Der Weg der Verheissung: Weill at the Crossroads

Copyright by the Estate of David Drew.
David Drew
Der Vlkg der Verheissung: Weill at the Crossroads
Tile firs/ pari of 1/iis essa y was published i11 1/ie SeplelllberOaober 1998 issue of T empo, a11d 111as CO IICem ed wilil
tile origi11s a11d ilislorical co111ext of K11rt Weill's a11d Fra11 z
Weif"el's D er W eg dcr Verheissung (Til e Pa1il of Til e
Pro111ise) a IIHISical dra111a (o r r1ear-opera) i11 follr acts, prese111i11g 1/ie Old T eslalllelll history of 1/ie J ewish people i11 a
1110dm1 comex1.
Der Weg der Verheissung was writ1e11 a11d co111posed
i11 E11rope i1·1 1934-35, a/ 1/ie i11Stigalio11 of tile A111ericm·1
j o11malis1, editor, and emrepmw.11· 1\lleyer vJ!eisgal (al that
ti111e a fervent Zionist). Til e 011/y prod11ctio11 10 date of til e
Ellglisil-lallgllage version e11tilled T he Eternal R oad was
swged by i\1/ax R ehliwrd1 at tile j\lfaHilatlall Opera House
i11 New )'ork i11 )m111ary 193 7. A a I V, for lllilicil Weifel's
origi11al Iitle lllaS Prop heten (Propile!S), is based 011 Til e
Book •?f) erellliail, a11d is co iiSiderably darker i11 tone 1ila11
tl1 e precedi11g ac/s. A f ew fi'agm ellts of it SIII1Jived i11 tile
R ei11ilarrlt prorluctio11 , but tile pro1ago11ist ili111se/f aurl Acl
IV as such 1vere suppresser!. l11 a peljor111i11g versio11 by 1/ie
prese111 llll'iter, 1/ie 11111sic of Proph eten 11/aS il earrl for 1/ie
first ti111e i11 its e111ire1y i11 May 1998 i11 Vie11 11a. It was subsequelltly peifol'lllerl rluriug 1/ie 1998 BBC Pr0111 seaso11 a1
Tile Royal Albert Hall, anrl recei1;er/ its Cer111a11 pre111iere
i11 Nove111ber 1998 i11 Boclllllll.
Til e pre111iere of 1/ie first-ever swgiug of Der W eg der
Verh eissung (by T11 ea/er Cileulllitz) is scheduledfor 13 )1me
1999. l1 will be precerlerl by a 3-rla y sy111posiu111 IIIOIIIIterl
by !lie U11i11ersity of Cilelllllitz ; tile prese111 IIJriter's paperfor
that symposi11111, 'Some Alternati11es 10 J,Veill', forlll s au
ex!CIIrlerl pare111/ies is between !lie conc/urlillg seaio11 of tile
fim T empo anic/e ('R ei11ilard! a11d Weifel') anrl tile
fo llowi11g sequel 10 if .
Acco rdin g to W eisgal's detailed account of the
origins of The Eternal Road, R einhardt had no
inkling of his plans until their November 1933
mee ting in Paris. W eisgal began by o utlining
th e idea of a biblical drama th at wo uld for the
first tim.e evo ke th e Old T estament in all its
breadth rather than in isolated episodes. At th e
end of his account, according to Weisgal,
Reinhardt sa t motionless and in sil ence before
saying - very simply' But who w ill be the author of this bibli cal play and
w ho will write the music 0 ' . ' You are the master', I
sa id , ' it is up to you to select th em'. Again there was
a long uncomfortable pause and R einhardt said that he
wo uld ask Franz Werfcl and Kurt W eill to collaborate
with him.
W ith or without prior noti ce, th e problems
inherent in W eisgal's conunission were so complex
that Reinhardt wo uld have had good reason for
balking at them and every excuse for prevaricating. B ut it was not a time fo r prevarication; and
R einhardt was not the man fo r it.
Eve n so , the speed and decisiveness of his
response seem extraordinary. The choice of
W etfel offered a more than merely intelligent
solu tion to an array of problems, each one of
w hi ch might have defeated a lesser m.an . But
evety answer implicit in that choi ce gave rise to
a new set of qu estions on the musical side.
Music was not a recreatio nal diversion for
W erfel, but a lifelong passion. It was also cenrral
to his life with Ainu Mahl er. H ad he discovered
some new Verdi in the early 1920s rath er than
m erely drea m ed of one, the Verdi novel he
co mp leted in 1924 would have had a different
thrust, and his Juarez lll'!d Maximilian co uld have
been framed as a co nventi onal libretto rather
than as the equall y conve ntio nal historical play
w hi ch Reinhardt inu11ediately produced in
Vienna and Berlin . In 1924 W erfel had in effect
co nstructed several effigies of a composer yet to
come. But only o ne of them, Verdi himself,
corresponded to his own hopes.
By November 1933, W etfel was still without
his new Verdi , and Reinhardt had lost all mea ns
of access to the not-so-old O ld Master who,
jointly with H ofmannsthal, had dedicated
Ariarl11e auf Naxos to him ' in Verehrung und
Dankbarkeit' . Eith er in th e wake of Richard
Strauss or aggressively p ositioned in front of
him , almost every composer of any note whose
nam e might have occurred to R einhardt during
that 'long un co mfortable silence' was disqualified on one ground or another. The outstandin g
exception was Weill .
R einhardt and Weill
' I do not understand vety mu ch abo ut mus tc'
declared R einhard t in a letter of 1894, ' but
nevertheless, or perhaps even for that very reason,
I am vety recepti ve to it'. H e was th en at the start
of his career. Forty yea rs later his und erstanding
of music ca n onl y have in creased in proportion
to his practical experien ce of it. Since non e of
34
'D er Weg der Verh eissung', 'The Path
cif the Bible',
that experience had involved him w ith th e
Second Vi enn ese School, th e apparently
(tho ugh deceptively) anti- modernist tendency
of W erfel's Verdi novel may well have stru ck a
sympatheti c cho rd.
Thirty years after Verdi 's death, th e UtopianM arxist philosopher Ernst Bloch had discern ed
'ein Sti.ick ji.idischen Verdi ' in W eill 's Die
Biirgschafi (1931-32). That 'bit of J ewish Verdi '
had in fac t alrea dy bee n evident in th e
Ma hagonny opera (1927- 29); and it became eve n
more pro no unced in Der Silbersee (1932- 33).
R einhardt had b ee n ac ti vely interes ted in
m o unting the Berlin premiere of Ma hagon ny
at the D eutsches T heater in 1930; and Der
Silbersee - w hose miraculo usly froze n-over lake
becom es at th e cl ose a mythi c 'W eg der
Verheissung' - was already anno un ced and in
re hearsal at the D eutches Th eatre w hen
R einhardt was dismissed in M arch 1933.
When W eisgal first visited him in N ovember,
R einhardt was preparing his produ cti o n of Die
Fledennaus at the Theatre Pigalle. W eill had been
based in Paris for six months - either in hotels or
at the N oailles residence - but had been abroad
during the sununer, trying to forget his troubl es
and recover from various psychosomatic ailments.
N ow returned , he had signed a three- yea r lease
o n a firs t-floor apartment in a simple house in rhe
village of Louveciennes outside Paris.
W eill was still a figure to be reckoned wirh in
the salons of Paris, though his reputation had lost
some of its social glitter since rhe st.lcces d'estime of
the premiere in June of ·n ,e Sevm Deadly Sins (Les
sept peches capitaux). H e was not alo ne in learning
the hard lesson that a visiting celebrity is generally
more welcome than a celebrated refi.tgee.
Even witho ut W eisgal's un expected interventio n, W eill would surely have heard from
R einhardt, or vice versa, towards rhe end of
N ovember 1933. O n the 26th of rhat monrh
M auri ce Abrava nel condu cted an o rchestral
concert at which three songs from Der Silbersee
were sung by Madeleine Grey - the soprano for
w hom R avel had written his Chansons hebrai'ques,
and a sup erb artist, as her too-few reco rdings
testifY. Just before the applause at the end of her
perfomu nce, cries of 'Vive Hitler!' and catcalls
directed at W eill were heard from the auditorium .
T he demonstration was led by the distinguished
French composer Florent Schmitt.
Meyer W eisgal would have been rhe last to take
fright at that news (which was widely reported in
rh e Paris press). Indeed, it could well have helped
allay som e of his initial rese rvati o ns abo ut
R einhardt's choice of composer, chief of which, as
he later admitted, was the false impressio n that
and J eremiah 's prophecies
W eill was 'some so rt of Conu11unist'. T he
Broadway opening in April 1933 of an ill-fated
produ cti on of ·n,e Titreepenny Opera togeth er with
th e publicity and gossip rhat preceded it and rhe
reviews th at fo llowed, would have been quite
su fficient to discourage W eisgal if R einhardt had
not had th e good sense to insist that he have a talk
wirh W eill before he left Paris in N ovember. In his
quiet way, W eill could be borh persuasive and
charmin g. With W eisgal he inm1ediately forged a
bond rhat remained unbroken - though it was
sometimes severely tested- until his death.
Altho ugh Weisgal had give n him a free hand,
R einhardt deserves credit fo r choosing W eill
ra ther than o ne of several safer if less exciting
alternatives (such as his fri end and collabo rato r
E ri ch W olfga ng Korngold, who had prepared
the Fledermaus editio n he was currently working
w ith). As director of the Salzburg Festi val and
almost a native of Vienna - his birthplace had
been in nearby Baden, but Vienn a was w here his
edu cation and career began - R einhardt would
have bee n full y aware of th e p oliti cal te nsions
in Austri a, and their cultural ramifica tio ns, ever
since the appointment of D oll fuss as C hancellor
in 1932 and his subsequ ent es tablishment of a
corporative state w ith clerico- fasc ist lea nings.
But was he suffic iently in to uch with Eu ropean
and especially Viennese music-politics to make
an accurate assessm ent of th e risks entailed in
bringi ng W eill and W erfel together, or eve n
trying to do so:> H ow fa r did he recognize and
understand that such a collaborati o n would no t
only involve an un official but powerful third
party in the person of W erfel's wife, Alma
M ahler, but th at it would acquire, thro ugh her,
certain qu ite specific co nno tati ons - politically
and sociall y, musicall y and aestheti call y, and
last but not least, spiritu ally, in th e (by now)
th oroughly politicized field of religio n?
It was no secret - not even, in its bare essentials,
from M eyer W eisgal, who was aware of th e
problem almost from th e start- that W etfel had
abando ned his J ewish faith durin g his adolescence in Prague, and had been tending towards
R o man Cath olicism well befo re he introduced
himself to Alma M ahler in 1918 in th e humble
apparel of a worshipper at th e shrine of G ustav
M ahler. T he fac t th at M ahler had converted
to Cath olicism in 1897, just a year before
Schoenberg converted to Protestantism , should
be seen in the light of Alma's claim th at it was
she w ho helped him become a tn.te believer. It is
clear from th e two widely divergent versio ns of
her m emoirs - th e fi rst of w hich was th e ghostwritten American versio n of 1958, And the Bridge
is Love - th at fo r some 25 yea rs she spare d no
Der W eg der Verh eissung', 'The Path
effort in pursuing similar ends with W erfel. But
th e fin al step ofbaptism was one he never to ok.
