Brahms as Liberal: Genre, Style, and Politics in Late Nineteenth
Transcription
Brahms as Liberal: Genre, Style, and Politics in Late Nineteenth
Brahms as Liberal: Genre, Style, and Politics in Late Nineteenth-Century Vienna Author(s): Margaret Notley Source: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 107-123 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/746329 Accessed: 15/11/2010 23:28 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to 19thCentury Music. http://www.jstor.org Brahms Genre, Late as Liberal: in and Politics Style, Vienna Nineteenth-Century MARGARETNOTLEY In an account of Brahms's dissatisfactions with the city of Vienna, Max Kalbeck recalled that after Wagner's death "music got mixed up with politics, and obscurantists from various parties had their hands in the matter." Kalbeck was writing here of Brahms's anger in the 1880s at the "anti-German" policies of the Czech-Clerical-Polish coalition then in power in the central government-the composer believed that machinations were behind the unsatispriestly state of affairs-and added that "the factory musical situation in the imperial city also did not please him." Using the religious theme of Parsifal as a tenuous connective to the previ- 19th-Century Music XVII/2 (Fall 1993). ? by The Regents of the University of California. A shorter version of this paper was given at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in 1992. I would like to thank Professors Leon Plantinga, David Brodbeck, and Virginia Hancock for their comments on drafts of that version. I am also grateful to James Webster for having read and commented on a more recent draft. ous topic of suspected Catholic intrigues, the biographer seized the opportunity to rail further on his own account at those "sanctimonious demagogues" who found Wagner's music useful because it "suppressed the intellect and unleashed the senses."' In this remarkable ac- 1"Was hier seinen Unmut erregte, war nicht die deutschfeindliche Politik der Regierung allein, mit der, wie bei allen Gelegenheiten, wo im Trtiben gefischt wird, Urtriebe der Pfaffen Hand in Hand gingen; auch die musikalischen Zustande der Kaiserstadt behagten ihm nicht. Die Musik wurde mit der Politik vermengt, und Dunkelmanner aus verschiedenen Parteilagern hatten die Hande dabei im Spiele. Seit Wagners 'Parsifal' galt der Autor des 'Biihnen-Weihfestspieles' vielen als eine Art von bekehrtem 'Tannhdiuser,' der vielleicht zuletzt noch reuig aus dem Venusberge in den Schof der alleinseligmachenden Kirche zurtickgekehrt ware. ... Jedenfalls Ubte, nach der Meinung scheinheiliger Demagogen, seine den Geist die Sinne entfesselnde Kunst einen knebelnde, zweckdienlicheren Einflutf auf glAubige Gemtiter aus als die Musik des Freidenkers und Haretikers" (Johannes Brahms, 4 vols. in 8 [rev. edn. Berlin, 1912-21], vol. III [1912], pp. 402-03). The "free-thinker and heretic" is, of course, Brahms. 107 19TH CENTURY MUSIC count, Kalbeck-and, of course, by implication Brahms himself-was displaying a complex of attitudes that students of nineteenth-century Austrian cultural history readily recognize as characteristically Liberal: a pro-German stance, an antagonism toward the Catholic church, and a profound distrust of anti-intellectual trends. Kalbeck's treatment of the opposition-the Brahms biograAnton Bruckner-within phy is no less telling. According to Kalbeck, part of Bruckner's appeal after Wagner's death lay in a politically motivated reaction against Brahms: "The troops called up to arms against Brahms received fortification from extremists of various reactionary religious, political, and social congregations."2 Kalbeck judiciously omitted any discussion of the Brahmsians' harsh ripostes: the vicious critical assaults on Bruckner in the 1880s, later judged by Carl Dahlhaus to be "one of the sorriest chapters in the history of music criticism."" There is certainly much evidence to support Dahlhaus's view. The attacks on Bruckner by such critics as Eduard Hanslick and Gustav D6mpke-as well as by Kalbeck, who wrote for Die Presse-were both brutal and personal: in one wellknown, scurrilous review D6mpke called the composer an "Untermensch" and said that he composed "like a drunk."4 But Dahlhaus's further claim that such attacks "struck a man who, unlike Wagner, was largely unable to defend himself"5 is too strong. Bruckner received ardent support in the debate from an unexpected journalistic source: the press of the PanGermans and of the Christian Socials, the most important of the anti-Liberal parties on the far right formed during that decade.6 2"Die gegen Brahms zum Heerbann aufgebotenen Truppen erhielten Verstiirkung von den Ultras verschiedener und gesellreligi6ser, politischer rfickschrittlicher, schaftlicher Wagners mythologisch Kongregationen. beglaubigtes Germanentum hatte auf den R6mling und dessen Symphonien abgeffirbt" (ibid., III, 404). 3Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989), p. 271. 4In the same review (Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, 30 March 1886), D6mpke wrote that "explanations for abnormalities must be sought" (quoted in Manfred Wagner, Bruckner [Munich, 1983], p. 174). 5Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, p. 271. 6See Manfred Wagner, "Bruckner in Wien: Ein Beitrag zur Apperzeption und Rezeption des ober6sterreichischen 108 What ostensibly lay at the center of the dispute was an aesthetic disagreement concerning the relative merits of "inspired invention" versus "rational elaboration," and these two poles were often linked to the contrasting connotations embedded in the genres of symphonic and chamber music.7 The argument, though, was not solely aesthetic. In fact, as Kalbeck claimed, it acquired political overtones and is perhaps best understood within the broader context of the Vienna of the late nineteenth century.8 Both composers lived permanently in Vienna from the late 1860s until their deaths in 1896 (Bruckner) and 1897 (Brahms). Their residence corresponds closely with what many have recognized as the era of Liberalism in that city: 1867-97. Austrian Liberals resembled other nineteenth-century European Liberals in their general belief in progress and the individual and their espousal of scientific methods and laissez-faire economics. But perhaps the most important point about this resolutely anticlerical liberalism is its sociological constituency. The Austrian Liberal party drew its members from a circumscribed, intellectually select group: the educated German and Jewish-German middle and upper-middle classes.' In 1867 Austria had ratified a constitution that implemented Liberal ideas of religious freedom and equality before the law. Viennese Jews felt an especially strong allegiance to the Liberal party Komponisten in der Hauptstadt der k. k. Monarchie"; and Johannes-Leopold Mayer, "Musik als Gesellschaftliches Anton Bruckner, der Anti-Biirger: Das Argernis-oder: Phanomen Bruckner als historisches Problem." Both essays are in Anton Bruckner in Wien: Eine Kritische Studie zu seiner Pers6nlichkeit, ed. Franz Grasberger, vol. II, Anton Bruckner: Dokumente und Studien (Graz, 1980). issue calls aesthetic Floros the 7Constantin "Einfallsapologetik gegen Verherrlichung der Ausarbeitung" in Brahms und Bruckner: Studien zur musikalischen Exegetik (Wiesbaden, 1980), pp. 30-34. See, as well, Bryan Gilliam, "The Two Versions of Bruckner's Eighth Symphony," this journal 16 (1992), 60-61. "Compare Leon Botstein, "Brahms and Nineteenth-Century Painting," this journal 14 (1990), 159. 9For two commentaries on the nature of Austrian Liberal culture, see Carl E. Schorske, "Politics and the Psyche: Schnitzler and Hofmannsthal," in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1981), pp. 5-10; and Albert Fuchs, Geistige Stromungen in Osterreich: 1867-1918 (Vienna, 1949), pp. 10-12. (called the Verfassungspartei in the 1860s), for the "1867 Constitution was from the standpoint of Austrian Jewry the culmination of the long struggle for emancipation."'1 Still, the Liberals remained the majority party in the central government only until 1879, and they were increasingly under attack in Vienna thereafter. In brief, the 1880s witnessed a growing cleft in Viennese society with the ascendency of political leaders representing different constituenlower-middle and working classes, cies-the Slavic nationalists, Pan-German extremists, and discontented Catholics from various social eventustrata including the aristocracy-who the of the Liberals on the hold broke city. ally The most successful of these figures was the Christian Social Karl Lueger, who received much of his initial support from the lower Catholic clergy and the newly enfranchised lower-middle class." When Lueger took office as mayor of Vienna in 1897, after having been elected on an anti-Semitic platform, it marked the end of the Liberal era.12 The Bruckner-Brahms conflict was played out against the backdrop of this sociopolitical upheaval. Like the political situation, the musical controversy grew more heated in the late 1880s, as political issues spilled over with greater frequency into the musical life of the city. Articles in the Christian-Social newspapers and books about Bruckner written soon after his death drew an analogy between antiLiberal political activity and the struggle to gain a hearing for Bruckner's compositions, adding that the two causes shared the same enemy: the Liberal establishment and, in particular, the Liberal press. One article, for example, protested a suggestion in an obituary by Richard Heuberger, which had appeared in both the Neue freie Presse and the Wiener Tagblatt, that the advocacy of Bruckner's music was politi- "'Robert S. Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph (New York, 1989), p. 145. "Lower-middle-class men received the vote on the national level in 1882, on the local level in 1885. Workingclass men did not receive the vote until 1907. See John W. Boyer, Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna: Origins of the Christian Social Movement 1848-1897 (Chicago, 1981), pp. 64, 211, and 324. 