Bruckner - Mahler - Schoenberg

Bruckner · Mahler

Schoenberg

DIKA NEWLIN

To my friends

MARIAN PASCHAL and HENRIETTE VOORSANGER

whose interest has made this work possible

Acknowledgments

Both author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the following permissions to use quotations, both of words and of music; without the amiable cooperation of those listed here, it would have been difficult indeed to have concluded this study.

Associated Music Publishers, Inc., New York, for various quotations from works by Bruckner, Mahler and Schoenberg.

Boosey and Hawkes, Inc., New York, for quotations from works by Mahler, reprinted by permission of the copyright owners, Boosey and Hawkes, Inc., New York; and also for the quotation from the Preface to Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.

Dodd, Mead and Co., New York, for quotation from Franz Grillparzer, by Gustav Pollak.

E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., New York, for quotations from Johannes Brahms, by Richard Specht, and from Arnold Schoenberg, by Egon Wellesz.

The Greystone Press, New York, for quotation from Gustav Mahler, by Walter and Krenek,

John W. Luce & Co., Boston, for quotation from Masks and Minstrels of New Germany, by Percival Pollard.

G. Schirmer, Inc., New York, for quotations from works by Beethoven and Bruckner, used by permission of the publisher, G. Schirmer, Inc.

Arnold Schoenberg, for quotations from various works.

Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, for quotation from Ivory, Apes and Peacocks, by James Huneker.

The Macmillan Company, New York, for quotation from Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche (translated by Alexander Tille).

Preface

THE IDEA of this book originally came to me during my years of study with Arnold Schoenberg in Los Angeles (1938–1941). At that time I was first introduced to the most radical works of Schoenberg—works virtually unknown in this country so far as public performances are concerned. I felt the need of a historical background which would explain the origins of the new style. It was this which brought me to a study of the works of Mahler and Bruckner; for Schoenberg’s oft-expressed indebtedness to Mahler plainly indicated that the roots of Schoenberg’s style might be found in Mahler’s scores (however different Mahler’s music might be in texture from Schoenberg’s), and the relationship between Mahler and Bruckner seemed well established. Thence, it was but a step to the conclusion that Schoenberg is not only the heir of Bruckner and Mahler but also the heir of the great Viennese classical tradition, which they transmitted to him. It is this conclusion which I have tried to prove in the following pages; it has been my desire to portray Schoenberg’s works as the culmination of several centuries of historical development, rather than as the products of a wilful iconoclasm. To this end, I have attempted to place Schoenberg in the Viennese cultural scene by analyzing, not only the musical background, but also the literary, artistic, and political background of his generation—a task which I have likewise performed for the period of Bruckner and of Mahler.

Such an extensive project could never have been carried out without the assistance and cooperation of those who were familiar at first hand with the milieu which I wished to reconstruct. Though space forbids detailed acknowledgments, I would like to express here some measure of my gratitude to all who helped me in any capacity—to Professor Paul Henry Láng and Dr. Erich Hertzmann, of the Department of Music, Columbia University, whose patient and painstaking guidance and unfailing encouragement were, from the beginning, of inestimable aid to me; to Dr. Herman T. Radin, who kindly furnished me with photostats and copies of unpublished Mahler material in his possession; to Mr. Leo Katz, for valuable commentary on the art-movements of the twentieth century; to Mr. Francis Aranyi, for the characteristic anecdotes relating to the première of Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder; to all those who, by word or deed, stimulated my imagination to a more vivid conception of the period with which I dealt, or who made me acquainted at first hand with its musical manifestations—Rudolf Kolisch, Eduard Steuermann, Fritz Stiedry, Erika Stiedry-Wagner, Alma Mahler Werfel; and, inevitably, to the one whose work made this study not only possible but necessary, who is his own best critic, and whom I have allowed to speak in his own words wherever feasible—to Arnold Schoenberg.