Politically Alma M ahler tended towards th e
far right, th ough not of co urse to its racist
extrem es. Her eventual consent to marry Werfel
after living with him, on and off, for ten yea rs
was conditional on his formally renoun cing the
utopian socialist residu e from his bri ef espousal
of revolutionary politics in post-World War I
Vienna. M arriage in tum enabled her in 1929 to
resume her confessional obligations as a Catholic.
Musically, Alma's utter devotion to the cause
of Mahler, combined with her own slender but
by no m eans negligible talents as a composer,
inclin ed h er to see Schoenberg as M ahl er's
natural successor and Alban Berg as anoth er
fa mily-member. In such a circle there was no
place rese rved for the composer of Die
Dre(rtroschenoper, how ever much such admirers
and condu cto rs of W eill as Zem.linsky and Fritz
Stiedty might have wished it otherwise.
Of all th at, R einhardt can scarcely have had
an inkling. Like most readers of W erfel's Verdi
novel - including prominent Gennanists of our
own day - he no doubt saw W etfel as a fervent
anti- modernist and anti-intellecn1al, drawn to
Verdi 's Italy (rath er th an Mussolini 's) and dedicated to popularist ideals fa r removed from
Schoenberg. But even before (or else immediately
after) W etfel had completed in September 1934
his holograph text of Der W eg der Verheim mg, he
had wtitten a passionate and noble tribute to
Schoenberg, for publication by Universal Edition
(Vie1ma), in their Festschrift A rnold Schonbe1;g z um
60. Ceburtstag. Praising Schoenberg for his
'exclusion of a.l.l secondaty goals (effect, success,
accessibility)', W erfel ends by ca.l.ling his work a
'sublime dialogue that w ill be judged properly
only by a peri od marked by a higher degree of
spirituali ty th an ours'.
W eill's ea rly hopes o f stud ying w ith
Sch oenb erg,
and
Schoenberg's
fri endl y
response, had led , dUling the three years following Busoni's death, to a pe1iod in w hich his
praise of Schoenberg and his music (in the
columns of th e offi cial orga n of R adi o Berlin),
was precisely consonant with W erfel's 60th
birthday uibute. In 1927, Schoenberg (unsuccessfull y) recommended W eill for membership of
th e Prussian Academy of Arts. But then came
Die Dreigroscheuoper and a fluny of provoca tive
articles by W eill . Wh en Schoenberg arri ved in
Paris in th e spring o f 1934, he was incensed to
find th at W eill was a local hero. To th e American
composer Virgil Th o mso n - acco rding to
T homson 's autobiogra phy of 1967 - he had
confided that of all the composers known to
of th e Bible',
and J eremiah 's prophecies
35
him , W eill was th e only one in wh om he could
discover no m erit whatsoever.
Schoenberg and Der biblisclu Weg
At her first m eeting with W erfel , in 1917, Alma
M ahler heard him read aloud and 'very dram atically' the text o f Schonberg's DerJakobsleiter:
' Now,' he said after the fi rst words, ' I kn ow the entire
conflict of this man. H e is a Jew - the Jew who suffers
fro m himself.
In the summer of 1921 Schoenberg took his
fa mily to th e Austrian resort of M attsee, near
Salzburg. Like all travellers and holiday-makers
in those unsettled times, th e Schoenbergs had
first to fulfill th e registration requirem ents.
Unfortunately, Schoenberg had left his baptism
papers behind . The official reaction w as blunt:
'Juden sind un erwunscht' Qews are not wanted).
D eeply shocked, Schoenberg and his family left
the resort at once.
The M attsee incident was a turning-point:
aft er 20 yea rs of successful ass imilati o n,
Schoenberg had been jolted into a new awareness of his J ewish roots. Confirmed in that by a
second provocation, Schoenberg in 1926 sketched
three outlines for a 3-act play, Der biblische W eg.
In the first outline the protago nist is clearly
modelled on H erzl, but is identified by the letter
M (for M oses?). In the second outline M has
becom e Max Aruns, and has acquired a double
personality - as visionaty (M oses) and as activist
(Aaron). Schoenberg completed th e play in
1927 and the libretto of his opera Moses und A ron
in 1928.
Much of Moses und A ro n was composed and
orchestrated durin g Scho enberg's Spanish
retreat in 193 1-32. InJanuaty 1933 he returned
to his post in Berlin at the Prussian Academ y of
Arts. But soon after th e N azi seizure of power at
th e beginning of M arch th ere were warnings of
a coming purge of 'J ewish influ ences' at the
Academy. On 17 M ay Schoenberg left B erlin
for Patis.
On e of Schoenberg's earliest letters from
Paris - dated 24 May 1933 - was addressed to
Max R einhardt. Schoenberg urged R einhardt
to read Der biblische W eg and exhorted him, at
this time of c1isis, to light a beacon for J ews
throughout th e world by staging th e play
w herever he co uld, wheth er in Gemun, in
English, in French. H e ass ured R einhardt that
th e play contain ed ' nothing, absolutely nothing
th at co uld offend a11y govermn ent whatever'.
R einhardt's response, if any, is unkno wn. In
anoth er letter from Patis, dated 13 June 1933,
Schoenberg describ ed to th e philoso ph er J akob
36
'Der Weg der Verh eissung', 'Th e Path of the Bible', an d Jeremiah's prophecies
Klatzkin his hopes of founding a 'new party' or
a 'new sect' w hose religious sense would be based
on the ' Gedanken', th e Idea, of th e 'aussenviildten',
the chosen, people, and w hose program me
wou ld be ' national-chauvinisti c on the hi ghest
level.. .rnilitant, aggressive, o pposed to an y pacifism and all intern ati o nalism .'
Five weeks later, at a cerem o ny in th e Uni o n
Liberale Israelite in Paris, Schoenberg form all y
declared his intentio n to 're-enter the community
of Israel' . In September 1933 he was info rmed
that his co ntrac t with th e Prussian Academy of
Arts was to be terminated w ith effect from 31
O ctober 1933. Un able to find work in France,
he accepted a providen ti al invi tati o n from
Josep h M alkin to teac h at his conservatmy in
Bosto n , and sailed for the USA on 25 October.
Befo re leaving France, Schoe nberg had been
busily soliciting supp ort for his Jewish 'Unity'
party. While recognizing th e grea tness ofH erzl's
visio n , he had strong reservations about its
prac ti cality in modern conditions, and was at
pai ns to dissociate himself from all forms of
Zionism. Among th e promin ent Jews to w ho m
he sent a letter of enqui ry was Franz W e1fe l.
W erfel replied by telegram , co nfirming th at he
too was actively interested in the 'Schicksa/', th e
destiny, of th e J ewish people.
Soon after th e publicatio n of W etfel's Die
Vierzig Tage des 1\lfusa Dagh - and th erefore in
the very period w hen Der Weg der Verheissung
was taking shape - Schoenberg w ro te aga in to
W erfel (presumably from Boston, though th e
copy in th e Schoenberg Institute has no heading
or date). R eminding him th at he, Schoenberg,
has dedicated himself to th e ' rescue of th e
Jewish people', he now informs him th at his first
step in that di rection had bee n Der biblische Weg,
and notes that his attempts to interest publishers
and theatres in the play have been rejected
'without exception and emph atically'. (There is
no mention of R einhardt.)
Though sto utly defending th e play and
stressing its merits as a propaga nda vehicle
(Tendenzstiick) Schoenberg admits that some of
his ' figures' are two-dimensional, since their
chief purpose is to be the 'm esse nge rs' of his
ideas. While denying th at his m etho d is as cerebral as m any mi ght imagine, he grants th at
W erfel himself m ay find it off-putting. (Its roots
in Expressionist th eatre are not m ention ed).
From his own standp oint, however, he accep ts
th at th e purposes of propaga nda mi ght be fulfill ed more easily and effe ctively were his key
fi gures to be ' fl es hed o ut' as characters. Since a
gift for characteriza ti o n is w hat he particularly
admires abo ut W erfel - so he tells him - he
proposes th at th ey collabora te o n a new versio n
of Der biblische Weg .
With a warnin g that W erfel should not
expect from him th e kind of fi·eedom th at Verdi
gra nted his librettists - surely a veiled but
respectful reference to W erfel's ow n work o n
Verdi and his librettos- Schoenb erg pro mises to
send the text in 2-3 days.
There, or almost th ere, th e story unsatisfactorily ends, at leas t as fa r as th e auth ors and editor
of a 460-page do ubl e issue of Th e j ournal of th e
Arnold Schoenberg Institute were concern ed four
yea rs ago .* It is left to Scho enberg to add an
essential coda to his letter to W erfel:
Lastly, bu t certainly not in cidenta lly, let me thank
you for yo ur marve ll ous Armenia-no vel, whi ch I go t
yesterday [.. .] and am reading w ith the greatest
excitement.
Schoenberg, w ho never wastes a wo rd and is
n ever casual, m ea ns exactl y w hat he says: his
parting wo rds are ce rtainl y not in cidental, for
th eir releva nce to th e m atter in hand is as clear
as the reaso ns for his grea t excitem ent. Die
Vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh was w ritten at white
hea t durin g th e 18 months preceding th e N azi
seizure of power in Germany, and first published in Vi enna in the ea rly summ er of 1933
(o nly a few months before R einhardt 's meeting
wi th W eisgal in Paris). O stensibly in th e tradition
of the historical novel, an d minutely resea rched
during th e W erfels' tou r of th e Middl e East,
The Forty Days (as it was called in th e versio n
w hi ch took the English-speakin g wo rld by
sto rm in 1934) was instrum ental in publicizing
for th e first time th e m assac re of th e Armenian
people by the Turks in 1917 (a n atrocity o nly
rece ntly in th e news once again).
Th e Forty Days is in three parts or Boo ks, of
w hi ch the first - entitled 'Coming Events' - is
a depiction and analysis of the ra cist and totalitari an mind so graphi c and so astute that it can
*
vol. XV II , numbers 1&2, June & November 1994, Los
Angeles, 1995. Edited by Paul Z uko(,ky and copiously annotated and documented by Moshe Lazar and R . Wayne Shoaf,
the do uble issue is entirely dedicated to Der biblische Weg. It
was the principal source for the account of Schoenberg's dratna
which the present author contributed to the programmebook for the 1998 world premiere in Vienna of Propheren. In
revisi ng th at account for the present occasion, th e author has
been much indebted to Alexander Ri nger's important book,
A mold Schowbe~e: The Composer as j ew (Oxford. 1990), which
among other things drew his atten ti o n to
Werfel's
Sc hoenberg-tribute. It is Professor R inger w ho - observing
every
nuance
of the
German
word
'Weg' and
of
Schoenberg's highly characteristic and idiosyncratic reading
of th e O ld T es tament - translates Sc hoenberg's titl e as
' Th e Path of the Bible', as distinct from 'The Biblical Way'
favoured by the Schoenberg Institu te.