12Individual Liberals, however, did continue to occupy key positions. See Fuchs, Geistige Stromungen, pp. 8-10. cally motivated: "It is not the veneration of Bruckner, but rather the opposition to him, that was-and is-a factional matter. In fact, it emanates from the party that means the same thing in the field of music that the old Liberal does in the field of politics. It uses the same press organs-indeed is often made up of the same people-but is at last in the process of dying out.'"'3 Thus, each side accused the other of factionalism; extramusical motives were at work on both sides. Liberal critics of Bruckner belittled his close ties to the Catholic church and his manifest Unbildung-Brahms himself described his rival as "a poor crazy person whom the priests of St. Florian have on their consciences."'4 On the other hand, critics in sympathy with the anti-Liberal movement saw Brahms as not merely an insider to the Viennese establishment but also a quintessential Liberal. And in fact there is a good deal of truth in this assessment: Brahms's Liberal identity went far beyond the conventional prejudice against Catholicism that he frequently expressed. Indeed, the values he held in common with the besieged Viennese Bildungsbiirgertum (educated, culturally formed middle class) were also fundamental to his artistic character. As we shall see, criticism of Brahms in the 1880s culminated in overt anti-Liberal critiques toward the end of the decade, which focused either on his connections to the elite cultural institutions or on traits considered specifically Liberal-or Jewish. sondern die Bekiimpfung '3"Nicht die Verehrung, Bruckner's war und ist Parteisache, und zwar geht sie von jener Partei aus, die auf musikalischem Gebiet dasselbe bedeutet, wie auf politischem Gebiete die altliberale, und sich derselben Presseorgane bedient, ja vielfach aus denselben Personen besteht, endlich aber gleich dieser im Absterben begriffen ist" (this article, written by Heinrich Schuster, appeared in the Deutsche Zeitung, 5 Nov. 1896). Most of Schuster's article is reprinted in Wagner, Bruckner, pp. 221-23. See, as well, Carl Hruby, Meine Erinnerungen an Anton Bruckner (Vienna, 1901), p. 27; and Rudolf Louis, Anton Bruckner (Munich, 1905), p. 96. 4""Erist ein armer verrtickter Mensch, den die Pfaffen von St. Florian auf dem Gewissen haben" (Bruckner had been a student at the monastery of St. Florian) (Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, III, p. 408, n. 1). Kalbeck had previously suppressed this passage from a letter (12 January 1885) to Elisabeth von Herzogenberg when he published the Brahms-von Herzogenberg correspondence. 109 MARGARET NOTLEY Brahms as Liberal 19TH CENTURY MUSIC II To what extent is it possible to reconstruct Brahms's "political" personality? The question is by no means an easy one. According to Christian Martin Schmidt, in the second half of the nineteenth century the Austrian and German middle classes were basically indifferent to political and social questions, leaving decisions on these matters to professional politicians.is However defensible such a judgement might be for the earlier part of this period, it does not hold up well for the latter part of it. The growing threat of political anti-Semitism seems to have stimulated many middle-class Viennese into opinions and even action. The Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus was formed in June 1891; by 1895 the society had 4,520 members.16 The founders included Brahms's friend Theodor Billroth; another prominent friend, Viktor Miller zu Aichholz, joined in 1897.17 Brahms's attitude toward all of this is at least partially recoverable. Like many of his fellow Liberals, he was guilty of occasional remarks that we would now consider to be antiSemitic. For example, the composer Karl Goldmark related an incident in which Brahms remarked loudly of him at a dinner party, "Don't you think it strange that a Jew should set a text of Martin Luther's to music? " (Brahms had origi- '"Das Buirgertum verhielt sich in der zweiten Hiilfte des 19. Jahrhunderts indifferent hinsichtlich des politischgesellschaftlichen Geschehens. Die Politik uberlietf man den *von oben bestallten Fachleuten und die sozialen Spannungen und Probleme wurden entweder nicht gesehen oder ignoriert" (Christian Martin Schmidt, Johannes Brahms und seine Zeit [Regensburg, 1983], p. 47). The figure of the "unpolitical German" appears frequently in commentaries on this period. 16Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna, pp. 186-87. In the March 1891 elections, the Liberal party had not condemned antiSemitism in its platform, as it had done in the past. See Peter Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria (rev. edn. Cambridge, Mass., 1988), p. 151. 17In 1876 Billroth had written an influential anti-Semitic book (Uhber das Lehren und Lernen der medizinischen Wissenschaften an den Universitiiten der deutschen Nation) about the influx of Jewish medical students into Vienna, which he later repudiated. See Boyer, Political Radicalism in Vienna, pp. 455-56, n. 245; Wistrich, Jews of Vienna, pp. 64, 216, 551-52. Bericht der Dritten des Vereines zur Abwehr des Generalversammlung Antisemitismus (Vienna, 1897), p. 14, lists Aichholz as an "Ehrenmitglied." It seems likely that other friends, and possibly Brahms himself, may have become members, but I have not yet seen the complete reports of this society. 110 nally refused to believe that the work was by Luther, but had then discovered that Goldmark was right.) For his part, Goldmark attributed the other composer's rage to his having overlooked the "exquisite" text for his own use, and he suggested that Brahms may have felt guilty afterward for having lost his temper. From our present perspective, the most surprising aspect of the story may be Goldmark's refusal to take offense at the way in which Brahms expressed his anger: for Goldmark, the point seems to have been the intensity of the other composer's wrath. He prefaced his account by remarking that Brahms "was as great a man as he was an artist," adding that "there was not a blot on his superb character," but that "he was never accustomed to restraining himself nor to holding his tongue."'" It is certainly clear that Brahms vehemently rejected most of the political or official policies and attitudes of anti-Semitism. Another close associate, Richard Heuberger, quoted Brahms in 1890 on the Jew-baiting by then rampant in Vienna: "I can scarcely speak of it, it seems so despicable to me. If the endless reinforcement of Galician Jews in Vienna were hindered, I would be in favor of it; but the rest is vileness."'1 (Many Liberal Jews in Vienna shared the composer's prejudice against the Galician Jews, who were seen as mired in "orthodox Heuberger also described obscurantism."20) Brahms's later fury at Lueger's mayoral victory: The master was completely horrified about the fact that the anti-Semites had gotten the upper hand in "'Karl Goldmark, Notes from the Life of a Viennese Composer, trans. Alice Goldmark Brandeis (New York, 1927), pp. 154-55. Goldmark published the setting of Luther's "Wer sich der Musik erkiest" for four voices and piano as his op. 42. He does not state in his memoir when he composed the piece. Furthermore, it was published with no indication of the year: see the entry under his name in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1980), vol. 7, p. 502. 9""Uberdie gegenwartige Judenhetze in Wien sagte Brahms: 'Daruber mag ich gar nicht reden, so erbdirmlich kommt mir das vor! Daf man den immerwdihrenden Nachschub galizischer Juden nach Wien hindert, dafur ware ich, aber alles andere ist eine Gemeinheit'!" (Richard Heuberger, Erinnerungen an Johannes Brahms: Tagebuchnotizen aus den Jahren 1875 bis 1897, ed. Kurt Hofmann [rev. edn. Tutzing, 1976], p. 45; the entry is from 4 November 1890). 20See Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna, pp. 82-83. the official positions of the city of Vienna and that Lueger had become vice-mayor and would soon be mayor: "Didn't I tell you already years ago that it would happen?You and all the others, too, laughed at me then. Now it's come to pass and with it the clerical economic system. If there were an 'AntiClerical Party'-that would make sense! But antiSemitism is insanity!'"21 The immediately entry in preceding reveals Brahms's Heuberger's diary (2 May 1895) for the of admiration Chancellor continuing Bismarck.22 BisOtto von Although Germany, marck was decidedly "illiberal," high regard for him was not incompatible with Austrian Liberalism, which had "traditionally combined constitutionalism with German nationalism."23 21"Der Meister war ganz entsetzt uiber die Tatsache, daf bei den offiziellen Stellen der Stadt Wien die Antisemiten hatten und Lueger Vizedie Oberhand bekommen burgermeister geworden und wohl bald Burgermeister sein wird: 'Habe ich Ihnen nicht schon vor Jahren gesagt, daf es so kommen wird? Sie haben mich damals ausgelacht und alle anderen auch. Jetzt ist es da und damit auch die Pfaffenwirtschaft. Gabe es eine 'Antipfaffenpartei'-das hatte noch Sinn! Aber Antisemitismus ist Wahnsinn'!" (Heuberger, Erinnerungen an Brahms, p. 82). Lueger first won the mayoral election in 1895, but the Emperor refused to ratify him as Mayor. It was only after Lueger had won four consecutive mayoral elections by increasingly large margins that the Emperor, in 1897, allowed him to take office. Despite the support that he received from the antiSemites, Bruckner insisted that he was not anti-Semitic. See August G611erich, Anton Bruckner: Ein Lebens- und Schaffens-bild, ed. Max Auer, vol. IV (Regensburg, 1936), pp. 228-29. Hruby reports, however, "as a curiosity," that Bruckner long considered asking Georg von Sch6nerer, a virulently anti-Semitic member of Parliament, to intervene on his behalf (in Parliament!). Hruby, Erinnerungen an Bruckner, p. 39. For more on Sch6nerer, see below. 22'"Wihrendwir gingen, sprach er uber die Bismarck-Reden, die gerade in einer neuen Buch-Ausgabe erschienen waren. Er war sehr begeistert dariiber: 'Und es ist doch wohl das meiste aus dem Stegreif! Vielleicht da und dort eine Sentenz etwas zugefeilt, aber im Ganzen doch Improvisation. Ein ungeheurer Geist! Und achtzig Jahre'!" (Heuberger, Erinnerungen an Brahms, p. 82; the entry is from 2 May 1895). 23Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism, p. 20. Many Liberals in Germany also admired certain of Bismarck's achievements, especially that of the unification of Germany. For Bismarck's complicated relations with the German Liberals, see James J. Sheehan, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1978). Lorenz Mikoletzky cites Hanslick (from archival material) in 1888 about Brahms's status as a German-born resident of Vienna: "'Obwohl in Hamburg geboren und noch nicht in Oesterreich naturalisiert, ist Brahms durch seinen stetigen Wohnsitz in Wien (seit 22 oder 23 Jahren) A number of anecdotes attest to Brahms's nationalistic fervor. For instance, Kalbeck ascribed Brahms's decision to spend the summers of 1886-88 in Switzerland to his love of the Oberland climate and landscape and, perhaps, an inclination to be near his friend, the journalist and poet Josef Viktor Widmann, but also to his previously mentioned sense of outrage about the Conservative coalition that, in 1879, had replaced the German Liberals in the Austrian government: "In view of the offensive public affairs, it pleased him to play the lover's role of the political refugee-that is to say, of a Liberal German man depressed in his feelings who turned his back, for the time being, on Minister Taaffe and his Czech-Polish-Clerical majority."24 Brahms's pride in being a German verged at times on jingoism, and in the third of these summers it caused a temporary rupture of his relations with Widmann. In August 1888, the latter wrote an article critical of the new Kaiser, the young Wilhelm II, to which Brahms reacted with predictable indignation, offering a defense not only of the Kaiser but also, gratuitously, of Wagner and Bayreuth.25 Yet Brahms possessed a pamphlet from that same year (1888) that viewed the dangerous new anti-Semitism in Austria as being "the natural result of exaggerated ideas of nationalism," especially the Liberals' German nationalism.26 There is no eigentlich ganz Oesterreicher geworden'." Mikoletzky, "Johannes Brahms und die Politik seiner Zeit," in Brahmsed. Susanne Kongress Wien 1983: Kongressbericht, Antonicek and Otto Biba (Tutzing, 1988), p. 390. Mikoletsky himself views Brahms as a patriotic German who was uncommonly well read in politics and history but who, nevertheless, deferred to the "experts" on contemporary political issues. 24"Auch gefiel er sich, angesichts der ihm widerwartigen 6ffentlichen Zustinde in Osterreich, in der Liebhaberrolle des 'politischen Flichtlings,' d. h. eines in seinen Gefiihlen liberalen deutschen Mannes, der dem gedruckten Ministerium Taafe und seiner tschechisch-polnischklerikalen Majoritit zeitweilig den Riicken drehte" (Kalbeck, Brahms IV, 1). 25See Kalbeck, Brahms IV, 151-53. Widmann, like Goldmark, forgave his friend's shortcomings. See his letter of 27 August 1888 in Gottfried Keller und J. V. Widmann: Briefwechsel, ed. Max Widmann (Basel, 1922), pp. 125-27. 26Anonymous, Gibt es eine gro/fe Conservative Partei in Osterreich? (Vienna, 1888). The author asserted that the Liberal party had become "conservative in the worst sense of the word" (p. 51) and so unpopular that in certain circles "the word 'Liberal' is used only as a reprove, even as an 111 MARGARET NOTLEY Brahms as Liberal 19TH CENTURY MUSIC reason to believe that Brahms accepted the argument, but the fact that he owned the pamphlet does suggest at least the possibility of some thoughtfulness about the issue of nationalism hidden behind the chauvinistic spouting. To be sure, Liberalism was not just a political and economic philosophy; as Rudolf Louis, one of its sharpest critics in the music world, noted, it was an entire Weltanschauungskomplex.27A number of writers have pointed out that the restricted group of people who provided the social base for the Liberalparty in Vienna were also the most active participants within the city's cultural institutions.28 Various friends of Brahms-for instance, the industrialist Richard Fellinger, along with the aforementioned Miller zu Aichholz, also an industrialist, and Billroth, a noted surgeon-formed part of the Liberalelite, as did several powerful advocates for his compositions-Kalbeck, D6mpke, Hanslick, and Heuberger-all of whom, as the partisans for Bruckner's music noted frequently, wrote reviews for Liberal newspapers. Both Liberalism's supporters and its critics acknowledged the paradoxical conservatism of the Liberals'cultural practices: Brahms'sreverence for the Classical past in instrumental music was thus by no means unusual-rather, it was the norm-and it was certainly a feature that endearedhim to his like-minded audience. The paradox was noted by many commenta- insult" (p. 53). The pamphlet proposed a restructured Conservative Party, which would be in agreement with most of the tenets of mid-century Liberalism, except in its espousal of a federalist solution to the nationalities problem. This pamphlet was in Brahms's library at the time of his death: see Kurt Hofmann, Die Bibliothek von Johannes Brahms: Biicher-und Musikalienverzeichnis (Hamburg, 1974), p. 3. The anti-Semitic parties were reactionary, that is, to the right of most within the Conservative Party. And between 1893 and 1895, the Conservatives and Liberals, "disturbed by lower middle-class radicalism in their ranks," formed a coalition in the central government. By the second decade of the twentieth century, though, the Christian-Social Party had become "what it had been tending to become for many years-the Conservative Party of Austria." See Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism, pp. 173 and 198. 27See n. 29 below. 28See, for instance, Botstein, "Brahms and Nineteenth-Century Painting," pp. 157-59. 112 tors. For example, in the course of his 1905 book on Bruckner, Louis wrote of his own longstanding critical stance toward the artistic preferences of the now-dethroned Liberal establishment: In peculiar contrast to its name and the political and economic views it advocated, Liberalismconstantly declared its allegiance in aesthetic matters to an ungenerous, patronizing conservatism. The artistic expression of the "Liberal"spirit was the academicepigonous classicism that today appears to us so thoroughly done away with.29 Looking back on the period from the perspective of 1933, the musicologist Arnold Schering, more tolerant of the Liberals and their predilection for Classical and classicizing art, wrote of Brahms's importance in the musical life of the educated upper-middle classes in Germany and Austria, "whose members belonged to the higher, intellectual professions," and added significantly for our argument here-that "the center of their musical world was chamber music," a genre especially associated with this composer.30 Brahms's tradition-oriented compositional style and his cultivation of the chamber genres certainly suited the tastes of many within the lag uberhaupt im innersten Wesen des damaligen 'Liberalismus' begrundet-sofern es erlaubt ist, darunter nicht blotg eine politische Partei, sondern in erweitertem zu Sinne einen ganzen Weltanschauungskomplex verstehen-datg er, in seltsamem Gegensatz zu seinem Namen und den von ihm vertretenen politischen und wirtschaftlichen Anschauungen, auf Asthetischem Gebiete bevormundenden sich stets zu einem engherzig Konservativismus bekannt hat. Der kiinstlerische Ausdruck des 'liberalen' Geistes war der akademisch-epigonenhafte Klassizismus, der uns heute so griindlich abgetan erscheint" (Louis, Anton Bruckner, pp. 97-98). Berufen Glieder den h6heren, geistigen 30"Deren angeh6rten. Hier... herrschte-bei allem Liberalismus in politischer Beziehung-ein gut konservativer Geist, ein gesunder Sinn filr Erhaltung und Weitergabe uiberkommener alles Kulturgiiter. . . . Diese Kreise sind treue Hutter ihrer Klassischen . . . Der Mittelpunkt gewesen. Musikpflege war die Kammermusik" (Arnold Schering, "Johannes Brahms und seine Stellung in der Musikdes 19. Jahrhunderts," in Jahrbuch der geschichte Musikbibliothek Peters ffir 1932 39 [Leipzig, 1933], p. 10). Schering had grown up in the sort of family that he was describing. This is a valuable essay despite the 1933 publication date. I am grateful to Pamela Potter for clarifying Schering's activities during the Nazi era. 29"Es prevailing Liberal culture; but beyond that, a case may be made that the substance of his music actually projected values that his own culture was tacitly encouraged to perceive as "Liberal." Commentators have often noted, for example, that Brahms emphasized the artistic and "logical" working-out of a musical idea, and several have connected this to middle-class attitudes. Schering asserted that the composer's audience responded to his music because it gave evidence of "self-restraint and rigor."'31 More recently, Schmidt has written that "hard work and willed accomplishment do not merely characterize Brahms's personal conduct; on the contrary, the category of accomplishment ... also stamps his conception of the compositional process."32 According to George Henschel, the composer stated explicitly that invention "is simply an inspiration from above . . . which I ought even to despise until I have made it my own by right of hard work." Tibor Kneif has connected this to the specific techniques of broken (durchbrochene) and thematic-motivic work that are so prominent a part of Brahms's compositional style.33 What has perhaps been insufficiently underscored is the great value that Brahms placed on the role of the intellect and the broader significance of this. The Liberals' guiding principle was their faith in the individual rational mind. A high regard for the intellect has, of course, distinguished Western civilization throughout most of its history. An increasingly widespread emphasis on reason, though-what might even be considered a politicized ideology of reason-is a particular hallmark of the period from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, 31"Das Herz flog Brahms zu . . . weil seine ganze Art des Musizierens auch eine Selbstzucht und Strenge verriet" (Schering, "Brahms und seine Stellung," p. 12). sind jedoch nicht allein 32"Fleitg und Leistungswille charakteristisch fotr Brahms' pers6nliches Verhalten, sondern die Kategorie Leistung-und das ist von auch seine Auffassung vom besonderem Gewicht-pragte Kompositionsproze{" (Schmidt, Brahms und seine Zeit, p. 59). 