New York City

Contents

Introduction: The Continuity of Musical Tradition in Vienna; Austrian Convention and Revolt

INTRODUCTION

In a brief survey of the musical aspects of the high baroque in Vienna we may find much to point to the future. The direct influence of Italianism may perhaps be disposed of first; it is still very active in the eighteenth century, but becomes of practically no measurable importance in more recent times.¹ Insofar as the Italian influx stimulated the production of opera in Vienna, however, it is of the greatest importance for events to come. Standing at the threshold of the eighteenth century, we can look ahead exactly two hundred years to the time when the Vienna Opera House, under Mahler’s direction, will be the focal point of Vienna’s cultural life. And, in the twentieth century as in the seventeenth, the opera is the special joy of the House of Hapsburg, and the ornament of its festive occasions. In fact, there is even something faintly anachronistic in the spectacle revealed to us in the letters of Mahler, who was in so many ways the prototype of modernity, which tell of his grave preoccupation with the problems of arranging a gala opera evening in honor of the visit of the Shah of Persia. Opera, too, becomes of importance to the neo-Viennese school in still another way, for the entire period of late romantic flowering from which the school stems is under the aegis of the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk. Wagner himself comes to Vienna and, thanks to the presence there of Hanslick, becomes the focal point of a dispute beside which even the most vitriolic episodes in the later controversies over Mahler, over Schoenberg, and over Schoenberg’s pupils seem a little pale. Brahms, lured to Vienna by the pleas of friends, by the untenability of his somewhat anomalous situation in Hamburg, and by memories of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, becomes, willy-nilly, an anti-pope set up against the Wagnerites. The Upper Austrian Bruckner, a curious baroque figure, falls under the spell of Wagner’s music; he, too, comes to Vienna, and lives to regret it as he becomes an innocent victim in the Wagnerian controversy. Mahler, first in Vienna as a young conservatory student, returns at the height of his career, as a feted opera conductor, to play the part of high priest to Wagner with his unforgettable performances of Tristan and the other Wagnerian masterpieces. And Schoenberg begins his career thoroughly steeped in Wagner. Much later he says, When I was twenty-five I had heard the operas of Wagner between twenty and thirty times each.² In view of all these facts, the citation of the beginning of Tristan in the last movement of Berg’s Lyric Suite attains a more than passing symbolic significance.

But of all the heritages from the baroque, one of the most significant and most problematic is the Catholic heritage. The Hapsburg monarchy was a stronghold of Catholicism in the baroque era and it remained so throughout its existence; the aristocracy, too, was strongly Catholic, and anti-Semitism was a force to be reckoned with in Vienna, in spite of the Jewish domination of a large proportion of the press. It is only through the entrenchment of Catholicism in the rural districts of Austria during the Vormärz (the period preceding the revolution of 1848) that a character like Bruckner, truly fanatical in his fervent Catholicism and in his submissiveness to established authority, can be explained. It has already been said that Bruckner was a man of the baroque. Indeed, it is not surprising that he should have been so, considering the environment in which he spent his formative years. The Abbey of St. Florian is one of the most majestic edifices in pure baroque style—Jesuit style—surpassed in Lower Austria only, perhaps, by Melk. And its magnificent organ inspired Bruckner to contrapuntal improvisations which bespeak the seventeenth-century soul in a man who was still alive when Schoenberg was twenty-one. Unlike Reger, he left no major organ works in the baroque tradition, but much of the essential nature of the baroque transmits itself to the monumentally orchestrated pages of his symphonies. In this sense, the baroque tradition passed to Mahler, but Mahler could never have been a man of the baroque in the sense that Bruckner was, for his faith was not Bruckner’s. In his gropings for faith amid the mazes of Judaism, Catholicism, and pantheistic nature-worship we may discover the source of the pseudo-Catholic mysticism, a latent residue of romanticism, which animates men like Schoenberg and Werfel. The relentless probings of the conscience which their mystical speculations imply may even suggest to us the rigorous discipline of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises.