D er Weg der Verheissung', 'The Path of the Bible', and j eremiah 's prophecies
be rea d and clearly understood in terms of
recent and present ge nocides everywhere, from
the Balkans to th e Middle East and fa r beyo nd .
Altho ugh W erfel is already beginning to fa lter
in Book T wo ('The Struggle of th e W eak'),
'Coming Events' is in itself a maj or achievement,
and explains, even if it does not entirely exc use,
W erfel's strenuo us efforts to avo id antagonizing
the N azi autho rities in 1933 and thus assure th e
circulati on (not to m entio n the sales) of Die
vierz ig Tage in Germany. In that ultimately
unsuccessful endeavour, he surely enj oyed th e
w hole-hearted supp ort of his w ife. Whether she
noti ced in the kibbutz-like stru ctures of Life o n
the M o untain (Book T wo's first chapter) the
almost unmistakable vestiges of nlillennari an
communism is another qu estio n. M ea nw hile,
'Coming Events' was mo re than eno ugh for th e
autho r of Der biblische Weg and the composer of
Accompaniment to a Film Scene to be going on with.
37
about the kind of singers he needs and the
conductor he wants Qascha H o renstein), comes
the cru cial passage:
Wetfel has now se nt me all four parts of the wo rk.
What he has done stri kes me as splendid , above all
in his successful knitting-together of this giga ntic
fonn . I am particularly and happily surprised about the
conclusion of th e pi ece. In its genuine naievety and
simpli city, this vision of the M essiah attains tru e
greatness, and all questions abom the work's 'tendency'
(Tendenz) are thereby answered, because the meaning
of the entire work has thus been revealed.t
To w rite to R einhardt in such a vein seems to
have come natura!Jy. T o have w ritten similarly
to Lenya wo uld have been to breach the longrespected boundaries of their correspondence .
Moreover, Lenya - as an irretrievably lapsed
Catholic, and proud of it- would have found it
hard to take his enthusiasm seriously.
T he strengths and weaknesses of the collabo rEstrangements
ation between R einhardt, W eill, and W erfel
W eill 's published correspondence with Lenya* were tested to the fulJ during the period from
sheds some light o n his relationship with W erfel, September to D ecember 1935, w hen the three
but o nly at a relati vely short range. In the peri od men w ere togeth er in N ew Yo rk preparing - o r
1933- 35, career-oppo rtuniti es and qu estio ns of ny ing their best to do so in the face of ever
material survival tend to dominate both sides o f greater obstacles- for the premiere of Tiu Eternal
the correspondence, irrespective of separatio n and R oad. W eisgal's optimism was inepressible, and
di vo rce . So it is no surprise that W eill's fi rst that was perhaps th e o nly reason why the
enthusiasti c reference to what he has been calling W erfels wa ited until February before sailing fo r
' the Bible thin g' (der Bibel-Sache) concerns th e Europe and returnin g to th e luxmy of Alma's
royalty-deal he stru ck in Salzburg o n 14 August three homes - th e villa at Breitenstein, the
1934, and th e substantial adva nce th at is now to mansion in Vienna's H o he W arte, and a small
be negoti ated. A week later, on his return to apartment elsewhere in Vienna.
Lo uvecienn es, he tells her that his 'worst fea rs'
During the summer of 1936 W erfel wro te
have com e tru e - the complete book and lyrics Horet die Stimme (H ea rken unto the Voice), a
for Ma rie Galar1t e are waiting for him, and oblige novel presenting his J eremiah-figure in contemphim to begi n composition at once, concurrently o rary terms. With W eill he remained in tou ch
w ith making a start o n ' th e Bible thin g'. Marie by letter fo r anoth er yea r or so . Whatever his
Galante, he tells her, looks pro mising - 'a big gro unds for deciding aga inst attending the
thriller (bombshell of a rol e!!!)'. A month later - January 1937 openin g of Th e Eternal Road, his
on Sunday 23 September - W eilJ info rms her fi ctional tribute to th e biblical fi gure who had
of his intentio n to complete, by the end of the bee n stru ck fro m its cast-list suggests that his
fo!Jowing wee k, not only the entire sketches
fo r Marie Galante but also the sketches for the t Author's translation . T he Symonette-Kowalke version in
Speak Lot11 (op.cir., pp.l 44-5) significantly alters the sense by
first two ac ts of 'th e Bible thing' - respecti vely,
substituting the adj ective 'tendentious' for the no un w hich is
'The Patriarchs' and ' Moses'. H e was as good as the obvio us translation of Twde11:z:, and is therefore obliged
his wo rd .
to retnove the diacritic ma rks w hich are pa rt of the sense,
Quite different in tone is th e progress-report as mere tendentiousness is not. 'Tendenzdkhtung' has an
W eill sent to R einhardt o n 6 October 1934. honourable place in the history of literature and dram a
(Schiller, Ibsen, Wedeki nd, etc. etc. ); and altho ugh by definBetwee n the opening remarks abo ut his success itio n its mai n purpose is to propagate specific ideas relating
in creating 'large- scale musical forms [... ] with- to problems of politi cs, religion, or society (cf Schoenberg's
o ut changi ng any text', and the closing o nes descriptio n of Der bibliscile Weg as 'ein Tendenzstiick') its
* Speak Low (Wlle11 Yo11 Speak Love):
11~e
Letrers of K11r1 Weill
a11d Loue Le11ya, edited and tra nslated by Lys Symonette and
Kim H. Kowalke, London, Berkeley, 1996.
cla im to be more than mere propaganda , that is, to have
some intell ectual and li terary content, presupposes a certain
imaginative and intellectual openness- not at all the san1e as
bein g tendentiously and perhaps covertly one-sided or reductionisr.
38
'D er W eg der Verheissung', 'Th e Path
if the Bible',
lifelong friendship w ith R einhardt was o n this
occasion better served by his absence th an by
his presence.
The W ez{els return ed to N ew York as refuge es.
Arriving by ship fi·om Lisbon on 13 October
1940, th ey stayed for som e ten weeks, but saw
no thing of W eill , who was fully occ upi ed wi th
preparations for th e Boston tty-o ut of th e show
that would beco me his first Ameti ca n 'hit' Lady in the Dark. On 30 D ecemb er, th e vety day
of the Boston opening, the W erfels arrived by
ca r at th eir fin e new hom e in Hollywood .
Four days later Werfel bega n to w rite a
novel abo ut St Bernadette of Lourdes . Though
typically unsure that there would be an y readership for the novel - or so Alma makes out - he
was fulfilling, by th e very ac t of m akin g it his
very first undertaking in America, a solemn vow
uttered at B ernad ette's shrine in Lourdes in
th e summer of 1940, w hen he and Alma were
fleeing from th e Germans and heading for th e
United States.
Published simultan eously in German and in
English in 1941 , Das Lied von Bemadette and The
Song of Bernadette were overnight best-sellers in
Am erica , Britain , and the neutral countries of
Europe. The Tech.nicolor film version, released
in December 1943, was a comparable box-offi ce
hit on both sides of the Atlanti c, especially in
predom..inantly Catholic co untties as each was
liberated by th e A.Jlies - beginning of course
w ith France.
Between them , the novel and the film had
appreciably changed the topography of th e
popular arts . Their success, and th e marketing of
it, were to influence publishers, producers, and
writers for years to come; and even in our ow n
very different times, they remain exemplary for
all devotees of th e immemorial alliance between
religion, royalties, and the box-office.
Which is no exc use for dismissing Werfel's
novel a priori as exploitative . In his next work,
J acobowsky un.d der Oberst, W erfel reverts to his
J ewish preoccupations, with enco uragem ent
from R einhardt - a close neighbour in Beverly
Hills, and one of th e first friends with w hom
the Werfels w ere reunited when th ey moved to
California. Subtitled 'the co medy of a tragedy '
and recalling th e Viennese tradition of N estroy,
the play (bes t known from its H oll ywo od
ve rsion and its equally fre e British and Ameri ca n
adaptati ons) deals with the very topics - ra ce,
expulsion and ex..ile - that had linked Th e Forry
Days to Der Weg der Verheimmg.
W eill 's first m ee ting with the Werfels since
1936 was at a social occasion in Hollywo od in
August 1944, w h en th ey were fellow-guests
and Jererniah 's prophecies
of the actor W alter Slezak (so n of th e great
Austrian-Czech tenor Leo Slezak). N ext day, 21
Au gust, W eill described the occasion to Lenya:
It was one of th e worst gath erin gs of refu gees I' ve
ever go ne to. A Genn an language evening of th e
worst kind - because it wasn't eve n Ge nnan bur that
awful mix ture of Hun ga rian and Vi enn ese.
Th e
Werfels were very ni ce. W erfel is a sick man, and she
is an old fool , but strangely wa nn and llerz licll to me,
and ge nuinely enth ousiastic [sic] abo ut Lady i11 the
Dark w hi ch she saw rvvi ce.
r... ]
'That so unds Like a petfect party you attended
at th e Sleza ks', replies Lenya, takin g th e bait and
then dropping a morsel of her own :
I was more afraid for you to go to the Werfels o n
acco unt of her. I thought she sure would be nasty to
yo u. But I su ppose, you are too successful , that
stopped her.
Six days later Weill was back at the trough.
According to th e less than co nvincing acco unt
he gave to Lenya, Alma had called to invite him
to an afternoon buffet, and he co uld think of no
polite way of refusingY ou know my in capability to think of a lie in a case
like that, so I we nt there. It was th e most luxurio us
ga thering I've ever seen, all poor refugees, drinkin g
french C hampagne (in th e aftern oon) and eating th e
best cold buffet imagina bl e w ith caviar of co urse.
Th e language was entirely that mixture of Hungarian
and Vi ennese wh ich I like so much. Well , I talked to
[Ludwig Bemelmans] for half an hour and lefi:, leaving
behind me a stom1 of indignation w hi ch I could still
hear 10 bl ocks away.
'That W etfel party so unds ghastly' , was Lenya's
only comment. To that, however, she add ed a
telling footnote: 'You see how important I am
j ust to be around you and make up those qui ck
lies on th e phone' .