33George Henschel, Personal Recollections of Johannes Brahms: Some of His Letters to and Pages from a Journal Kept by George Henschel (Boston, 1907), pp. 22-23; Tibor Kneif, "Brahms-ein biirgerlicher Kiinstler," in Johannes Brahms: Leben und Werk, ed. Christiane Jacobsen (Wiesbaden, 1983), p. 12. the era of the ascendancy of the middle classes. Nineteenth-century Liberalism can be seen as one of the first culminations of rationalistic tendencies in Western culture: "The liberal credo in the broadest sense demanded of its devotees the commitment of heart, mind, and will to a world ordered by rational, regulative principles."34 As has been widely noted, this period was also marked by the rise of a supposedly "autonomous" instrumental music, whose existence came to be justified by the tonal system and by appeals to the techniques of "musical logic." The full flowering of tonal and thematic-motivic logic in Classical music surely offers at least a partial explanation for the Liberals' preference for that repertory over the Romantic music of the more recent past. Reason is clearly being privileged in the notion of "musical logic"; moreover, an elaborate analogy is being made between music and language. The young Heinrich Schenker wrote in 1895 that "musicians gradually started to believe that the art of music possessed an intrinsic logic similar to that of language" because instrumental music had been obliged "to learn to convey convincingly the impression of selfcontained thought."33 Among recent writers, no one has explored the topic more extensively than Dahlhaus. He wrote about the history of "musical logic," which dates back to the eighteenth century, and how the changing conceptualization of language subtly affected its meaning: music "can be designated as a language in an almost unmetaphorical sense" within the framework of certain nineteenthcentury linguistic theories.36 He also noted that, while in the eighteenth century the term referred only to harmony, in the nineteenth cen- 3"Schorske, "Austrian Aesthetic Culture in the Liberal Era: A Historian's Reflections'," in Pre-Modern Art of Vienna ed. Leon Botstein and Linda Weintraub 1848-1898, (Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., 1987), p. 18. 35According to Schenker, though, music only feigns "necessity and logic." See Heinrich Schenker, "The Spirit of Musical Technique," trans. William A. Pastille, Theoria 3 (1988), 87-88. The original article appeared in the Musikalisches Wochenblatt 26 (1895). See, as well, Pastille, "Heinrich Schenker, Anti-Organicist," this journal 8 (1984), 29-36. 36See Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Roger Lustig (Chicago, 1989), p. 113. 113 MARGARET NOTLEY Brahms as Liberal 19TH CENTURY MUSIC tury it came to encompass thematic techniques as well.37 In his work on Brahms, Dahlhaus focused on the aspect of "musical logic" that Adorno deemed to be "the vital element of chamber music, the work with themes and motifs or its echo, that which Schoenberg called 'developing variation"':38according to Dahlhaus, "music appears with Brahms as the development of [motivic] ideas, as sounding discourse."39 Elsewhere, he declared that this idea that the motivic-thematic and harmonic development of a movement could be compared with discourse, in which every detail forms a consequence to what has been presented previously and a premise for what follows, does not appear altogether selfevident, but since the late nineteenth century has become one of the firmly rooted aesthetic principles.40 And Schenker wrote that many listeners began to connect the sense of inevitability and coherence created in tonal masterworks with the "sort of necessity possessed by natural organisms."41 37Ibid., pp. 105-08; Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, p. 368. 38Theodor W. Adorno, Introduction to the Sociology of Music, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York, 1976), p. 89. Compare Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, p. 257: "Developing variation is a compositional hallmark of chamber music." This is, of course, a complicated matter with many implications that cannot be dealt with at length here. Dahlhaus and Adorno have treated the nuances of this issue as a central feature of their work. 39Dahlhaus, "Brahms und die Idee der Kammermusik," in Brahms-Studien, ed. Constantin Floros, vol. I (Hamburg, 1974), p. 46. See, as well, Dahlhaus's essay "Issues in Composition" in Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary Whittall (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1980). und 40"Dag3 man . . . die motivisch-thematische eines Satzes mit einer harmonische Entwicklung Abhandlung vergleichen k6nne, in der jede Einzelheit eine Konsequenz des Vorausgegangenen und eine Voraussetzung des Folgenden bildet, ist eine Vorstellung, die durchaus nicht selbstverstindlich erscheint, seit dem spAten 19. asthetischen Jahrhundert aber zu den eingewurzelten Prinzipien gehdrt" (Dahlhaus, "Musikkritik als Sprachkritik. Musikalische Logik," in Klassische und romantische Musikiisthetik [Laaber, 1988], p. 283). 41""Andso the appearance of intellectual logic glimmered above all the expanded shapes resulting from fanciful, arbitrary artifice. Soon it was even believed that artificial constructs had the same sort of necessity possessed by natural organisms" (Schenker, "Spirit of Musical Technique," p. 98). 114 When Brahms himself and certain of his colleagues spoke about "logic" in music, as they frequently did, the stress is often not so much on the "inherent" or fully "evolved" logic of tonality and techniques of motivic development as on the intellect of the individual artist-subject: it is the "logical" artist who makes an "organic" composition.42 Evidence of Brahms's compositional creed comes especially from his students Gustav Jenner and Prince Heinrich Reuf?. Jenner began to study with Brahms in the late 1880s and wrote an account of those lessons in 1905. Jenner's report of Brahms's reaction to a piano trio that he had brought to the first lesson implies the organic model: "The whole ... lacked that broad and full undercurrent of feeling that produces the unity of effect in a work of art, by expressing itself in an equally lively manner throughout the various parts and giving all the details, even if disparate and at a distance from each other, its particular stamp."43 In his own daily work at composition, according to Reutf, Brahms never lost sight of "his 'arch' [seine 'Bogen'], the rounding-off of the whole." 44As preparation for their own composing, he requested that his students analyze the relationship between part and whole (the "organic" structure) in works by the Classical masters. Jenner's account, in particular, demonstrated how strongly the older composer felt about the need for proper musical Bildung.45 42This notion of organicism, of course, sharply contrasted with that in which a piece is seen as taking on a life of its own. See Ruth A. Solie, "The Living Work: Organicism and Musical Analysis," this journal 4 (1980), 147-56. 43"Dem Ganzen aber fehlte jene breite und volle Unterstr6mung der Empfindung, welche die Einheitlichkeit der Wirkung eines Kunstwerkes hervorruft, indem sie in allen Teilen gleich lebendig sich iussert und allen noch so mannigfaltigen und noch so entfernten Einzelheiten ihr bestimmtes Geprage gibt" (Gustav Jenner, Johannes Brahms als Mensch, Lehrer und Kiinstler: Studien und Erlebnisse [Marburg, 1905], p. 7). 44"Verlire er beim taglichen Absolvieren des Pensums seinen 'Bogen,' d. h. die Abrundung des Ganzen, nie aus den Augen" (Kalbeck, Brahms IV, pp. 88-89). 45"Wie oft habe ich Brahms im Zorn ironisch ausrufen hiren: 'Dass man in allen anderen Dingen zu lernen hat, weiss jeder, nur in der Musik ist es nicht n6tig; das kann man, oder man kann es nicht'!" (Jenner, Brahms als Mensch, p. 58). See, as well, the entry for 19 January 1885 in Heuberger, Erinnerungen an Brahms, pp. 151-52: "Auf Bruckner kam die Sprache, und er dufierte sich wieder so wie einst: Er begreife nicht, was die Leute da finden wollen. Composing sets of variations was particularly appropriate for Brahms's pedagogical purposes because "no [other] form is so well suited to teach the beginner to distinguish the essential from the unessential, to educate him in artistic, strictly logical thinking."46 When Jenner first showed Brahms his compositions, the older composer pointed out its "illogical" features: "In this manner Brahms directed my view from the surface of a dreamy sentiment downwards into the depths, where I could but sense that in addition to feeling another factor must be active, which because of lack of ability and knowledge assisted me only very imperfectly: the intellect.'"47 Jenner recalled the composer's subsequent recommendation that he study and imitate the sonata-form procedures of the Classical masters: "He intended that through this composition of pieces after models ... I would learn to think logically in music."48 Implicit in Jenner's repeated use of derivatives of the word "logic" are, again, the high status of reason and the parallel between music and language: "logical thinking in music" is analogous to "logical thinking." What Brahms was teaching could have been alternatively described as, perhaps, "artistic discrimination." Brahms's conception of the artist as intellectual agent is fully consonant with Liberal values, and his compositions can be understood to have projected those values through the marked discursive quality that Dahlhaus noted, through the strong "impression" of coherent and "selfcontained thought" in his works. Brahms's Da sei ja Draseke (ich hatte ihm eben Einiges von diesem geliehen) ein wahrer Klassiker, und der sie doch auch ziemlich konfus. 'Gemeinsam ist den zwei Herren, dafs beide wenig gelernt haben'." Brahms himself was in large part self-taught, having had a formal general education that was somewhat limited and having reeducated himself in music in the 1850s. 46""Keine Form ist so geeignet, den Anfanger zu lehren, das Wesentliche vom Unwesentlichen zu unterscheiden, ihn zu kiinstlerischem, streng logischem Denken zu erziehen" (Jenner, Brahms als Mensch, p. 48). 47"So lenkte Brahms meinen Blick von der Oberfliche einer traumseligen Empfindung hinunter in Tiefen, wo ich nur ahnen konnte, dass neben der Empfindung auch ein anderer Faktor tatig sein misse, der aus Mangel an K6nnen und Wissen bei mir nur sehr unvollkommen mitarbeitete: der Verstand" (ibid., p. 8). 