Passing to the eighteenth century, we find in Vienna a flourishing of eminent composers such as is unparalleled in her twentieth-century renaissance. Even the listing of their names is informative to us, for the presence of such names as Czernohorsky, Gyrowetz, Koželuch, or Jiránek tells us that there was much Slavic blood in this so-called Viennese school, a fact which may seem at first surprising. However, it must not be forgotten that it was the mixture of nationalities brought about by the aggrandizing policies of the House of Hapsburg which helped to create the style known to us as Austrian. Vienna, as a brilliant musical center, was naturally a magnet to musicians from Austria’s crown lands; but not to these alone, for some of Vienna’s most renowned masters—men like Beethoven and Brahms—were no Austrians at all, but Germans. The factor of racial mixture, particularly when the Austro-Bohemian strain is taken into account, is of special importance because it brought about the introduction into the Viennese style of provincial folk elements. Such elements are much in evidence in the minuets of Haydn’s symphonies, which often have the character of Austrian peasant dances. Here it is possible to trace a direct line of descent from the eighteenth century to more recent times. For the earthy scherzos of Bruckner’s symphonies, too, spring directly from peasant soil. This is no fanciful analogy; it is a definitely established fact that Bruckner, in the insignificant Upper Austrian hamlets where it was his lot to teach as a young man, was much in demand as a fiddler at rustic entertainments. The spirit of the peasant dances was transferred to the scherzos of his symphonies, contrasting strangely with the grandiose organ-like passages of baroque inspiration. And it is not in Bruckner alone that this nineteenth-century Austrian version of the transfer of folk-dance material to the symphony may be found. Mahler, too, utilized the rhythms and in some cases the melodies of Austrian and Bohemian folksong. In connection with what has already been said of the Slavic strain in the eighteenth-century Viennese school, it is well to remember that Mahler was born on Czech soil, in the little Bohemian village of Kalischt. In the slightly larger town of Iglau (Jihlava) to which his parents later moved he was exposed not only to folk-music but also to the Austrian military music. At the age of four he is said to have known by heart most of the tunes played by the military band at the barracks in Iglau. This earliest childhood experience of music undoubtedly had something to do with the predilection of the symphonist Mahler for martial rhythms and tunes, though not nearly so much as some of his over-zealous biographers would have us believe. Specific instances can be pointed to, however; Ernst Křenek, for example, has commented on the identity of the opening horn motive of the Third Symphony with the first bars of a patriotic marching song well known to all Austrian school children.³ This matter will be discussed again later with reference to other influences on Mahler; it is only mentioned here for the purpose of demonstrating the parallel between the influence of popular or semi-popular material on the Viennese style in the eighteenth century and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Austrian popular music of the eighteenth century bore other fruit as well. In the Vienna of Mozart’s time and before, one of its chief manifestations was the serenade, otherwise known as the cassation or divertimento. In its most artistic form it takes the shape of a finished masterpiece like Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, but it could be, and often was, of a much more informal nature. Thus its orchestration might consist merely of whatever group of instruments happened to be assembled at a given moment. However, in contrast with its North German relative, the dance-suite for wind and brass instruments, it is usually made up of winds or strings in a small chamber ensemble. Mozart wrote many such works, not only in the early part of his career (the B flat major divertimento for wind instruments) but also in his maturity (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and the string trio in E flat major). The divertimento or serenade does not end with Mozart. Beethoven’s Septet, Op. 20, is a divertimento both in spirit and in the number of movements; the specific Austrian tone is notably evident in its minuet. A still later example of the divertimento is the Schubert Octet. These two compositions do not use the characteristic old names of divertimento or serenade, and they exhibit truly symphonic proportions, but in view of what has already been said it is not surprising that at least one of the names continues to remain in use. Thus we must take into account Brahms’ two Serenades for orchestra, concerning which Richard Specht’s rather naïve words, in the light of the history we have just been retracing, seem to take on new significance: It is as if Papa Haydn had been given a son. . . .⁴ It is the influence of the genre in more recent times that really concerns us, however, and here we shall find concrete evidence of the continuity of at least one Viennese tradition. Schoenberg’s Op. 24 is entitled Serenade, and is set for seven instruments (clarinet, bass clarinet, mandolin, guitar, violin, viola, ’cello) and, in one movement, a baritone voice singing a sonnet of Petrarch—Petrarch, whose enervated lyricism seems so subtly appropriate to this Indian Summer of the Viennese serenade. The fallacy of the notion that the style achieved by the use of the twelve-tone row in composition must of necessity be a coldly impersonal one is indicated in the dance movements of this Suite, which are specifically Viennese in tone, with their popular character emphasized by the use of guitar and mandolin. That the music happens to be atonal adds nothing to and detracts nothing from this well-defined character. The same tone may be noticed in the second movement (Tanzschritte) of one of Schoenberg’s next-following works, the septet for piano, piccolo-clarinet, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, viola, and ’cello; and, though the listener may not realize it on a first hearing on account of the atonal setting, the theme of the third movement (Theme and Variations) is, according to the composer, a German folk song. Given all that has gone before, such stylistic earmarks are not surprising, particularly as the Austrian tone is no stranger to the earlier works of Schoenberg. It creeps in, unannounced, in a Ländler-like passage of his Pelleas und Melisande,⁵ in unmistakable fashion. Of the rather disconcerting appearance of Ach, du lieber Augustin in the second movement of his Second String Quartet there will be more to say later, in other connections.