Truthfulness is not perhaps m e o utstanding
characteristic ofWeill's own communications at
this time, but it is clear that preserving a powerbase in Hollywood was at least an adjunct, and a
vital one, to his Broadway career. In that sense,
party-go ing was a necessity not a perk, and som e
'ghastly' experiences were un avoidable. Alma
had wisely excluded him from her High Culture
parti es - w here the Schoenbergs were often th e
guests of honour, and the Thomas M anns occasionally; but now that the Song of Bernadette film
had been released with such se nsational success,
there was a sporting chance that he m..ight meet
so meone relevant to his own film plans. In any
event, an afternoon buffet at th e Werfels would
surely have bee n less upsetting to him th an an
even..ing at the Brechts down in Santa Monica,
where Hanns Eisler might b e found quaffin g
40
Der W eg der Verheissung', 'The Path of the Bible', and j eremiah 's prophecies
Californian wine and perhaps sharing som e
precious Beluga caviar with Lion Feuchtwanger,
a lifelong Conmmnist sympathizer, a distinguished ri val and mortal foe of Werfel, and
author of th e anti-capitalist satire Petrolewninseln
for w hich Weill had composed songs and in cidental music in the year of Die Dreigroschenoper.
One would not guess from W eill 's correspo ndence with Lenya that th e W erfel he met in
1944 was the W erfel with w ho m he had set
forth on Der Weg der Verheissung exactly ten yea rs
before . For Wetfel, as W eill must have guessed
o r kn own, there was now little tim e left. He
di ed a year later, aged 54.
In the su mmer of 1948 - a year after his visi t
to Palestine and soo n aft er th e found ati o n of
the new State of Israel - Weill return ed to
Hollywood with his fri end and collaborator
Alan Jay Lerner. Their hop es of securing a film
co ntract came to nothing, but th e visit was not
a waste of time. Having just attended the highly
successful premiere in Bloo min gto n, Indiana, of
W eill 's college- opera DoLim ir1 the Valley, they
discussed various ideas for anoth er such opera,
including o ne that would b e base d on th e
biblical Boo k of Ruth and inco rporate music
from the extensive Ruth-scene in The Etemal R oad.
Posthumo usly rehabilitated in Weill 's co nscientious inugination, Werfel and Th e Etemal Road
are part of the night -sky of the 'Musical Tragedy'
Lost irr the Stars, W eill's last co ntribution to
Broadway and his last completed collaboration
with his fri end and neighbo ur, th e playwri ght
M axwell Anderso n. After its successfi.tl Broadway
opening in October 1949 , Lost irr th e Stars co ntinued to play an impo rtant rol e in W eill 's life
and thoughts. Like W erfel in his posthumo usly
published novel Stern des Ungeborenerr (The
Unborn Star, 1946) , the W eill of Lost irr th e
Stars stru ggles to reco ncil e nebulou s ho pes
with realisti c an xieti es. In that respect he o nce
again becomes instantly recognizable as th e
composer of Der f¥eg der Verheissrrng.
Amo ng W eill 's last publi c appeara nces- and
one of w hi ch he w ro te with understanda ble
pride in a letter to his parents of 5 Febru ary
1950 - was at a ce rem o ny in hono ur of
M axwell Anderso n m ounted by th e N ational
C onference of C hristi ans and J ews. As th e son
of a Baptist minister, Anderson paid appropriate
tribute to m o re than a decade of understan ding,
fello ws hip , and workin g partnership with W eill ,
th e so n of a J ewish ca nto r. H e co uld hardl y
have found a simpl er o r m o re graceful way of
circumventing th e £1ct th at he and W eill , to th e
best of his knowledge, we re of one mind with
rega rd to religio us beLi ef, and th erefore in no
danger of quarrelling abo ut doctrin al and other
differences w hi ch sincere believers o n bo th sides
of th e fence might still hold to be incompatible.
In his diary entry of 1 February 1950 W eill
records that he had teleph o ned Gertrude
Lawrence to tell her th at he and Alan Lern er
had decided to go ahead w ith their adaptati o n of
the Book of Ruth. Just ove r two months later
he di ed in a N ew York hospital . H e was buried
without religi o us rites at a cemetery overlooking
the Hudson river at H averstraw. The funeral
oration was spoken by M axwell Anderso n.
Teleologies: (1) Atonement
Beginning with Abraham and the Covenant The Promise in its primal state - and endin g
with J eremiah and the destru cti o n of the Second
T emple in 586 BC, the bibli cal scenes in Der
W eg der Verheissung are evo ked from a timeless
but clearly contempo rary perspective of racial and
religious persecuti o n: a threa tened conm1uniry
has sought refu ge in its synagogu e, and The
R abbi, who has tried to intercede w ith th e
authorities, has now returned from his apparently
fruitl ess mission, and is reminding believers and
sceptics alike of th eir ancient history by readin g
from th e sacred Books and from the Torah
scro lls. Beside him stands The Thirteen- YearOld; below him, on th e steps leading to his
lectern, sits the boy's £1ther, The Estran ged One,
w ho has long abandon ed his fa ith but is now,
und er th e influ ence of his (bar mitzvah) so n ,
begi nnin g to seek a 'Way' or a ' Path ' back to it.
Contrary to W e1fel's express wishes but with
som e initial supp o rt from R einhardt, m ost of
th e biblical sce nes and all the Rabbi 's narratives
were set to music, as were man y of th e collective
and indi vidual inteij ec ti o ns fi·om th e ' co ntempo raiy' synagogu e level. W eill's co nception of
th e narratives as recitati ves in th e tradition of
Bach's Evangelist is a develop ment from the two
chro nicl es of th e Unknown Soldier in his Berliner
Requiern (on poems by Brecht) and as such reflects
lessons leamt fi·om Busoni and his 'Sketch for a
dramatic petfomJ.ance of Bach's St Matthew
Passion '. W e1fe l's fea rs of 'liturgical m onoto ny'
if T he R abbi 's readings were set to music must
have owed something to unh appy mem ories of
his J ewish upb1in ging in Prague, but were beside
the point as fa r as his composer was concem ed.
R einhardt fo r his part was more in favo ur of
the Bachi an rec itati ves th an of w hat W eill called
his ' large-sca le musical forms', few of w hi ch
survived th e depredations of th e 1937 production.
Th e o nes th at pro vid ed R einh ardt and hi s
des igne r w ith op po rtuniti es for spectacul ar
climac ti c effec ts fared bes t. In th at res pec t th e
Der Weg der Verheissung', 'The Path
fin ale of Part Three, 'The Kin gs' , was a notable
asse t, both beca use of its criti cal position in
Reinhardt's three-act form, and because of th e
stage pictures: th e building and then the consecrati o n of King Solomon's Temple, followed by
th e Night W atchman's fea rful warni ng to th e
communiry, an d the concludin g reacti o ns of
The R abbi , The Boy, and his estranged fa th er.
The final e has three main sections. An Frnino rish orchestral march (related in character
to th e finale of Weill's Second Sympho ny, but
now with overtly J ewish modal inflexions)
suggests the seven gruelling years of buildingwork. It leads, not without some modulatmy
illscomfo rt, to a do uble cho rus unitin g th e
Biblical and th e synagogue levels in the familiar
words of Psalm 47 and the apparently unambiguous key of B flat major: 'Y e nations clap yo ur
hands... sing praises with trump ets and fire'.
These jubilatio ns are, however, called in qu estio n
by a powerful modulation to D mino r, which
serves as the first warnin g of w hat is to com e,
and does so with such rypicaliy W eillian foresigh t that the redoubled energy with w hich the
B-Oat major rejoicings are resum ed so unds like
a stru ggle against some intractable force. In that
co ntext th e culminating Alleluias in C major (!)
would have as little to rely upon as th e concluding C maj o r of th e Second Symphony, were it
not for the off-stage trump ets and trombon es
proclaiming, fo rtissimo , the cycli c ' Promise'
th eme, w hose origins go back to th e very
beginning of Der Weg - w here the orchestra
softly answers The Rabbi 's opening recitative,
'And th e Lord spake unto Abraham'.
At the thund ero us knock o n th e synagogue
door, the Biblical scenes of rejoicin g are instantly blacked out, and the C-major Alleluias,
already tinged by the mino r, are replaced by the
throbbing of a low E fl at on th e timpani. The
Watchnu n has seen figures prowling outside,
and calls for all lights to be extinguished. Th e
President of th e Communi ry responds by urgi ng
everyo ne to find hilling-places in th e roof-tops
and th e cellars. All compl y, except for Th e
R abbi , The Thirteen-Year-Old an d his father,
The Estranged O ne. In the Epilogu e, The Boy
extends his hand towards his fath er, w ho asce nds
th e steps and is already standin g beside his son
and Th e Rabbi as Part Three end .
As an example of acco mpanied speech, or
melodrama, the Epilogue reveals a sni ctly AustroGerma n ancestty. In more senses th an o ne, it is
a visiona1y moment: locally, it prepares for th e
qu esti on witl1 w hich th e Pro ph et Isaiah o pens
th e music for Prophete11 - 'Watchman, what of
th e ni ght' ' - and hence for J eremiah's bal eful
of the
Bible', and Jeremiah 's prophecies
41
reply and for Isaiah 's E-flat major rejoinder,
'Comfort Ye, my people' . In a broader sense
th at was only beginning to be revealed in 1945,
the visionary moment prefigures regions of
human and inhuman experi ence th at still today
border on the indescribable. In these few pages
of score, the auth or of Th e Forty Days of M usa
Dagh and th e W eill of the Second Symphony
reach an understanding wider and deeper than
either can have been aware of
The Epilogue is a ternary stru cture whose
central sectio n is a ruminative development of
the B-flat major theme of th e Psalm 4 7 cho rus.
Entrusted to two clarinets and then to solo
oboe, th e meditati o n begins in E-flat maj or and
proceeds on its own melodi c and tonal path.
Partly because of the much slower tempo, and
partly beca use of the key-colo ur and w hat
becomes of it, th e head-motif is audible in terms
not o nly of th e Psalm setting but also of quite
another double choru s: th e Chorus mystiws that
concludes th e Eighth Symphony of Gustav
M ahler - specifically, the setting of 'Ewig! Ewig!'
at rehearsal-figure 210.
It is not the only Mahletian moment in th e
score, but it is th e salient one, and it helps illumine
the very illfferent motif with w hich a solo cello
initiates the Epilogue. H eard in the context of th e
entire score the motif is as mysterious as it is striking. Although it does not readily explain itself in
tem1s of the overall thematic-moti vic stru cture,
th ere is somethin g strangely and releva ntly
familiar about its first appearance: it is as if th e
cello's plunging Line and th e darkly apprehensive
harmony were some half-forgotten memory for
composer and listener alike.
It is only after th e central transfiguration of th e
Psalm 47 melody th at tile cello-motif is revealed
in a new and likewise transfigu ting light. Witho ut
the kind of note-for-note resemblance that had
pointed to Mahler's 'Ewig! Ewig'', the cello
motif in both its original forms had been harkin g
back to Schoenberg's Verkliirte Nacht - not to
th e main D minor th em e, but to its most
chromatically distraught va1iant (bars 202- 210).
N ow recalled in tranquilliry, it seems to be recomposing the final image of !~c h ard D ehmel's
poem: w heth er in the inward light of their own
transfigured night ('durch ho he, helle Nacht', as
D ehmel evokes it) or looki ng towards th e
unspeakable, T he R abbi , The Thirteen-Year-Old,
and his no-lo nger estranged father, are as o ne;
and the music is at one with th em.