4""Erwollte, dass durch diese Arbeit des Nachschaffens ... ich sollte musikalisch logisch denken lernen" (ibid., p. 57). quasi-rationalistic aesthetic credo, joined with his close association with the chamber genres that were so important in the musical life of the Liberal upper-middle class, became charged with political connotation in the late 1880s. III In reaction to what one historian has called the "dreary rationalism" of the Austrian Liberals,49 many Viennese began to participate in what amounted to a nonrational cult of emotion and instinct, which began to develop with particular strength in the 1880s. The issue, admittedly, is a complex, multilayered one, but in a well-known treatment of it Carl Schorske described the "sharper key," the new emphasis on emotion as it manifested itself in Viennese politics, as "a mode of political behavior at once more abrasive, more creative, and more satisfying to the life of feeling than the deliberative style of the liberals."'o Because of the close ties between the Viennese Liberals and Jews, the calculated arousal of anti-Semitic feelings became the most potent tool in the fight to dislodge the Liberals from power in the city. An effective anti-Liberal movement began to coalesce shortly after lower middle-class men finally gained the vote on the local level in 1885.51 The historian John Boyer attributed the changed style of politics to this new class of voters: Much of the irrationalbehavior which has been imputed to [Luegerand the other Christian Social leaders] on the basis of their wild rhetoric was actually a commonly understood and accepted system of public discourse current among the particular strata to which the Christian Socials appealed.Such language was the expected verbal response to situations of tension and conflict.52 49Robert A. Kann, The Multinational Empire, 2 vols. (New York, 1950), I, 101. ,oSchorske, "Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio," in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna, p. 119. For a treatment of related trends in Germany, see Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961). "For the events that followed the widening of the franchise in 1885 and eventually led to the formation of the Christian Social party in 1889, see Boyer, Political Radicalism in Vienna, pp. 213-35. 52Ibid., p. 206. 115 MARGARET NOTLEY Brahms as Liberal 19TH CENTURY MUSIC But this does not fully explain the origins of the new political style. Lueger, often portrayed as the ultimate pragmatist, habitually resorted to the "sharper key" to exploit a volatile political situation. Still, it was a group of young idealists who earlier had conceived the "sharper key" and given it its name.53 They based their program for a politics of emotion on Richard Wagner's writings and his accomplishments in the music drama, and they put the new political style in the service of radical German nationalism. Some of the most prominent members of the group were Jewish and the intensity of the polarization in the city. A review of the first full public performance of Bruckner's String Quintet in 1885 by the Liberal critic D6mpke became a denunciation of the emotionalism that he perceived in all "futurist" (zukunftlerische) music. D6mpke wrote that because of its nature, "chamber music, by and large, had remained protected the longest from the futurist excesses,""7 and that it was possible to discriminate "organic" musical quality more clearly in the contemporary concert hall or chamber-music salon than in the opera had long accepted a form of cultural anti-Semitism as part of their v6lkisch reaction against the bourgeois liberalism of their parents. .... Since they saw themselves as members of the German Volk, even the Jewish members . . felt it essential to reject what they regarded as Semitic cultural traits. As [George]Mosse observes, the Jew was seen in stereotype as being intellectual and artificial, rootless and alienated from nature.54 Here it is possible to be candid and distinguish the logical from the merely "gifted" artists, those who create organic works of art from those who gush subjectively .... The true basis of the new musical religion is at least as much to be sought in an unmistakable coarsening and blase overstimulation of direct musical sensation as in the theory of the unified work of art.58 These young men supported Georg von Sch6nerer, a Member of Parliament and PanGerman extremist, and broke with him only when the racial cast of his anti-Semitism became obvious."5 Sch6nerer's Pan-German movement continued to attract many university students, but the blend of anti-Semitism and revitalized Catholicism offered by the group around Lueger proved to have wider appeal. After 1889 the Pan-Germans put their support behind Lueger and the newly formed Christian Social party to bring about the collapse of Liberalism in Vienna.56 By the mid-1880s, the anti-Liberal cult of emotion was as apparent in the musical life of Vienna as it was in its politics. The simplistic polemics that issued from both sides suggest house: In a straightforward affirmation of the Liberal aesthetic creed, D6mpke placed the composer as maker and thinker, the "logical artist" who creates "organic works of art," on a higher level than the composer as priest of the "new musical religion" or medium, the "merely 'gifted' artist" who "gushes subjectively" in his work. To the partisans of the opposing aesthetic side, though, what D6mpke described pejoratively as a "blas6 overstimulation of direct musical sensation" was a positive attribute: that of expressive immediacy, power, and vividness. Lueger's manipulation of the language of feeling made for effective politics in the Vienna of the 1880s. Although somewhat different motives may have underpinned the new emphasis 57""Imganzen und grossen war natuirlich die Kammermusik 53See William J. McGrath, Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in Austria (New Haven, 1974). 54Ibid., pp. 196-97. "Ibid., p. 198. 56In 1888 Sch6nerer lost his political rights for five years after he and his cohorts raided the editorial offices of the Liberal newspaper Neues Wiener Tagblatt. See Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna, pp. 219-20. The Christian Social party was formed shortly thereafter under Lueger's leadership. See Boyer, Political Radicalism in Vienna, pp. 224-25. 116 noch am von den zukunftlerischen Ausschweifungen verschont (Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, geblieben" liingsten 17 Jan. 1885; rpt. in Louis, Anton Bruckner [2nd edn. Munich, 1918], p. 314). 58"Hier gilt es, Farbe zu bekennen und den subjektiv von dem organisch gestaltenden, den schwirmenden Kuinstler zu logischen von dem bloss 'geistreichen' . . . Der wahre Grund der neuen unterscheiden. musikalischen Religion mindestens ebenso sehr in einer unverkennbaren Vergr6berung und blasierten Ueberreiztheit des unmittelbar musikalischen Empfindens zu suchen ist, als in der dramatischen Theorie der Allkunst" (ibid., p. 315). on direct, unleashed emotion in music, part of the purpose there, too, was to appeal to a broader audience. Many musicians and critics, again influenced by Wagner as well as by Schopenhauer, believed that the greatest music has a powerful emotional impact without the mediation of the intellect, and that this was its salutary democratizing feature. And they saw Brahms as virtually incapable of having this kind of effect on his audience. One critic, the eminent Wagnerian Hans Paumgartner, wrote in 1890 that Brahms's symphonies do not inspire and delight the human heart and will therefore never become popular. But anything that would be lasting must be popular. This is the case with all art, perhapswith all human action. Art, but especially music, that wins the admiration of experts but not the beating heart of humanity will endure only with difficulty.59 Brahms's perceived failure along these lines was acute precisely in his symphonies, for the symphony was the instrumental genre expected to have the most general appeal. In 1909 Louis summed up a view of Brahms's symphonies that appears to have been widespread:60 In construction, the greatest possible concentration and conciseness; in content and its expression, a tender intimacy that brings the symphony closer to 9""Siebegeistern und erfreuen eben keines Menschen Herz und werden darum niemals popular werden. Alles aber, was Dauer haben soll, muf popular sein. Dies ist bei aller Kunst, vielleicht bei allem Menschenwerke fiberhaupt der Fall. Was sich in der Kunst, speciell aber in der Musik nur die bewundernde Kritik der Fachmanner und nicht das schlagende Herz der Menschheit gewinnt, das wird schwerlich lange fortleben" (Wiener Abendpost, 14 March 1890). Paumgartner was the husband of the noted singer Rosa Papier, from whom he was separated in the 1890s (he died in 1896). The musicologist, composer, and conductor Bernhard Paumgartner was their son. See Bernhard Paumgartner, Erinnerungen (Salzburg, 1969), p. 16. 60Ludwig Speidel asserted in an obituary in the FremdenBlatt, 6 April 1897, that "gegen die symphonischen Weltideen Beethoven's gehalten, aussern Brahms' Symphonien nur die Privatgedanken und Privatmeinungen eines geistvollen Mannes." In the next generation, Paul Bekker still echoed this assessment. He wrote of the narrowing of the horizon "from the feeling for humanity of the heroic Beethoven era" and of an "unsymphonic intimacy" in Brahms's symphonies, grouping him with Mendelssohn and Schumann as "btirgerliche" composers. See Gustav Mahlers Sinfonien (rpt. Tutzing, 1969), p. 11. chamber music; abandonment of that-in the highest sense of the word-popular, indeed democratic trait that distinguishes the Beethoven symphony in such an unparalleled way, and in its place, cultivation of an elegant aristocracy of taste that flatters the connoisseur and carries "Odi profanum vulgus" clearly legible on its forehead.61 Criticism of Brahms tended to focus on an ostensible weakness in melodic invention, which was seen as particularly problematic in his symphonies.62 A year after the publication of Brahms's Second Symphony in 1878, Wagner wrote in the Bayreuther Bliitter of certain unnamed contemporary composers who transplanted to their symphonies a style of unpliant and fragmented melodic writing ("paltry melodies like chopped straw") more suitable for "socalled 'chamber music'." After noting that the latter music was in any case no longer performed in the appropriate small rooms, Wagner asserted that when Beethoven composed symphonies "he believed he had to speak in large, vivid strokes to the people, to all of mankind, in the spacious hall."63 61"In der Formgebung m6glischste Konzentration und Knappheit, im Inhalt und seiner Mitteilung eine zarte die das Wesen der Symphonie dem der Intimitat, Kammermusik annahert, Preisgabe jenes im h6chsten Sinne Wortes volkstiimlichen, ja demokratischen Zuges, der die Beethovensche Symphonie in so einzigartiger Weise auszeichnnet, und an seiner Stelle Pflege eines vornehmen Geschmacksaristokratismus, der dem Kenner schmeichelt und das: Odi profanum vulgus deutlich lesbar an der Stirne trAgt" (Louis, Die deutsche Musik der Gegenwart (Munich, 1909), p. 159). 