Tim Ruedeman, saxophone

Transcription

1 Wednesday October 19, 2011, 8:00 pm Kulas Recital Hall Concert No. 28 Faculty & Guest Recital Ann Roggen, viola Steven Beck, piano Tim Ruedeman, saxophone Entartete Musik: Music Banned by the Third Reich Serenade in F Minor, Op. 73 (1922) Robert Kahn ( ) Suite, Op. 102b (1949) Hans Gál Cantabile ( ) Furioso Con grazia Burla Tim Ruedeman, saxophone Steven Beck, piano Trio, Op. 47 (1928) Paul Hindemith I. Solo, Arioso, Duett ( ) II. Potpourri: Schnelle Halbe, Lebhaft, Schnelle Halbe, Prestissimo Intermission Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 117 (1948) Ernst Krenek Andante ( ) Allegro Vivace Andantino Ann Roggen, viola Steven Beck, piano

2 Suite, Op. 25 (1921) Arnold Schoenberg Präludium ( ) Gavotte-Musette Intermezzo Menuett-Trio Gigue Steven Beck, piano Divertimento, Op. 75 (ca. 1929) Gottfried Rüdinger Allegro ma non troppo, risoluto ( ) Andante sostenuto Allegretto Larghetto Allegro risoluto Please silence all electronic devices and refrain from the use of video cameras unless prior arrangements have been made with the performers. The use of flash cameras is prohibited. Thank you.

3 Program Notes In the 1920s the Nazis adopted the term entartete as a loosely defined technical concept with which to condemn modern culture. The first exhibition of Entartete Kunst (degenerate art) took place in Munich in The following year an exhibition of Entartete Musik (degenerate music) took place in Düsseldorf. Atonal music, jazz, and works by Jewish composers were branded as degenerate and banned throughout Germany and the occupied territories. The Entartete Musik exhibit featured portraits of defamed composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Ernst Krenek, Anton Webern, Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, and Kurt Weill, under which were written crude slogans attacking their racial origins and moral character. Copies of banned scores, texts, and listening booths playing banned music were part of the exhibit. Some music was banned based on its content: atonality, modernism, or programmatic content that did not conform to Nazi ideology. However, much of the music that was banned was done so on the basis of the racial and religious origins or the political views of the composers, regardless of the style and content of the music. Therefore a large swath of music exhibiting a great diversity of style and genre was labeled as degenerate. Tonight s program reflects that diversity and represents music from an array of composers all of whose lives and careers were irrevocably altered by the events of mid-20 th Century Europe. German composer, Robert Kahn ( ), received his early musical training at the Berlin Musikhochschule and the Munich Akademie der Tonkunst. The young composer came to the attention of Brahms, who invited Kahn to study composition with him, but that offer was declined out of youthful diffidence. After a period of military service, Kahn settled in Berlin. Kahn enjoyed considerable success during the later decades of the nineteenth century. His String Quartet Op. 8 was dedicated to and performed by the Joachim Quartet, and his orchestral Serenade was given its premiere by the Berlin Philharmonic under von Bülow. In 1894 he was appointed to the Berlin Musikhochshule where he taught piano and music theory until In 1916 he was elected to the Berlin Akademie der Künste. However, his career was halted in 1934, when because of his Jewish origins, the Nazis forced his resignation. In 1937 Kahn emigrated from Germany to England, where he played little part in the musical life there. His forced resignation essentially ended his musical career. Kahn died in relative obscurity in the village of Biddenden in Kent in The Serenade in F Minor (1922) was first scored for a trio of oboe, horn, and piano. However, the composer constructed the work to be played by a variety of instruments, up to eleven different combinations, all with piano. In style it is not unlike the early serenades of Brahms. However, unlike Brahms serenades, it is constructed in a single continuous movement, broken into two distinct halves: an Andante sostenuto in F minor with a contrasting trio, a brisk 2/4 Vivace, and an Allegretto non troppo e grazioso in F major, with a faster central trio in D major. Austrian composer, Hans Gál ( ), was a prolific composer, teacher, and scholar. Gál attended the New Vienna Conservatory, where he was a pupil of Richard Robert. In 1915 he won the newly created State Prize for Composition. That same year he was drafted into the Austrian army. He continued to compose during his military service, completing his first important opera Der Arzt der Sobeide, which launched Gál s career as an opera composer. During the 1920s Gál experienced a