Can a passage th at is uniqu e in W eill's music of
any peti od - thou gh clearl y situated in th e area
defin ed by Der Silbersee, th e Symphony, and Tl1e
Selle// Dea dly Si11s- be adeq uately explain ed in
42
'Der Weg der Verh eissung', 'Th e Pat/1
rf tl1 e Bible',
terms of a dramatic situa ti on that was uniquely
suggesti ve in itself and in its histori cal co ntext? Or
was th ere a more intimate relati onship wi th
W eill's own experience of exile in the European
winter of 1934-35?
With Mahler clearl y identifiabl e in th e foreground of the Epilogue and Schoenberg becoming
dimly visible as h e ap proaches from th e far
distance - like J eremiah at the start of Propheten
- W eill has in effec t dupli cated the Father-SonR abbi tablea u in the form of a shadow-play in
w hich he co uld replay the role of The Estranged
One returning to th e fold in a newly awakened
se nse of his heri tage and responsib ili ties as a Jew.
But it was o nly an Epilogue; and as such it
was also th e pro logue to J eremiah's prophecies
and their fulfilm ent. At the time of composition ,
Weill's parents we re still li ving in Leipzig,
w here his father, th e former Cantor in Dessau,
was Warden of th e B ' nai B ' ri th orphanage.
N o soo ner had W eill reached an agreem ent
w ith W eisgal, R einhardt and W etfel than he
wrote to his fa th er o utli ning th e proj ec t and
asking w heth er he might borrow from him any
m aterial relatin g to music for J ewish wo rship traditional music, he emphasized, rath er than
19th- or 20th-century adaptations. Given th e
grea t quantities of such music available to him at
th e N ational Library in Patis - w hi ch he duly
co nsulted - and co nsidering how many traditi o nal J ewish melodies he was able to jot down
from memory (to his own surprise, according to
a co ntemporary interview), it is clear that the
request to his fat her was m ore in th e nature of a
gesture of t11nily fe llowship th an th e refl ectio n
of practi cal need.
It was to his father that Weill dedicated the
only publication in his lifetime of any music from
Th e Eternal R oad- a "14 -page album co ntaining
six numb ers arranged and simplified by C happell
(New York) for mass consumption. But that
dedicati on is a mere token of w hat is co nveyed
by the wo rk itself and parti cularly by the ton e
and substance of The Rabbi's acco mpani ed
recitatives. Brief though th ey are, these 'readings'
(as W etfel calls th em) fi·om the scriptures provide
th e en tire score with th e only indi vidual co ntributions that are co nsistent in ton e, substance ,
and wo rkmans hip. To atttibute this consisten cy
to a pio us regard for sacred texts wo uld be to
ove rl ook other scriptu al passages w here Th e
R abbi is not the intermediaty, and th e ca ndlesmoke beco mes disturbingly redo lent of Mati e
Galante and her world .
The Rabbi 's last words are, in th eir musical
setting, the co nsummation of all th at is 1nost
perso nal and in ward in his ro le: ' A vo ice is heard
a11d j erem iah 's prophecies
in R amah ... .Ra chel weeping for her children'.
With th at, The R abbi closes th e Book of
Jereiniah and covers his head w ith a prayer-shawl
as The Voice of Rachel pleads for the children
of Israe l to th e strains of 'Eli Tziyon ' , th e
m elody traditionally used on the Ninth Day of
Av in commem o ration of th e destru ction of the
two Temples .
Transgressions and Disguises
'And King Saul put on disguise' (Da vermununte sich Saul). Only in this one instance
do The Rabbi 's recitativo readings lead direc tly
into an ari a-like stru cture in the sa me mod e.
The sce ne of Saul, Samu el, and th e Witch of
Endo r is a sombre ritu al th at prepares for th e
likewise trinitarian Epilogue to Part lll: it too is
in the nature of an aria for orchestra (with sung
as we ll as spoken wo rds, th ough th e vocal lines
are mere emb ellishments).
Although th e m usic is immediatel y co m prehensible as a prophecy of the imminen t dea th of
Saul and his house, it amou nts to much more than
that in th e context of Die Bargschafi, th e 3-act
opera w hi ch, as W eill himself acknowledged, is
th e direc t precursor of Der Weg der Verheissung.
For this is a music w hose discriminations and
judgem ents are as Solo m o ni c and as Gand hian as
th ose of the Ju dge in Die Biirgscluift. Its classicism
is not neo-classicism., and if at one point it overlaps with th e yo uthfi.tl M endelsso hn , it do es so
w hile scrupulously avo iding all suggesti o n of
Weber and his Wolfs Glen (o ne ofWeill's most
admired episodes in an opera that had bee n a
£wourite since his ea rly adol escence).
T he sons of Saul are slain by th e Philistines,
Sau l fa lls o n his own sword, and D avid m o urns
for J o nath an in a H ebraicized G minor before
£1lli ng for Bathsheba and arrangin g for th e dea th
of her husband in a letter-so ng based o n the
sa me ostinato-rhythm as the Lust movement
(Unzucht) in Die sieben Todsiinden - a collocatio n
co ntinu ed and developed later in th e scene. The
sam e sce ne has the Avenging Angel singing in
the accents of the Vengea nce Alia in Der Silbersee;
and just before th e climax, T he R abbi is draw n
into the network of allusions to Die B,:irgschafi,
though no t for any conun uni cable purpose.
The pressures of time under w hich WeiLl
co mp osed Der lr!leg der Ve rlw·ss11ng had begun to
leave trace at qu ite an ea rly stage in Part I, 'The
Patri archs' . Since th en , th eir intermittent but
cum.ulati ve effects have been twofo ld: the overre liance on routine osti natos and sequ ences; and
freq uent reco urse to W eill 's ow n rece nt work in
order to extra ct material fo r re-processing in
harmonica Ll y and melodically more co nventional
D er Weg der Verheissr.mg', 'The Path
terms. There was indeed a certain ironic justice
in reverting to th e upside-down Papal catalogue
of The Seven Deadly Sins and ostentati ously display ing it the right way up. Predictably, however, the musical and artisti c benefits of that simple strategy tend to be disproportio nate to the
mo re obvio us advantages of beatin g th e clock.
Fortunately, th e Saul-Samuel scene has in effe ct
put paid to most of th ese practi ces by indi cating
th e craggy path that w ill lead to Propheten by th e
way of David's climactic outcry of repentan ce and
supplicatio n:
M y God, my God, w hy hast thou fo rsa ken me?
... Co nceived in sin , bo rn in iniqui ty , redeem me and
cleanse me.
These are his last words. In W eill's exceptionally
po wetful settin g (b ut not in W erfe l's published
text of 1935) th ey are repeated ,fortissirno, by the
entire J ewish community in the synagogue; and
th ey are sung to th e most widely known of th e
traditional and liturgical melodies W eill has drawn
upo n - the Kol Nidre, the melody traditionally
reserved for the most solemn ho ur in th e J ewish
sacred calendar, th e Eve of Yom Kippur.*
Teleologies (2): The Messiah and The End
of Time
T he all-explaining 'Tendenz' that W eill discovered and was enthralled by when he received
th e final pages of W erfel's text was C hristian,
not J ewish. The J ehovah of old - th e vengeful
tribal god, the wrathful and implacable judge of
his own backsliding people - has been replaced
by th e N ew T estam ent version , the God ofl ove
and mercy, w hose Only Son is The W ay to
everlasting life. W erfel's J eremiah , as selfdeclared 'man of peace', already prefigures the
R edeemer. It is he w ho defends th e poor
aga inst the rich and denounces wo rldly vani ties,
he w ho sca tters with his stick th e idol-sellers'
wa res, h e above all w ho is persecuted, ston ed,
and imprisoned for preaching th e gospel of
peace and humili ty . Opposed to J eremiah is th e
false prophet C hananjah (H ananiah), w ho has
been re- cast by W erfel as a m odern Pharisee, a
smooth-talking demagogue and flatterer w ho
shamelessly talks of peace w hile planning war.
C haracteristi call y, Werfel has produced a
schi zoid J eremiah, enlightened by the N ew
T estam ent yet anguished by the O ld. Still bearing
th e Jahwist yoke, he is and remai ns the prophet
* See 1'\..inger op.cit., pp.75-81, for an in valuable discussion
of the melody, its historical origins, and the uses Schoenberg
made of it in his work o f the san1e name and in o ther works,
notably the Fourth Q uartet.
of the Bible',
and J eremiah's prophecies
43
of doom (a nd as such , a fi gure deep ly inimical
to The Eternal Road of 1937). But in his qu asiapostolic guise, he already has th e answer to
R achel's prayer for her children, and knows
how the ni ght-long and solitary vigil of T he
Thirteen-Year-Old will be rewa rded at first
light by the answer to his question about th e
coming M essiah.
T he figure and co untenance of th e M essiah
as revea led to th e boy in his visio n are no ncorporeal, 'as if made fro m light' . Yet the 'hu ge
crown ' he is seen to be holding seems to confinn
that the figure is indeed Christ Risen in Majesty.
At th e fo o t of Werfel's holograph of D er
Weg, after the address (Alma M ahl er's villa at
Breite nstein) and the date (14.9.34), are th e
initials fa miliar from Catholic iconography since
mediaeval times: D.G . (Deo gratias).
A propos of D er biblische Weg Schoenberg
had always insisted on the need to enlist th e
enthusiastic support of non-J ews; but that was a
political not a religious obj ective. Sin ce Meyer
W eisgal's comparable if dissimilar obj ectives
were hardly to be achieved at th e cost of losing
J ewish support, W erfel's messianic vision was, to
say the least, provoca tive. Werfel was duly persuaded to think again , and respo nded w ith an
intelligent compromise to whic h, presumably,
Alma Mahler gave her blessing. The first edition
of his text (with Weill's nam e discre etly omitted) was published in Vienna in 193S.t In place
of 'D er M essias' th ere now appears 'D er Engel
der Endzeit', 'The Angel of the End of Time' a figure derived from the N ew Testam ent's
most profoundly Semitic book, Th e R evela tion of
St J ohn th e Divine.
And the angel whi ch l saw standing upo n the sea and
upo n the earth li fted up his hand to heaven. And
sware by him that liveth for ever and ever [... ] that
there sho uld be time no longer. (Revelatiol'l X, 5-6)
This is a far cry from the M essiah of th e N ew
T estament as originally imagined by W erfel, but
not from R evelation XXI, w here a new J erusalem
descends 'out of heaven from God, H aving th e
Glory of God'. And that N ew J erusalem
had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, [... ]
and names written th ereon , which are the names of
the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.
In each of W eill 's holograp hs- and also in th e
processed vocal score used for rehearsals in
N ew York - th e aria of th e visionaty figure is
still attributed to th e 'Voice of th e M essiah ';
t
Der Weg l der Verheissung / ei11 Bibelspiel! voll i Frallz
(Vienna, 1935).
