Wagner, Hindemith

Slaying the Wagnerian Monster: Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi , and Musical Germanness after
the Great War

Author(s): Joel Haney
Source: The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Fall 2008), pp. 339-393
Published by: University of California Press
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02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 339
Slaying the Wagnerian

Monster: Hindemith, Das
Nusch-Nuschi, and Musical
Germanness after the
Great War
JOEL HANEY
W
hen Paul Hindemith’s one-act burlesque
opera Das Nusch-Nuschi premiered in Stuttgart in June 1921, it quickly
helped establish him as an enfant terrible in German music. The pre- 339
miere caused a scandal, abetted in part by the opera’s positioning
alongside an earlier and very different one-acter, Mörder, Hoffnung der
Frauen, which Hindemith had based on an Expressionist play by Oskar
Kokoschka. In sharp contrast to the Kokoschka opera, which attempts
to give mythic expression to a violent struggle between the sexes, the
A shorter version of this essay was delivered at the 73rd Annual

Meeting of the American Musicological Society in Quebec City,
Canada (November 2007). Substantial portions of this research
also appear in chaps. 2 and 5 of my dissertation, “The Emer-
gence of a Postwar Musical Outlook: Hindemith’s ‘Hard-Edged
Simplicity,’ 1919–1922” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2006). I am
grateful to James Hepokoski for advising this project from its be-
ginnings, and to Robert Holzer, Patrick McCreless, and Robert
Morgan for helpful suggestions relating to the material pre-
sented here. Archival work at the Hindemith-Institut (Frankfurt/
Main, Germany) in 2004 was made possible by a scholarship
from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. I am in-
debted to Giselher Schubert, director of the Institut, for his
advice and encouragement, and to Luitgard Schader and Heinz-
Jürgen Winkler for help with archival materials.
The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 25, Issue 4, pp. 339–393, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347.
© 2009 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
Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/
jm.2009.25.4.339.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 340
the journal of musicology
order the day in Das Nusch-Nuschi is sexualized buffoonery and ridicule,

qualities that ultimately lent it an even more subversive aspect than its
shocking predecessor. Even a brief synopsis of Das Nusch-Nuschi, whose
story had originated around 1904 in a stage work subtitled “A Play for
Burmese Marionettes” by the Munich author Franz Blei,1 shows that
matters of both intense emotion and brutality are handled as things to
be drowned in laughter:
A Burmese puppet-Emperor is cuckolded by all four of his wives on
the same night with the same man. This is the handsome Zatwai (a
mute role), whose servant Tum tum has arranged the tryst. Hoping to
avoid any possible fallout from his actions, Tum tum no sooner dis-
charges this duty than he finds a new master in the Emperor’s drunken
Field General, Kyce Waing. The latter is made to believe that Tum tum
has heroically rescued him from a hideous Nusch-Nuschi, half giant rat
and half alligator, that had crept from the river. (Actually, the sluggish
beast had simply expired under the General’s own enormous weight.)
Unfortunately, Tum tum has been seen at his former duties and the
next morning is hauled before the imperial court, where he reveals his
master—not untruthfully—as Kyce Waing. A herald brings confirma-
tion from the latter that Tum tum had indeed rendered a “great ser-
340 vice” the night before, at which the grief-stricken Emperor demands
“the usual” for Kyce Waing: castration. When the imperial Henchman
attempts this and returns disgraced, however, claiming that “it was no
longer necessary,” all erupt in thunderous laughter. (During the strug-
gle with the Nusch-Nuschi—whose name suggests a corruption of
“nuts-nuts” [Nüsse-Nüsse]—Kyce Waing had screamed “It’s biting me
on my backside!”)
A riotous scenario in itself; but above all it was the perception of

ridiculing commentary on Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in Das Nusch-
Nuschi that raised the hackles of critics. Giving greatest offense was the
cuckolded Emperor’s quotation from the second act of Tristan, where
King Mark laments his betrayal by his trusted knight. Hindemith high-
lighted this moment with a close mock-up of Wagner’s music, shown in
example 1, ending with a trombone reference to the famous four-note
motive that opens the Tristan prelude (itself present in the Emperor’s
melody on “und echte Art”).
In making the identification with Tristan explicit, the King Mark
passage suggests the possibility of an entire network of humorously
deviant allusions, many of which have been enumerated by Camilla
1 Franz Blei, Vermischte Schriften, vol. 4, Das schwere Herz. Zwiesprachen und Gedichte
(Munich: Georg Müller, 1911), 149–76. On the background of Blei’s play, which Hin-
demith kept largely intact as his libretto, see Annegrit Laubenthal, Paul Hindemiths
Einakter-Triptychon. “Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen,” “Das Nusch-Nuschi” und “Sancta Susanna”
(Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1986), 81–89.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 341
haney
example 1. Paul Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi, Third Tableau, reh. 88.

Used with kind permission of European American Music
Distributors LLC, sole U.S. and Canadian agent for Schott
Music.
(Der 2. HEROLD ab.)
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02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 342
example 1. (continued )
[Ł
Ý ð −ð ½ Ł Ł −ð ½ ¼ −Ł Ł
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Bork.2 Transposed into Blei’s puppet empire, the love triangle between
Mark, Isolde, and Tristan reappears in grossly disfigured form. The Em-
peror is cuckolded not once but four times over, and, as the play hints,
the wives repeatedly indulge their appetites outside the marriage. The
figure of Tristan is divided between the handsome Zatwai and the inept
Kyce Waing. The former, the actual culprit, possesses tremendous sex-
ual potency but barely exists as a character, while the latter, the Em-
peror’s right-hand man, shoulders the blame but turns out to have
been incapable of the deed. Tum tum calls to mind Brangäne by engi-
neering the illicit rendezvous, but far from keeping faithful watch, he
sees trouble ahead and hits the road.
As Blei’s subtitle indicates, this deflation of Wagnerian heroism,
emotion, and eroticism had been originally designed for a medium
2 Camilla Bork, Im Zeichen des Expressionismus. Kompositionen Paul Hindemiths im Kon-
text des Frankfurter Kulturlebens um 1920 (Mainz: Schott, 2006), 143.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 343
haney
wonderfully suited to the task of ridicule. After a period of intense

Wagner enthusiasm in his youth (the 1880s), by the time of Das Nusch-
Nuschi Blei was contributing to the satirical journal Simplicissimus and
producing plays for Munich’s newly established cabaret Die Elf Scharf-
richter (The Eleven Executioners), which specialized in puppet satire. En-
tirely in the spirit of this genre, his puppet-people in Das Nusch-Nuschi
“always appear as types, never as characters.”3 As Annegrit Laubenthal
pointed out in the first extended study of Hindemith’s opera, formulaic
stereotyping reaches particularly funny lengths when we meet the Em-
peror’s wives in the First Tableau. In a rapid series of solo appearances,
each wife states her name and rank and then anticipates the ren-
dezvous with a verbal formula whose fourfold repetition hilariously un-
dercuts any sense of individualized passion.4
Blei had been proud enough of this piece of turn-of-the-century
cabaret humor in 1913 to have it reprinted in a special issue of Die Ak-
tion devoted to his work; at the 1921 premiere of Hindemith’s opera,
though, he reportedly downplayed it as a mere “occasional joke.”5 If
his doing so betrayed a newfound uneasiness over the potential critical
reaction, then this feeling was entirely justified. The harsh words of one
early reviewer, Willibald Nagel, were typical: “As a joke in the right set- 343
ting, okay. But as an opera in a theater supposedly devoted to artistic
culture, no. For in the end, the whole story is filth. . . . Tasteless is the
endless drawing out of the story; tasteless is the disgustingly lustful
scene with the four wives. More than tasteless, cynically brazen, and
knavishly shameless is the Tristan quotation, which recalls the betrayal
of Mark’s honor.”6 Another critic, Karl Grunsky, wrote even more
bluntly of “a desecration of our artistic sanctuaries” and declared with
3 “erscheinen die Personen immer als Typen, nie als Charaktere.” Laubenthal, Paul
Hindemiths Einakter-Triptychon, 84–85. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.
On Blei’s turn-of-the-century activities, see Laubenthal’s introductory remarks in Paul
Hindemith. Sämtliche Werke, Band I, 2. Das Nusch-Nuschi, op. 20. Ein Spiel für burmanische
Marionetten in einem Akt, ed. Annegrit Laubenthal and Luitgard Schader (Mainz: Schott,
2002), xv n.7. In contrast to the puppet medium of Blei’s play, no evidence survives indi-
cating Hindemith’s intentions for a puppet staging of the opera. See Bork, Im Zeichen des
Expressionismus, 161–62.
4 Laubenthal, Paul Hindemiths Einakter-Triptychon, 116.
5 Paul Hindemith. Sämtliche Werke, Band I, 2, xi and xv, note 6; see also Paul Hin-
demiths Einakter-Triptychon, 81, note 109.

6 “Als Witz am rechten Orte: ja; als Oper auf einer Bühne, die künstlerische Kultur
pflegen soll: nein. Denn am Ende ist doch die ganze Geschichte eine Schweinerei. . . .
Geschmacklos ist die endlose Dehnung der Geschichte, geschmacklos die wahrhaft
ekelhaft geile Szene mit den vier Frauen. Mehr als geschmacklos, zynisch frech und
bübisch unverschämt ist das Tristan-Zitat, das die Erinnerung an den in seiner Ehre be-
trogenen Marke weckt.” Willibald Nagel (signed W. N.), “Württ. Landestheater: Opern-
Uraufführungen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 6, 1921. Cited from a copy surviving in Hin-
demith’s own collection of newspaper criticism (uncatalogued) at the Hindemith-Institut,
Frankfurt/Main, Germany (henceforth H-I).

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 344
indignance that “Here, everything holy to us is dragged through the

mud in an un-German spirit. . . . How long will we Germans allow such
things to be done to us?”7
The profound ill humor of these remarks testifies forcefully to the
changed historical situation in which Hindemith appropriated Blei for
an operatic setting. The event responsible for that change was the First
World War, which Germany had entered so confidently in 1914 only
to be broken and humiliated politically, socially, economically, and
morally after four years of bloody fighting. For everyone involved and es-
pecially for Germany, the shocking disjunction between prewar confi-
dence and the devastation that followed traumatically undermined a
sense of connection with once cherished ideals. And in German art mu-
sic, among the most idealistic domains of prewar European expressive
culture, this led to a hard turn away from lofty sincerity toward irony as a
dominant expressive mode, a turn whose significance looms ever larger
as narratives of early 20th-century art music increasingly counterbalance
a longstanding emphasis on technical innovation with attention to cul-
tural meaning.8 In the case of post-imperial Germany, sensitivity to the
latter issue—and to the tone of the reviews quoted above—asks that we
344 also consider a second outcome of the disjunction between prewar past
and postwar present: a deeply embittered, defensive hypernationalism
that clung strenuously to a heroic image of the past and longed for its
restoration. As the later history of the Weimar Republic demonstrates,
this force would shape the postwar era in decisive ways. And its role in
the debate over how the prewar legacy related to the postwar moment
was nowhere more pronounced than in German music.
Although early criticism of Hindemith’s opera makes for lively
reading, questions surrounding Das Nusch-Nuschi’s sharply ironic rela-
tion to the Wagnerian legacy in the war’s aftermath have guided exist-
ing scholarship only to a limited extent. Both Laubenthal and Bork,
who have contributed most extensively so far, have ably situated Blei’s
7 “eine Entweihung unserer Kunststätte. . . . Alles, was uns heilig ist, wird hier von
nicht deutschem Geist in den Schlamm gezogen. . . . Wie lange werden wir Deutsche uns
Derartiges noch gefallen lassen?” Review from the Münchener Abendzeitung, June 9, 1921;
quoted in Paul Hindemith. Sämtliche Werke, Band I, 2, xiii.
8 One recent example is Richard Taruskin’s characterization of the postwar ironic
turn as causing “a much more significant rupture than the one created by maximalism
[i.e., prewar modernist experimentation], which however it impressed audiences with its
radical means, nevertheless remained faithful to its (and their) immediate esthetic her-
itage. The ironic break meant—for the first time—the rejection of the immediate past, a
true break with tradition.” The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 4, The Early Twentieth
Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 467. For a classic literary-historical
account that elevates war-generated irony to a mega-trope of twentieth-century conscious-
ness, see Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1975).

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 345
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play within its turn-of-the-century literary milieu, within the category of

the burlesque, and, generally, in relation to Hindemith’s own involve-
ment with puppet theater during the war years. And both have shed
light on Hindemith’s rich musical score, including its formal design, its
use of musical exoticism and quotation, and its engagement of turn-of-
the-century orchestral modernism. But questions of musical meaning
are folded back into the aesthetic context provided by Blei’s play, rele-
gating the historical issue of a postwar ironic turn to the periphery.9
This is especially true of Bork’s study and entirely consistent with her
goal of showing how Hindemith’s opera exemplifies the generic cate-
gory of the burlesque. As specific historical interpretation, though,
such an approach has limitations. At one point, we read of the “histori-
cal distance” separating Hindemith’s King Mark quotation from Wag-
ner’s original, but we are not let in on the history that created that dis-
tance and granted the parody its particular flavor.10 A fuller picture
remains to be drawn, one that takes firmly into account the most histor-
ically pressing context for Hindemith’s use of Blei: the upheaval in Ger-
man self-understanding that came with the war and greatly unsettled
the relationship with the past.
345
Lost Innocence and the “True Abtsroda”
“Our cabaret is a gesture. Every word that is spoken and sung here
says at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded
in winning our respect. What could be respectable and impressive about
it? Its cannons? Our big drum drowns them. Its idealism? That has long
been a laughingstock, in its popular and its academic edition. The
grandiose slaughters and cannibalistic exploits? Our spontaneous fool-
ishness and our enthusiasm for illusion will destroy them.”11 Thus wrote
Hugo Ball in April 1916, not long after the opening of the Cabaret
Voltaire in Zurich, the birthplace of European Dada. Ball, a German
whose initial support for the war had turned to disgust and a flight
from Germany with forged papers, had recently found kindred spirits
9 At one point Laubenthal did press toward broader music-historical matters by in-
voking a Hindemithian critique of Straussian program music (Paul Hindemiths Einakter-

Triptychon, 125). Both scholars referred to the opera’s participation in a broader “turn
toward comedy” that signaled the decline of theatrical Expressionism, but neither con-
nected Das Nusch-Nuschi or this trend to the war-related ironic turn in German culture.
See Paul Hindemith. Sämtliche Werke, Band I, 2, ix; and Bork, Im Zeichen des Expressionismus,
140.
10 See Bork, Im Zeichen des Expressionismus, 161.
11 Hugo Ball, diary entry of April 14, 1916, in Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, ed.
John Elderfield, trans. Ann Raimes, The Documents of 20th-Century Art (New York:
Viking, 1974), 61.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 346
in a fellow German expatriate, Richard Huelsenbeck, and the Romani-

ans Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco, among others. And since February
this group, “the youngest and worst-behaved wing of Switzerland’s
growing colony of central- and East-European war opponents,” had
been throwing high-spirited foolishness in the face of the war’s incom-
prehensible destruction.12
It was no coincidence that Dada, the most radical attack to date on
the nineteenth century’s lofty conception of art, emerged precisely
when the war’s horrors were being revealed in their full extent, when it
was becoming clear “that the war had very much to do with barbarism
and absolutely nothing to do with cleansing, purification, or indeed
Kultur.”13 This last word had been emblazoned on Germany’s banner
when it had marched to war: “The issue is battle, the battle forced on us
for German Kultur, which is threatened by the barbarians from the east,
and for German values, which the enemy in the west envies us. And so
the furor Teutonicus bursts into flame once again. The enthusiasm of the
wars of liberation flares, and the holy war begins.”14 With this sum-
mons, the rectors and senates of Bavarian universities had called their
students away from their academic pursuits to the service of a grander
346 matter in August 1914. And with so many others of their generation,
they went, eagerly and innocently, with little idea that their innocence
would end so soon and so painfully.
Participating in this devastating loss of innocence was the young
Hindemith, even before he put in his year of service in 1918.15 Swept
up in the heady nationalism of 1914 and brimming with filial pride (his
middle-aged father quickly volunteered), the eighteen-year-old wrote
confidently to Swiss friends that upon seeing the resolve of the Ger-
mans taking to the field, “even the enemy will have to realize that the
German people are fighting for a just cause and did not enter the war
out of sheer pugnacity, as the French, Russian, and English lie-factory
12 John Willett, Art and Politics in the Weimar Period: The New Sobriety, 1917–1933
(New York: Da Capo, 1978), 26.

