their
colleagues in the visual and literary arts, they often suggested that spe-
cifically instrumental, so-called absolute music best embodied the
-
impressionism to expressionism in such broad terms that they considered any recent
modernist work, regardless of style, to be expressionist. Still others distinguished impres-
sionism and expressionism from each other but nonetheless grouped them together as
modernist responses to romanticism.
57
See Heinz Tiessen, “Der neue Strom, IV. Expressionismus,” Melos 1 (1920): 102–6;
Arnold Schering, “Die expressionistische Bewegung in der Musik,” in Einführung in die
Kunst der Gegenwart (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1920), 139–61; and Simon, “Musikalischer
Expressionismus.”
58
“Auge des Leibes” and “Auge des Geistes.” Hermann Bahr, Expressionismus (Mu-
nich: Delphin-Verlag, 1920, orig. 1916), esp. 67–68 and 94–97.
59
Bahr, Expressionismus, 78. An enormously influential text in conceptualizing this
cultural shift was Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraktion und Einfühlung: Ein Beitrag zur Stilpsycho-
logie (Munich: Piper, 1908).t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
ambitions of expressionism.60 “Expressionist” music would thus reject
the depictive, sensual qualities that had come to be associated with
impressionist music. It would endeavor instead to realize its own purely
musical nature—in part by disregarding compositional conventions that
placed “outer” restrictions on the expression of “inner” visions.
On this basis, postwar critics, unlike writers today, typically associ-
ated expressionism with abstract instrumental as opposed to program-
matic, vocal, or stage genres. In particular, they frequently discussed the
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/158/407185/jm.2020.37.2.158.pdf by guest on 27 August 2020
abstraction of chamber music as an expressionist opposite to the color-
ful orchestral effects associated with impressionism.61 Already in 1907
Hamann had suggested that the rich orchestration and sensual empha-
sis of an impressionist aesthetic were incompatible with the limited
instrumentation or finely wrought thematic work characteristic of
chamber music.62 Critics writing after the war framed an embrace of
instrumental chamber genres as a reaction against the sensual extrava-
gance of the late nineteenth-century orchestra. Hermann Unger, for
example, described a “more intimate ‘expressionist’ musical conception”
as having replaced the “devotion to large-scale orchestral music of the
Wilhelmine era.”63
180 Critics reviewing joint performances of Schreker’s and Schoenberg’s
chamber symphonies regularly observed stylistic and generic contrasts
that fall precisely along these lines. Thus, although the two works were
nominally of the same genre, critics regularly pointed out that they were
not actually of the same type. In particular, critics often suggested that
Chamber Symphony was a misnomer for Schreker’s work. His large
ensemble and emphasis on sensual, timbral-textural effects rather than
on more abstract motivic-thematic work appeared incompatible with
a chamber style. In contrast, Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony seemed
to exemplify, and even intensify, the chamber aesthetic that postwar
critics associated with musical expressionism.64 This in part had to do
with the performing forces required for Schoenberg’s Chamber
Symphony in contrast to Schreker’s. The most striking aspect of
60
See, for example, Tiessen, “Der neue Strom, IV. Expressionismus,” 102; Schering,
“Die expressionistische Bewegung,” 141; and H. H. Stuckenschmidt, “Musik und Expressio-
nismus,” Die rote Erde 1 (1920): 339–40, at 339.
61
See Clare Carrasco, “Zemlinsky’s ‘Expressionist’ Moment: Critical Reception of the
Second String Quartet, 1918–1924,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 71 (2018):
371–438, esp. 380–84.
62
Hamann, Der Impressionismus, 62.
63
“die Hinwendung von der großen Orchestermusik der Wilhelmischen Epoche zu
der intimeren ‘expressionistischen’ Musikauffassung.” H[ermann] Unger, “Aussichten für
Musikfeste 1923,” Rheinische Musik- und Theater-Zeitung 24 (April 14, 1923): 61.
64
See Frisch’s discussion of the generic complications posed by this work, “Refractory
Masterpiece,” 88.You can also read