62See, for example, Angelika Horstmann, Untersuchungen zur Brahms-Rezeption der Jahre 1860-1880 (Hamburg, 1986), p. 255, on the reception of the finale of the First Symphony. 6311Die gewisse zahe Melodik, welche ihnen [symphonic we say-Romanticcompositions of our "newest-shall Classical school"] aus der von ihren Sch6pfern bisher still gepflegten, sogenannten 'Kammermusik' zugefuhrt wird. In die 'Kammer' hatte man sich nimlich zuriickgezogen; leider aber nicht in das traute Stibchen, in welchem Beethoven athemlos lauschenden wenigen Freunden alles das Unsagliche mittheilte, was er hier nur verstanden wissen durfte, nicht aber dort in der weiten Saalhalle, wo er in grofgen plastischen Zilgen zum Volke, zur ganzen Menschheit sprechen zu muissen glaubte. . . . Was vorher zu Quintetten und dergleichen hergerichtet gewesen war, wurde nun als Symphonie servirt: kleinliches MelodienHacksel" ("Ober die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama" [1879], rpt. in vol. X, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen [3rd edn. Leipzig, 1897], p. 183). See, as well this passage in Adorno, Sociology of Music, p. 94: "In prin- 117 MARGARET NOTLEY Brahms as Liberal 19TH CENTURY MUSIC At one point even Kalbeck confided to Heuberger that he himself had misgivings about Brahms's symphonic style. Heuberger wrote this into his diary after a Viennese performance of the Fourth Symphony in January 1887: I had a strangeconversation with Max Kalbeckabout Brahms. K. said finally that B., despite his significance, is no master of the foremost rank, since execution prevails over power of invention [in his symphonies]. There is a lack of the great, noble popularity, the appealing to the common people, which, for example, distinguished Beethoven. "Symphonies must reallybe understandableto the common people. Brahms'ssymphonies will never become that."'64 The Liberal Kalbeck, too, invokes "Beethoven the democrat" and stresses the primacy of melodic invention and the "common touch," both apparently crucial to the meaning of the symphony as a genre. Thus, it seems that the more rarefied chamber genres rather than the symphony were widely held to be Brahms's real domain.65 According to Louis, the close association of Brahms with chamber music only intensified the aversion that progressive musicians already felt toward this kind of composition. Their antipathy toward chamber music was related to their egalitarian politics: "Chambermusic ruins the character"-thus was said among us at the time. And the grounds for this strange saying were these: we observed that because higher chambermusic makes itself accessible to laymen only with difficulty, an appearance of being ciple, Beethoven's symphonies are simpler than chamber music despite their substantially more lavish apparatus, and this very simplicity showed what effects the many listeners had in the interior of the formal edifice. It was not a matter of adjusting to the market, of course; at most, perhaps, it had to do with Beethoven's intent to 'strike fire in a man's soul'." 641"Mit Max Kalbeck merkwtirdig fiber Brahms gesprochen. K. sagte endlich einmal, dag B. trotz seiner Bedeutung kein Meister allerersten Ranges sei, da die Mache doch die Gewalt der EinfAlle tiberwiege. Es mangele die groge, edle PopularitAt, das Demagogische, welches z.B. Beethoven auszeichnet. 'Symphonien mtissen doch eigentlich dem Volke verstAndlich sein. Das werden Brahms' Symphonien nie'" (Heuberger, Erinnerungen an Brahms, p. 156; the entry is from 3 January 1887). 6 This was certainly the conclusion in a number of obituaries. 118 intimately familiar with it bestows an aura of an exceptional musicality and thus fosters affectation, snobbery, and hypocrisy.66 Theodor Helm, who came to admire Bruckner's music in the 1880s, remained one of the fairest of the reviewers on either side of the musical struggle. Both the Clarinet Quintet of Brahms and the Eighth Symphony of Bruckner received their first performances in 1892. In his review of the symphony, Helm referred to the Clarinet Quintet as "masterly," but added this: What does even the most beautiful "chamberpiece" signify-a genre that is effective only in a small space and therefore addresses itself to narrow circles-in comparison with a symphony like the latest by Bruckner, whose thrillingly all-powerful tonal language-we experienced it joyfully in the Philharmonic concert-is capable of inspiring thousands upon thousands who have ears to hear and a heart to feel what is heard!67 Toward the end of the 1880s and later, some chamber groups instituted series of chambermusic concerts with inexpensive tickets in big halls as a way of making this music, otherwise preserved for the enjoyment of a select, affluent group, available to a wider audience.68 But 661"'Kammermusikverdirbt den Charakter,'-so ging damals unter uns die Rede, und die Beobachtung, wie der Anschein einer innigen Vertrautheit mit der dem Laien nur schwer sich erschliessenden h6heren Kammermusik den Nimbus einer exzeptionellen Musikalitat verleiht und so die Affektation, den Snobismus und die Heuchelei gerade auf diesem Gebiete besonders tippig wachsen lisst, mochte diesem seltsamen Diktum einigen Grund geben" (Louis, Die deutsche Music der Gegenwart, pp. 273-74). 67"Aber was bedeutet auch die sch6nste derartige Genre, das nur in kleinem 'Kammercomposition'-ein Raume wirksam ist und sich daher auch nur an engere eine Symphonie, wie die letzte Krise wendet-gegen Bruckner'sche, deren hinreigend allgewaltige Tonsprachewir haben es im philharmonischen Concert freudig erlebtTausende und Abertausende zu begeistern vermag, die da Ohren haben, zu h6ren, und ein Herz, das Geh6rte zu empfinden!" (Deutsche Zeitung, 28 Dec. 1892). Adorno wrote of the inherent elitism of chamber music: "People who think they are musical take it for granted that chamber music is the highest musical species. This convention certainly serves largely for elitist self-affirmation; the limited circle of persons permits the inference that matters reserved for those must be better than what the misera plebs enjoys" (Sociology of Music, p. 95). 68For instance, in the 1889-90 season the Hellmesberger Quartet turned their performances in the large hall of the as he noted in his review, Helm (like both Wagner and Brahms) believed that chamber music was "effective only in a small space."'69 Many years later, in his memoirs, Helm recalled the two premieres in 1892 and used a metaphor to contrast the genres of chamber music and symphony: "Even the finest, most successful pastel-drawing-with which a chamber-music piece by Brahms may perhaps be compared-can never compete in immediate striking effect with a musical fresco in the boldest style."70 IV The view of Brahms as essentially a composer of chamber music-and hence an intellectual elitist-did not change in his lifetime. In a few works from the mid-1880s, however-especially the Third Symphony, op. 90, which received its first performances in the 1883-84 season, and the A-Major Violin Sonata, op. 100, and C-Minor Piano Trio, op. 101, which had their premieres in the 1886-87 season-he was Musikverein building into "popular" concerts. Speidel wrote approvingly of these concerts at the end of the season in the Fremden-Blatt, 2 April 1890: "In diesen Tagen hat das Quartett Hellmesberger den gegliickten Versuch gemacht, Auffuhrungen im Grogfen Saale der Musikfreunde mit populiren Preisen zu veranstalten. Gute Musik fuir billiges Geld, ist in Wien ein Wunsch vieler. Es war ein grofges Zustr6men von Publikum an den beiden Abenden, und nach VerstAndnifg und Begeisterung war die beste musikalische Gesellschaft versammelt." Although the symphony was widely considered to be a more democratic genre, in reality the masses could no more easily attend symphonic than chamber-music performances. "Popular" symphonic concerts began to be a feature of Viennese musical life at approximately the same time as the lower-priced chamber music concerts. Speidel wrote a disgruntled review of one early concert of this sort in the Fremden-Blatt, 7 March 1889. William Weber places the city's first popular orchestral series a decade later, in 1899. See Weber, "Wagner, Wagnerism, and Musical Idealism," in Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics, ed. David C. Large and William Weber (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), p. 67. 69SeeHelm, "Finfzig Jahre Wiener Musikleben (1866-1916): Erinnerungen eines Musikkritikers," Der Merker 8 (1917), Die 194; Heuberger, "Brahms als Kammermusiker," redenden Kiinste: Zeitschrift fuir Musik und Litteratur 3 (1896-97), 894. 