13 “daß der Krieg sehr viel mit Barbarei, dagegen mit Läuterung, Reinigung oder
gar Kultur ganz und gar nichts zu schaffen hat.” Martin Thrun, “Krieg und Revolution.
Über die Erschütterungen von Kunst und Kultur nach 1910,” in Musikkultur in der
Weimarer Republik, ed. Wolfgang Rathert and Giselher Schubert, Frankfurter Studien 8
(Mainz: Schott, 2001), 26; see also p. 29. In characterizing 1916 as a turning point in atti-
tudes toward the war, historians frequently mention the disastrous British offensive on
the Somme, which lasted from July to November and resulted in unprecedented casual-
ties. See, for example, Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, 12–14; Modris Eksteins,
Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York: Mariner, 1989),
144–45; and Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, 472.
14 Quoted in Eksteins, Rites of Spring, 93.
15 On Hindemith’s increasing disillusionment with the war and German national-
ism while serving on the Western Front, see my “The Emergence of a Postwar Musical
Outlook,” chap. 4.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 347
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would like to broadcast.”16 As is well known, though, June 1916 found

him expressing remarkably different sentiments to the same friends.
After reporting that his father’s death on the Western Front the previ-
ous September had finally been confirmed, he waved it away: “Now
enough of so sad a subject! You surely have experienced enough of it as
well, so it is not at all necessary for me to lament and parade my sorrow
before you. The whole war is sad enough, and therefore it is good if
one can set up the ‘music hall of humor’ [‘Singspielhalle des Humors’]
against these times. That helps quite a bit. I have succeeded in doing so
and therefore am not suffering at all during these difficult times.”17
Whether Hindemith was really not suffering remains questionable,
but significant consequences indeed followed from his declared retreat
into a world of spirited imagination. With this pronouncement, he was
glossing his favorite poet, Christian Morgenstern, who had prefaced his
1905 collection Galgenlieder (Gallows Songs) with a description of the
turn-of-the-century cabaret milieu in which those poems had origi-
nated. It was within a fellowship of “Gallows Brothers” who had resolved
“to set up the music hall, so to speak, of their humor” against a hostile
historical moment, one marked by a questionable “ideal of unflagging
progress” that reigned supreme “in things moral, medical, poetic, patri- 347
otic; in commerce, art, and science.”18 Amid the far greater hostilities of
a World War, when the nineteenth-century ideal of progress was suffer-
ing irreparable damage, Morgenstern’s grotesque and absurd humor
found a ready audience in the young Hindemith. He had been avidly
reading his poetry since at least the summer of 1915, when he shared it
with a fellow member of his “Urian” Club. This was a circle of friends
from school—Frankfurt’s Hoch Conservatorium—devoted to madcap,
16 “müssen selbst die Feinde eingestehen, daß das Deutsche Volk für eine gerechte
Sache streitet und nicht, wie die französische, russische & englische Lügenfabrik so gerne
verbreiten möchte, nur aus Rauflust in den Krieg zog.” Letter to the Weber family, Sep-
tember 23, 1914, in Paul Hindemith. Briefe, ed. Dieter Rexroth (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1982),
35.
17 “Jetzt genug des Traurigen! Sie erfahren wohl auch noch genug davon, und
darum ist es gar nicht nötig, daß ich auch noch lamentiere und Ihnen etwas vorjammere.
Der ganze Krieg ist traurig genug und da ist es gut, wenn man dieser ganzen Zeit die
‘Singspielhalle des Humors’ gegenüberstellen kann; das hilft über vieles hinweg. Ich
habe das gut fertig gebracht und deshalb leide ich auch gar nicht unter den trüben
Zeiten.” Letter to the Weber family, Whitsun holidays 1916, in Briefe, 44. (Envelope post-
marked June 14, 1916 [H-I, 3.338.12].) In the same letter, we learn that Hindemith’s fa-
ther had died on September 25, 1915; his last communication to the family had arrived
on September 12.
18 Christian Morgenstern, Alle Galgenlieder: Galgenlieder, Palmström, Palma Kunkel, Der
Gingganz, afterword by Jürgen Walter (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1989), 11. The connec-
tion with Morgenstern’s preface was pointed out by Michael Zimmermann in “Harm-
losigkeit und Melancholie bei Christian Morgenstern und Paul Hindemith,” Hindemith-
Jahrbuch 16 (1987): 60, note 3. See also Friederike Becker, “Singspielhalle des Humors. Zu
den Dramatischen Meisterwerken Paul Hindemiths,” Hindemith-Jahrbuch 18 (1989): 15–16.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 348
homespun entertainment, a group whose perceived affinity with Mor-

genstern’s lively cabaret circle surely delighted him.19
Allied in spirit with the Urian Club was another student organiza-
tion, the “Abtsroda Music School.” For this fictitious “conservatory for
music and related endeavors following the most modern principles,”
Hindemith drafted an irreverent annual newsletter in September 1915.
Among the highlights of this document, which has apparently received
no scholarly attention, is a satirical piece on the wartime proliferation
of Fatherland songs and an article entitled “New Bayreuth.” In the lat-
ter Hindemith described the recently completed “Abtsroda Festival
Theater” with the following ironic reconstruction of Wagner’s theater:
“By means of a magnificent gothic Empire portal, the front of the
building has been brought into stylistic unity with the back, which is
dominated by Romanesque rococo motifs. The inside is entirely de-
voted to the stage and the orchestra pit; room for the audience could
not be accommodated due to a lack of space.”20
Given the lighthearted atmosphere that seems to have prevailed in
these student circles, it is striking to see how vehemently Hindemith re-
acted when he sensed its endangerment. Feeling that the Abtsroda
348 group was breaking down in December, he submitted his “resignation”
with unaccustomed seriousness: “I see it ever more clearly. Abtsroda is
no joke, no empty craziness. The true Abtsroda is a place where unde-
filed truth, sincerity, and strength of character are guarded. And it is
toward this new Abtsroda that I will turn, even if no one comes with
me!!!”21 Such an outburst initially seems unwarranted: “undefiled truth
and sincerity”? By this point, though, Hindemith’s family had had no
19 See Hindemith’s letter to August Taravella of July 12, 1915 (H-I, 3.264.2). On
the Urian Club, see his letter to the Weber family of December 28, 1913 in Briefe, 31–32.
(Hindemith had been writing plays for this group since its inception; for a helpful discus-
sion of these, see Becker, “Singspielhalle des Humors.”) Giselher Schubert suggested the par-
allel with Morgenstern’s Gallows Brothers in his booklet notes for Paul Hindemith. Lustige
Sinfonietta. Ragtime, Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, cond. Gerd Albrecht, Wergo
WER 60150-50, 1988, compact disc, 3.
20 “Die Vorderseite wird durch ein herrliches gotisches Empire-Portal in stilistische
Einheit mit der Rückseite gebracht, wo romanische Rokoko-Motive vorherrschen. Der In-
nenraum wird durch die Bühne sowie den Orchesterraum ausgefüllt, während der
Zuschauerraum wegen Platzmangels nicht eingebaut werden konnte.” The heading
“Konservatorium für Musik und verwandte Betriebe auf modernster Grundlage” appears
at the top of Hindemith’s newsletter, along with the title “Jahresbericht 1914–15” (H-I,
3.296.2). In private conversation, Heinz-Jürgen Winkler (H-I) suggested that the
“Abtsroda” designation may have been chosen to commemorate a student outing to the
town of that name, located in the Rhone mountains in central Germany.
21 “Ich sehe es immer deutlicher: Abtsroda ist kein Scherz, kein leerer Wahn. Das
wahre Abtsroda ist eine Pflegestätte der lauteren Wahrheit, Aufrichtigkeit und Charakter-
stärke. Und nach diesem neuen Abtsroda will ich wandeln, selbst wenn niemand mit mir
geht!!!” Letter postmarked December 10, 1915, H-I, 3.296.7. To my knowledge, this im-
portant letter has gone unmentioned in Hindemith scholarship.

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word for three months from the Front, where his father had been de-
fending Germany’s “just cause.” The innocence of 1914 was giving way
to painful disillusionment, and in its midst ironic play offered the truest
form of sincerity available. (“What we are celebrating,” Ball would write
of his cabaret some months later, “is both buffoonery and a requiem
mass.”)22
Dispersing the Vapors: Wartime Wagner Satire

This revision of sincerity left its mark on Hindemith’s compositions
beginning with the Lustige Sinfonietta of 1916, a programmatic orchestral
work written in response to Morgenstern’s poetry.23 But Hindemith’s
reading list at this time included yet another author concerned with
ironized expressiveness, particularly in reaction to Wagnerian overin-
dulgence: Friedrich Huch, another Munich-based writer of Wagner pup-
pet satires. It is relatively well known that Hindemith prepared an entire
score of incidental music for Huch’s parody of Lohengrin, which was
likely performed in the fall of 1916 at the home of his friend Emmy
Ronnefeldt, daughter of a prominent Frankfurt family. This score,
which thrives on playful reworkings of Wagner and quotations from the 349
standard repertory, forms an important precedent for Das Nusch-Nuschi.24
Equally relevant, however, to our understanding of Hindemith’s
later opera—and more significant for our picture of his emerging anti-
Romanticism during the war years—is Huch’s broader Wagner critique,
22 Diary entry of March 12, 1916, in Flight Out of Time, 56.

23 See especially Zimmermann’s discussion of the Sinfonietta in “Harmlosigkeit und
Melancholie,” 64–67. With reference to the developmental fugato of the first movement,
which responds to Morgenstern’s proto-Dada phonetic poem “Das große Lalulā,” Zim-
mermann wrote of an ironic “de-semanticizing” of artistic media in both cases: the poem
suggests the vestiges of traditional meaning by obeying conventions of meter and rhyme
but withholds actual semantic meaning by using only nonsense words. In rough analogy,
Hindemith’s fugato begins with an “expressive” subject only to have the music devolve
into aimless, non-expressive play shortly thereafter. This Morgenstern-inspired fugato
shows that after his declared turn toward the “new Abtsroda” Hindemith indeed began
allowing his more ambitious compositional work to be guided by ideas that once had
appeared to be mere humorous diversions. Included in his fictitious newsletter from the
previous September had been a list of the past year’s concerts, beginning with a Morgen-
stern evening featuring “Das große Lalulā: Cantata for Large Orchestra, Chorus, Organ,
etc.”
24 See Bork, Im Zeichen des Expressionismus, 162–63. Hindemith’s manuscript score
survives at the Hindemith-Institut. Although Emmy Ronnefeldt’s own reminiscences state

that the Lohengrin parody did receive a performance (see Becker, “Singspielhalle des Hu-
mors,” 26), determining when is difficult. In the puppet-theater notebooks that Hin-
demith kept (H-I), there appears a chronological listing of performance dates for all
other plays for which he had supplied incidental music. No date appears next to Huch’s
parody, but this listing is sandwiched between two others bearing the dates September 4
and November 5, 1916, which suggests that a Lohengrin performance may have occurred
during September or October of that year.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 350
of which the Lohengrin parody forms merely one installment. By 1916,

Hindemith had also read Huch’s parody of Tristan und Isolde for shadow
puppets and his “musical novel” Enzio, which had appeared, like the
Wagner parodies, in 1911. This is made clear by marginal annotations
that he entered into the 1916 second edition of Ferruccio Busoni’s
Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music.25 Enzio engages not just Wagner but
a range of turn-of-the-century music-aesthetic positions, but Wagner
nonetheless figures prominently. In an exchange of letters, the young
title character—who has been living and breathing The Ring of the
Nibelung—is warned by his friend Richard, an aspiring composer, to
beware of Wagner’s expressive sensuousness:
One can only enjoy it as an intoxication. Wagner is a magician, a sor-

cerer whose name bears within it a world that stands alone. But suffus-
ing this world is no pure, heavenly atmosphere. Issuing from all its
pores, as it were, are narcotic, anesthetizing, sweet vapors that envelop
the soul and enslave the emotions rather than free them. And in this
subjugation lies the entire sensual pleasure of their magic, which has
something vile about it. . . . The Wagner experience is entirely differ-
ent from all other artistic experiences. Its effect is not purely artistic
350 but personal, as if one were to labor for years under a demonic influ-
ence before violently shaking it off in a need for self-preservation. . . .
With respect to Wagner, one must willingly bind oneself in fetters, if
one has not yet found oneself.26
25 See Wolfgang Rathert, “Das ist ja alles schon tot! Ein Kommentar zum Verhältnis
Busoni-Hindemith,” Hindemith-Jahrbuch 33 (2004): 214–33. Hindemith’s copy of the

Sketch (H-I) bears an acquisition date of October 1916. Due to similarities in language be-
tween its annotations and Hindemith’s correspondence from this time, and to the lively
discussion that the second edition provoked when it appeared, we may assume that the
annotations were entered relatively close to this date of acquisition.
26 “Man kann sie nicht anders als im Rausch genießen. Wagner ist ein Magier, ein
Zauberer, sein Name schließt eine Welt in sich, die einzig dasteht. Aber um diese Welt
liegt keine reine, himmlische Atmosphäre, es ist, als entstiegen aus allen ihren Poren
narkotisierende, betäubende, süße Dämpfe, die die Seele einhüllen; sie knechtet die
Empfindungen, anstatt sie zu befreien. Und in diesem Geknechtetsein liegt die ganze
Wollust ihres Zaubers, der etwas Verruchtes an sich hat. . . . Das Erlebnis ‘Wagner’ ist
ganz anders als alle andern künstlerischen Erlebnisse. Es wirkt nicht rein als Kunst, es
wirkt persönlich. Wie wenn man jahrelang unter dem Einfluß eines dämonischen Men-
schen gestanden hätte, bis man aus Selbsterhaltungstrieb diesen Einfluß endlich von sich
abschüttelt. . . . Wagner gegenüber muß man, wenn man sich selbst noch nicht gefunden
hat, sich freiwillig in fesseln schlagen.” Huch, Enzio. Ein musikalischer Roman (Munich:
Martin Mörike, 1911), 214–15.
Hindemith’s marginal reference to Enzio is extremely brief (“Vgl. dazu Fr. Huch ‘En-
zio’ ”), but it was triggered by a passage of Busoni’s that strongly resembles statements
strewn throughout this very letter: “Wagner, ein germanischer Riese, der im Orchester-
klang den irdischen Horizont streifte, der die Ausdrucksform zwar steigerte, aber in ein
System brachte (Musikdrama, Deklamation, Leitmotiv), ist durch die selbstgeschaffenen
Grenzen nicht weiter steigerungsfähig. Seine Kategorie beginnt und endet mit ihm
selbst.” Ferruccio Busoni, Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Insel-
Verlag, [1916]), 12.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 351
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With these words, Huch leaned heavily on a characterization that had

been formulated over two decades earlier by that most famous Wagner
apostate, Friedrich Nietzsche: Wagner the magician, counterfeiter of
the transcendent, sublime, and profound, who ensnares listeners
through an overwhelming musical sensuousness; Wagner the threat to
one’s well-being who may be removed only through a forceful act of re-
jection. Along with Nietzsche and Blei, Huch too had struggled against
Wagner’s seductive allure. Parody, comedy, and the grotesque were his
means for doing so, and the works of 1911 stand as a deliberate pledge
of renunciation.27
Nowhere is the renunciation expressed more directly than in the
Tristan parody for shadow puppets that Hindemith read during the
war years. Here, Huch took humorous but sharp aim at the aura of
transcendence that he (along with Nietzsche) believed Wagner had
achieved through coercion. What better place to dispel the illusion of
transcendence than in a ridiculing rewrite of Tristan, the locus classicus
of metaphysical music drama? This agenda of course lay behind Huch’s
polemical choice of the shadow-puppet medium. “Do not forget this!”
we are told straightaway in the prologue:
351
Foot-high shadows will move about
On artificially clear, smoothly taut lines,
In black profile will they stir,
As if set free from the material world.
But behind the curtain, mechanically well-devised,
There they are again, those that carry on before you,
Each member from cardboard artfully fashioned,
So that the players amble before you doubly.28
No one is in danger of being taken in, but we are warned nonethe-

less that what might seem a higher reality onstage has been projected
from material reality, and a shabby cardboard one at that. As the play
27 See Andrea Schneider, Die parodierten Musikdramen Richard Wagners. Geschichte und
Dokumentation Wagnerscher Opernparodien im deutschsprachigen Raum von der Mitte des 19.
Jahrhunderts bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs, Wort und Musik. Salzburger Akademische
Beiträge 27 (Anif/Salzburg: Müller-Speiser, 1996), 180. For the abovementioned images
from Nietzsche’s Wagner critique, see The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans.
Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1967), 155 (Wagner as sickness), 160 (Wagner as
magician), 167–68 (the impulse toward the sublime), and 183 (the “counterfeiting of
transcendence,” “music as Circe”).
28 “Vergeßt dies nicht!” “Fußhohe Schatten werden sich bewegen / Auf künstlich-
hellem, glattgespanntem Leinen, / In schwarzem Umriß werden sie sich regen, / Und
losgelöst von der Materie scheinen. / Doch hinterm Tuch, mechanisch fein erdacht, / Da
stehn sie nochmals, die vor Euch verhandeln, / Aus Pappe kunstreich jedes Glied
gemacht / So daß die Spieler doppelt vor Euch wandeln.” Friedrich Huch, Tristan und
Isolde, Lohengrin, Der fliegende Holländer. Drei groteske Komödien (Munich: Martin Mörike,
1911), 5.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 352
progresses a central target comes clearly into view: Wagner’s appropria-