Weife/
44
'Der Weg der Verheissung', 'The Path
of the Bible',
and th at is how he has tried to comp ose it, but
stri ctly from the standpoint of The Thirtee nY ea r-Old .
In its essentials, thou gh not in its effect nor in
the demands it makes on the teno r soloist, the
aria aspires to a childlike simplicity . The incipit
describes an ascending C-major scale, and apart
from a brief tum to the flat submediant, the entire
melody remains true to its diatoni c premisses.
Harp and strings provide an eq ually simple
accompaniment, w hile the woodwind outline a
plange nt co unter-melody, above which organ
an d vibraphone are slowly and for the last time
proclaiming the cyclic them e of The Promise .
In the co ntext of Propheten. and its unmistakable references to th e discontents and sicknesses
of the 20th century, W eill's attempt to capture a
timeless and uni versal truth, and to do so in
terms that a Thirteen- Year- Old of his own day
would easily have grasped, has mo re dignity and
integrity than a hypercriti cal listener of today is
likely to grant. To cite in W eill's defence the
M ahler of the Wunderhorn years (especially th e
child's view of heaven that informs the finale of
his Fourth Symphony) would at best be a naivety
of its own . At this late moment in Propheten, the
music and its essential m elos have made their
escape from all thin gs German , indeed, from
every latitude and longitude. Even th e popularist oleography of the scoring serves to rem ove
natio nal traits.
Yet the aria does have a precise location. It
is Sulzer's and Lewandowsky's 1830 version of
Omnom Kein - the Response for the Eve of
Atonement. In W eill's versio n o nly the incipit
and its immediate consequ ences are used, and
even th ey are simplified, not without losing th e
specifically Jewish characteristi cs. In th e aria's
central span W eill temporarily aband o ns
Omn01n Kein and its hidden m eanings - 'it is
truly so that the evil imagination predominates
within us' - in order to return to the Kol Nidre
and his own coda to it. While W etfel's 'M essiah '
is advocating the grateful acceptance of suffering(!) Weill's is reminding th e attentive listener
of th e Kol Nidre and his own impassioned continuation of the traditional melody (by way of
und erlinin g D av id 's fin al and un equi voca l
repentance).
Teleologies (3): The March to Zion
As th e angelic or messianic vision fades, the
modal figure first heard in th e opening bars of Der
Weg der Verheissung - where The Rabbi, in
recitative, introduces the message of God to
Abraham - is recalled by unison horns in the
shofar- Like fom1 it had acquired later in that
scene. Th e Thirtee n- Yea r-Old wake ns the
and Jeremiah 's prophecies
sleepers huddled in th e synagogue, and as he
begins to tell th em of his vision , th e music
o ri ginally associated with Abraham and th e
Covena nt is recalled on the strings . An other
shofar-call impassiv~l y ann o unces the arri val of a
R oyal M essenger bearin g the reply to The
Rabbi 's petitio n: The King (of w herever) has
decreed that the J ewish community, on pain of
death, must leave th e occupied zone of th e city
before sundown.
Like Schoenberg during the same period, and
not for altoge ther dissinlilar reasons, W erfel is
disinclined to offend the auth o rities in Europe's
largest Gemun-speaking territory. The mythologized King and the hint of purely nlilitary
expediency seem strangely incompatible with
the contemp o rary realities and prospects so
clea rly discerned in th e Epilogue to Part Ill and
so vividly prefi gured by th e 'so unds of breathless
terror, of pantin g, of moaning cries' w hich are
hea rd off- stage at th e very start of Der Weg, even
before the dra mati c action is initiated by the
Prologue in th e synagogue. By fonnulating the
royal proclamation in relati vely harml ess ternlS,
W erfel provides himself w ith an alibi w hile
th eoreti cally leaving th e spectato r in full charge
of th e m essage already delivered in the Part III
Epilogue. But w hat now' And w hat has W eill
to say abo ut it'
To th e antecedent phrase of the Covenantmusic w hich had already ignored the arrival of
The King's M esse nger, th e tonally synm1etrical
consequ ent is now added, as if the King's demand
were superfluous. The quietist impli cati ons are
clea r: it is not from this nam eless king th at a
significant message has come; nor is it in th e
unoccupi ed zo ne of th e troubled city o r th e
pastures beyo nd that th e tru e peaceable kingdom is to be found. With Goethe o nce again ,
'Ailes Vergangliche ist nur ein Gleichnis ... '.
Perhaps w ithout meaning to and certainl y
w itho ut any M ahlerian pretensions, W eill has
set th e musical stage for anoth er Chorus l'l'lystiws
(to w hich the o nly convincing alternative wo uld
be a Purgato rio and Rondo burlesca , in the
manner of th e second and third movements of
his Second Symphony). For just such a chorus,
he already had a clea r musical precedent in the
8-part choral setting of th e Alnlighty's command
to M oses after he has abandon ed his people and
asce nd ed the heigh ts, leaving Aaro n desolate
and afra id - afi·a id of 'vengeance' - while th e
Golden Image is being fashioned. On the heights
above, M oses is shown th e 'radiant prototypes in
eternity' of the sacred obj ects in the Ark of th e
Covena nt, and is th en co nunanded - and tllis is
w h ere th e 8-part cho rus begins - to take th e
46
'Der W eg der Verheismng', 'Th e Path
of the Bible',
T ables of the Law and descend to his people,
who are already worshipping and orgiastically
celebrating the God of Gold.
A corresponding ascent from nadir to Z enith is
not only conceivable after the interventio n of
Th e King's M essenger, but is latent in W erfel's
concluding stage-picture. Immediately after the
departure of Th e M essenger, rwo grea t processions begin to ascend T he Path ofThe Promise:
th e first co mprises all the Biblical fi gures and
sup ernumeraries, and is led by the arch-father
Abraham, w h ose gaze is fixed on the grea t
stairway that fom1s the Fifth Stage - the stair to
H eaven and the sphere of the angels and The
Voice of God; th e second begins o n th e grou ndlevel of the synagogue and its 'timeless' community, and is led by T he R abbi onto th e Path that
curves up to th e Biblical stages. At the head of
the great stairway forrning Stage Five app ears
once again the lu cent figure of The M essiah (or
Der Engel der Endzeit). His arms are outstretched towards Abraham 's; but 'before th e
meeting takes place', W erfel declares, 'the scene
fades into darkn ess and the play ENDS'.
The visio n is Wetfel's, but the appropri ate
'chorus mysticus' has in effect been rul ed out by
Meyer W eisgaJ's Z ionist o bj ectives and by th e
text of Psalm 126 which becomes th eir emblem
and justification. To end Der Weg der Verheissung
with a rousing choral settin g of that psalm, and
to prepare for the eve nt as ea rly as th e opening
scene, must have bee n among th e main points
of agreem ent confirn1ed at th e Venice and
Salzburg m eetin gs in th e first half of 1934. W eill
bega n sketching 'The Patriarchs' in September,
and within rwo o r three days must have reached
the point in the text w here Abraham and Sara
are instruc ted by th e Almighty to leave their
native land and proceed with th eir entire household to Canaan . As their caravan sets forth and
The Rabbi continues his natntion , the orchestra
adumbrates the C maj or alia marcia which at this
junctu re could be mistaken for mere stage-music.
In ' Moses', however, th e march returns in a
brief but euphoric choral setting which serves as
th e introductory refrain of a 'M arch to Zion'
w hose ex te nd ed and m o re m editative trio
section (notable for its tango-like undertones) is
destin ed to become th e epitaph of M oses as he
di es without setting foot in th e Promised Land.
In Part III there is only th e remotest ec ho of
th e M arch; and in Part IV , th e prophecies of
J eremiah, togeth er with th eir cataclysmic fi.llfilment in th e destru ctio n of the Templ e and the
captivity of th e blinded kin g and his people,
seem to have banished all thou ght of th e March
to Zion, as fa r as W eill's music is concern ed.
and J eremiah 's prophecies
And no wonder. The 'Tende nz' w hich had so
seized his imagi nation w hen he received th e
final pages from W erfel during the latter half of
September 1934 was no t, of co urse, the Zio nist
one (which he had known about all along).
Neither in th e passions and th e anguish of
Propheten, nor even in th e messianic C major
which answ ers th e suppli cati o ns of Ra chel and
the question and praye r of Th e Thirteen-YearOld, do es he give any warning of what w ill happen when the rwo processions begin their
ascent: eight bars of the sprightly caravan music
as th e processions assemble, a 16-bar choral setting of Psalm 126 (all six verses) based on the
lusty refrain of the March to Zion, and a ninebar orchestral coda ending forti ssimo in C
major. 'When the Lord turned aga in the captivity of Z ion ' sa ng the psalmist, 'we were Like
them that dream. Then was ou r mouth filled
with laughter, and o ur tongu e with singing .. .' .
In W eill's blithely triumphalist setting, there
is no time for them that dream, no time even
for the wide-awake Thirteen- Year- Old. Onl y
pe rhaps in the insistent m ajor-minor fa lserel ations preceding the final cadence is th ere
perhaps th e hint of a doubt abo ut the propriety
of such a statement in this profoundly hazardous
and uncertain context.
Including th e extended trio which is reserved
for Moses in Part II , th e ' M arc h to Zion ' wo uld
have bee n ideal for the purposes of Th e Ro ma~~ ce
of a People, the vast open- air pagea nt of Jewish
history which W eisgal had presented at the
Chicago Worlds Fair in M ay 1933 . Almost exactly
ten years after that sensationally successful eve nt,
th e March to Zion was heard agai n in W e will
Never Die, a pagea nt first staged at M adiso n
Square Gard ens and spo nsored by the
Conunittee for a J ewish Army of Stateless and
Palestinian J ews. Th e auth or of the text was th e
playwright, journalist, and militant ac tivist, Ben
H ec ht, with w hom W eill was closely in volved
during th e war yea rs. Subtitled 'A M emorial D edi cated to the Two Million J ewish D ead of
Europe' , W e Will Never Die was an expression of
o utrage, and perhaps the first of its kind anywhere; but its ultimate purpose, like th at of th e
March of Z io n, was purely propaga ndist.
T he final ap pea rance of th e M arch in W eill 's
lifetime - or so th e evidence suggests - was in
August 1946 in A Flag is Born , a pagea nt com lnissioned fro m H ec ht by the Amet; can League
for a Free Pal estin e. Furnished w ith at least
fourtee n passages of incidental music, mostl y by
W eill and partly fi:om Th e Etemal R oad, th e
pagea nt boasted th e subtitle ' Pales tin e is Ours '.
When all is said and do ne, and every reaso n-
'D er Weg der Verh eismng', 'The Path of the Bible', and Jeremiah 's prophecies
abl e explanati on or exc use weighed in th e
balance, it is hard to resist the co nclusion that
Th e Eternal R oad was almost fa tally flawed from
th e start. The very title which had been wished
up o n the English-language versio n of Der Weg
der Verheissung was a techni colo r folly wo rse
than any in Hollywoo d 's Song of Bemadette.