The divertimento was by no means Vienna’s only form of musical diversion in the eighteenth century. At least as popular an entertainment was the national Singspiel, with its merry medley of speech and music, its straightforward strophic songs, and its irrepressible Hanswurst, the comic figure par excellence of the Viennese public. Joseph II’s official patronage of a national Singspiel theater in Vienna undoubtedly helped to raise the artistic standards of the genre—it could hardly have done otherwise when a Mozart was commissioned to write music for the new enterprise—but one feels that the Emperor’s actions could have done nothing to increase or to abate the popularity of Hanswurst-Casperle, that irresistible buffoon. He was finally eliminated from Vienna’s serious theater in 1772, when German actors took over the Burgtheater to play there the legitimate dramas of Goethe and Schiller, but he simply moved to the suburban theáters, where he continued telling his questionable jokes to the infinite delight of his Viennese followers and to the disgust of any North-German visitors who happened to be in the audience. His burlesques of Austria’s non-Germanic racial types, too, amused an audience which was accustomed to the variety of national elements drawn from all corners of the polyglot Empire.

Some of the characteristics of this popular art may suggest to our minds the corresponding musical form of a later period in Viennese musical history—the operetta. True, the operetta is far inferior to the Singspiel, mainly on account of the commercialization which it underwent at the hands of composers like Franz Lehár and Oscar Straus. Johann Strauss was hampered in his efforts to create an artistically balanced operetta by the generally inferior quality of his libretti. Nevertheless, not only his operettas, but also his dances remain really great in their limited sphere. And to consider the Strauss waltz as the symbol of Vienna is not by any means to insult Vienna’s serious composers. Schoenberg was not ashamed to call Strauss a great composer. At first sight this type of music might seem to have very little in common with the lofty aims of the composers of the neo-Viennese school. However, it is a curious coincidence, if nothing more, that three of the school’s most important composers got their start, in one way or another, through operetta. Mahler, barely twenty, fulfilled his first conducting engagements in the little spa of Bad Hall, conducting operettas and farces (Possen). Schoenberg, also in his twenties, had to abandon work on Gurre-Lieder in order to eke out a living by orchestrating second-rate operettas. And Alexander von Zemlinsky, Schoenberg’s only teacher, was an operetta conductor—and, from all contemporary accounts, an excellent one—before he came to the Vienna Court Opera. Surely such association with operetta was no experience of unmixed pleasure for the composers concerned. But is it not possible that (especially in the case of Mahler) the necessary contact with this popular art was of importance to them later on, because it impressed upon them whatever had remained fresh and vital in it? We have already glimpsed the influence of Austrian folk-song upon Mahler and Schoenberg; something of folk-art was present in the operetta, too, though to a slighter and slighter degree as it underwent the commercializing process already referred to.