tion of Arthur Schopenhauer’s musical metaphysics, which strongly in-
formed his work including and subsequent to Tristan and continued to
be ratified as the “official” musical metaphysics by several turn-of-the-
century German modernists.29 In conversation with Isolde in act 1 of
the parody, Brangäne muses that their shadow-world must stand mid-
way between the world of more fully corporeal beings on one hand
and a yet higher spiritual plane on the other. Speculating that humans
“must be even further removed from the purely spiritual than our two-
dimensional world,” she asks: “Could they not achieve through a work
of art that which our philosophers attain when, by means of thinking,
they reduce themselves to one dimension? To a single straight line? Is
there anything more spiritual?” Both an outward and an inward turning
are involved, she explains: “they turn themselves against our material
world-lamp so that the shadow of their nature—actually, their nature
itself—becomes ever more compressed, until, like a stick, it becomes a
line. They do this in order to lose themselves in the purely spiritual, to
eliminate everything superficial that proves disruptive when concepts
are employed in contemplation.”30
352 These are undisguised jabs at Schopenhauer’s doctrine that release
from a world of delusive appearances may be gained only through
aesthetic contemplation. And while Wagner’s 1870 essay “Beethoven”
remains the most important prose document of his Schopenhauer
reception, a much earlier product has long been recognized in Tristan.
Musically, this work stood as an immediate model for Wagner’s
Schopenhauer-allied notion of “unending melody,” the imperative that
for music to convey the metaphysical “thing unspeakable” it must pro-
ceed seamlessly and significantly, never lapsing into empty rhetoric. In
terms of Wagner’s story, the debt to Schopenhauer emerges clearly
in the famous love scene from act 2, where Tristan and Isolde curse the
daylight world of appearances as a realm of deception and delusion,
29 Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1989), 360. Richard Strauss clearly represents an exception
here; see Charles Youmans, Richard Strauss’s Orchestral Music and the German Intellectual Tra-
dition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005) and James Hepokoski, “Framing
Till Eulenspiegel,” Nineteenth-Century Music 30 (2006): 4–43.
30 “. . . daß sie vom rein Geistigen noch mehr entfernt sein müssen als unsere nur
zweidimensionale Welt. Und könnten sie wohl das Kunststück vollbringen, das unsere
Philosophen ausführen, wenn sie sich beim Denken aufs Eindimensionale reduzieren?
Auf eine einzige grade Linie? Gibt es etwas noch Geistigeres?” “sie drehen sich so gegen
unsere materielle Weltlampe, daß ihres Wesens Schatten, ja ihr Wesen selbst sich immer
mehr zusammenzieht, bis es, wie ein Pfahl, zur Linie wird. Sie tun es, um sich nach
Möglichkeit in das rein Geistige zu verlieren, um alles Oberflächliche, das sie im An-
schaun der Begriffe stören könnte, auszuschalten.” Huch, Drei groteske Komödien, 12–13.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 353
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one to be steadfastly rejected for the truer, purer realm of night. Their
flight from the “spiteful day” into the “chaste night,” moreover, quickly
becomes aligned with their anticipated renunciation of the phenome-
nal world and their resolution into a higher spiritual unity through
death-in-love (Liebestod ).31
In Huch’s parody, temporary redemption occurs, but only by turn-
ing Wagner’s Schopenhauer rudely on his head. Exhausted from their
violent passion by act 3, the lovers now desire to be rid of each other
once and for all. They attempt the dematerializing exercise described
by Brangäne, strenuously envisioning themselves as lines while physically
reorienting themselves sideways. With success in sight, Tristan cries out,
“Oh heavenly feeling of near nothingness!” (“O himmlisches Gefühl des
beinah Nichtses!”), a swipe at Schopenhauerian nihilism and likely a
reference to Wagner’s second act, where the enraptured pair exclaims,
“Highest heaven’s oblivion of the world!” (“Himmelhöchstes Wel-
tentrücken!”).32 The nub of Huch’s humor, of course, lay in his res-
olutely anti-Schopenhauerian conflation of the spiritual with the physi-
cal in a manner that grants the latter the status of underlying reality
while demoting the former to the realm of cheaply engineered surface
phenomena. 353
It was precisely this inversion of Wagnerian metaphysics that came
to mind as Hindemith, looking on from his “music hall of humor,” re-
acted to Busoni’s Sketch in late 1916. Notwithstanding Busoni’s own
decidedly anti-Wagnerian convictions, his pamphlet famously spins out
a metaphysics of “eternal harmony” strongly conditioned by Schopen-
hauer and other Romantic philosophy. In one characteristically dra-
matic passage, he speculated that contemporary composition most
closely approached music’s ethereal, transcendent nature in its mo-
ments of silence. Hindemith, having endured similar statements in the
preceding pages and unable to hold his peace, retorted in the margin
that this idea should be tried out in a symphony made up entirely of
pauses and fermatas; this would be an even better joke, he continued,
31 This final twist—the merging of Schopenhauerian renunciation with redemptive
human love—was Wagner’s own contribution, which he himself described as a revision of

Schopenhauer’s metaphysics during the composition of Tristan. See his letter to Mathilde
Wesendonck of October 12, 1858, in Martha Schad (with Horst Schad), “Meine erste und
einzige Liebe.” Richard Wagner und Mathilde Wesendonck (Munich: Langen Müller, 2002),
134–38; see also John Deathridge and Carl Dahlhaus, The New Grove Wagner (New York:
Norton, 1984), 73. For Wagner’s theoretical discussion of “unending melody,” see
“Zukunftsmusik,” in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, trans. William Ashton Ellis (New York:
Broude Brothers, 1966), 3:332–38. For the “Beethoven” essay, see Richard Wagner’s Prose
Works, 5:57–126 (especially 65–76). Schopenhauer’s original formulations occur in The
World as Will and Representation, trans. E. F. J. Payne, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1966),
1:255–67 and 2:447–57.
32 See Huch, Drei groteske Komödien, 56.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 354
than Huch’s dematerializing exercise in Tristan.33 Comments like this

confirm that Hindemith already held any speculative metaphysics under
suspicion: music’s essence was something fully embodied in its sonorous
presence, not something that fled it. To claim the reverse would be to
engage in irrelevant and ultimately self-serving smoke and mirrors.
Perhaps taking a cue from Huch, Hindemith dashed off his own
mini-Tristan parody the next year in Todtmoosiana, a satirical play com-
memorating a Black Forest student outing.34 The target here is the in-
toxication of the Wagner experience that had worried Richard in
Huch’s novel. Following a love duet in the second scene of Hindemith’s
act 2, three women who are intent on drowning their sorrows in
schnapps sing an Arie und Terzett. (Although Hindemith furnished texts
for the many numbers that make up this scene, their pairing with actual
music appears to have been a big joke. An editorial note at the begin-
ning of the scene casually informs the reader that its music has been
drawn from The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Ninth Symphony, and The
Ring of the Nibelung.) Most of the brief “aria,” sung by one Ria Altstatt,
has been lifted directly from Tristan’s act 1 declaration prior to drink-
ing from Isolde’s cup: “Trug des Herzens! / Traum der Ahnung! /
354 Ew’ger Trauer / Einz’ger Trost / Vergessens güt’ger Trank, / Dich
trink ich sonder Wank” (Heart’s deceit! / Wishful dreaming! / Eternal
mourning / As the only consolation. / Benevolent draught of forgetful-
ness, / I drink you unflinchingly!). For good measure, she tacks on a
hearty (and rhyming) “Prost!!!” After the ensuing “trio”—a raucous
drinking song—a concluding “stretta” quotes extensively from Wag-
ner’s Act II love duet as the women stagger deeply into drunkenness:
“Fühl’ ich Dich wirklich? / Seh’ ich Dich selber? / Dies Deine Augen? /
Dies Dein Mund?” (Is it really you that I feel? / Is it truly you that I see?
/ These your eyes? / This your mouth?), and so forth, leading to the
climactic “Freude — Jauchzen! / Lust — Entzücken! / Himmel —
33 “Vielleicht schreibt demnächst einmal ein Komponist aus dem Kreise der ‘Jünger
der ewigen Harmonie’ eine vollkommene Symphonie, die nur aus Pausen und Fermaten
besteht! – Das ginge noch über Friedrich Huchs ‘Tristan-Verliniierung!’ ” Transcribed in
Rathert, “Das ist ja alles schon tot!” 231; annotation in Busoni, Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik
der Tonkunst, 36. Frequently, Hindemith threw up his hands in disgust: “It would be best,
then, that we give up making earthly music altogether and instead listen to the ‘eternal
harmony’ with our inner ears, without attempting its translation into earthly terms. . . .
This is such dilettantism!” (“Dann ists am besten, wir hören gänzlich auf, irdische Musik
zu machen und hören nur mit unseren inneren Ohren auf die ‘ewigen Harmonie,’ ohne
zu versuchen, sie ins Irdische zu übersetzen. . . . Das ist bester Dilettantismus!”) Rathert,
230; Busoni, 34.
34 Paul Hindemith, Todtmoosiana. Ein naturalistisches Schauspiel in drei Akten von mir
(Mainz: Schott, 1999). That year Hindemith was still imbibing Huch, specifically his mag-
num opus Pitt und Fox. See Hindemith’s letter to Emmy Ronnefeldt of October 14, 1917
in “Jugendbriefe von Paul Hindemith aus den Jahren 1916–1919,” Hindemith-Jahrbuch
2 (1972): 191.

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höchstes / Weltentrücken!!” ( Joyous exulting! / Blissful delight! /

Highest heaven’s oblivion of the world!!).35
In Wagner’s original, the lovers’ ecstatic proclamation of world-
conquering desire is communicated not merely through these words
but, in the most Schopenhauerian sense, through the delirious inten-
sity of the music. To the extent that this scene stands as a representative
of Wagnerian intoxication, Hindemith’s parody provides an earthy ex-
posé of its “heavenly atmosphere” without altering a single word of the
libretto. And this, it seems, was the joke: the suggestion that to all out-
ward appearances, very little stood between the exalted rush of Wagner-
ian ecstasy and intoxication plain and simple.
Directly on the heels of this Tristan parody, any lingering vapors of
the Wagner spell vanish when four dancing girls enter with a resolutely
anti-Wagnerian number: couplets im Stile der amerikanischen Nigger-songs.36
Not unlike the scene introducing the four wives in Das Nusch-Nuschi,
which Hindemith would call an Arie mit Variationen, each girl introduces
herself here in a verse that provides a witty, snapshot characterization.
The first is grossly overweight, the second infatuated with photography,
the third a lover of opera (Carmen and Aida, conspicuously not the vari-
ety that had just been laughed off the stage), and the fourth is wasting 355
away with grief. After each has sung her verse, the others join in for a
snappy refrain in English: “We are the four music-girls, / The music is
our pleasure.” Clearly, the popular-culture references embedded in this
“number”—the revue as a highly physical, fast-paced entertainment
genre, popular music aligned with African-American culture, photogra-
phy as a pastime—further ironize the pretension to transcendence
found in the Tristan libretto extracts just before.37
If during this period Wagner’s indulgence had become available for
ridicule in Hindemith’s literary imagination, as a composer-in-training
he was never more fully engaged with the Wagnerian legacy than in
1917. This was the year of his monumental Three Songs for Soprano and
Large Orchestra, op. 9, a work that reads convincingly as a gesture of
emancipation from his recently ended conservatory training. As Dieter
Rexroth pointed out, the op. 9 songs draw heavily on the expressive lan-
guage of Wagner’s climactic closing monologues and Richard Strauss’s
35 Hindemith, Todtmoosiana, 27–29.

36 Ibid., 30–31; this scene is briefly discussed in Becker, “Singspielhalle des Humors,”
23–24.
37 Hindemith’s abovementioned note that the music for the couplets and other num-
bers had been drawn from monuments by Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner suggests an
even more immediate (and humorous) collision between popular culture and German
high culture. Here again, Ball comes to mind: “The ideals of culture and of art as a pro-
gram for a variety show—that is our kind of Candide against the times.” (Diary entry of
June 16, 1916, in Flight Out of Time, 67.)

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 356
tone poems.38 The Wagner-Strauss vein of orchestral opulence and ex-

pressive intensity was not the only one informing Hindemith’s style at
this time, but he wielded it with great exuberance, even as late as 1919
in Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen. And yet even at the point of its emer-
gence in the op. 9 songs, the exuberance is colored with irony; Wagner-
ian gestures are both evoked and curiously trivialized in a process that
threatens to devolve into “a grotesque, comical playing with the frag-
ments of tradition.”39 Hindemith’s situation vis-à-vis the Wagnerian
legacy in the later 1910s, then, appears profoundly ambivalent: just as
he was discovering its expressive and technical means (“conquering the
Strauss orchestra,” as a young Adorno put it),40 the high artistic serious-
ness with which those means had been invested was losing credibility by
the hour.
Wagnerian Emblems in Hindemith’s Opera

If some conviction still lingers in the Wagnerian expressiveness of
Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen, then in Das Nusch-Nuschi, begun in the fall
of 1919, we hear a boisterous proclamation of its foreclosure as a com-
positional option. In addition to functioning within the immediate dra-
356
matic context provided by Blei’s burlesque, the King Mark quotation—
the opera’s most obvious Wagner reference—has also been heard to
call into question the broader relevance of the late-Romantic “espressivo
tradition” to the radically changed postwar cultural climate.41 Hin-
demith’s score frequently summons images of Wagnerian expressive-
38 See Dieter Rexroth, “Widerklang des Dichterischen. Zu Paul Hindemiths Bio-
grafie und frühen Vertonungen literarischer Texte,” in Gottfried Benn. Briefwechsel mit Paul
Hindemith, ed. Ann Clark Fehn (Wiesbaden: Limes, 1978), 153; Hermann Danuser also
interpreted the songs as a gesture of emancipation in “ ‘Sturmüberflaggt’—Paul Hin-
demiths expressionistische Moderne in den drei Orchestergesängen opus 9,” Hindemith-
Jahrbuch 16 (1987): 32–57.
39 “ein grotesk-komisches Spiel mit den Bruchstücken der Überlieferung.” Rexroth,
“Widerklang des Dichterischen,” 157. For more on Hindemith’s changing attitude to-
ward Strauss—especially as informed by the ongoing Strauss critique of Paul Bekker, see
my “The Emergence of a Postwar Musical Outlook,” chap. 2. On Wagner in Mörder, Hoff-
nung der Frauen, see Laubenthal, Paul Hindemiths Einakter-Triptychon, 70–72.
40 “In Liedern erobert er sich das Strauss-Orchester.” Theodor W. Adorno, essay I
from “Ad vocem Hindemith. Eine Dokumentation,” in Impromptus (Frankfurt am Main:

Suhrkamp, 1968), 54. Originally published in 1922 as “Paul Hindemith” in the Frankfurt
Neue Blätter für Kunst und Literatur.
41 Stephen Hinton, “Expressionismus beim jungen Hindemith?,” Hindemith-Jahrbuch
16 (1987): 27. Elsewhere, Hinton briefly referred to the King Mark passage as evidence
of a dalliance with Dadaist and Surrealist protests against the art institution in bourgeois
society. The parallel with Dada is especially apt here, for it was with Das Nusch-Nuschi that
Hindemith brought his “music hall of humor” emphatically into the public sphere. See
Stephen Hinton, “Germany, 1918–45,” in Modern Times: From World War I to the Present,
Music and Society, ed. Robert P. Morgan (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993),
87–88.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 357
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ness (some very alluring), but it also registers an urgent desire to gain
distance from this legacy. It accomplishes this through numerous,
more-or-less overt Tristan allusions, through broader evocations of Wag-
nerian expressive opulence, and through the juxtaposition of these
against an antithetical, rough-hewn style allied with an emphatically
non-German source.
Direct and lightly veiled allusions to the Tristan motive abound in
Hindemith’s score, often in conjunction with a broader Wagnerian or
post-Wagnerian expressive style. In addition to the one following the
King Mark quotation (to my knowledge, the only one that scholars have
pointed out), there is a host of other allusions as well. Some occur later
in the Third Tableau during the “Finale,” an erotic entertainment for
the imperial court featuring dancing maidens and wandering poets.
During the Finale, as seen in example 2, one poet reproves another
who has fallen prey to the torments of love with a proverb: “If you lick
honey from a knife blade, friend, you will surely cut your tongue” (Lekst
du Honig Freund, von eines Messers Schneide, schneidest sicher du dich in die
Zunge). Hindemith, perhaps seizing upon an emotional resonance with
Wagner’s motive, which had been popularized as “Tristan’s Suffering,”
reproduced at pitch the trombone’s insertion from earlier in the 357
tableau.42 The frequent recurrence throughout the Finale of the lilting
melody in which this motive is embedded, often shorn of its rising-sixth
opening, suggested to Laubenthal a possible dance-music quotation,
but I would propose that it is a Tristan allusion stylistically fitted to the
scene.43 Hindemith surely put on his best Wagnerian face just after this,
at the end of the entertainment when Kamadewa, god of desire, unites
the lovers. Example 3 shows a passage replete with Wagnerian finger-
prints, including the direction sehr innig, tense string tremolos, and a
grand emotional swell to an unresolved altered dominant (on E ),
which then gives way to dying echoes of “Tristan’s Suffering” in the solo
horn.44 But just after this, Wagnerian self-possession suffers a rude
dismissal when the focus shifts from the play-within-the-play to the
more primary “reality” of the marionette court, which exits to a raucous
toy march.
Another group of Tristan allusions, likewise embedded within a
broader Wagnerian style and desire-ridden context, occurs much earlier,
42 Hans von Wolzogen, Richard Wagner’s ‘Tristan und Isolde’: ein Leitfaden durch Sage,
Dichtung und Musik (Leipzig: L. Senf, n.d.).