4 meteoric rise in his career as a composer. His opera Die Heilige Ente (The Sacred Duck) was his greatest success. It was performed in more than twenty theaters, receiving hundreds of performances, and remained in the repertoire until Gál s growing popularity brought him into contact with conductors George Szell and Erich Kleiber, and composers Alban Berg and Anton Webern. During this period Gál coedited the complete works of Brahms, and numerous other volumes as well. In 1929 he was named Director of the Conservatory in Mainz, supported by, among others, Fritz Busch and Furtwängler. Gál was a leading figure in German musical life, but that distinction came to a complete and abrupt end in March of Shortly after the Nazis occupied Mainz, Gál was summarily dismissed from his position at the conservatory and the public performances of his works were banned throughout Germany and the occupied territories. Gál returned to Vienna and tried to protest his dismissal, based on his military service to Germany and its Allies. Realizing that his situation would not improve, in 1938, he emigrated from Austria to England. England was not a refuge for long. In 1940 Gál was arrested and interned at the Isle of Wight as an enemy alien. During the war years, Churchill imprisoned many foreign nationals, imprisoning actual Nazis side by side with Jewish and political refugees who were fleeing Nazism. Although the post-war years were filled with uncertainty for Gál, he did finally receive a teaching position in Edinburgh in He became an essential part of Edinburgh s musical life, but never regained the popularity and importance he enjoyed during the Weimar years in Germany and Austria. Gál continued to compose until his death in Unlike that of many of his contemporaries, Gál s music does not feature a great use of dissonance. His use of harmony is inventive, but rarely does it range into the world of conventional modernism. The Suite for Saxophone and Piano, Op. 102b, was completed in the years , written during his first years in Edinburgh. Paul Hindemith ( ) was one of the foremost German composers of his generation, and was a figure central to both music composition and musical thought during the interwar years. He was a prolific composer, theorist, teacher, violist, and conductor. During the post-war years until his death in 1963 Hindemith remained one of the world s most respected musicians. In recent decades there has been renewed interest in and scholarship of Hindemith s music and theories including the establishment of a Hindemith Foundation, a complete edition of his works, and celebrations of the centennial of his birth in Finding a new creative voice that could be a champion of the cause of National Socialism was of great importance to the Nazi party. Older composers such as Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner were thought of as masters of the German Romantic tradition, but not seen as the trailblazers that would lead German music into the future. A number of people in National Socialist circles, including conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, thought that Paul Hindemith might be that voice. However, Hindemith s collaborations with Jewish musicians and his work with twelve-tone music and atonality, did not comply with the National Socialist aesthetic. Hitler himself took exception to Hindemith s music and by April of 1933 over half of Hindemith s works had been banned in Germany. In 1938 Hindemith s music figured prominently in the Entartete Musik exhibition in Düsseldorf. Realizing that the situation for him in Germany was worsening, Hindemith emigrated first to Switzerland and eventually to the United States. In a 1939 diary entry Hindemith was self-critical of his behavior under the Nazis: I always see myself as the mouse who