In speaking of the great number of composers in eighteenth-century Vienna, it was said that even a listing of their names could be very informative. Two of those names—Georg Matthias Monn (1717–1750) and Johann Christian Mann (1726–1782) are of special significance at this point because, thanks to them, we have an excellent opportunity of pointing out the continuity of Viennese musical life in still another way. The examples which we have so far cited of the influence of Vienna’s earlier musical generations upon her later ones do not necessarily imply that the later composers were consciously affected by their predecessors. A truly vital continuity, on the other hand, could only be attained if the contemporary composers were really interested in the work of preceding generations, and made an active effort to keep it alive. Thus it is that Schoenberg’s editions for the Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Oesterreich of a symphony, two harpsichord concerti, and a ’cello concerto by Monn, and a divertimento by Mann, assume more than a passing significance, for they show that—though far from musicologically-minded—he has a sincere interest in the art of Vienna’s past. Whether or not the principles on which he has carried out the basso continuo in these works are completely acceptable to musicologists is not in question here. The significant thing at this point is to show that the revivifying of the works of their predecessors is apparently of some import to these composers. That this should be true speaks much for the vitality of Vienna’s traditions even if there were no other evidence to support it.

To speak in detail of the importance of Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven for the development of later Viennese composers is a task which must be reserved for later chapters. All that is specifically a part of the Viennese tradition, rather than of the international cultural heritage, in these men has been dealt with by implication in what was said about the lesser musicians of the eighteenth-century Austro-Bohemian school; and matters of broader significance must of necessity fall outside the scope of this introductory chapter. Thus we shall have particular occasion to return to Beethoven when we discuss Mahler’s choral symphonies. However, before leaving the eighteenth century it may not be amiss to point out an interesting historical parallel between the activities of Viennese composers in foreign lands then and now. The distribution of Austro-Bohemian composers during the eighteenth century is a matter of record; they might be found from Philadelphia to St. Petersburg. The so-called Mannheim school of pre-classic symphonists was populated with these Austro-Bohemians; even as Burney had cause to comment that Prague could not hold its native composers, so Vienna was to distribute her composers almost as fast as she produced them. Now it is curious to observe the selfsame phenomenon taking place in our time, when so many of the composers of the neo-Viennese school are political or religious exiles from their own country. Whether or not the historical parallel will go farther—whether the present enforced distribution of the neo-Viennese school will lead to stylistic developments of international importance comparable to those initiated by the widespread activities of the eighteenth-century Viennese school—remains to be seen.

With Schubert an element enters the Viennese musical scene which is thereafter to become of the greatest importance in the history of the neo-Viennese school. This element is lyricism, and what is important for us to remember about it is that it finds its place at this time not only in the romantically tinged Lied, where it might be logically supposed to belong, but also in the symphony, from which it had previously been far-removed. The natural result of this is a loosening of classical symphonic principles, form,⁶ and idiom, coupled with the introduction into the symphony of elements drawn from the rich literary background of romantic lyricism. The full consequences of the latter step are not perceptible in Bruckner, who was immune to literary influences to a degree scarcely credible in the nineteenth century; but, as we have said, he was a strangely anachronistic figure. The most far-reaching results of this whole development in symphonic style may be witnessed in Mahler, from whose hands they pass to Schoenberg and his school, though not always used by these composers in the way that might have been expected.

It is when we reach the times of Schubert that we begin to get a more vivid conception of the vastness of the network of personal relationships between the generations of Viennese composers. Schubert, shortly before his death, desired to study with the renowned theorist and contrapuntist Simon Sechter, and would have begun to do so in earnest had he not been stricken, at that very time, with his last illness.⁷ The presence of a man like Sechter, with his solid, albeit somewhat pedantic, knowledge, in the Vienna of this period shows that the sturdy strain which can be traced back to the baroque and to Fux had not died out; even more significant, in the same sense, is the desire of a finished master like Schubert to study with such a teacher. And when we find that Sechter was the most important teacher of Bruckner, and recall the line of direct descent which may be traced from Bruckner to Mahler to Schoenberg to Schoenberg’s pupils, we begin to appreciate the true meaning of statements such as Felix Salten’s remark that the relationship between Vienna’s succeeding musical generations is often so close as almost to be perceptible as a living entity. The instance he gives to prove his point is the very one we have just mentioned, the connection between Schubert, Sechter, and Bruckner.⁸ The citation of such instances, and the drawing from them of conclusions which sometimes outstrip the true facts, is nothing new, for much has been said or written on the subject of Viennese musical tradition, some of it rather superficial in tone, by writers more exclusively concerned with the modern period of Vienna’s history. Paul Stefan’s comparison of Schubert and Mahler is typical of this sort of discussion.