43 Compare Laubenthal, Paul Hindemiths Einakter-Triptychon, 124.
44 Hindemith’s musical allusion to Wagner might be highlighting a dramaturgical
reference in Blei to Isolde’s Liebestod. In addition to giving the woman the last word just
prior to the consummation of the love relationship, Blei describes the pairs of lovers as
falling together “in rapture” (in Verzückung), perhaps referring to Isolde sinking down “as
if transfigured” (wie verklärt) upon the body of Tristan.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 358
example 2. Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi, Third Tableau, reh. 103
103 Ruhig bewegt
\ Ł ²Ł ²Ł Ł Ł Ł ² Ł ý Ł ¦Ł Ł
ZWEITER DICHTER
Ý ¼ý
466
−Łý Ł
Ł Ł

Lekst du Ho - nig, Freund, von ei - nes Mes - sers
− ŁŁ ýý ŁŁ ŁŁ ðð ýý ¼ý
Ob.
Trp. Trp.
¦ Ł ý Ł Ł
Š Ł ý Ł Ł ²² ŁŁ ýý ðð ýý ŁŁ ýý ŁŁ ŁŁ ²² ŁŁ ýý
! \ Vcl. ² Ł ý ðý
n
Cl.
²Łý
Ý ¼ ý Hf. ² ŁŁ ýý ŁŁ ŁŁ
ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁŁŁ Ł ŁŁŁŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł ŁŁ
\\
Ý ²Ł ²Ł Ł
470 Ł Ł Ł Ł 5 ¹ Ł Ł Łý ² Łý
Ł 42
2.D.
4
Schnei - de, schnei - dest si - cher du dich in die Zun - ge.
¼ý − ŁŁ ýý ŁŁ ŁŁ ðð ýý − ŁŁ ýý ŁŁ ŁŁ ðð ýý
Ob.
358
Š ðð ýý ŁŁ ýý ŁŁ ŁŁ 45 ŁŁ ýý ŁŁ ŁŁ 42
! ðý n
Trp.
Cl.
n n n
Ý ² ŁŁ ýý ŁŁ ŁŁ ² Ł
Ł ýý ŁŁ ŁŁ
Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł 45 Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł 42
]\ Łý Ł Ł −Ł −Ł −Ł Ł − Ł
Ý 2 ¼ý −Ł Ł
473
2.D.
4
Sucht du Ho - nig, Freund, von ei - nes
Łǹý
n ¼ý ŁŁ ýý ŁŁ ŁŁ −− ðð ýýý
Ob. Fl. Cel.
Łý Ł Ł ð
Fag.
Š 42 −Ł ý ŁŁ ŁŁ ¦ ŁŁ ýý ðð ýý
¦−− ŁŁŁ ýýý
! \
ŁŁ ŁŁ −− ŁŁ ýý ðð ýý
²²² ŁŁŁ ýýý ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ
Cl.
Ý 2 ¼ý
4 Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 359
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example 3. Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi, Third Tableau, 4 before

reh. 104
Molto ritenuto
485
\\
ÿ ÿ ÿ ¼ý
DRITTES MÄDCHEN
Š 42 Ł Ł
Dei - ne

dimin.
Š 42 Łð ý Ł Ł Łð ýý Ł Ł ðý ðý
! ý
Ý 2 ² ðð ýý ý ² ðð ýý ý ÿ ÿ
4 ¼ ýŁ Ł Ł −ŁŁŁ ý Ł Ł ¼ ýŁ Ł Ł −ŁŁŁ ý Ł Ł
489 104 Sehr innig [ Łq

rubato
Š ² Łý Ł Ł ý Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Łý −Ł Ł ² Ł Ł −Ł Ł ý Ł

3.M.

Au - gen küs - sen mir das Kleid vom Lei - be wenn du mich so an - siehst.
Str. q
Š ² ÐÐ ÐÐ ðð ððð
359
! Ð Ð
\\\ cresc. molto [[
−Ð −ð ð
Ý ½ Ð Ð Ł ý Łý
3
ð ²Ð Łý Ł Ł ŁŁŁ
Vcl.
q
\\ [
Ł ¹ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ² Ł ¹ ¦ Ł −Ł Ł ² Ł Ł −Ł Ł ý
492
Š ¼ Ł Ł ² Ł ý
3 3
Ł

3.M.
Dei-ne Blik - ke, mei-ne Die - ner - in - nen, neh-men Tuch und Band und Schlei - fe
q
Š ² ÐÐ ðÐð − ð ðð Ððð ððð
! Ð
\\ cresc. molto
Ð ð −ð ð
Ý ¼ ¦ð ð ð ð ð Ł ý Łý
²Ł ²Ð Łý Ł Ł Ł ŁŁŁ
3

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 360
\\
495
²Ł ý Ł m m m m m Łm −Ł ð 6
−Ł
3.M. Š ¼ ² Ł ¦ Ł Ł ý Ł Ł ² Ł Ł Ł −Ł
Nichts sonst läßt du mir, als die - se klei-ne Per-le Schwei - ßes
Š ðhh ðh
h
! Ð Ð −− ðð ð ŁŁ Ł −ŁŁ Ł
\\ [
m m Łm − ð ý
colla parte
Ý ²− ŁŁŁŁ ¹ ¼ ½ ½ Łm ² Łm Łm Ł −Ł ½
Ł −Ł
Hr.
Ł −Ł
Ł −Ł
6
Langsam
(KAMADEWA tritt herein und lenkt die liebenden Paare
ritenuto
498 \ zueinander, daß sie in Verzückung hinfallen)

¼ −Ł Ł Łý −Ł 2 −Ł −Ł ¼ ý ÿ
3
3.M. Š 4
zwi - schen mei - nen Brü - sten.
360 Hr.

Š ²− −ððð ðððð ð 42 ¦ ¦² ŁŁŁ ý ¹ ¹ Łý ¦ Ł ² Ł Ł ² Ł ² Ł ² Ł
! − ð ð
[[[ \
¼
Ý 2 ¦Ł
Ł −−ŁŁ 4 ¦ Łð ý
ðý ðý
¦ Ł −Ł −ð ðý
¦ Ł −Ł −ð Ł
m m Pk.

501
3.M. Š −Ł ý Ł Ł ÿ ÿ ÿ
Komm.
ritenuto

Str.

Š ¦ ¦−Łðð ýý Ł Ł ² ŁŁ ý Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł Ł ² Ł ² Ł ² Ł ¦ ¦−Łðð ýý Ł Ł
! ][
ý
Str.
Ł ¹ ¹ ¼ý

ý
Holz
cresc. molto !!
Ý −ðð ýý ¦ ² ŁŁŁ ðý ðý −ðð ýýý

ðý ðý ð ý ð
\

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 361
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in the First Tableau’s Arie mit Variationen for the four wives. Example 4
shows the music for Ratasata, the Emperor’s fourth and most volatile
wife. Here the lush string scoring, with divisi violins over throbbing
triplet offbeats, the moody chromaticism, and the marking sehr weich,
ein wenig sentimental (very weakly, a bit sentimentally) all signal an ironi-
cally over-determined late nineteenth-century atmosphere.45 But this
general reference gains in specificity when we compare the opening of
Ratasata’s verse with the end of the Finale discussed above. Here as
there, the solo horn intones a languorous three-note chromatic de-
scent, now beginning on A . While shorn of its opening leap, the fig-
ure’s basic shape—an elongated anacrusis falling chromatically to a
strong downbeat—combined with its espressivo marking, its association
with the sufferings of love, and even its appearance in the horn, speaks
for yet another Tristan allusion.46 Ratasata herself soon utters a com-
plete version of the motive, doubled most of the way by an espressivo
viola line; and as she continues, her melody frequently sprouts addi-
tional references, icons of her irrepressible desire.
But of course none of this is in earnest. Nor is Ratasata’s tremen-
dous finish (reh. 19), where her passion rises deliriously in an earth-
shattering Straussian buildup reminiscent of Don Quixote’s “Ride though 361
the Air” or the climax of Tod und Verklärung. Here Hindemith crafted a
magnificent display of post-Wagnerian indulgence. But despite the im-
pressiveness with which he wielded this late nineteenth-century style
(and his presumed delight at the opportunity to restate the passage
during a later orchestral interlude), it too ultimately resides within quo-
tation marks. As Laubenthal pointed out, Ratasata’s late Romantic
moodiness has been firmly relativized through its appearance amid a
potpourri of widely differing stylistic affections in the larger aria. The
fourth wife thereby recedes as an individual and takes her place as one
emotional type among others through an ironic bracketing maneuver,
“a warning against the absolutizing of subjective emotions.”47
45 Laubenthal aptly characterized Ratasata’s verse as “a ‘late Romantic,’ extrava-
gantly emotional showpiece” (“ein ‘spätromantisches,’ überschwenglich emotionales

Paradestück”). Paul Hindemiths Einakter-Triptychon , 117.
46 In Wagner, the horn is the most prominent voice carrying the motive at the cli-
max that accompanies the drinking of the love potion in act 1.

47 “. . . ein Exempel statuiert gegen die Verabsolutierung subjektiver Emotionen.”
Paul Hindemiths Einakter-Triptychon, 116. In his notes for Gerd Albrecht’s recording of Das
Nusch-Nuschi, Giselher Schubert briefly characterized Hindemith’s score as a broad cri-
tique of prewar modernism (“music about music at the turn of the century”), adding to
its list of allusions the exoticism of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and the turn-of-the-
century “neobaroque” style commonly associated with Max Reger. Booklet notes, Paul
Hindemith. Das Nusch-Nuschi, Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, et al., cond. Gerd Al-
brecht, Edition Paul Hindemith, Wergo WER 60146-50, 1988, compact disc, 2.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 362
example 4. Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi, First Tableau, reh. 18
18
290
ÿ ÿ
RATASATA
Š 01
3 m mm m
Sehr weich, ein wenig sentimental
Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ ² Ł−¦ ŁŁ ŁŁ −− ŁŁ ¦ Ł ² Ł
Ł Ł
ÿ ¹
Solo Viol.
01
4. Vers
Š
! Š
¹
−−−ŁŁŁ ¦ ð
Hr. Solo
][ espr.
²Ł
¼
][
01 ¦ ð ý ¹ −− ŁŁ ŁŁ

¹ ð
¼
3
¹ −− ŁŁ ŁŁ
Ł −Ł −Ł Ł
3
Ý
Pk.
−ŁŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł 01 −Ł ¹ ¼ ¹

− Ł ][ ][
][
con sentimento
Ł ²Ł
292
Š ¼ ¹ ² Ł Ł Ł Ł 01 ¹ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ra.

Ich bin Ra - ta - sa - ta, des gro-ßen Kai - sers
8va
362
m
Ł Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł−−ŁŁ −ŁŁ ² Łm ¦ Łm ¦ Łm
3
−¦ ŁŁ ² ŁŁ −¦ ŁŁ ýý ¹ ¼ 10 ¹ Ł Ł− Ł
Š m m m Łm
! −ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁŁ
[
Š −ŁŁ Ł Ł ðŁ Ł Ł Ł

¹ ²Ł
¼
01 ¦ ð ý ¹ ¦ ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ðŁŁ ¹ ¹ ŁŁ ŁŁ
¼
3
¹ Ł ¦Ł ¦Ł Ł
3 3 3 3
Ý ð Ł ¹ ¼ 10 ½
poco [
294
ð Łý ²Ł ¦ Ł ý
Ra. Š ² Ł Ł Ł
¹ /
0
Mung Tha Bÿ - a - vier - te Frau.
(8va)
3
²Ł ²Ł
Solo Br.
¦ Łý ²Ł ¦ Ł ý Ł /
Š ²² ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ¦ ¦ ŁŁ ýý
!
0
[ espr.
r. H.

3 3 3 3
Š ² ðŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ ¹ ¼ ²² ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ¦ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ /0
¦ŁŁ Ł ŁŁŁŁ
3
3
Ý ð Ł ¹ ¼
²ð Ł ²² ŁŁ ¦¦ ŁŁ /0
²ð Ł

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 363
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\
passionato

296
Ra. Š /0 ¼ ¼ ¹ ² Ł Łý ²Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł /0
Der schö - ne Mann heu - te
Ł Ł ²Ł ¦Ł
Ł Ł
Š /0 Ł ² Łý ¹ ¹ Ł
Solo Vl.
/0
!

\ ][ 3
3 3
Š /0 ¦ ² ŁŁ ² ŁŁŁŁ ŁŁŁŁ ŁŁŁŁ ² ŁŁŁŁ ŁŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ /0

3 3 3 3 3
²Ł Ł Ł ² Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł

Ý / Ł ²Ł ² Ł ² Ł ² Ł ²(`Ð ) ¦ ð /0
0 Ł ²Ł ²Ł ² Ł ² Ł ²Ł Ł

Ł ² Ł ¦ Ł
298
Š /0 Ł 3
Ł Ł /0
Ra. ²Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Łm − Łm Łm ² Łm Ł
mor - gen mach - te mir Zei - chen zum Fen - ster hin -
363
Š /0 ¹ ² ¼Ł Łý

²Ł ¦ ð /0
! ][
Hr.
Š /0 − ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ /0
3 3 3 3 3 3 3
¦Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁŁŁ ²¦ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ¦− ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ
¦ ŁŁ ² Ł Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł ¦Ł Ł −Ł Ł Ł ²(`Ð ) Ł
3
Ý / ²Ł ²Ł /
0 ²Ł ²Ł Łý ¦Ł 0

[
Riten.
300
Š /0 Ł ¹ Ł Ł ² Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł −Ł
0/
3 3
Ra. ²Ł ¦Ł
auf, und sein Die - ner hol - te mich mit der
Hr. Solo
Š /0 Ł ¼ ¼ −Łý −Ł /0
!
²Ł ¦Ł
[[ dolce
Š /0 Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ −− ÐhhÐ /0
3 3 3
Ð
(`) [[
Ý / ²ð ý −Ł ý
3
/0
0 Ł Ł − Ł Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł


02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 364
Even disregarding this larger frame, heavy irony surely speaks from
the witty profusion of Tristan references in the first half of the verse,
starting with the motive’s direct repetition in the horn at the begin-
ning. This strategy had a famous precedent in the best known French
Tristan spoof, “Golliwogg’s Cake-Walk,” from Claude Debussy’s 1908 pi-
ano suite Children’s Corner. And it may be that Ratasata’s verse engages
not only the Wagnerian target but Debussy’s earlier targeting as well.48
In any case, another of Hindemith’s Tristan references stands squarely
in the tradition of the dance music stylizations that had long been
favored in French Wagner satire. This one appears in the Second
Tableau, set at the luxurious home of Zatwai. Here two Bayaderes ritu-
ally invoke Kamadewa to fortify the unseen sexual efforts of the master
of the house, who repeatedly comes and goes with each of the Em-
peror’s wives. The physicality of this imagined offstage action received
blunt commentary from Hindemith, who went far beyond Blei’s stage
directions (“soft music for dancing”) by inserting three energetic num-
bers with forceful climaxes.49 The second of these, played during Zat-
wai’s absence with the second wife, Osasa, begins as an unpretentious
piece of chinoiserie with a light, pentatonically-inflected melody, but
364 the music soon wanders into conspicuously shifty territory. As seen in
example 5, near the midpoint of the violin’s octave-long chromatic
descent at rehearsal 54, we find the Tristan reference, now compressed
intervalically and rhythmically—indeed, refitted with a snappy syncopa-
tion entirely appropriate to the oom-pah dance beat but utterly at odds
with the aura of metaphysical mystery surrounding Wagner’s original.
The Pfitzner-Bekker Controversy, 1920

In Das Nusch-Nuschi Hindemith was pulling a prank of deflating re-
contextualization basic to French Wagner satire at least since Emmanuel
Chabrier’s Souvenirs de Munich from the mid 1880s. Although Chabrier’s
48 Debussy’s Tristan reference, found at mm. 61ff in “Golliwogg,” brings with it an
equally notable shift in texture (Ratasata’s verse had been preceded by hammering
anapests in the brass, drums, and low strings) and a likewise conspicuous expression
marking, avec une grande emotion. Moreover, in both pieces the brief span intervening be-
tween the Tristan motive’s initial statement and its repetition is of a tellingly similar size,
producing a phrase-rhythm affinity that binds the passages together despite significant
differences in texture and instrumentation: seven quarter notes from the arrival on the fi-
nal note of the motive’s first statement to the melodic apex of its restatement. For a
provocative account of late nineteenth-century French Wagner satire, see Taruskin, The
Oxford History of Western Music, 4:60–63.
49 At the request of his publisher Schott later in 1921, Hindemith joined the first
two dances with material from the Third Tableau to form an orchestral suite that could
be performed separately from the opera. See Paul Hindemith. Sämtliche Werke, Band I, 2,
xi–xii.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 365
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example 5. Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi, Second Tableau, reh. 54