70"Einmusikalisches Freskogem~ilde im kuhnsten Stil, mit welchem sich doch selbst die feinste, gelungenste Pastellzeichnung-der sich allenfalls ein Kammermusikstiick von Brahms vergleichen liift-an unmittelbar einschlagender Wirkung niemals messen kann" (Helm, "Ftinfzig Jahre Wiener Musikleben," Der Merker 8 [1917], 498). briefly seen as composing in a new and simpler, more "popular" style.71 The following anonymous review of the C-Minor Piano Trio illustrates the kind of reaction these compositions initially elicited, even from critics normally hostile to Brahms: "This time the composer has created from the depths of his undeniably great lyric gift and has bestowed upon us a work that gives pleasure not only to the expert through its artistic working-out, but also to the soul and ears of the naive listener."72 The many critics and musicians under the sway of ideas from Schopenhauer and Wagner believed that a composer could communicate directly to an audience, educated or not, through heartfelt melody. While it had usually been acknowledged that the "artistic working-out" in his compositions gave pleasure to the musically educated ("the expert"), Brahms had often been criticized for deficiencies in his melodic style that made his works inaccessible to the public at large. Reviewers therefore welcomed the longer and more continuous melodic writing in these new works ("this time")-the critic cited above went so far as to speak of the composer's "undeniably great lyric gift." The political crisis in Vienna deepened soon after the premieres of the chamber works in the 1886-87 season. "Talk of a potential antiLiberal coalition soon filled Vienna's political clubs and salons in the autumn of 1887"73 after Lueger gave his first anti-Semitic speeches in June and September of that year. Not surprisingly, the polarization within the Viennese musical world appears to have intensified shortly thereafter, and in April 1889 Helm noted that "in Vienna it seems to be even harder to reach a reconciliation in music than in politics."74 The positions of several critics would 71Forthe reception of these works, see my Brahms's Chamber-Music Summer of 1886: A Study of Opera 99, 100, 101, and 108 (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1992). 72"Der Componist hat diesmal aus der Tiefe seiner unleugbar grogfen lyrischen Begabung gesch6pft und uns ein Werk beschert, das nicht blogf durch seine kunstvolle Arbeit den Kenner, sondern auch Gemiith und Ohren des naiven H6rers erfreute" (Illustrirtes Wiener Extrablatt, 27 February 1887). 7•Boyer, Political Radicalism in Vienna, pp. 217-18. 74"Mit der musikalischen Vers6hnung geht es aber in Wien, wie es scheint, noch viel schwerer, als mit der politischen" (Deutsche Zeitung, 13 April 1889). 119 MARGARET NOTLEY Brahms as Liberal 19TH CENTURY MUSIC certainly seem to have hardened. Paumgartner and Ludwig Speidel, for example-both enthuwrote fasiasts for Bruckner's music-initially vorable reviews of Brahms's A-Major Violin Sonata but in subsequent reviews only a few years later treated the same work with contempt.75 Paumgartner and Helm, both prominent critics, reviewed concerts in long-established newspapers. The former wrote for the Wiener Abendpost, an "official" newspaper published by the Austrian government.76 Although this daily did not always agree with official governmental policies, its basic stance was non-Liberal: the Liberals had been the opposition party in the central government since 1879. Helm, on the other hand, wrote for the Deutsche Zeitung, which had originally been Liberal but then became aggressively anti-Semitic after 1887, eventually turning into a mouthpiece for Lueger.77Both critics stressed the cerebral quality of Brahms's later music. In a March 1890 review of the second version of the B-Major Piano Trio, op. 8, Helm regretted the changes that Brahms had made in the exposition of the opening movement and characterized the differences between the two versions in this way: "What stood there earlier [in the 1854 version] seemed to us the direct outpouring of a passionate youth's heart; what stands there now has been dictated by the technical artistic understanding of one who has since become a master but also a much more coolly thinking man."78 Helm tended to criticize Brahms even more for his connections with the Liberal establishment than for the content of his music and asserted repeatedly that the strident advocacy of Brahms's music by the Liberal newspapers only hurt his cause. In the review from April 1889 quoted above, he compared the enthusiastic reaction to the Third Symphony at 75Speidel's reviews are in the Fremden-Blatt issues from 7 December 1886 and 3 December 1893; Paumgartner's are in the Wiener Abendpost issues from 16 December 1886 and 9 December 1893. der 6sterreichischen 76See Kurt Paupid, Handbuch Pressegeschichte 1848-1959, 2 vols. (Vienna, 1960), I, 121. 77Ibid.,p. 158. 78"11Wasfrfiher dort stand, diinkte uns der unmittelbare Ergug eines gliihendes Jtinglingsherzens, was jetzt dort steht, hat der technische Kunstverstand des seither zum Meister emporgereisten, aber auch weit kiuhler denkenden Mannes dictirt" (Deutsche Zeitung, 4 March 1890). 120 its premiere in 1883 with the cool reception of a recent performance: Of late not only ... the F-MajorSymphony, but in general every largercomposition by Brahmshas met the most distinct suspicion on the part of the public. This is the fault of none other than that small group of critical despots who are always enraptured by Brahms,speaking as if he were a Bach or Beethoven, while they basically ignore Bruckner.79 Paumgartner's reviews of Brahms pushed all this much further. Even more than Helm, he dwelt on "Liberal" traits in the composer's music, concentrating-as many critics before him had-on Brahms's melodic style. His critique of the 1890 premiere of the G-Major String Quintet, op. 111, is typical: Ingenious, full of interesting details. . . . Neverthe- less this newest creation of Brahms also bears the cool reflecting trait sharedby everything by Brahms, even if his faction . . . conducted itself in the most enthusiastic manner. But enthusiasm is the very feeling that Brahms never arouses. The themes, although treated so effectively and elaborately, seem nonetheless more and more thought ratherthan felt, more constructed than discovered. One is so seldom in one's innermost soul touched by Brahms,and the specific mood in which Brahms puts us is always only a reflective pleasure.80 Describing the themes in Brahms's late style as intellectually conceived ("thought rather than in jiingster Zeit nicht nur . . . die F-dur 79"Dagf ... Symphonie, sondern iuberhaupt, jede gr6foere Composition von Brahms dem ausgesprochensten Mif~trauen des Publicums begegnete, hat niemand Anderer verschuldet, als jenes kleine Hiuslein kritischer Despoten, die von Brahms immer verztickt, wie von einem Bach und Beethoven sprechen, wifhrend sie Bruckner grundsitzlich unbeachtet lassen" (Deutsche Zeitung, 13 April 1889). 8011"Geistreich, voll interessanter Einzelheiten. . . . Doch auch diese neueste Brahms'sche Sch6pfung hat den kiihlen reflectirenden Zug, den alles Brahms'sche besitzt, an sich, wenn auch die Partei ... sich auf das enthusiastischeste geberdete. Gerade aber Enthusiasmus ist die Empfindung, die Brahms nie erregt. Die Themen, so wirksam und kunstvoll auch dieselben musikalisch verarbeitet werden, scheinen doch immer mehr gedacht als empfunden, mehr construirt als gefunden. Man wird so selten bei Brahms im innersten Gemtith getroffen, und die spezifische Stimmung, in welche wir durch Brahms'sche Musik versetzt werden, ist doch immer nur ein reflectirter Genuf" (Wiener Abendpost, 19 November 1890). felt") and artificial ("more constructed than discovered"), Paumgartner focuses on those features of modern culture most despised by the anti-Liberal reactionaries. Not only is there a clear anti-Liberal stance in his reviews from the late 1880s and early 1890s, there may also be an anti-Semitic subtext: the features he chose to emphasize, artificiality and intellectualism, were-as we have seen-even more closely associated with Jews than with Liberals. Paumgartner touched more explicitly on the new Germanic ideology in a review of a concert given by Joseph Joachim and Brahms in February 1889: Herr Joachim received a great deal of applause;nevertheless, the enthusiasm of a deeply stimulated and inspired audience was lacking. Brahmsas composer, Joachim as performer-that is the new German music. It is clever and learned, interesting and tasteful; nevertheless, if the German people had never felt and heard any music but this, they would never in all eternity have been permitted the experience of a Sedan.81 Again stressing an undesirable learnedness in his critique of both Brahms and Joachim, Paumgartner was implying that German music was being defiled by a non-German emotional superficiality.82 (And Joachim was, in fact, Jewish.) No holds were barred in the new anti-Liberal, anti-Semitic newspapers that proliferated at the end of the 1880s. The music critics in these papers took up some of the same themes that appeared in Paumgartner's reviews, but were shamelessly direct in their expression of volkisch tribalism. The Deutsches Volksblatt, German-national, anti-Semitic organ in Austria," began publishing at the end of 1888.83 Already in the newspaper's first numbered issue (1 January 1889), the importance of music to its agenda was evident. The newspaper showed its particular musical orientation by quoting Wagner and making constant reference to him on the very first page in an article that borrowed its title from his essay "Was ist deutsch?" The contributors included August Gllerich, who had been Bruckner's student and was later to be his biographer. An article on German folk song, which he coauthored, observed this: "To invent melodies requires only strong feeling and that involuntary, unerring creative instinct which must be inborn.Both reside unweakened even today in the raw core of the Volk."84 The composition of melodies as described here sounds very like the "subjective gushing" that D6mpke had found so deplorable in Bruckner's music. And, indeed, the reviews and other articles on music in the Deutsches Volksblatt consistently espoused an irrationalist aesthetic, emphasizing the efficacy of melody born of strong emotion and the related issue of expressive immediacy. In a review of a concert of chamber music by Schubert and Beethoven, G6llerich (in typical fashion) offered an evaluation of Bruckner: Only this master is capable today of elevating his melody to the eternally effective, purely human type of his great predecessors, while contemporary talents-even those of the most imposing natural gifts [i.e., Brahms]-are for the most part understandable only through the mediation of art-historical reflection.85 which has been called "the most significant 81"HerrJoachim errang sehr vielen Beifall, doch fehlte der Enthusiasmus einer im Innersten erregten und begeisterten Brahms als Componist, Joachim als Zuh6rerschaft. Vortragender-das ist die neue deutsche Musik. Sie ist geistvoll und gelehrt, interessant und feinsinning; doch wenn das Volk der Deutschen nie Anders in T6nen geh6rt und empfunden hatte, so hitte es in Ewigkeit niemals ein Sedan erleben dirfen" (Wiener Abendpost, 13 February 1889). 