Was no one in R einhardt's production tea m
awa re, or did no one care, th at 'The eternal
road ' was an image favoured by Germany's new
leadership , and especially by the Propaganda
Minister, for w ho m 'Der ewige W eg des
N ationalsozialismus ' was not o nly a foregon e
co nclusion but also part of th e daily round of
speech- m aking and leader-writing?
In his letter to Lenya of 4 June 1947 , written
from Geneva after his first and only visit to
Palestine, W eill mentions the ' hu ge ovation'
he had received from the Palestine Orchestra
(soo n to beco me the Israel Philharmonic), and
also a 'short and painless' recepti o n for him
given by th e M ayor of Tel-Aviv, a city which
he describ es as 'very ugly w ith a j ewish-fascist
po pulation th at m akes yo u vomit'.* Hi s
vehemence is revealing, and not only in th e
imm ediate co ntext of his private meeting with
C haim W eizmann .
That mee ting had been arranged for him by
M eyer W eisgal, who only a fe w months earlier
had severed his last links with Zionism and th e
J ewish Agency, in disgust at th e backstage
intrigues against W eizmann. How moved W eill
had been by the meeting with W eizmann is
so mething to which his correspo ndence, and
no t only with Lenya , testifi es. But th ere is a
deeper expression of personal emotion in the
orchestral arra nge ment of the H atikvah which
he composed later that year for perfom1ance by
th e Boston Symphony Orchestra in conjunction
w ith a Testimoni al Dinner in W eizmann 's
honour. Six months later, the new State oflsrael
was proclaimed, and W eizmann was named its
first President. Predictably, th e H atikvah was
chose n as the national anthem; but instead of
anticipating that predictable choi ce, W eill 's
disquieting arrangement is th e nea res t he ever
ca me to a critiqu e of his own March to Zion.
The present writer's decision to preface his
1998 performing edition of Propheten. w ith
W eill's Hatikvah was inseparable from th e more
complex but equally onerous decisions relating
to th e formal and musico-dram atic consequ ences of the Royal Messenger's intervention.
All other considerati o ns aside, a 16-bar reprise
of th e cyclic M arch to Zion would have been
* See Tempo 206, September 1998, p.19.
47
stru cturally egregious and musically inane. The
4-act structure of the score 'begi ns' (without
prelude or introdu ction) in G and 'ends' (without
closure) in th e C m ajor of th e Covenant-music;
but Propheten as a self-standing entity beginning
in Dorian E is structurally incompatible with an
o pen end followed by a 34-bar March which apart from its frankly propaga ndist purpose - is
a minusc ule Grand Finale-cum-curtain-call for
the entire cast of Der Weg.
The performin g ve rsion of Propheten therefo re
o mits the M arch to Z ion and replaces it with th e
tripartite stru cture of Interlud e, Double Chorus,
and Epilogue which closes 'The Kings'. As for
b eginning this ve rsion w ith th e orchestral
Hatikvah , the dra matic and histo rical relevance
of Weill's arrangement wo uld be insufficient
justification were it not for the musical conn exions. E cho es of the Walt Whitman settings of
1942 and anticipations of the ' Cry, the Beloved
Co untry' lament of 1949 are secondary in
importance compared to th e sub-thematic and
motivic links. The arrangement does not begin
with the traditional melody of the Hatikvah , but
with Weill 's own counter-theme, presented at
the start in parallel triads. The incipit, including
th e dactylic rhythm, replicates in the sam e
modality (D o rian on E) but in diminution and
in higher octaves (woodwind and second violins)
the similarly descending scale of the opening
phrase of Propheten - Isaiah the Prophet's question to th e unseen watchman, 'W achter, wie
weit in der N acht sc hon?' . The same motif,
again underlin ed in parallel fifths (rather than
tri ads), had acco mp ani ed J eremiah 's first
prophecy of woe. Isaiah's retort, 'Comfort Y e,
My People', begi ns with the same motif in the
m ajor, and continu es with a refrain based on its
inversion - none other than W eill's adaptatio n
of 'Omnom Kein' , here assoc iated with Isaiah 's
vision of a peace-loving Israel admired and
emulated by 'all nations' .
Ifthis was The Hope, ' H a' tikvah ' , ofChaim
W eizmann and indeed of his friend and private
secretary M eyer W eisgal, and co untless others,in N ew York and W ashington in November
194 7, the realities of the time - like those of o ur
o wn time - gave every sign that th at fulfilm ent
of The Hope would be long deferred. That,
indeed, is th e sense ofWeill's arran gement, no t
least in the central section, w here the dactylic
rhythm of the opening is transferred to a twonote ostinato in th e bass. Although that particular
ostinato, and oilier similar ones, have been W eill's
favo urite trope for dangerous and war-like situations ever since Die Biirgschcift, he can hardly have
forgotten its role in the central scene in Propheten,
48
b~.&.t
'Der Weg der VerheiSSimg', 'The Path
of the Bible',
where Jerusalem is besieged, and Jeremiah is
attacked by the crowd and denoun ced and
impriso ned by the war-m ongerin g Chananja h.
Given his life long fo ndn ess for contrapuntal
inve rsions and maj or-m.i.nor transfonnation, th e
comp oser of Hatikvah was clea rly recalling th e
di alectical relatio nships betwee n J eremiah and
Isaiah at the start of Proph eten and the Vision of
th e Messiah at the close. O nly in th e light of that
dialectic - and its links (via 'Omnom Kein ')
with th e liturgy of th e Eve of Aton ement - are
the last two bars of Weill's H atikvah comprehensible as son1.ethin g m ore than a pardonable
concessio n to the mood of a testimonial dinn er
for W eizmann. The final Picardy third (with
obligatory cymbal clash) would be a hollow triumph indeed/ror W eill's sharply form ulated perception thatfu e incipit of'Omnom Kein ' (in his
versio n) was alway latent in that of th e
H atikvah 's fo lk-tune, and vice ve rsa. By cleaving to the minor mode until th e penultimate
bar, the Hatikvah of 1947 finally suppl ants th e
M arch to Z ion, and restores J eremiah to his
rightful place op posite Isaiah.
f
Loyalties: Ruth and Naomi contra Polly
and Macheath
'MELODIE, MELOD IE , MELODIE' - that had been
W erfel's triplicated demand to Weill when he
w rote to him from Breitenstein on 15
September 1934 enclosing the final scenes of
Der W eg der Verheissung. Not anticipating th e
electrify ing effect of the final childlike visio n of
The M essiah, and certainly not bargaining for
through-composed stru ctures (or for individual
recitatives, arias and ensembles w here none was
specified), W erfel was perhaps thinkin g of a
score in the tradition of Weill's first composition
teacher, Humperdinck - the Humperdinck of
Konigskinder and R einhardt's Th e M iracle. W eill
had other ideas fro m the start; and at least some
of them appealed to R einhardt.
But R einhardt for his part had requirements
strictly of his own. One of them concerned th e
actress H elena Thimig, his non-J ewish partner
during the rece nt years of a marriage now dissolved. Like W e1fe l, who for many yea rs had
li ved wi th th e Gentile to whom he was now
married, and like W eill, w ho had remained o utwa rdl y unp erturbed by his recent divorce fi·om
Lenya , Reinhardt had a personal as well as a
political and philanthropic interest in th e
extended scene with w hich W erfel had begun
'The Kings ' (Part III). For in that scene th e
ancestry of King David is traced back to th e
Moabite Ruth - by strict definition , a Gentile,
and certainly an alien in th e eyes of th e Isra elites
and J eremiah's prophecies
of the time. The st01y is archetypal, its figures
univ ersal . N aomi is the widow of Elimelech of
Bethlehem , w ho had taken her to th e neighbo uring land of M oab , together with th eir two
so ns. Both so ns many Moabites, o ne of w hom
is Ruth . After ten yea rs, M oab is stri cken by
drought and famin e, and both so ns di e. Naomi
resolves to return to Bethlehem, and Ruth,
unlike her sister-in-law, insists on accompanying her: 'Whith er thou goest, I w ill go; and
w here thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people
shaiJ be my people, and thy God my God'.
For the European and America n publics, and
particularly for the public in Germany that
W e1fel was thinking of (a nd that Schoenberg
was still hoping to reach w ith Der biblische W eg)
th e moral, and th e inter- rac ial politics, of th e
Book of Ruth were wholly apposite. For
R einhardt, W e1fel's Ruth was a role made for
H elene T himig; and for W eill, th e directorial
imperati ves would entail th e familiar disciplin e
of writing for a singing actor rather than a
trained singer.
From W erfel 's and Reinhardt 's point of view,
th e Ru th scene was a playlet within a play; from
W eill's it was a miniature biblical opera with an
impo rtant social theme, and as such, a successor
to one of the many proj ects left behind in
Ge rm any
Nabo ths W einberg (N aboth 's
Vineya rd), a school-opera planned with Caspar
N eher in 1932. Last and probably least, but by
no means insignificantl y, the Ruth scene was for
W eill a means of qualifying th e calculated blasphemy of Brecht's allusion to Ruth 's pledge
(' Whither thou goest. .. ; etc) in th e PollyM ac heath 'Love Scene' in Die Dmgroscher10per,
with o ut suggesting any reaso n or desire to
repudiate it.
As a natural enemy of Brecht and his circle,
and th e butt of his own onetime supp o rter Karl
Krau s, W erfel co uld hardly have introduced , in
all seriousness , a R oyal M essenger at th e end of
Der I!Veg der Verheimmg witho ut at the sam e time
ho ping to get his own back. Whereas Brecht's
playful gloss on J ohn Gay had heightened th e
deliberate absurdity of Gay's Happy End, W elfel's
wholly serious gloss on Gay and Brecht produces,
w ith th e aid of Psalm 126, a Zionist End th at he
himself was not party to, and that Weill, already
co nfused by his parents' immigration to
Palestine, was un able or unwilling to dwell upon .
Predi ctably eno ugh it is th e Ruth scene that
exposes the fundam ental di chotomi es refl ected
in Der Weg der Verheissung: th ose w hich had existed or developed in the minds of its two autho rs,
and th ose inh e rent in th e cultural hist01y of
th e first half of th e 20th centUty .
Der Weg der Verheissung', 'Th e Path of the Bible', and Jeremiah 's prophecies
49
Alban Berg's posthumous Vio lin Conce rto of book of th e 48- specifically to the co unter sub1935 and W etfe l's Das Lied von Bemadette of j ect and w hat becomes of it in th e later episodes .