Solo Viol.
ŁŁŁ Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł
54
280 ¦ Łý −ð Łý ²Ł ²Ł Ł
Š /0 .0 /0 .0 /0
I ! \ \
con eleganza
Š /0 ¼ .0 ¼ /0 .0 ¼ /0
Horn ² Ł ²Ł ²Ł ²Ł Ł ²Ł ¦Ł
²Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ
Ý/ ¹ Ł¹ Ł ¹ Ł .0 ¹ ¹ Š / ¹ ¹ ¹ . ¹ ²Ł ¹ Ł /
II ! 0
\\
0 ²² ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ 0 Ł Ł 0
Ý/ Ł Ł Ł .0 Ł Ł /0 Ł Ł Ł .0 Ł Ł /0
0
¦Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
284
²ð Ł Ł ²Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł ŁŁŁ ð
Š /0 .0 ² Ł /0
I ! 3
365
Š /0 .0 ¼
Ł ²Ł Ł −Ł Ł
/0
²Ł Ł ²Ł ²Ł Ł
Š /0 ¹ −ŁŁ ¹ ŁŁ ¹ ŁŁ .0 ¹ ¦ ² ŁŁ ¹ ŁŁ ¹ ŁŁ ¹ ŁŁ ¹ ²² ŁŁ ¹ ŁŁ ¹ Ł ¹ Ł /0
II !
Ý/ Ł Ł Ł .0 Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł /0
0
Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
witty nose-thumbing of this sort is not easily equated with disdain or even
with freedom from Wagner’s pull, the rhetoric of French anti-Wagnerism
is undeniably more urgent closer to the time of Das Nusch-Nuschi. Con-
sider Jean Cocteau’s prescriptions for modern French music famously
unveiled in Cock and Harlequin in 1918. While wide-ranging in his points
of reference, Cocteau returns frequently and in various guises to the
theme of “escaping from Germany” that had been set forth in his dedi-
catory preface to Georges Auric. And in doing so, he draws heavily on
Nietzsche’s Wagner critique, not least in the dedication itself, which
lauds a younger French generation “which no longer grimaces, or

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 366
wears a mask, or hides, or shirks,” which “hates paradox and eclecti-

cism,” and which “shuns the colossal.”50 When Cocteau penned these
well known remarks the war was still going on, and the intensification
of an already politicized discourse could only be expected. But we
should not hesitate to explore a similar heating up of German musical
discourse, too, when probing historical meaning in Hindemith’s opera.
Post-Versailles Germany witnessed a tense debate that pitted self-
appointed guardians of German cultural purity against those champi-
oning a broader vision of international renewal.
The position of Das Nusch-Nuschi within this debate—a matter
whose exploration in the secondary literature goes little beyond the
quotation of early reviews—was made clear by Nagel in the 1921 review
cited earlier. “Is not Pfitzner right,” he went on, “when he says that we
are vulgarized, soiled, and cheapened by so much of what calls itself the
newest German art? . . . In my opinion, it would be laughable to main-
tain that something as slopped together as this grotesque could cause
moral damage. For the sake of our great and pure art, though, such
scribble must be countered publicly.”51 Nagel’s language shows that in
postwar Germany the status of “German art” was a very live issue, as was
366 Hans Pfitzner’s declaration, in the final chapter of his 1920 book Die
neue Ästhetik der musikalischen Impotenz (The New Aesthetic of Musical
Impotence), that it had been “cheapened, vulgarized, and degraded”
by forces antithetical to the German spirit.52 Deeply bitter over the loss
of the Empire and Germany’s stiff treatment by the Allies in the Treaty
of Versailles, Pfitzner and many on the intransigent right were attribut-
ing Germany’s ruin less to the tenacity of its official enemies than to
forces within the country itself. This was the notorious Dolchstoßlegende,
the idea that the war effort had been “stabbed in the back” by corrosive
anti-German forces at home, which had taken advantage of “the incli-
nation of the German toward what is alien and hostile to his nature.”
50 Cock and Harlequin: Notes Concerning Music, trans. Rollo H. Myers (London: Egoist,
1921), 3.
51 “Hat nicht Pfitzner doch recht, wenn er sagt, daß wir versaut, verdreckt und ver-
kitscht sind durch so vieles, was sich jüngste deutsche Kunst nennt? . . . Es wäre meines
Erachtens lächerlich zu behaupten, solches zusammengesudelte Zeug wie diese Groteske
könne sittlichen Schaden anrichten. Aber um unserer großen und reinen Kunst willen
muß gegen derartiges, Geschreibsel öffentlich vorgegangen werden.” Nagel, “Württ. Lan-
destheater: Opern-Uraufführungen.” Although brief, Laubenthal’s survey of the opera’s
early reception does lay important groundwork; see Paul Hindemith. Sämtliche Werke,
Band I, 2, xii–xiv.
52 Die neue Ästhetik der musikalischen Impotenz. Ein Verwesungssymptom? (Munich: Süd-
deutsche Monatshefte, 1920), 123. Pfitzner’s alliterative phrase was “verkitscht, versaut,
versumpft.” For an account of his central role in polarizing German cultural discourse af-
ter the war, see Eckhard John, Musikbolschewismus. Die Politisierung der Musik in Deutschland
1918–1938 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1994), 58–89.

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This fatal inclination, we read, had weakened German culture and poli-
tics alike. “I am speaking about the same thing,” he maintained. “Artis-
tic decay is a symptom of national decay.”53
In appealing to a combative, nationalistic idea of cultural purity in
the wake of Wilhelmine Germany’s demise, Pfitzner was retracing the
specious chauvinistic logic that Wagner had espoused in the years sur-
rounding the Franco-Prussian War and the Empire’s birth half a cen-
tury earlier. Indeed, this latter-day Wagnerian missed no opportunity to
make the identification as clear as possible. Demanding the “conscious
separation” of true German national sentiment from the “Jewish inter-
national” forces hostile to it, Pfitzner praised Wagner’s essay “Jewish-
ness in Music” for its valiance, and, while lining up the heroes of
German nationalism against the opposition, he placed Wagner’s name
proudly in the company of Bismarck’s.54 In a final flourish, he even
glossed Hans Sachs’s closing admonition from Die Meistersinger ; refitting
Wagner’s words to address the postwar present, Pfitzner called for a de-
cisive taking of sides, “so that one knows, at least in the empire of ideas,
what is German and true, after the holy German Empire has, truly and
actually, collapsed in smoke.”55
With Wagner’s posthumous endorsement, Pfitzner was demanding 367
the shoring-up of a self-conscious artistic nationalism whose postwar task
would be to stand as an aesthetic surrogate for the lost Empire. Now,
the inflammatory chauvinism of this vision and its intertwining with Wag-
nerian triumphalism are well known. But much less has been said about
the counter-imperative for German composition being voiced at the
same time by his main adversary, Paul Bekker, whom Pfitzner ven-
omously branded a suitable leader for the “Jewish international move-
ment in the arts.” The period just after the publication of Pfitzner’s book
in early January 1920 found Bekker—an eminent Frankfurt music critic
whose work was avidly followed by the young Hindemith—traveling
53 “Die Neigung des Deutschen zu dem ihm Wesensfremden und Feindlichen”; “ich
rede von demselben Dinge. . . . Die künstlerische Verwesung ist das Symptom der na-
tionalen.” Pfitzner, Die neue Ästhetik der musikalischen Impotenz, 129 and 125, respectively.
54 Ibid., 124, 127.
55 “Damit man weiß, wenigstens im Reiche der Idee weiß, was deutsch und echt ist,
nachdem wirklich und wahrhaftig das heilige Deutsche Reich in Dunst zergangen ist.”
Ibid., 131. Wagner’s original formulation: “Should the German people and empire col-
lapse, / . . . / none would know what is German and true, / were it not to live on in the
honor of German masters. / . . . / And should the Holy Roman Empire vanish in the
mist, / there will still remain for us holy German art.” (“zerfällt erst deutsches Volk und
Reich, / . . . / was deutsch und echt, wüßt’ keiner mehr, / lebt’s nicht in deutscher Meis-
ter Ehr’. / . . . / zerging’ in Dunst das heil’ge röm’sche Reich, / uns bliebe gleich die
heil’ge deutsche Kunst!”) Richard Wagner. Sämtliche Werke, Band 9, III. Die Meistersinger von
Nürnberg, WWV 96, Dritter Aufzug und Kritischer Bericht, ed. Egon Voss (Mainz: Schott,
1987), 335–37, 339–41.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 368
throughout western Germany with a lecture entitled “The Meaning of

German Music for the World.”56 He too had been reflecting on Ger-
many’s cultural past through the lens of a shattered present, but the di-
rective that he drew for the musical future could not have differed
more greatly from Pfitzner’s.
Bekker began by affirming that “we are living at a time when the
problem of reestablishing an international community has become the
fundamental problem of our life,” and he went on to warn that “the con-
tinued systematic cultivation of one-sidedly ethnic and nationalistic inter-
ests that gave rise to the world catastrophe can only plunge us yet deeper
into confusion and misery.”57 The focus of Bekker’s historical reflection
was of course the implication of music in these destructive “nationalis-
tic interests.” And Wagner emerges once again as the standard-bearer
of German nationalist culture, but in a decidedly less affirmative light.
Whereas nineteenth-century cultural nationalism had initially been
viewed as a means for benefiting culture at large, Wagner had forsaken
the common good by intensifying the nationalistic bearing of his art to
an unprecedented level. Of course, Bekker acknowledged, Wagner’s
music had met with remarkable success on the broader European stage,
368 but his means for achieving this had been less than honorable. Instead
of offering his non-German listeners an elevating appeal to participate
in a universal cultural community, Wagner had triumphed by snuffing
out any possibility of resistance. Now it was Bekker’s turn to lean on
Nietzsche, specifically his analogy between the perceived authoritarian-
ism of Wagner’s music and the Prussian militarism of the young Em-
pire. Surveying a tattered European landscape and the Empire in ruins
three decades later, Bekker found the comparison all too fitting and
agreed that in the “triumphal procession” of Wagner’s art
there lay something violent, something Napoleonic, a conquesting

that one could almost call brutal. For its opponents, surrender was
neither voluntary nor without reservation. To the contrary, it came
about through the enervation of a power that was inwardly resistant
56 Bekker, “Die Weltgeltung der deutschen Musik,” reprinted in Neue Musik, Dritter
Band der Gesammelten Schriften (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1923), 119–56. In

his admirably comprehensive study of Bekker’s critical writings, Andreas Eichhorn situ-
ated this important essay within Bekker’s broader output but did not pursue its relevance
to specific developments in postwar composition. See his Paul Bekker. Facetten eines kritis-
chen Geistes, Studien und Materialien zur Musikwissenschaft 29 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms,
2002), 304–14.
57 “Wir leben in einer Zeit, die das Problem der Wiederherstellung einer interna-
tionalen Gemeinschaft zum Grundproblem unseres Lebens gemacht hat”; “die bewußte,
planmäßige Weiterführung einseitig volksmäßig und nationalistisch abgegrenzter Inter-
essenpflege, aus der die Weltkatastrophe hervorgegangen ist, uns nur noch tiefer in Ver-
wirrung und Elend stürzen muß.” “Die Weltgeltung der deutschen Musik,” 121.

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but nonetheless incapable of opposition. This was continually experi-

enced as violent by contrasting national sensibilities and provoked
their inward rebellion. The triumph of Wagner’s art corresponded
thoroughly to the triumph of 1870–71.58
Far from bridging differences in national sensibility, then, Wagner’s

music had dangerously sharpened them and even had spurred a similar
intensification among other nationalist strands, especially in the French
anti-Wagner reaction of Debussy and his followers. Moreover, the prob-
lematic legacy of Wagnerian Kunstnationalismus had persisted at home
among the heirs of the New German School—obviously so in the case
of Pfitzner, but even, we read, in the subtler, more aloof modernism of
Strauss.59
Bringing his analysis up to the present, Bekker demanded that Ger-
man music shake off the cultural arrogance that had ended in ruin:
When we discuss today the possibility of a new meaning of German

music for the world, its prerequisite is that we reject the notion of a
conquesting, specifically German music in the manner of Wagner’s art
and ask ourselves whether German music is ripe enough to forge from
all the manifold results of all the nationalist musical developments a 369
new, generally binding whole in which all will recognize the inmost
qualities of their own nature.60
In the name of postwar renewal, here was an appeal for a healing syn-
thesis of what had become divided, for the overcoming of an antagonis-
tic nationalist agenda, for the blending of the achievements of the vari-
ous national schools, and for the recovery of a universalist cultural
ethos that had been lost in the previous century. Now, one might object
that this proposal never frees itself of German cultural chauvinism;
even Wagner had availed himself of this universalizing model, where
58 “es lag etwas Gewalttätiges, etwas Napoleonisches, ein—man könnte fast sagen:
brutales Eroberertum in diesem Siegeszug der Kunst Wagners. Und es war auf der Gegen-
seite kein freiwilliges, widerspruchsloses Sichhingeben. Es war vielmehr die Schwäche,
die der Kraft wich, innerlich widerwillig, aber unfähig zur Gegenwehr, dabei stets das
Gegensätzliche der anderen nationalen Art heftig empfindend und innerlich dagegen re-
bellierend. Der Triumph der Kunst Wagners entspricht durchaus dem Triumph von
1870/71.” Ibid., 139–40. Cf. Nietzsche’s characterization in The Birth of Tragedy and The
Case of Wagner, 180.
59 “Die Weltgeltung der deutschen Musik,” 140–42, 146.
60 “Wenn wir heut die Möglichkeit einer neuen Weltgeltung der deutschen Musik
erörtern, so ist Voraussetzung, daß wir den Gedanken eines Eroberertums spezifisch
deutscher Musik in der Art der Kunst Wagners ablehnen und uns fragen, ob die deutsche
Musik reif ist, aus all den mannigfaltigen Ergebnissen der nationalistischen Musikent-
wicklung aller Völker ein neues allgemein gültiges, allen als innersten Bestandteil des
eigenen Wesens erkennbares Ganzes zu schaffen?” Ibid., 153.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 370
the heroic task of elevating particular cultural achievements to the uni-

versal plane falls to the Germans.61 Of unarguable significance, though,
is Bekker’s demand for an emphatic course correction in German
music: for the abandonment of any musical trajectory that could be
associated with a now tainted Wagnerian enterprise in favor of a vigor-
ous engagement with non-German strands of musical nationalism.
Having suddenly lost its stamp of concrete political legitimacy with
the demise of the Empire, the nationalism with which Wagner’s project
had become bound up now lay bare for all to see. And amid the shocked
crowd of onlookers were those like Bekker, who rejected this former le-
gitimation as morally insupportable, and defenders like Pfitzner, who
called for an aesthetically sublimated restoration.
Under these polarized conditions, which prevailed during the com-
position and early reception of Das Nusch-Nuschi, to travesty Wagnerian
loftiness, however fun the ride, was to take serious aim at the ominous
reaction gathering under its banner. As we have seen in Grunsky’s re-
view quoted earlier, even Tristan und Isolde, which had never enjoyed
the nationalist pomp surrounding Die Meistersinger, became an occasion
for fierce, proprietary language and talk of “un-Germanness.”62 Against
370 the foil provided by such indignant guardians of cultural purity, the
choice of Blei’s burlesque appears perfectly calculated to cause a stir,
whether for its excessive, faux-oriental sensuality, its sham heroism, or
its moments of grand but empty emotional pathos. And in Hindemith’s
music, these last are both summoned and dismissed with scandalous
ease.
Hindemith was well enough aware of Bekker’s resistance to the
hardened postwar nationalism to seek solidarity with him amid the up-
roar he had caused. In an open letter to the composer published on
the eve of the National Socialist triumph years later, Bekker reminisced:
“You came to me once, enraged, with a newspaper article: they had per-
formed two of your one-act operas in Stuttgart, and a critic—no longer
living, so let’s leave his name aside—had dutifully and nationalistically
treated you to the usual moral mud-slinging on account of Das Nusch-
Nuschi. You were willing to put up with criticism, but not this kind, and
you went for the guy’s throat.” He continued with irony: “I tried to
make it clear to you—as you know well enough today—that this was actu-
61 Wagner, “What is German?,” in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, 4:151–69. For a re-
cent discussion of this model, see Bernd Sponheuer, “Reconstructing Ideal Types of the
‘German’ in Music,” in Music and German National Identity, ed. Cecilia Applegate and
Pamela Potter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 36–58.
62 Pointing to this review, Schubert noted that such language already foreshadowed
that of German art criticism after 1933. (Booklet notes, Paul Hindemith. Das Nusch-Nuschi,
Wergo WER 60146–50, 3.)