5 recklessly danced in front of the trap and even ventured inside; quite by chance, when it happened to be outside, the trap closed! Hindemith composed his Trio Op. 47 for viola, heckelphone, and piano in The heckelphone, an instrument akin to a tenor oboe, was newly invented at the time and Hindemith included an alternate part for tenor saxophone (replacing the heckelphone) in the very first publishing of the piece. The trio, like much of Hindemith s music from this period, uses all of the notes of the chromatic scale, but often melodically distributed to create individual lines that are wholly diatonic. Ernst Krenek ( ) was one of the most prolific composers of his time, active for more than seven decades until his death in He played a role in many of the 20th century s significant artistic movements: atonality, neoclassicism, jazz-influenced writing, serialism, and avant-garde electronic music. Krenek began his musical studies in Vienna with Franz Schreker. In 1920 he moved to Berlin. Between 1923 and 1925 Krenek spent time in Switzerland and Paris, returning to Berlin. During this time his musical and artistic circle included Busoni, Hermann Scherchen, Artur Schnabel, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Theodor Adorno, Milhaud, Stravinsky, Berg, Webern, and Schoenberg. Krenek s earliest music was written in a Romantic idiom, but by the early twenties he had adopted an uncompromising atonal style. Krenek s music reflects myriad styles and influences, which were apparent in Krenek s only unequivocal public success: the opera Jonny spielt auf (1927). Set in nightclubs, glaciers and trains, and referencing almost all the available styles of the time, including jazz, Jonny was an instant success. It was performed in dozens of different opera houses and made its way to New York as early as Ironically, the very success of Jonny brought Krenek to the attention of the Nazis. The vernacular styles, especially its jazziness and the character Jonny, a black jazz musician, made Krenek s opera a convenient target for the Nazis. Jonny was a major focus at the 1938 Düsseldorf Nazi exhibition of degenerate music. Krenek made his second visit to the United States in 1938 and had originally planned to return to Austria; however, the Anschluss of 1938 made that return impossible. Krenek remained in the US and accepted a teaching position at Vassar College. In 1942 he accepted a position at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in 1947 he moved to California, where he spent the rest of his life in Los Angeles and Palm Springs. Krenek s time in the US was extremely prolific. He produced over 100 compositions during his time in California. Starting in the 1960s Krenek regained some of the recognition he had received as a younger man and was honored in many ways. His music was often programmed and many festivals of his work were mounted, especially in California. The Viola Sonata, Op. 117 was completed in Los Angeles in just four days. Krenek departs from conventional 12-tone rules, using a freer atonal and serial technique. It is structured in three movements: Andante, Allegro vivace, and Andantino. Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg ( ) was the leader of the Second Viennese School of composition and a pioneer of twelve-tone music. During the 1920s and early 1930s Schoenberg was one of the leading figures in German musical life. Among his most famous pupils were Alban Berg and Anton Webern. In 1933 Schoenberg was forced to leave his position at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin after the Nazis announced that all Jewish elements were to be removed from the academy. Schoenberg and his music figured prominently in the 1938 Entartete Musik exhibition

6 in Düsseldorf. Citing Schoenberg as the father of twelve-tone music, Nazi critics often identified twelve-tone or atonal music as specifically Jewish. In 1933 Schoenberg fled Germany, immigrating to the United States where he found work as a teacher, first in Boston, then in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California. Although Schoenberg continued to compose and held teaching positions he was never again to enjoy the stature and success that he did in the prewar years in Germany. Schoenberg began composing the Suite for Piano, Op. 25 in 1921 and completed the piece in February and March of The suite is the first of Schoenberg s pieces that is wholly dodecaphonic. It is structured in five movements: Prelude, Gavotte-Musette, Intermezzo, Minuet-Trio, and Gigue. Gottfried Rüdinger ( ) was a German composer and teacher. He studied composition with Max Reger in Leipzig and church music under Wilhelm Widmann at Eichstätt Cathedral. In 1920 Rüdinger was hired as a member of the theory staff at the Academy of Music in Munich. In 1938 he was named as a full professor and continued to teach there until his death. In 1933 the Nazi regime started a series of loosely connected efforts to foster the development of local music talent. An attempt was made to recruit new artists willing to cultivate a style that was consistent with the tenets of National Socialism: bolder than the Romantic music of the past, but stopping short of Jewish atonal or twelve-tone composition. The result of that narrow and somewhat ambiguous agenda was the purging or silencing of the most talented composers in Germany and the occupied countries. Gottfried Rüdinger was among a younger generation of German composers who were allowed to continue to compose music. That group included lesser-known composers such as Kurt Stiebitz, Otto Besch, Albert Jung, Hermann Simon, Ulf Scharlau, Bruno Stürmer, and Cesar Bresgen. Rüdinger s music received attention in the press, including a feature article in the Algemeine Zeitschrift fur Musik in January of There are several notices of performances of his works throughout Germany documented in that journal during the years , but very little mention of Rüdinger after that. It is likely that Rüdinger was a beneficiary of the purging of Germany s pool of composers, and rose to more prominence than he would have otherwise. Of his approximately 150 compositions, the last third (from the war years) remain unpublished. The Divertimento for viola, tenor saxophone, and piano, Op. 75 was composed in the late 1920s, around the same time as Hindemith s Trio (1928) for the same instrumentation. The piece reflects the influence of Rüdinger s teacher Max Reger, as well as his use of Bavarian folk-tunes in his concert music. ~ Notes by Tim Ruedeman