Schubert and Mahler sprang from the same source. It was their beloved Vienna, their blessed Austria, the melodies of the South-German borders, tunes in which sings so much that is strange and yet so much that is familiar. From this Austria they came. The experience of these masters began with everyday things—a street, a rustic garden, little brooks, paths between vineyards, a suburb of Vienna; it ended—differently, it is true, for each of them—ended in eternity.

Schubert lived isolated from his times and even from his city, lived only in the spirit. Mahler, at the turn of the new century, had all means at his command; he ruled over the greatest theaters and over concerts; he interpreted, he molded and formed artists, men, a public. . . . But basically he was just as childlike as Schubert. And just as demonic.⁹

The danger of such discussions as this, and of such remarks as Salten’s, is that they are apt to lead to the formation of a certain kind of cliché in the criticism of modern Viennese developments. One of these clichés is the Bruckner>Mahler fetish, which has often been overdone. Between Mahler and Schoenberg—to take another example—there subsisted no such ideal relationship as has often been depicted by biographers too anxious to make their heroes into saints. In fact, it would be possible to pick flaws in any of the connections between Viennese composers of differing generations (and hence of differing points of view) here and elsewhere discussed. Many of the fallacies inherent in a system of classification which would represent the succession of generations in Vienna’s musical history as a single smooth and uninterrupted flow will be dealt with later. What is important at this point is to realize that some such flow, though not always smooth or uninterrupted, did and does exist. It is only when we have grasped this basic idea that we can be sure of not losing our bearings when confronted with even the most surprising creations of the neo-Viennese school.

But, before this aim is completely fulfilled, there is one other basic idea which we must keep in mind. In the survey of musico-historical events just outlined one must perceive the latent functioning of a historical force which is a factor in every society and which is inevitably significant in the background of the Viennese composers under consideration. This force is the interplay and contrast of convention and revolt in the history of art, literature, music, and politics. It manifests itself in various ways: in the presence side by side of a conservative faction and a radical faction, in the alternation of periods of reaction with periods of revolution, and in the presence of elements of convention and revolt in the same party, or in the same individual. Examples of these varying manifestations in Austria will immediately occur to any student of history. One need only remember the irruption of the revolutions of 1848 into the stagnant Biedermeier period of the Vormärz; or—to recall more recent history—the tragic contrast dominating Austria before 1914, when the aging Emperor Francis Joseph, immured in the hereditary strict Catholicism of the Hapsburgs, failed to cope adequately with the disturbed conditions in Austria’s non-German crown lands. It is ironic that the very mixture of national elements which in one way had been Austria’s strength, as we have seen in our brief outline of the development of the Viennese musical style, should in another have proved the direct cause of her downfall. This contrast seems no less significant than the fruitful symbiotic relationship between convention and revolt of which Austrian history furnishes so many excellent examples. An anecdote which illustrates this relationship most strikingly is recounted by Ludwig Hevesi in his biography of Rudolf Alt, the great nineteenth-century artist who did more, perhaps, than any other Austrian painter to immortalize Vienna’s architectural masterpieces and inimitable character-types. It relates to the early days of Vienna’s Secession, that militant organization of ambitious young artists, as revolutionary as its name implies.