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 371
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ally the higher method of criticism and that in Germany its endurance
was obligatory for any who had talent, ability, and character to risk.”63
Das Nusch-Nuschi and Stravinsky

When considering what exactly Hindemith had “dragged through
the mud” in the parodic satire represented by Das Nusch-Nuschi, we
might at first want to mention its riotous upending of conventional
morality: the fourfold unfaithfulness of the Emperor’s wives or, later,
the inhumane decision to punish the innocent Kyce Waing by castra-
tion. But cuckolding was also central to Wagner’s original and surely no
more offensive than the union of a Siegmund and Sieglinde. The real
sin of Das Nusch-Nuschi was to strip away the seductive aura of transcen-
dence and expansive subjectivity that had suffused Wagner’s project
even during its own transgressive moments. In Tristan und Isolde, Wagner
had in fact taken pains to dramatize the inadequacy of conventional
morality in the face of transcendent realities: what had appeared an
adulterous affair to the eyes of the world proved in the end to be a vehi-
cle of Schopenhauerian redemption. In Das Nusch-Nuschi, by contrast,
Blei mockingly downgraded this redemptive love to rampant promiscu- 371
ity, one element of a broader deflation in which subjectivity itself ossifies.
To convey the subjective vacancy of Blei’s characters, part of Hinde-
mith’s solution was to appropriate an emphatically non-Wagnerian and
63 “Einmal kamen Sie wütend mit einem Zeitungsblatt zu mir: in Stuttgart hatte
man zwei Ihrer Opern-Einakter aufgeführt und ein Kritiker—er lebt nicht mehr, also
lassen wir seinen Namen—hatte Sie des Nusch-Nuschi wegen pflichtgemäß und national
gesinnt mit der üblichen moralischen Dreckspritze behandelt. Kritik wollten Sie sich
gefallen lassen, aber so etwas nicht, und dem Kerl gingen Sie an die Gurgel. Ich ver-
suchte Ihnen klar zu machen—heut wissen Sie es zur Genüge—daß dieses eben die
eigentliche höhere Methode der Kritik sei und ihre Erduldung in Deutschland obliga-
torisch für jeden, der Begabung, Können und Charakter einzusetzen hat.” Bekker’s letter
originally appeared in his Briefe an zeitgenössische Musiker (Berlin: Max Hesse, 1932), 31–
43; reprinted in Eichhorn, “. . . es geht alles mitten durch die Welt,” 126–36; cited passage at
127. The review in question may very well have been the one by Nagel quoted earlier,
which had enlisted the support of Pfitzner’s anti-Bekker polemic. Nagel had died a few
years earlier, in 1929, and a copy of his review indeed survives among Hindemith’s
papers.
Hindemith appears to have kept abreast of the exchanges between Pfitzner and
Bekker for some time. In his Nachlass are copies of Pfitzner’s 1917 Futuristengefahr (di-
rected against Busoni), Bekker’s response to this (in the form of a typescript, H-I
3.241.1), and Pfitzner’s Die neue Ästhetik, which bears an acquisition date of 1920. (On
the Pfitzner publications, see Die Hindemith-Bibliothek in Blonay, compiled by Susanne
Schaal-Gotthardt and Luitgard Schader, 190 [H-I].) Portions of the 1920 controversy
were also readily available in the pages of the Frankfurter Zeitung, including Bekker’s reply
to Pfitzner, which articulates a position similar to that found in “Die Weltgeltung.” See
Bekker, “Impotenz oder Potenz? Eine Antwort an Herrn Professor Dr. Hans Pfitzner,”
reprinted in Kritische Zeitbilder (Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler, 1921), 310–26; originally pub-
lished in the Frankfurter Zeitung, January 15 and 16, 1920.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 372
conspicuously non-German compositional approach that had only re-

cently broken into German consciousness: that of Igor Stravinsky. As is
by now well known, Hindemith’s earliest overt gesture of allegiance to
the composer with whom he is usually paired in accounts of postwar
neoclassicism would come in 1922, just after the wildly successful
Donaueschingen premiere of his zany Kammermusik No. 1 under Her-
mann Scherchen. Stravinsky, writing to Ernest Ansermet in mid August
of that year, reported that he had received a score from the young Hin-
demith, “a sort of German Prokofiev, infinitely more sympathetic than
all the others under Schoenberg.” Which piece Hindemith submitted
for Stravinsky’s approval remains unknown, but Scott Messing sug-
gested the Kammermusik itself, given the proximity of its premiere,
and Richard Taruskin seconded this, citing Ian Kemp’s evaluation of
Hindemith’s opening movement as “undoubtedly the finest Petrushka-
derivative of the twentieth century.”64
Kemp drew the comparison for good reason, for even a quick look
at Hindemith’s opening reveals marked similarities with the beginning
of Petrushka. In both passages, a brilliant sound sheet is projected from
an incomplete diatonic collection through rapid, interlocking ostinati
372 high in the strings and fanfares in the upper winds.65 Here Hindemith
was capitalizing on the aggressive simplicity that Taruskin identified
as a hallmark of Stravinsky’s “neonationalism” and traced to the outer
tableaux of Petrushka: long stretches with an unvarying pulse, flat dy-
namics, unmitigated diatonicism, uniform rhythmic and melodic pat-
terns, mechanical ostinati, “crude” voice leading, and so on.66 If these
features set Petrushka firmly apart from its composer’s own earlier music
and that of his Russian contemporaries, their transposition into Hin-
demith’s compositional practice signaled an even sharper break with
64 Stravinsky’s letter quoted and translated in Scott Messing, Neoclassicism in Music:
From the Genesis of the Concept through the Schoenberg/Stravinsky Polemic (Ann Arbor: UMI,
1988), 125. Originally published in “Une lettre inédite d’Ansermet à Stravinsky à
propos du Sacre du printemps,” Revue musicale de suisse romande 33.5 (1980): 215. On the
Kammermusik-Petrushka connection, see Messing, 184, note 94; Taruskin, “Back to Whom?
Neoclassicism as Ideology,” Nineteenth-Century Music 16 (1993): 294; and Kemp, Paul
Hindemith (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 11. A copy of the Petrushka orches-
tral score (Berlin: Russischer Musikverlag, 1912) survives in Hindemith’s personal library
in Blonay, Switzerland, alongside many other Stravinsky scores. (Die Hindemith-Bibliothek in
Blonay, 244.)
65 Compare Hindemith’s opening especially with reh. 8 in Petrushka. Another case
of direct modeling occurs later in the Kammermusik movement, where a busy 16th-note
unison figure has been obviously taken from the middle of the “Russian Dance” in
Petrushka’s First Tableau (compare m. 17 in Hindemith with Stravinsky’s first clarinet
seven measures after reh. 34).
66 The bulk of this discussion occurs in Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Tradi-
tions: A Biography of the Works Through Mavra, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1996), 1:718–35.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 373
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his inheritance: the German espressivo tradition of the late nineteenth

century, stemming largely from Wagner.
The Kammermusik and the 1922 letter clearly suggest the budding
of an alliance that would flourish in the years ahead, but Hindemith’s
experiments with Stravinskyian neonationalism arguably go back to
1920 or even 1919, well before the onset of the Stravinsky craze among
the German avant-garde. Notwithstanding the central position that
Stravinsky’s work would assume in the German New Music scene by the
mid 1920s, it played very little role in that country’s musical life prior
to 1922.67 The Ballets Russes had presented Petrushka and The Firebird
in Berlin in 1912 (Petrushka was heard there again, unstaged, in 1920),
but until the early postwar years Stravinsky was, in Martin Thrun’s
words, “as good as unnoticed” in Germany. And even then, perfor-
mances were generally few before Ansermet led the German premiere
of The Rite of Spring in Berlin in late 1922. That year and the next, Hin-
demith would become heavily involved with Stravinsky’s music as a per-
former: among other things, he fiddled under Scherchen in the Ger-
man premiere of Histoire du Soldat in Frankfurt in June 1923.68 But as
important as the events of 1922–23 were, both for the dissemination of
Stravinsky’s music in Germany and for Hindemith’s alignment with it, 373
they arguably signal not the beginnings of a reception process but in-
termediate stages of one that had been underway for two or three years.
Among those pieces suggesting an early encounter with Petrushka,
Das Nusch-Nuschi figures prominently.69 Several passages from Hinde-
mith’s puppet opera suggest direct and indirect modeling on Stra-
vinsky’s puppet ballet. One of these is the initial verse of the Arie mit
Variationen. Here Hindemith breathes musical life into the Emperor’s
67 See Martin Thrun, Neue Musik im deutschen Musikleben bis 1933 (Bonn: Orpheus-
Verlag, 1995), 77–80.

68 Kopien von Programmzetteln, #316 (H-I); see also Thrun, Neue Musik im deutschen
Musikleben, 81. Stravinsky’s music had also figured prominently on the programs of Hin-
demith’s “Gemeinschaft für Musik” in 1922; these included the Three Pieces for String
Quartet and the Concertino. (Kopien von Programmzetteln, #242.)
69 To mention a few likely Petrushka derivatives from Hindemith’s 1919–22 output,
beyond those to be discussed below: the sixth variation from the finale of his 1919 Sonata
for Viola and Piano, op. 11, no. 4 (a fugato “to be performed with bizarre clumziness”:
compare the bear-trainer episode from Stravinsky’s Fourth Tableau); parts 1 and 3 of the
“Pantomime” movement from the 1920 Tanzstücke for piano, op. 19 (compare Stravin-
sky’s jesting mummers from the same tableau); and the “Tanz des Giftes” from the 1922
“dance pantomime” Der Dämon (compare the cursing Petrushka in the Second Tableau).
Michael Kube proposed yet another Stravinsky resonance in the last movement of the
Tanzstücke, but in doing so he played down the issue of any widespread modeling in Hin-
demith. (See Kube, Hindemiths frühe Streichquartette. Studien zu Form, Faktur und Harmonik,
Kieler Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft 45 [Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1997], 199.) By the mid
1920s, other Stravinsky works would echo in Hindemith’s music: Histoire du Soldat in the
Kammermusik, op. 36, no. 3 (for violin and chamber orchestra), and The Rite of Spring in
the Concerto for Orchestra, op. 38 (both 1925).

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 374
first wife, Bangsa, who in contrast to the indulgent Ratasata gets right
down to business. As example 6a shows, gone is the stuff of Wagnerian
self-possession: the lush, expressive strings, the throbbing accompani-
ment, the moody chromaticism. In their place we find a lean texture
where the voice contends with harder woodwind timbres—an English
horn obbligato and growling bassoons—all the while propelled by a
clockwork cello ostinato. While we may not be able to trace this passage
to any one model in Stravinsky, echoes abound. Consider the moment
from the Second Tableau of Petrushka shown in example 6b, likewise
featuring an “exotic” English horn melody against an ostinato riddled
with grace notes.70 (Here the solo instrument’s nasal, double-reeded oth-
erness presumably evokes the portrait of the “oriental” Magician scowling
down from Petrushka’s cell wall.) Also reminiscent of Petrushka are
the vehement whole-tone intrusions toward the end of Bangsa’s verse
(mm. 206–7), shown in example 7a. Here the pitch content and
gesture of Hindemith’s low-register string writing closely resemble Stra-
vinsky’s in another ostinato passage featuring English horn, now from
the Third Tableau (ex. 7b).
When sketching his opera Hindemith had entertained a vastly dif-
374 fering characterization for Bangsa. In example 8, which transcribes a
fragmentary alternative sketch for her verse, the opening measures
show a vocal contour similar to the final version, but all resemblance
soon vanishes. The ensuing compound meter, sixteenth-note figura-
tion, melodic sequences, imitative entries, and decorative trill all sug-
gest Hindemith’s initial leanings toward a flowing “neobaroque” styliza-
tion worlds away from the mechanized, scampering final version. It is
unknown just when Hindemith set down this idea for Bangsa’s verse,
but his ultimate rejection of it in favor of the final version—perhaps in
May 1920, but in any case well after the Pfitzner-Bekker controversy
had been aired—arguably signals the onset of an alignment between
Blei’s puppet world and a musical style indebted to Stravinsky.71
70 In addition to instrumentation, texture, and style, the passages are also similar in
sonority, being inflected by the minor pentatonic-scale collection. At the opening of

Bangsa’s verse, which centers on F, this unfolds as a series of ascending fourths—that
characteristic interval of the Hindemith sound, already favored here (B –E –A in the
English horn above the F–C ostinato). In Stravinsky, where E is the tonal center, the col-
lection is most clearly projected in the ostinato accompaniment on the second half of the
second beat of the first three measures (E–B–A–D–G from low to high register).
71 After having worked in a normal front-to-back direction, Hindemith turned his
sketchbook upside-down and worked from back to front, resulting in a reversed page or-
dering. In Sketchbook 37, the Bangsa sketch occupies a position immediately prior to the
sketches for the final Stretta of the Piano Sonata, op. 17, which Hindemith completed in
mid April. Serious work on the opera—which had broken off shortly after it had begun
the previous fall, when Hindemith sketched the first hundred-odd measures of the First
Tableau—then resumed in May with the continuation of the First Tableau, including
the wives’ aria. For a published description of this sketchbook, see Luitgard Schader,

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 375
haney
example 6a. Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi, First Tableau, reh. 10
I. Vers
10
$171 Im gleichen Zeitmaß

m
½ ¹ Ł −Łl −Ł Ł −Ł −Ł Ł
Solo
%Š ¼ −Ł l 01
][l
EH
$Ý
1
Vc.
% Łl Ł Łl Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł 0
\ l l
$173
EH Š 01 Ł −Ł −Ł Ł −ð ý ðý Ł −Ł
:
Ý1 ½ `7777777777777777
Fg.
1.
% 0 ¼ −−ðð −ŁŁ ¹ ¼ ½
n
2.
`: 7777777777777777
][ [
Š 01 ÿ ½ Łý Ł 375
BANGSA

Ich bin
$Ý
1
Vc.
% 0 Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł −Ł − Ł Ł Ł − Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
n n nn
$175 −Łm Ł −Ł −Ł Ł 1 Ł −Ł
EH Š Ł −Ł 0 −Ł Ł −ð ý
:
Ý `777777777777
ÿ ½
01 ¼ −−ðð
1.
%
Fg.
n
2.
`: 777777777777
ðý Łm
BANGSA Š −Ł 01 ¼ −Ł −ð
Bang - sa, des gro - ßen
$Ý
1
Vc.
% Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł 0 Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł −Ł − Ł Ł Ł
n n nn
“Hindemiths Skizzenbücher Nr. 1 bis 41: Entstehungszusammenhang und Inhalt einer
Quellengruppe,” Hindemith-Jahrbuch 30 (2001): 249–50. For more on the compositional
history of the opera, see Paul Hindemith.Sämtliche Werke, Band I, 2, x–xi.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 376
example 6a. (continued )
$177 n
EH Š Ł −Ł −Ł Ł −Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł Łý −Ł −Ł −Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ
Ý ¹ ½ ½ ²ð
% −ŁŁ ¼
1.
Fg.
2.
ðn
m −Łm Łm ¦ Łm −ð −ð
Š −Ł
()
BANGSA
Kai - sers Mung Tha By - a
$Ý
Vc.
% − Ł Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł −Łn −Łn Łn Łn
n
$179
Š Łý −Ł −Ł −Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł −Łl Łl −Łl Łl Łl −Łl Łl Łl −Ł Łl Ł /
EH
l l 0
[ 3 3
1. Ý ½ ²ð ÿ /0
%
Fg.
376 2.
ðn
ðý Ł −Ł ½ /0
BANGSA Š ¼
er - ste Frau.
$Ý
Ł /
Vc.
% ¦ −Ł Ł Ł Ł −Łn −Łn Łn Łn ¦ −Ł Ł ² ¦ Ł Ł ² ² Ł Ł Ł 0
$181
EH Š /0Łn−Ł Ł −ð Ð
[
− Ł Ł − ŁnŁ −Ł Ł
/ ¾ −Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Klar. 1.
(B) %Š 0 ¼ ¼
[
BANGSA Š /0 ÿ ÿ
$Ý
Vc. /0 −Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł − −Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
][
Ý / −Ł ¹
pizz.
Ł ¹ Ł ¹ −Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹
Kb.
% 0
][

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 377
haney
example 6a. (continued )
$183 3
¹ ¹ −Ł ð
Š Ł −Ł Ł −ð ý Ł /0
n ][
EH
[ ¹ ½ /0
Klar. 1.
(B) %Š Ð Ł ¼
$ Ý zus.
Hr. 1.
¹ ¼ ½ /0
(F) 2.
Ð Ł
[ Ł Łl
Š ½ ¹ Ł
Ł Ł Łl ¹ ¼ ½ /0
1.
! \[
Ł Łl Ł Ł Ł ¹ ¼
Š ½ ¹ Ł ½
Trp (B)
/0
2.
\[ l
l
š ½ ¹ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Łl ¹
¼ ½ /0
1.
!š \[
½ ¹ Ł Ł Ł ¹ ¼ ½
Pos.
¼ /0
2.
% \[ l
\ 377
Š ÿ ½ −Ł Ł −Ł /0

BANGSA
Heu - te mor -
$Ý Ł
Vc. − Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł /0
[
Ý Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ /
Kb.
% 0
[
$185 ² Łl Łl
Solo
²Ł
Ob. 1 Š /0 ÿ ¼
]\
EH
%Š 0
/ Ł Ł Ł Ł −Ł ý −Ł Ł Ł
Ł
Š /0 −Ł −Ł −Ł Ł Ł −Ł −Ł Ł −ð

