A Glorious, if Nazi, Voice

“And don’t give me that stuff about Fischer-Dieskau being Hitler’s favorite baritone,” snapped Pablo, as I waited in line yesterday to get the popcorn. And did eyebrows rise?

Of course not—we were at the Metropolitan Opera Rebroadcast, and the movie theater was filled with people who have been hearing this argument for years.

As it happens, the jury is probably in on Fischer-Dieskau. Yes, he was a member of the Hitler Youth—as was everyone’s favorite Pope Emeritus—but neither man probably had much say in it. And he served in the German army, at one point caring for horses in the Russian front, and later getting captured by the Allies. The point is that he was a young man during the war, and hadn’t started his musical career: Hitler probably had never heard of him.

OK—so what about older musicians, those who had been established at the rise of Nazism, especially those who were German? Did they have the moral obligation to speak out?

Specifically, what about Elisabeth Schwarzkopf—certainly one of the greatest singers of the last part of the 20^th century, but also a Nazi? And if so, how much of one? Because look, it’s one thing to get—grudgingly—into bed with the bastards, it’s another thing to seek them out, flirt outrageously, and commit outrageous libidinous acts with them.

And according to The Guardian, Schwarzkopf went quite a ways with the Nazis: she joined the Nazi Student League, which according to The Guardian was hardly unusual: half of the students were members. But according to The Guardian:

What was unusual, however, was that she volunteered to become an ANSt leader, at least for one term. That demonstrated dedication to the cause of Nazism beyond the call of duty, and was an obvious sign that she wanted to get ahead quickly in her profession.

There’s more—she may have had an SS general for a lover when she contracted tuberculosis and had to spend a year in a sanatorium. She joined the Nazi party, although only one in five musicians were active in the party. When the war ended, Schwarzkopf was with the Vienna State Opera, which was handy, since she was more easily “de-Nazified” there than in Berlin.  And she later took an American boyfriend after the war, and then married an English Jew, which gave her British citizenship (and allowed her to earn a title). Nor was that all: the husband was Walter Legge, artistic director of EMI Music, and a man who would shepherd her career adroitly for decades.

Her defense? Well, according to The Washington Post:

"Everybody at the opera joined," she told the New York Times. "We thought nothing of it. We just did it."

As well, she told the Times that it was the equivalent of joining a union: if you wanted a job, you joined the party.

Think this is just about Nazism? Hardly, since Gustavo Dudamel, the Venezuelan conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has recently been criticized for not having criticized the current president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro. Worse, according to his critics, Dudamel played a concert in Venezuela the day after a particularly bloody protest. And Dudamel’s defense? Well, he is a product of a remarkable program called El Sistema, which takes kids out of the barrios, puts instruments in their hands, and teaches them both how to play remarkably well, and how to be disciplined, how to work together, how to succeed. And for that program to work? It needs government support.

Nor is Dudamel alone—what about Valery Gergiev—the Russian conductor who has supported Putin and his actions in the Crimea and the Ukraine? Oh, and has been comfortably silent on the draconian anti-homosexuality laws? Doesn’t he have the moral obligation to speak up?

If we say yes, then the question becomes “why?” Why hold Dudamel / Gergiev to a different standard than a rock star, a movie star, a writer? If we demand that classical musicians and no one else stand up and denounce repressive states or dictators…well, aren’t we claiming the moral high ground? Aren’t we saying that what we do is better than anyone else?

Why not come out and say it?

Yes.

I could invoke the philosopher Schopenhauer; here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

"[...] “Schopenhauer thought that music was the only art that did not merely copy ideas, but actually embodied the will itself.”[29]

He deemed music to be a timeless, universal, language which is comprehended everywhere, and can imbue global enthusiasm, if in possession of a significant melody.

But why not put Schopenhauer aside, and just say that there’s something special that we do—those of us who have spent years practicing our art? True, Michael Jordan spent years practicing his hoops—but I’m sorry, it’s different.

It’s curious—Schwarzkopf was known for her recording of Strauss’s Four Last Songs, but it was actually another soprano, the Norwegian Kirsten Flagstad, for whom Strauss wrote the work. And Flagstad took some heat for returning to Norway during World War II; here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

Nonetheless, against the best advice of her friends and colleagues, including former president Herbert Hoover, who pleaded with her to stay out of Europe, she returned to Norway via Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Marseille, and Berlin in April, 1941.[3] Though during the war she performed only in Sweden and Switzerland, countries not occupied by German forces, this fact did not temper the storm of public opinion that hurt her personally and professionally for the next several years.[4] Her husband was arrested after the war for profiteering during the occupation that involved his lumber business. This arrest, together with her decision to remain in occupied Norway, made her unpopular, particularly in the United States. The Norwegian ambassador and columnist Walter Winchell spoke out against her. In 1948, she performed several benefit concerts for the United Jewish Appeal. In defense of Flagstad's husband, Henry Johansen, it should be noted that after his death it was revealed that during the occupation he was arrested by the Gestapo and held for eight days. Also, Johansen's son by his first marriage, Henry Jr, had been a member of the Norwegian underground throughout the war.

Well, I spent time listening to the great, last song of the Four Last Songs, “Im Abendrot.” Schwarzkopf has the more technically perfect recording—it sounds as if it were recorded yesterday. Flagstad has all the creaks and crackles of an old recording, and the quality of the recording isn’t high. But it’s easy to get a sense of what an amazing voice it was, and what an interpretation she gave the song.