12See the tabular summation of "German" and "Not German" traits in Ernst Hanish, "The Political Influence and Appropriation of Wagner," trans. Paul Knight, in Wagner Handbook, ed. Ulrich Muiller and Pater Wapnewski, trans. ed. John Deathridge (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), p. 191. 83See Paupi6, Handbuch, I, 107. A "Probeblatt" appeared on 15 December 1888; the first numbered issue appeared on 1 January 1889. 84"Melodien zu erfinden, vermag nur ein starkes Empfinden und jener unwillkiirlich das Wahre treffende, schaffende Instinct, welcher angeboren sein mug.-Beide leben heute im frischen Marke des Volkes" noch ungeschwicht (August G6llerich and Dr. J. Pommer, "Die Pflege Volksliedes-eine der des deutschen Ehrenpflicht Deutschnationalen," in Deutsches Volksblatt, 21 January 1890). 8""Einzig dieser Meister vermag heute seine Melodie zum ewig giltigen, rein menschlichen Typus zu erheben, gleich seinen grogen Vorgangern, wahrend die zeitgen6ssischen 121 MARGARET NOTLEY Brahms as Liberal 19TH CENTURY MUSIC G611erich likewise lost no opportunity to disparage Brahms directly, even dragging his name into a review of the pianist Eugen d'Albert: "With d'Albert we do not enjoy immediately with the feelings, but rather with the intellect. ... D'Albert's individuality thus corresponds above all to the work of the master of brooding thought but brittle invention, the work of J. Brahms !"86 In other reviews, G611erich ridiculed the composer's apparent attempts at a simpler, more accessible style-especially as found (or as believed to have been found) in the Third Symphony.8" He asserted in February 1889 that Brahms "wants at any cost to be popular": One of the cleverest critics in Vienna, L. Speidl [sic], in an ingeniously apt way writes that when Brahms wants to be popular,he displays a kind of "desperate naivete." We were reminded of this choice expression again while listening to the Andante of the [Third] Symphony-what wretched barrenness of ideas reigns in this Zampa-like movement, which does not even disdain Jewish-temple triplets simply to appearproperly"understandable"!88 Talente uns-auch bei den achtunggebietendsten nur unter Vermittelung Begabung-gr6tgtentheils Reflexion verstandlich werden" kunstgeschichtlicher (Deutsches Volksblatt, 25 December 1889). Although he does not mention his source, G6llerich has "borrowed" several phrases from Wagner's essay on Beethoven of 1870: "Die Melodie ist durch Beethoven von dem Einflusse der Mode und des wechselnden Geschmackes emanzipirt, zumrn ewig giltigen, rein menschlichen Typus erhoben worden. Beethoven's Musik wird zu jeder Zeit verstanden werden, wihrend die Musik seiner Vorginger gr6ftentheils nur unter Vermittelung kunstgeschichtlicher Reflexion uns bleiben wird." See Richard Wagner, verstindlich Gesammelten Schriften und Dichtungen (3rd edn. Leipzig, 1897), IX, 102. 86"Bei d'Albert geniefen wir nicht unmittelbar mit dem Gefiihle, sondern mit dem Verstande. . . . Deshalb entspricht der Eigenart d'Albert's vor Allem das Schaffen des Meisters griibelnden Denkens, aber spr6der Erfindung, das Schaffen J. Brahms!" (Deutsches Volksblatt, 18 January 1889). 87David Brodbeck has seen Brahms as "for once determined to take the better of the New Germans at some of their own games" in this symphony. See his "Brahms, the Third Symphony, and the New German School," in Brahms and His World, ed. Walter Frisch (Princeton, 1990), p. 75. 88"Dabei sich um jeden Preis popular geben will. Einer der geistvollsten Kritiker Wiens, L. Speidl, schrieb jiingst in genialzutreffender Weise, daf Brahms, sobald er popular werden m6chte, eine Art 'verzweifelter NaivetAt' entwickelte. Das kistliche Wort kam uns bei Anhorung des 'Andante' der genannten Symphonie wieder so recht 122 The historian Steven Beller notes that in the later days of Liberalism, "anyone could be discredited by being associated with the Jews," and that Liberals were the usual targets.89 Paumgartner, in a veiled way, may have intended, and G611erich certainly did intend, to link Brahms with the Jews. But the music critic of the Ostdeutsche Rundschau, Josef Stolzing, was utterly blunt. In a sarcastic article from March 1890 about the conservative Viennese symphonic programs, he remarked that Goldmark and Brahms were "in any case the right composers for the predominantly Jewish audience of the midday concerts."90 Stolzing then moved his survey from the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde concerts to those of the Philharmonic and in a rhetorical flight of fancy transformed Brahms into a Jew: We are very curious about the Philharmonic repertoire, which will be assembled, as ever, from some frequentlyheardsymphonies of Beethoven,Schubert, and Schumann, along with the most recent works by Jews. . . . What a pleasing spectacle awaits us when Hanslick, Hirschfeld, K6nigstein, and Kalbeck again offer the palm to their great (?) fellow-clansmen Goldmark, Goldschmidt, Brahmsetc. and lead them into the temple of immortality. Long live the music-loving and music-making Jewry! Strange!In the realm of politics Jewry is liberal; in that of music, conservative.91 zum Bewuftsein-welch' trostlose GedankendArre herrscht doch in diesem 'Zampa'-mdifigen Satze, der selbst juIdische nicht verschmdiht, um nur recht Tempel-Triolen 'begreiflich' zu erscheinen!" (Deutsches Volksblatt, 28 March 1889). Compare Brahms's approving remarks in October 1886 about Goldmark's Merlin: "Vor so einem fixen Kerl wie Goldmark muf man Respekt haben; es ist eine Freude, beim Durchlesen zu sehen, wie das alles wirken wird, wie alles an seinem Platze steht. Und dabei jtidelt es gar nicht, gar keine 'Triole"' (reported in Heuberger, Erinnerungen an Brahms, p. 155). The remark by Speidel appeared in the Fremden-Blatt, 7 March 1889, in reference to "Vergebliches Stindchen," op. 84, no. 4: "Was will man am Ende mit einer solchen verzweifelten Naivetit, die Brahms stets bekundet, wenn er einem volksthiimlichen Stoff berfihrt." 89Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews 1867-1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge, 1989), p. 200. 90"Dagegen finden wir Goldmark und Brahms, jedenfalls fiur das in seiner Mehrheit jiidische Publicum der Mittagsconcerte die richtigen Tonsetzer" (Ostdeutsche Rundschau, 19 October 1890). sind wir auf den Spielplan der 91"Sehr neugierig Philharmoniker, welcher sich wahrscheinlich, wie alle Jahre, aus einigen often gehorten Symphonien von Brahms, of course, was not a Jew, but he was a Liberal-and not just because of his connections with the exclusive cultural organizations and Liberal newspapers. For the motivic-thematic elaboration, chamber style, and reflective aesthetic experience associated with his music were linked more generally with Liberal intellectual elitism and, by implication, Liberal individualism. V6lkisch irrationalists embraced a diametrically opposed grouping of melodic invention, symphonic style, and a direct emotional experience of music. To be sure, the schematic categories established by the polemicists did not always hold, for example, in the connection between politics and musical tastes: Speidel, a Jewish journalist who wrote for the Fremden-Blatt and the Neue freie Presse, admired the music of Bruckner but was critical of both Wagner and Brahms; Moritz Szeps, the Jewish editor of two leftist-Liberal newspapers, the Neues Wiener Tagblatt and later the Wiener Tagblatt, was a Francophile but also an ardent Wagnerian.92 And a number of questions remain: for instance, what does "melodic invention" mean; and how close a connection can be made between parts of what Dahlhaus called "the second age of the symphony" and the transition to mass politics in the late nineteenth century? Beethoven, Schubert und Schumann und den modernsten Jiidenwerken zusammensetzen wird.... Welch' erfreulicher Anblick wartet unser, wenn Hanslick, Hirschfeld, Konigstein und Kalbeck ihren grofen (?) Stammesgenossen Goldmark, Goldschmidt, Brahms u.s.w. wieder die Palme reichen und sie in den Tempel der Unsterblichkeit fuhren werden! Es lebe das musiktreibende und musikliebende Judenthum! "Sonderbar! Auf politischem Gebiete ist das Judenthum 'liberal,' in der Musik conservativ" (ibid.). 92For Speidel, see Charlotte Pinter, Ludwig Speidel als Musikkritiker, 3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., University of Vienna, 1949); for Szeps, see Berta Szeps, My Life and History, trans. John Sommerfield (London, 1938). Still, the skewed critiques reflect a real conflict that culminated in the collapse of Viennese Liberalism in 1897, the year of Brahms's death. His rehabilitation as an echt deutscher composer seems to have begun quickly thereafterit helped that he was not actually Jewish.93 The Liberal party had little political power after 1897, but Albert Fuchs has noted that such important (Jewish) intellectuals as Sigmund Freud, Stefan Zweig, and Arthur Schnitzler continued to view the world from essentially Liberal perspectives.94 To his list, we could add Arnold Schoenberg, whose emphasis on "musical logic" and composing "after models" surely derives from the Liberal tradition (invoked now by a musical "progressivist"). Moreover, Alban Berg's polemic against Hans Pfitzner in 1920 took up the crucial aesthetic question ("inspired invention" versus "'rational' elaboration"),"• still imbued with political meaning, that had engaged the factions around Brahms and Bruckner in fin-de-siecle Vienna. The rhetoric in the original musical controversy had often been petty. But the central issue was not trivial, and its aesthetic and political aspects -..-. had become inseparable. 9,In his reminiscences of Bruckner, published in 1901, Hruby attempted to dissociate Brahms from the Liberals around him. See his Erinnerungen an Bruckner, p. 37: "Wenn Brahms gekonnt hitte, wiirde er vielleicht der Erste gewesen sein, der die Hanslick-Fellinger'sche Clique, fuir die er nur Ekel empfinden mufte, von sich abgeschiittelt hitte. Denn schlietlich war Brahms auch ein Deutscher, und ein guter obendrein! Aber er konnte eben die Propagandisten seines Ruhmes nicht Lugen strafen." 94See Fuchs, Geistige Stromungen, p. 10. 9'This essay, "Die musikalische Impotenz der 'neuen Asthetik' Hans Pfitzners," which appeared originally in the Musikbliitter des Anbruch 2 (June 1920), is rpt. in Willi Reich, Alban Berg: Mit Bergs eigenen Schriften und Beitriigen von Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno und Ernst Krenek (Vienna, 1937). 123 MARGARET NOTLEY Brahms as Liberal