BANGSA
: 777777777777777777777777
- gen sah ich vom Fen - ster aus
$Ý Ł `
/0 −Ł Ł Ł
][ Ł −ðn −Ł Ł Ł
Vc.
Ý / Ł ¹ −Ł ¹ ¼ −Ł ¹ ¼ ¼
Kb.
% 0 \

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 378
example 6b. Igor Stravinsky, Petrushka, Second Tableau, reh. 54
Łl
54
$ ² ŁŁŁ
¹ ÿ
Fl I. Š .0 ¼ /0
² Łl Łl Łn Łl
n
Łl Ł
Solo
Cor. Ingl. Š ² .0 /0
]\
Ý . /0
Cl basso.
0 ² Łm Łm ²Ł Ł
\
¾ Ł Ł Łl ¾ Ł Ł Łl ¾ Łl Łl Łl ¾ Ł Ł Łl
sim.
Ý² . /0
Fag. II.
% 0 l l l l l l
[\
\\
Piatti ⁄ .0 Ł Ł Ł Ł /0
\\
e Gr. Cassa.
Ł Ł
² . Ł Ł /0
Š Ł Ł
378
Piano. ! 0
8vb
Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ý² .
0 ŁŁ Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Łl Łl
/0
l l
8vb
con sord. Łl
$ ² ¹ Łl Łl ¹ Łl
Š .0 ¹ ¹ /0
!
V. I.
\
² ¹ Łl ¹ Łl ¹ Łl ¹ Łl
sord.
V. II. Š .0
/0
Ý .
(pizz.)
0 /0
C.B.
% Ł Ł Ł Ł
54
\
More evidence for this alignment crops up in Hindemith’s Third

Tableau, before the King Mark quotation, when the Emperor’s head
eunuch Susulü fussily reports the doings of the royal wives the morning
after their tryst with Zatwai. As seen in example 9a, Susulü sings against
an inane backdrop of clucking oboes in parallel fourths and pecking

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 379
haney
example 6b. (continued )

$ ² ÿ ÿ ÿ
Š /0 .0 /0
² n
Š ² /0 Ł Ł Ł Łl Łl Łl Łl Łl Łl .0 Łl Łl Ł Ł Ł Łl Łl Ł /0
Ý / .0 /0
0 ²Ł Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ²Ł Ł
Ý² / ¾ Ł ¾ Ł ¾ l l Łl ¾ Ł¾ Ł ¾ Ł¾ Ł
% 0 Łl Łl l Łl Łl l Ł Ł .0 l Łl Łl l Łl Łl l Łl Łl l Łl Łl l /0
⁄ /0 Ł Ł Ł .0 Ł Ł Ł Ł /0
² / Ł Ł Ł Łl Łl Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
lŁ Łl . Ł /0
Š 0 Ł Ł Ł
! Ł 0
Ł Ł . Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ
379
Ý ² / Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł ŁŁ /
0 ŁŁl Łl Łl 0 ŁŁl ŁŁ
l ŁŁl Łl 0
(8vb)
$ ² ¹ Łl ¹ Łl ¹ Łl . ¹ Łl ¹ Łl ¹ Łl ¹ Łl /
Š /0 0 0
!
Š
² / ¹ Łl ¹ Łl ¹ Łl . ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Łl ¹ Łl /
0 0 l l 0
Ý / .0 /0
% 0 Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
violins in a chromatically descending ostinato. This strange constellation

of a dry upper-register melody coupled at the fourth over a repeating
chromatic figure can also be found in the final tableau of Petrushka,
where the “Dance of the Nursemaids” undergoes a bizarre transforma-
tion after rehearsal 97. As we see in example 9b, the repetitive melody
first occurs in the solo trumpet against a plucked, chromatic quasi-
ostinato in the violins and is then transferred largely to the upper

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 380
example 7a. Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi, First Tableau, m. 206
(205)
\ BANGSA
−Łý
Š [] ¹ −Ł Ł −Ł −Ł −Ł −Ł ¹ Ł

Wir wer - den spie - len bis
n
Ý ½
Bs. Cl. Łý −Ł −Ł −Łð Ł Ł Ł Ł
½
!
[] ²ð
Bn. n
Ý ½
Vc.
Ł Ł
[] Ł Ł Łn Łn Ł Łn
Ý ½ ¹ ¹ ¹ ¹
Cb.
[] Ł Ł
Łn Łn
8vb
2
[ −ðý Łý
380
Ł
Š Ł
− −Ł Ł ¼
zum Hah - nen - schrei!
n [ 3
ý Ł Ł Ł − Ł Ł −Ł Ł
3
Ý Ł −Ł −Ł −Łð Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł Ł
½ ÿ
!
²ð
n
Ý
Ł Ł Ł Ł Łn Łn Ł Łn Ł Ł − Ł −Ł − Ł −Ł ¦ Ł ¦ Ł
Ý ¹ ¹ ¹ ¹ Ł ¹ −Ł ¹ −Ł ¹ ¦ Ł ¹
Ł Ł Łn Łn
(8vb)
woodwinds, who state it in parallel perfect intervals above reinforced

orchestration.72
A somewhat cruder adaptation speaks out from the latter half of
Hindemith’s First Tableau, when the fabled Nusch-Nuschi emerges
72 Petrushka—specifically, its Third-Tableau waltz music—might also stand behind
the arpeggiated woodwind squeals that punctuate Susulü’s monologue. The gesture of an
abrupt upward leap followed by a quick arpeggiated descent is provided by the flute’s
preparatory idea just before reh. 71. The function of articulating phrase endings with
such descents, moreover, may be traced to the cornet interjections during the waltz’s
grotesque middle section.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 381
haney
example 7b. Stravinsky, Petrushka, Third Tableau, reh. 66

66
EH 3 3
Š − [/0] ¼ ¼ ³ Ł Ł ³ −Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł−Ł Ł .0 ³ Ł Ł ³ −Ł Ł Ł
!
+ ][ 3
[ sub.
Vc.
Ý−/
sul ponticello
[0] Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł .0 Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
\l l l l
Cb.
sul ponticello
Ý − / Łl Łl Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł . Ł Ł Ł Ł
[0] Łl Łl Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł 0 Ł Ł Ł Ł
\
8vb
from the river to threaten the drunken Kyce Waing. Central to this pas-
sage, shown in example 10a, is an oscillating figure moving at various
speeds in different ostinato layers. The bassoons double the basses in
low, muddy major thirds while divisi cellos move twice as fast in parallel 381
minor thirds. Above, the upper woodwinds present a related figure—
now proceeding by half rather than whole step—in a quasi-imitative
texture. We find a similar situation in example 10b, near the opening
of Petrushka, where Stravinsky had embedded a fair barker’s cry at two
different speeds against a whirling backdrop. Not only do we encounter
a similar treatment of the bass melody: grotesquely accented and dou-
bled in low thirds, with a generally oscillating melodic contour and in a
two-to-one rhythmic relationship with the quicker upper stratum; we
also find essentially the same instrumentation as in Hindemith, with
bassoons doubling the low strings and the oboes and piccolos carrying
the highest melodic level.
Hindemith’s passage is coarser than this proposed counterpart, but
he surely took his cue from tendencies that stood out in Petrushka, ten-
dencies that troubled Stravinsky’s peers as representing the exchange
of former technical refinement for “the uncouth and unmediated.”73
We may easily imagine what Hindemith’s further coarsening of such
practices signaled to the adherents of “unending melody.” This group,
it should be recalled, included not just conservative critics; Wagner’s
principle had remained alive in prewar progressivist composition, in
73 Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, 1:720. In Taruskin’s account the
fair-barker passage stands as a prime example of Petrushka’s aggressive new simplicity

(710ff).

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 382
example 8. Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi, fragmentary sketch for

Bangsa’s verse. (Sketchbook 37, pp. [40]–[39]. Reprinted
with kind permission of the Hindemith-Institut, Frankfurt/
Main.)
n n n n n n n
−Ł
[Š] −Ł ý Ł ¹ Ł Ł −Ł −Ł Ł Ł −Ł −Ł −Ł ý Ł −Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł
−Ł Ł
Bang - sa er ste
−Ł
[Ý] −−− ŁŁŁŁ
−Ł gr
Trom
Łý Ł
heu te
Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁý
4
Š
[] Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ł ²Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ²Ł Ł Ł ² Ł ý
Ý
[] Łý
382
Ł Ł Ł ² Ł Ł ² Ł Ł Ł
ein en
ŁŁ Ł
Fen- ster aus
6 morgen sah ich vom
Š
[] Ł ý ²Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ² Ł
² ŁŁ Ł Ł ŁŁ ² ŁŁ ² ŁŁ Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł ²² ŁŁŁ ¦ ¦ ŁŁ ŁŁ ²² ŁŁ
Ł Ł Ł

Ý ¦Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ²Ł ¦ Ł
[ ] Ł ²Ł Ł Ł ²Ł Ł Ł ²Ł Ł Ł Ł ý Ł Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ²Ł
8
Ł Ł Ł ² Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł ² Ł Ł Ł Mann
[Š] ¦¦ ŁŁ ŁŁ ²ŁŁ ¦ ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł
¦ ð Ł ŁŁ ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł
Ł Ł Ł ²Ł Ł Ł
² Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł ¦ Ł Ł −Ł ¦ Ł Ł −Łý
[Ý] Ł Ł Ł ²Ł Ł Ł
−Ł ¦ Ł −Ł ŁŁ −ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ −ŁŁ ² Ł Ł Ł − Łý Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ðŁ ý −Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł
Ob. I
10
Š − Ł ý Ł Ł
[]
und sein Die - ner hol - te mich mit der
Łý Ł − Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł Ł
Ý Ł Ł Ł −Ł ¦ Ł ¦ Ł −Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł Ł
[]

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 383
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Łý Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ł ý −Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł
13
[ ] Łý
Š Ł Ł Ł
Strick - lei - ter
Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Egl
Ý Ł −Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł
[] Ł Ł ¦Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ²Ł Ł
Ł
` Ł Ł
Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ý ² Ł Ł ² ŁŁ ² ŁŁ ² Ł ² Ł ŁŁ ý ² Ł ² Ł
16
Š Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
[] ŁŁŁ ² Ł ý Ł ² Ł ² Ł
Ł
Łý
das Haus
Ý ²Ł ý Ł Ł ðý
[] Ł ²Ł ¦Ł Ł

− ŁŁý Ł Ł −ŁŁ ý Ł ² Ł ² Ł ² Ł ¦ ŁŁ ² Ł ² Ł ² Ł Ł
383
Ł −Ł ý
¦ Ł ý ² Ł ²Ł ² Ł
19
[Š] ²Ł ²Ł ² Ł× Ł ² Łý

¦Ł

Ł ¦Ł ²Ł Ł Ł
mit den gel - ben Af - fen
Ý ð Łý Ł ²Ł ²Ł Łý
[]
Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ý Ł ²Ł ²Ł ý
Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł Ł ² Ł Ł Ł ² Ł ² Ł × ŁŁ Ł Ł ² Ł Ł Ł
21
[Š]
²Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ²Ł ²Ł Ł ²Ł ²Ł ²Ł ¦Ł Ł ¦Ł Ł Ł Ł
in der ers - ten Gas - se
Ý
[]
practice and in such theoretical notions as “obbligato recitative.” Schoen-

berg, too, had firmly believed “that music, in order to satisfy the meta-
physical claims formulated by Schopenhauer, must at every moment be
‘significant’—‘eloquent’ in a sense reaching beyond the limits of verbal
language. Nothing should be tolerated that does not justify itself as a
musical idea: formulas, padding and ornaments are judged empty and

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 384
example 9a. Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi, Third Tableau, reh. 81

SUSULÜ
81
]\
(singt alles im Falsett)
67
−Ł Ł − Ł Ł Łý Ł −Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł
Š .0 ¼ /0 .0
n
Ich bin Su - su - lü, der O - ber - eu - nuch des
E − Cl.
][
Ein wenig schneller
l l l − Łl − Łl Łl ¼ ¾ Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł
¹ −−ŁŁ ŁŁ / −−ŁŁ − Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł −−ðð Ł ¦Ł
Ob.
ŁŁ
Š .0 ¼ ¹ .0
! Viol.
\pizz.
0
n
Š .0 −ŁnŁ ² Łl ¦ Łl ² Łl /0 −ŁlŁ ² Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł ŁŁ ² Ł ¦ ¦ Łð ² Ł −ŁŁ ² Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł

l l l ²Ł ¹
.0
n
Engl. Hr.
70
−Ł Ł Ł Ł −Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
Su. Š .0 /0 ¼ .0
kai - ser - li - chen Frau - en - pa - la - stes. Als ich heu - te
384 n
Ł
Picc. Ł ²Ł Ł
¾ Ł Ł ²Ł
− Ł Ł
Ł ¹ ¹ −−ŁŁ ŁŁ −−ŁŁ −− ŁŁ Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł −ð ¼
Ł
Š .0 /0 −ð Ł ¹ .0
! \
Š .0 −ŁŁ ² Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł /0 −ŁŁ ² Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł ŁŁ ² Ł ¦ ¦ Łð ² Ł −ŁŁ ² Ł ¦ Ł Ł

²Ł ¹
.0
n
73
Ł Ł −Ł −Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
3
Su. Š .0 /0 .0
mor - gen nach - se - hen ging, wie den Dam - en die Nacht be-kom-men ist,
Ł EsŁ Kl.Ł Ob.Ł −−−ŁŁŁ ¦ ŁŁ −ŁŁŁ −−ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ −−ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ððð ýýý
Š .0 ¹ −ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł /0 .0
! [
Š .0 −ŁŁ ² Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł −ŁŁ ² Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł −ŁŁ ² Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł /0 −ŁŁ ² Ł ¦ Łð ² Ł ŁŁ ² Ł .0
¼ n

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 385
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example 9a. (continued)
−Ł Ł − Ł − Ł Ł −Ł ¦Ł Ł 3
.0 ¦ Ł Ł Ł Ł
77
Su. Š .0 ¹ ¹ −Ł /0 −Ł Ł

fand ich wie im-mer die Bet-ten leer,
n al - le vier Bet -ten

Ł Ł ²Ł Ł − ŁPicc. Ł ² Ł
−ŁŁl ŁŁl ŁŁl −− ŁŁl − ŁŁl ŁŁl ŁŁl −Łl −Łl ¼ Fl.¾ Ł
. ¹ − /0 −−ðð ŁŁ Ł ² Ł . Ł
Š0
¹ 0 ][
! ² ŁŁl ŁŁl ŁŁl
Š .0 ²¦ ŁŁ ² Ł −ŁŁŁ ² Ł ¦ ŁŁ ² Ł ²−ŁŁŁ ² Ł /0 ¦ ðŁ ² Ł −ŁŁ ² Ł ¦ Ł Ł .0 ¹
Ý
²Ł ¹
¹ n ¹ n Fag.
insignificant.”74 By sharp contrast, in Das Nusch-Nuschi emblems of

metaphysical suggestiveness are trotted out only to be laughed offstage
by an aesthetic of endless repetition.
At one point, Hindemith’s score could not imply this more
strongly. Following the Nusch-Nuschi’s appearance, Tum tum rushes 385
heroically to Kyce Waing’s defense but in the dark and confusion rains
blows on the General himself. As we see in example 11, Hindemith’s
battle music thickens in a grand crescendo through the piling up of osti-
natos. Participating in all this is the four-note Tristan motive, again in
the solo horn but now a high-pitched yelp beginning on its uppermost
note. Amid woodwind shrieks this figure is ruthlessly recycled, rhythmi-
cally compressed, and, when the battle reaches its peak before re-
hearsal 31, hewn down brutally to its final tritone. With respect to the
onstage buffoonery of this scene, “Tristan’s Suffering” might refer to
the needless agony of the unsuspecting General. But when considering
its broader function in Das Nusch-Nuschi as an emblem of Wagnerian
and post-Wagnerian transcendence, we hear in its mechanized transfor-
mation the merciless denuding of this attribute—a sharp musical ac-
knowledgement, it would seem, of its bankruptcy in the Germany of
1920.75
74 Carl Dahlhaus, “ ‘The Obbligato Recitative,’ ” in Schoenberg and the New Music,
trans. Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987), 145–46. Schoenberg had formulated his concept in 1912 with reference to the
last of the Five Orchestral Pieces, op. 16, from 1909.
75 If we entertain Laubenthal’s speculation that Kyce Waing presents a caricature of
the militaristic Kaiser Wilhelm II, then we might interpret this presumed symbolic act of
rejection as explicitly intertwining two emblems: one of Wagnerian transcendence with
another of the discredited Imperial era. See Paul Hindemiths Einakter-Triptychon, 91–92
and 120, note 158.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 386
example 9b. Stravinsky, Petrushka, Fourth Tableau, 2 after reh. 97
² Tpt. I Ł Ł
Š [] Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
!
]\ ma marc.
² Ł ¦ Ł Ł −Ł Ł ² Ł ¦ Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł −Ł Ł
Vn. I, II (+ 8vb ) pizz.
Š [] ¼ ¹
\
¹
Hp. I (+ 8va )
¹
Ý² ¼ ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł
[] Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
\
Vc. pizz.
Picc., Fl.,
EH, Cl.,
Ł Ł ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ

Vn. I, Vla. (+ 8va )
²
Š Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
386
! ² Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł −Ł Ł ² Ł ¦ Ł Ł ² Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł ¦ Ł −Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł ¦ Ł
Š ²Ł −Ł Ł ² Ł Ł ² Ł ¦ Ł − Ł ¦ Ł
Ob. I, Bn. I
Vn. II (+ 8va ) pizz.
[¹ ¹
Vc. pizz.
¹ ¹ ¹ ¹
Ý ² ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ
Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
][
Cb. (8vb) pizz.
ŁŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
² ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ¦ ŁŁ ¹ ¼
Š
!