Somehow, however gloriously Schwarzkopf sings, it’s the voice of Flagstad that seems less mannered and more majestic.

Or is it just that a Nazi isn’t singing it?

Music from the Camps

I had known about it for years, and had even read memoirs about it. So when The New York Times announced that Alice Herz-Sommer, the oldest survivor of the Nazi camps, had died I wasn’t surprised to learn that she had been a pianist, and had been one of the lucky few whose music had saved them from the gas chambers. The Nazis, having a love of music and a need for publicity, decided to, well, not kill two birds with one stone. So they set up Theresienstadt, which would be a feeder camp for Auschwitz, and also would be a model camp featuring the best of Jewish cultural and intellectual life.

Nothing illustrates the enormous and horrifying paradox that was Nazi Germany better than their relationship with music and the Jewish musicians who played—often—the great works of German / Austrian composers. But let The Guardian tell the story:

In 1943 the Nazis struck upon two entwined ideas. One was to stage Brundibár, a children's opera composed in 1941 by Hans Krása, invite a delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross to see it, and let these distinguished guests be the judges of what they saw. The children sang, the orchestra played and the Red Cross was delighted, underwriting Terezín with its international authority and a clean bill of health. Within days, almost the entire cast of children had been shipped "East" to the gas chambers.

The second scheme was to produce a documentary entitled The Führer Gives a City to the Jews, for which Terezín was cleaned up and grotesque sequences filmed in which apparently happy inmates, in reality doomed to die, play football and cultivate market gardens. And of course there is music: the Terezín Orchestra plays, under the baton of its founder and conductor, Karel Ancerl. Here, his genius is exploited for a nauseating propaganda purpose – "but he could not do otherwise," recalls Anka. But she knew him differently, for who he really was, her memories both intimate and epic.

Better, consider the story of Herz-Sommers, as The New York Times describes it:

Music spared Mrs. Herz-Sommer a similar fate. One night, after she had been in Terezin for more than a year, she was stopped by a young Nazi officer, as Ms. Stoessinger’s book recounts.

“Do not be afraid,” he said. “I only want to thank you for your concerts. They have meant much to me.”

He turned to leave before adding: “One more thing. You and your little son will not be on any deportation lists. You will stay in Theresienstadt until the war ends.”

And so Herz-Sommers had the paradoxical privilege of being allowed to live, though she had to escort her mother to the deportation center for the “East” in Prague (small wonder—she called it the worst moment of her life), and see her husband in 1944 transferred from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz and then to Dachau, where he died.

Perhaps because of the music, she never turned bitter. The Times quotes her thus:

“It was propaganda,” she later said. “We had to play because the Red Cross came three times a year.”

But for Mrs. Herz-Sommer, who played more than 100 concerts in Terezín (the Czech name for Theresienstadt), the sustaining power of music was no less real.

“These concerts, the people are sitting there — old people, desolated and ill — and they came to the concerts, and this music was for them our food,” she later said. “Through making music, we were kept alive.”

“Making music” I assumed to be the act of interpreting somebody else’s music, but I was only half right. Because there was music being composed, too—and a special music it was. Because Czechoslovakia had a special, dual musical heritage. Yes, they were deeply influenced by Germany, studied there and played its music. But there had also emerged a distinctly Czech school: Smetana, Janácek, and of course Dvorak, who straddled both worlds. Here’s what The Guardian has to say:

Listening to the new Nash CD, and earlier recordings of the Terezín works by the La Roche Quartet, the Pavel Haas Quartet of Prague (Haas died in Auschwitz in 1944) and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, one gets a very strong sense that not only were great composers murdered in gas chambers, but also that a whole greater than the sum of its parts was summarily eradicated: a distinctively Czech school of music – bursting with talent, energy, innovation, yearning and wit – poised to flourish and reinvent the national music in the world of postwar modernity.

Of course it never happened, but those few composers who did survive – mostly gentiles such as Bohuslav Martinu – offered a hint of what might have been but never was, with his extraordinary blend of Bohemian romance and modern rigour. However, the saplings of that truncated Prague Spring did very briefly grow, could be heard and were heard – en route to the gas chambers.  

Thus, a whole nascent musical tradition was lost. But what had it been? How did the music from Theresienstadt sound? Tantalizing to think about, and especially so when considering the words of one particular composer, Victor Ullmann, who died in the camps in 1944. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about him:

The particular nature of the camp at Theresienstadt enabled Ullmann to remain active musically: he was a piano accompanist, organized concerts ("Collegium musicum", "Studio for New Music"), wrote critiques of musical events, and composed, as part of a cultural circle including Karel Ančerl, Rafael Schachter, Gideon Klein, Hans Krása, and other prominent musicians imprisoned there. He wrote: "By no means did we sit weeping on the banks of the waters of Babylon. Our endeavor with respect to arts was commensurate with our will to live."[3]

I turned, as always, to YouTube, and sure enough, it was there: the Third String Quartet, written in 1943. And how did it sound?

Well, it’s music I admire more than like. It’s also music that is tightly reasoned, well-crafted, highly serious; this composer let’s you see why one of the foremost composers of the time, Arnold Schoenberg, thought so highly of Ullmann. It’s music that refuses to sink to bathos or cheap sentiment.