1941 - his first work in Arr1e1i ca - were dedi cated Altho ugh this subterranea n intrusio n from th e
to th e memo ry of th e same 19-year-old gi rl : Busoni years is a rec urrent feature of the rondo
M ano n Gropius, Alma M ahl er's daughter by form and is eventually resolved by the concludher second m arri age. Within 20 yea rs of its ing fu gal stretto (not ho wever o n the m ain subpremiere - at least half of w hi ch we re lost j ect) it is yo ked to a molto espressivo refrain in G
beca use of world eve nts- th e Berg co nce rto had maj or (with tints of th e minor) that hails from a
established itself in th e 20th-century repertory very different wo rld, as do all th e lyrical maj orand in popular estee m. By th en The Song of mo de episodes th at follow.
Bernadette had topped th e best-seller lists everyThe lyrical refrain is first sun g by Ruth to th e
w here, made fo rtunes for m any, and quietly wo rds of her sole11U1 pledge, 'Whither tho u
fa ded fro m view, unbruised by th e sco rn heaped goest, I will go'. In spirit (for it is by no mea ns
o n it by intellectu als of every hu e. As late as without spirit) th e refrain and its ham1on y are
1965, even so distin guished an advocate of already tra velling- companions fo r R einhardt on
W etf el as Walter Sokel felt obliged to prefa ce his his missions to H o llywood ; and indeed it was
defence of the novel by remarkin g that in the first in Hollywood in 1937 th at W eill sketched a
yea r of publicatio n ' millions of shopgirls from foxtrot version of the refrain for his Fritz Lang
Zurich to C aliforni a had rejoi ced over it' .*
film You and Me. It was not used. But the miginal
Even if W erfel himself had sca rcely dream ed scene, as already no ted, retain ed its hold on
of such a readership, it was implicit in his reli- W eill's imaginatio n until the last weeks of his
gious and social thinking that w hat he had to say life, w hen he was acti vely plannin g a college
ho uld reach th e wides t possible public. There at o pera on th e Ruth materia] with Alan J ay
least W eill was entirely at o ne w ith him; and Lerner as his librettist and Down ir1 the Va lley as
even th e Berg o f th e Violin C oncerto might not its forerunner.
have demurred. The difference was no t so mu ch
W eill knew exactly what he was do ing w hen
between W erfel's public and Berg's, as between he couched th e pledge-refrain in a different
Berg's and Schoe nberg's.
musical language fro m that of th e C minor tango,
Thanks to the practical exigencies and to for it is Ruth 's answer, o n th eir safe arrival in
R einhardt's close personal in vo lvem ent, the Israel, to N aomi 's considerate but heavy-heatted
scene of N aomi , Ruth and Boaz epitomizes advice that she sho uld now return to M oa b
many of th e problems and some of th e musical w here she is free to worship th e G od of her own
obj ectives of th e firs t three Acts or Parts of Der people. In her loyal reply, the V -mino r relationWeg der Verheim mg. The stru ggle between Moses ship to whi ch th e W eill of fo rm er times mi ght
and The Angel of D eath had inspired the darkest instincti vely have resorted is o nl y a vesti gial
and most intense music yet, and R einhardt - wh o colo uring for an otherwi se o utspokenly oldwas later to extract from W eill a mo re popular £1shioned affirm ation of th e do min ant and its
replacement for th e fin ely inugi ned Rachel- m o ral order.
J acob duet in Act I - would have had cause to
Ruth 's readin ess to worship th e God of a
reconm1end beginning Part Ill in a m ore popular ' fo reign ' people, as if in recognitio n that historstyle even had Thimig's involvement not been an ically it is the same God as hers, was theologi cally
issue. W eill too k his cue for th e Ruth scene from important for W erfel, and at least in theory a
th e roughly comparable elopement-scene, ' D er link between him and th e W eill of th e M axwell
M adchenraub', w hi ch he had recently composed Anderson musicals, the Whitman Songs, and th e
fo r th e operetta Der Kuhh andel. But the J ewish-Christi an affili ations of his las t months.
Caribbea n settin g and primitive rural milieu of It is in the maj or-mode episodes of the Ruth
th e operetta introdu ced social and eroti c tensions sce ne, and above all in the Ruth-Bo az du et,
and titual undercurrents w hi ch w ere more con- that W eill was m ost plainly preparing himself
du cive to Weill 's invention dun th e respectable fo r conmmnicati o n with m ass audiences on
marriage of Ruth into high-bourgeois society. both sides of the Atlantic. As in th e ex uberant
Unlike the music of the operetta scene, that of M arch to Zion, so in th e tend ern ess and th e
th e Ruth scene is linguistically at odds with itself growing passion of th e Ruth-B o az duet: th e
The C minor tango with which it opens has a preferences, aes theti c prin ciples , and valu e
strong Jewish accent th at does not disguise a debt judgements of 'informed' elites have apparently
to Bach's great G minor fu gue in the second bee n set aside in favour of th e simplest and m ost
direct emotional appeaL
* Walter F. Sokel, -n,e Writer i11 £'Ctremis, Stanford, 1967, p.228.
Already, it wo uld seem , th e future compose r
50
'Der Weg der Verheissung', 'Th e Path
of the Bible',
of Lost in the Stars is mee ting W etfel's insistent
dem and for ' M elody' in terms w hi ch defin e
som e of th e o bj ecti ves of Th e Song of Bemadette.
In th at respect th e Ruth sce ne illustrates, m ore
clea rl y th an any other, th e characteristic polyva lences of D er Jl(leg der Verheissung and th e risks
entailed in over-e mphas izing th eir obvio us
attracti o ns in th e current theo retica l, critical ,
and cultural climates. As a mea ns of approaching
the W eill centenaty in the yea r 2000, Der Weg
der Ve rh eissung has th e undo ubted adva ntage th at
it can be promo ted and m arketed to the openminded and th e intellec tually curio us o n the
grounds that ' All W eill ' , or m ost of him , 'is
there' . For that purpose, its reti culated stru cture
is ideal. But th e tru e £1scina ti o n of the piece
detives not fro m the exemplaty character of this
or that passage acco rding to this or that th e01y,
but rath er from th e inter- depend ence of the
parts - th e weakest as well as th e stro ngest.
M elody, melody, and more melody, rega rdl ess
of fo rmal, dram ati c, and large-scale stru ctural
co nsiderations, wo uld never have bee n eno ugh
for W eill ; and it was certainl y not enou gh to
save Tl1e Eternal R oad.
'All W eill' is of co urse a co unter-slogan to th e
disca rded but not forgo tten bann ers of th e
' T wo-W eill' mo ve ment. Altho ugh the movement itself has long sin ce bee n disbanded and
its leaders banished to th e o uter darkness, the
musical perso n i.n th e stree t, th e professional or
amateur musician in thea tre, opera ho use, or
concert venu e, and th e conscientious and ho nestto-god listener, tends to rem ain unconvinced.
With the best w ill in the wo rld , th e eviden ce of
th eir ears still makes it as diffi cult fo r th em to
accept th e noti o n of a unitaty W eill as it is
easy - now- to revere a unitaty Stravins ky.
As th e W eill ce ntenaty approaches , th e
debates abo ut Der Weg der Verheissung might well
begin with a frank adrnissio n o n all sides that
there were indeed two W eills - W eill and Lenya.
By th e sa m e token th ere were two W etfels Franz and Alma. This wo uld seem to be an
opportun e moment fo r openin g a new enquiry
- and no t only fi·om the standpoint of gend er
stucli es - into th e influ ences exerted by these two
remarkable women o n th eir respecti ve husbands,
and th e rapport between them that developed
over th e 15 or so years afte r W eill 's dea th.
Neither W eill nor W erfe l we re th e weak men
their detractors often claim ed; but each was mallea ble up to a po int. Th e £1et th at Alma M ahl er
possessed heavier hammers than Lenya, and rather
m ore of th em , is less important th an th e skills
and intelligence with which they were wielded.*
and j eremial1 's prophecies
Envoi
T he story of Schoe nb erg's frustrated attempt to
co ngratulate Britten after the petformance of th e
Serenade fo r Tenor, H om , a11d Strings w hi ch
Btitten had co nd ucted in Los An geles soo n after
th e end of World W ar II is well known: th e
m essage deli ve red to Britten in so ga rbl ed a form.
that he did not recognize the name of his
prospective visitor, and the repl y to th e effec t
that Mr B ritten was unabl e to receive any m o re
unin vited gues ts that evening. Distressing as th e
stoty is from eve ty angle, it is easier to imagin e
th an th e results of a hypothetical encounter in
postwa r H oll ywood between the composer of
1\lloses und Aron, the Kol N idre, and A Survivorjro111
Jl(/arsaw, an d his erst\vhile admirer, th e co mposer
of Der Weg der Ve rh eissung and its immecliate
begetter, Die siebe11 Todsii11de11 . T he sense in
w hi ch Schoenb erg mi ght wish to congratulate
Britten o n his Serenade is as clea r as the fac t that
th ere was no co nceivable se nse in w hi ch
Schoe nb erg mi ght have fo und it possible to pay
a similar compliment to W eill .
And W eill ? If Ad o rn o' s acco unt is to be
trusted, W eill saw Scho enb erg's 'W ay' as th e
o nl y va lid alte rnati ve to his own (w hi ch left
no room for Britten , of course : but neith er did
Ad o rn o). B efore th e judge m ent-sea t of
Schoenb erg himself, W eill wo uld surely have
suppressed any tho ught of such a po lari ty. But at
least with respect to Die siebeu Todsii11 de11 and
th e key moments in Der Jl(leg he co uld well have
summon ed in his defen ce the unqui et spitit of
another of his natural enemi es, and turned to his
own acco unt the short poem entitled 'Coda'. Its
author is Ezra Pound:
0 m y so ngs ,
W hy do you look so eagerl y and so curi o usly
into peo pl e's £1Ces.
Wi ll you find yo ur lost dead am o ng them '
Th anks are du e ro Dr. Sidn ey Fix man, Dr. Ed wa rd
H arsh. and th e staff of th e W eill- Lcnya R esea rch
C entre for mu ch help w ith resea rch and documentanon.
*
As f:1 r as th e e vidence of Lenya's true stature and natural
gifts are co ncerned, two remarka ble publ icatio ns coi nciding
wi th her own centenary last O ctober will be fo und in val uable:
L£ ,\ ' l 'fl TJ1 e Le,~end: A Pia orinl A li iObio,Qrnplq•, ed ited and
introduced by David Farn eth (Thames & Hudso n, Lo ndo n
1998): and LE.\'l'fl. a magnHicent productio n published by
Bea r Fam.i ly R ecords (Gern1any) and co ntaining in additi o n
to Le nya ·s co mplete reco rdings o n 13 C D s a ve ry substanrial
hard- cover vo lu me of docum entatio n Jnd pi ctures. Thanks to
Farn eth's metic ulous ed iting of the ' Pi ctorial Autobiograp hy'
and rh e co mbined etTorrs of the many co ntributo rs to the
B ear Fami ly album. o ur present kn owledge and understanding of W eill·s Li felong if so metin1es in tennirrcnr and \VaywJ rd
partn er is much e nhanced.