² ¦ Ł ²Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł −Ł Ł ² Ł Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł −Ł Ł ² Ł ¦ Ł ¦ Ł ¹ ¼
Š ² Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ¦ Ł ²Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ¦ Ł ²Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł ¦ Ł ²Ł ¹ ¼

¹ ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¹ Ł ¼ ¼
Ý ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁŁ ¼
Ł Ł Ł

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 387
haney
example 10a. Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi, First Tableau, m. 429

Ein Nuschnuschi, das ist ein Tier halb große Ratte, halb Kaiman, kriecht langsam
her und schnauft. Auf ihm sitzt lächelnd KAMADEWA, der Gott des Verlangens.
429 Oboi 3
3
Š ÿ ŁŁ ýý ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ²² ŁŁ ŁŁ −ŁŁ ŁŁ ²² ŁŁ
! Ý
Bn., Cb.
² ŁŁ
[[
n
3
ŁŁ
n
ŁŁ ² ŁŁn
n
3
ŁŁ
n ŁŁ
n
² ŁŁ
n ŁŁ
n
3
ŁŁ ² ŁŁn
n
3
ŁŁ
n ŁŁ
n
Ý Vc. 3 3
²² Ð Ł Ł Ł ² Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ² Ð Ł Ł Ł ² Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
²Ð Ð
Trb., Tuba, Cbn.
[
² ŁŁ ýý ŁŁ ²² ŁŁ ² ŁŁ − ŁŁ ŁŁ ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ýý
Fl.
Ł Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ
² ŁŁ Ł Ł ŁŁŁ Ł ŁŁ
431
Ł ² Ł Ł
Š Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł − Ł
Ł Ł ² Ł ² Ł ² Ł Ł −ŁŁ ŁŁ ² ŁŁ
!
Ł Ł Ł
Łýý Ł
Ł ŁŁ Ł ² Ł Ł
387
Ý 3 3 3 3
² ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ² ŁŁn ŁŁ ŁŁ ² ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ² ŁŁn ŁŁ ŁŁ
n n n n n n n n n n
Ý
² ŁŁ Ł Ł ² Ł Ł Ł ¦¦ ððŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł ¼ ¦ð
¦ ðn
Ł ¼ ¦Ł
ŁŁ ²² ŁŁ ŁŁ − ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł Ł Ł
8va
² ŁŁ −Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł ² ŁŁ ²² ŁŁ ŁŁ −ŁŁ ŁŁ ² ŁŁ ŁŁ −ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ
433
! Ý
² ŁŁ
n
3
ŁŁ
n
ŁŁ ² ŁŁn
n
ŁŁ
n
3
ŁŁ
n
² ŁŁ
n
3
ŁŁ
n
ŁŁ ² ŁŁn
n
3
ŁŁ
n ŁŁ
n
Ý ¼ ð ¼ ð
¦Ł ðn Ł ð
¦Ł Ł n

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 388
example 10b. Stravinsky, Petrushka, First Tableau, reh. 3
¹ŁŁ ŁŁŁŁ ¹ŁŁ ŁŁŁŁ ¹ŁŁ ŁŁŁŁ

3 Picc., Ob.
Š − [/0] ÿ ÿ
43
! Vn. II
[
Š − [/0] ð ýðð ýý ððð ýýý ð ýð ý
ðý
ðð ýý
ðý ð ýð ý
ðý
ðð ýý
ðý ð ýð ý ððð ýý
ðý ý
ð ýð ý ððð ýý
ðý ý
][
Vla.
Ł
Bn., Cbn. (8vb)
Ý − / Vc., Ł Ł
Cb. (8vb)
Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł Ł
[0] ¼ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ
Ł
][ n n n n n n n
Ł Ł Ł ŁŁ ŁŁŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł
â = â Poco a poco accelerando e crescendo
ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁŁŁŁ ŁŁŁŁŁŁŁŁ
Š− ¹ ¹ 14 ¹ 44
388
! 3
Š − ð ýðð ýý ðð ýý
ðý ð ýð ý ððð ýý
ðý ý
.0 ðð ððð
ð
ðð ððð /0 ð ýð ý ððð ýý
ð ðý ý
Ý − ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ Ł Ł Ł .0 ŁŁŁ ¼ ÿ /0 ÿ
Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ
n n n
The Nusch-Nuschi battle and its ridicule are one and the same, and
indeed, the broader battle staged by Hindemith’s opera is one of up-
roarious self-reflexive laughter. This dynamic plays a pivotal role in our
understanding of any burlesque, but so should the historical and cul-
tural situation within which the laughter gains its specific tone. The in-
tense mirth of Das Nusch-Nuschi shouts down Wagnerian grandiosity
even as it parades it, but in doing so it also registers a still-fresh shock at
the linkage between Wagner as a force in Imperial German culture and
the devastating real battles of the recent past. Amid the brokenness
wrought by the war, the claim of Wagnerian expressiveness to metaphys-
ical purity could no longer be taken for granted, and the hard-hearted
nationalist reaction only confirmed this. Since the mid 1910s, when the
true cost of Imperial pride was becoming painfully apparent, Hinde-
mith had found many occasions for hard laughter, with Das Nusch-
Nuschi emerging as the latest and most public of these. Considered as a
product of these turbulent and traumatic years, its mirth may be heard

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 389
haney
example 11. Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi, First Tableau, reh. 30
30 Immer vorwärts gehen

463 (TUM-TUM ﬁndet einen Stock und haut auf KYCE WAING)
Tum Š
geschrien: Wart, wart, du Vieh, raß raß sa sai sa sai
Kyce
Ý ÿ ÿ
Immer vorwärts gehen
Š ÿ ÿ
! Ý Ð
\
:
`
¼ Pk. Ł ¼ Ł
:
`Ð
½
poco
Ł
a
¼
poco crescendo
Ý
3 3 3
Ł − Ł ý ŁŁ ŁŁ −−ŁŁ Ł ² Ł Ł ¦¦ ŁŁ Ł ý Ł Ł −Ł ý Ł Ł Ł Ł
Ł −Ł ý Ł ²Ł Ł Ł ý Ł Ł −Ł ý Ł Ł Ł Ł
389
465
Tum Š
tschang, willst du gleich diesen guten
Kyce
Ý ÿ
geschrien: Au, au! Es beißt
½
Pos.
Š ¼ ý
¦² ðððnýý
!
² ððð
:
` `Ð
Ý Ð ŁŁ
Ł ¼ ¼ Ł Ł Ł ¼
[
−Ł ý Ł
3
Ý
² Ł ý ŁŁ Ł −Ł Ł ² Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł
3 3
² Ł Ł ² Ł Ł ýý ¦ Ł Ł Ł −Ł Ł ² Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł −Ł ý Ł
²Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ¦Ł Ł ²Łý

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 390
example 11. (continued)

467
Tum Š
tapfern Herrn in Ruhe lassen?
Kyce
Ý
mich in das Hinterteil! Au!
Hn.

Š Łý −ððð ýýý
−Ł ð Łý −Ł
!
¼ ² ððð ½
` n
Ý Ð `Ð
ŁŁ ½ ŁŁ ŁŁ
¼ ¼ ¼
−Ł ý ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł ² Ł ² Ł Ł ² Ł Ł ýý
3
Ý Ł Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ý ¦ Ł Ł
3 3 3
¦Ł
Ł Ł Ł ² Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ý ¦ Ł Ł − Ł ý l Ł ²Ł ² Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ¦ Łl
469
390 (Haut immer auf den General, unterdessen das Nuschnuschi erstickt)
Tum Š
Sa sai! Gleich hab ichs erschlagen!
Kyce
Ý
Au! Au! Au!
8va
ÿ ½ ¹ −−ŁŁŁ
!
Š ¼

n Holzbl.

Š ð − ðð ýý Łð ý −Ł ð
¼ ðý ²ð − ðð ½
` n `Ð n
Ý Ð Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ
¼ Pk. Ł ¼ ¼ ² ðý ¼
l ² Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ² Ł
Ý Ł Ł ý ŁŁ ŁŁ −−ŁŁ Ł ² Ł Ł ¦ Ł ² Ł Łý ² Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł ²Ł Ł ² Ł
Ł Łý Ł ²Ł Ł ¦ Ł ²Ł Łý
3 3 3
3

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 391
haney

471
Tum Š ÿ
Das dicke Fell!
(8va) 8va
−ŁŁn n 8va
−
Š −Ł Ł ¹ −−ŁŁŁ −−−ŁŁŁ Ł ¼ ¹ − ŁŁ
−Ł
!
¦ ¦ ŁŁ ¼
¦ ¦ ŁŁ
n n

Š ²ð ð ý ¦Ł ý −Ł −Łððð Ł ý ŁŁ −Ł
² ðð ýý ²Ł ¼ − Ł
¼ n
` `Ð
Ý ¦Ð n
ŁŁ ² ðý
ðý ¼ ¼ ¼
ý Ł Ł
−Ł ý Ł Ł Ł Ł ² Ł ² Ł ² Ł Ł ýý ¦ Ł Ł ¦Łý ²Ł
Ý ²² ŁŁ ý Ł Ł −Ł ý Ł Ł ²Ł ² Ł ² Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł ¦Łý ²Ł
Ł Ł
3 3
(8va) 8va
391
8va
473
−Łn n
¹ −−ŁŁŁ −−−ŁŁŁ ¹ −−ŁŁŁ
n
−−−ŁŁŁ
Š −−ŁŁ Ł ¦ ŁŁŁ Ł
!
¦ ¦ ŁŁ ¦ ¦ ¦ ŁŁ
n n
Š Łððð Ł
ð ý − Ł Ł ² Ł ðð ýýý Łý −Ł
²Ł − ðð
accel. ¼ ² ðn
` `Ð [[
Ý Ð Š
ð ¼ ²Ł ð ð
Ý ² Ł Ł −Ł ¦ Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł ý Ł ý ²Ł Ł ¦ Ł ²Ł ²Ł Ł ¦ Ł ²Ł ý
col 8 alta va
²Ł Ł
3 3 3 3
²¦ ŁŁŁŁ
to ring with disillusionment and loss. As a harbinger of things to come,

however, Das Nusch-Nuschi may also be understood to revel in a new, in-
vigorating alliance with a musical Ausländer whose example would help
Hindemith to develop his own anti-Romantic accent in the years ahead.
California State University, Bakersfield

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 392
n n
−−ŁŁŁ −−−ŁŁŁ −−ŁŁŁ −−−ŁŁŁ
475
Š ¹ Ł
./
!
¦ ¦ ŁŁ
[[[[
Š Ł ²Ł Ł
n Ł ./
[[[[
3 3 3
Š ² ŁŁŁ ŁŁ
Ł
ŁŁ
Ł
ŁŁ
Ł
ŁŁ
Ł
ŁŁ
Ł
ŁŁ
Ł
ŁŁ
Ł
ŁŁ
Ł
ŁŁ
Ł ./
[[[[
Ý `ÐŁ
3 3 3
²¦ ŁŁŁŁ
ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ
ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ./
3 3 3
n n n
−Ł −Ł −Ł −Ł −Ł −Ł
476
Š ./ ŁŁŁ − ŁŁ −−ŁŁ ¦¦ ŁŁŁ − ŁŁ −−ŁŁ ¦¦ ŁŁŁ − ŁŁ −−ŁŁ

392
! Š ./ Łn
Š ./ ² ŁŁŁ
n
stentato
ŁŁ
Łn
²Ł
ŁŁ
Łn
Ł
n
ŁŁ
Łn
3
ŁŁ
Łn
Ł
ŁŁ
Łn
Ł
n
ŁŁ
Łn
ŁŁ
3
Łn
Ł
ŁŁ
Łn

Ý/ Ł 3
ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ

3
ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ

3
ŁŁŁ ŁŁŁ
. ²¦ ŁŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ ŁŁ
Ł
3 3 3
stentato
31
477 \
¹ ² Ł Ł Ł ² Ł Ł Ł ¼ Ł
Nicht schnell
Tum Š ÿ ¼
Da liegt es und ist tot, ganz
Š ŁŁŁ ¼ ½ ÿ ÿ
! Š Ł ¼ ½
Nicht schnell
Š ² ŁŁŁ ¼ Ý ² Ł Ł Ł ² ŁŁ Ł Ł ² Ł ý Ł ð ý
Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Łý Ł ðý
3
ÿ
3
ÐÐ
ÿ
Ý Ł ¼
Fag.
][
½ ÿ
²¦ ŁŁŁŁ Ð
\
Baßt.

02_Haney_pp339-393 2/11/09 7:56 AM Page 393
haney
ABSTRACT
With the devastation of the First World War, Germany experienced
a traumatic loss of identification with values that had been central to its
prewar culture, and these emphatically included musical values. In
postwar German art music, this resulted in heavy irony toward the lofty
philosophical claims and musical expressiveness that the later nine-
teenth century had bequeathed to prewar modernism. But it also occa-
sioned bitter attempts to reassert those values, as exemplified by the
polemics of Hans Pfitzner. Prominent on both sides of this debate, which
found a medium in musical composition as well as musical discourse,
were issues of national identity, nationalism, and the legacy of Richard
Wagner.
One musical statement that attracted much notice early on was
Paul Hindemith’s burlesque opera Das Nusch-Nuschi, which premiered
in Stuttgart in 1921. Hindemith, then beginning his rapid ascent in the
postwar music scene, had based his opera on a Burmese marionette
play that scandalously satirized Tristan und Isolde. There is considerable
evidence of Hindemith’s ironic engagement with Wagner throughout
the war, and his opera—the postwar culmination of this trend—
393
abounds with ironic evocations of Tristan.
Training a critical lens on Wagner’s legacy, Das Nusch-Nuschi also
resonates strongly with a position then being voiced by Paul Bekker,
who spoke out against Pfitzner’s Wagnerian hypernationalism and
called for a decisive internationalist turn in postwar German composi-
tion. Specifically, Hindemith’s opera sharpens its ironic, anti-Wagnerian
tone by reaching beyond German modernism to embrace the Russian
“neonationalism” of Igor Stravinsky.
Keywords: Paul Bekker, Paul Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi, Igor Stravin-

sky, Wagner reception


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Slaying the Wagnerian Monster: Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi , and Musical Germanness after

the Great War

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Slaying the Wagnerian

A shorter version of this essay was delivered at the 73rd Annual

This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 17 Nov 2015 03:38:37 AM

the journal of musicology

order the day in Das Nusch-Nuschi is sexualized buffoonery and ridicule,

A riotous scenario in itself; but above all it was the perception of

This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 17 Nov 2015 03:38:37 AM

example 1. Paul Hindemith, Das Nusch-Nuschi, Third Tableau, reh. 88.

This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 17 Nov 2015 03:38:37 AM

the journal of musicology

text des Frankfurter Kulturlebens um 1920 (Mainz: Schott, 2006), 143.

This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 17 Nov 2015 03:38:37 AM

wonderfully suited to the task of ridicule. After a period of intense

demiths Einakter-Triptychon, 81, note 109.

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the journal of musicology

indignance that “Here, everything holy to us is dragged through the

This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Tue, 17 Nov 2015 03:38:37 AM

play within its turn-of-the-century literary milieu, within the category of

voking a Hindemithian critique of Straussian program music (Paul Hindemiths Einakter-

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the journal of musicology

in a fellow German expatriate, Richard Huelsenbeck, and the Romani-

(New York: Da Capo, 1978), 26.

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would like to broadcast.”16 As is well known, though, June 1916 found

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the journal of musicology

homespun entertainment, a group whose perceived affinity with Mor-

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Dispersing the Vapors: Wartime Wagner Satire

22 Diary entry of March 12, 1916, in Flight Out of Time, 56.

survives at the Hindemith-Institut. Although Emmy Ronnefeldt’s own reminiscences state

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the journal of musicology

of which the Lohengrin parody forms merely one installment. By 1916,

One can only enjoy it as an intoxication. Wagner is a magician, a sor-

Busoni-Hindemith,” Hindemith-Jahrbuch 33 (2004): 214–33. Hindemith’s copy of the

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With these words, Huch leaned heavily on a characterization that had

No one is in danger of being taken in, but we are warned nonethe-

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the journal of musicology

progresses a central target comes clearly into view: Wagner’s appropria-

29 Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley:

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31 This final twist—the merging of Schopenhauerian renunciation with redemptive

human love—was Wagner’s own contribution, which he himself described as a revision of

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the journal of musicology

than Huch’s dematerializing exercise in Tristan.33 Comments like this

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höchstes / Weltentrücken!!” ( Joyous exulting! / Blissful delight! /

35 Hindemith, Todtmoosiana, 27–29.

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the journal of musicology

tone poems.38 The Wagner-Strauss vein of orchestral opulence and ex-