When the Viennese Secession was founded in 1897, Rudolf Alt headed it as honorary president. . . . Gloriously the aged man led a youthful band which swore by principles of which he was perhaps unaware in theory but which he had always followed in practise: the prime importance of the artistic moment, respect for nature, avoidance of academic clichés, loyalty to one’s self; artistic art and personal art, not commercial art for the public and the art-dealers. It was a beautiful and touching scene, when, on a sunny afternoon—April 27, 1898, the cornerstone of Olbrich’s Secession Gallery was laid on a site next to the Naschmarkt. . . . In the midst of the clutter of building materials sat Rudolf Alt, in a simple armchair which was decorated with a laurel-wreath. When the cornerstone had been laid and our patriarch had dedicated the building with the first strokes of the hammer, the laurel-wreath was plucked to pieces; everyone present took a few leaves from this honored laurel in memory of the first hour of a new age.¹⁰

Is there not something peculiarly symbolic in this dedication of the first hour of a new age by the honored patriarch of an age gone by? And is not something of the same symbolism intended by Paul Stefan when he begins his moving chronicle of the death of the old and the birth of the new in the Vienna of 1903–11 with the death of Rudolf Alt?¹¹ The feeling which this symbolism expresses is the natural consequence of the continuity of traditions in Vienna; and it is self-evident that this continuity exists not only in musical traditions but also in the traditions of all other forms of culture. Many further examples in proof of the same premise might be offered, but they would serve only to emphasize further what has already been said.

Under these conditions, the incorporation of elements of convention and revolt in the same faction, or even in the same individual, is quite understandable, and it is hardly surprising that convention and revolt could live together on very amicable terms in Vienna. In Schoenberg, for example, elements of both exist side by side, and their workings are quite consistent with one another. Thus, while his technique of composition with twelve tones¹² is revolutionary, his concepts of solid harmonic and contrapuntal technique, as inculcated in his teaching, are conventional, in the sense that they depend on vital traditions of the past. But this kind of conventionality has nothing to do with outworn academic formulae. Nothing could be less academic than Schoenberg’s heartfelt admiration for Bach and Mozart. There is profound truth beneath the paradox in his statement, I am a conservative who was forced to become a radical.

But convention and revolt do not always exist so amicably side by side, whether in the same person or in the same generation. Conservatism is often sterile academicism, and in that case it is urgently necessary that it be combatted by forces of revolt; but even conservatism of a worthy type is often placed in the position of having to defend itself against a revolutionary movement whose aims are equally worthy. Such an instance is the unfortunate Brahms-Wagner controversy, which manifested itself with particular violence in Vienna because of the presence there of Brahms on the one hand and Bruckner on the other. In this case, as in so many others, the conflict was aggravated by the zealous efforts of the partisans of both sides, a circumstance which led to much more ill-feeling than would otherwise have existed. One may recall still another controversy which, while in another sphere and of far less importance, illustrates the same kind of incompatibility between convention and revolt: the outbreaks of violence between opposing factions when Mahler, the apostle of modernism in opera-production, was succeeded as director of the Vienna Court Opera by the well-bred conservative Weingartner.

Naturally, the continuous occurrence of incidents such as these led to the dissatisfaction of the more advanced Viennese intellectuals with Vienna, which they felt to exert a hampering influence upon their efforts for cultural independence. Austria was held to be insular, too much cut off from currents of world culture. The young Viennese artists and musicians of the turn of the century often looked towards Berlin as the home of intellectual modernity—an attitude expressed by Stefan in the opening chapters of Das Grab in Wien, and manifested by Schoenberg when he himself went to live in Berlin in 1901. Thus is engendered the Austrian paradox, of which Ernst Křenek writes as follows:

The feeling of the approaching decay was growing throughout the later 19th century, when the inability of coping with the increasing political difficulties on the part of the representatives of the imperial idea became more and more evident. A most peculiar attitude of hedonistic pessimism, joyful skepticism touching on morbid sophistication, became the dominant trait in Vienna’s intellectual climate.¹³

A most concise expression of the curious attitude of Viennese intellectuals towards Vienna is to be found in a letter of Schoenberg to Mahler. Sending his best wishes for Mahler’s fiftieth birthday, Schoenberg expresses the hope for all of us, that Mahler will soon live again—this time for