Investigating the relationship between musical Modernism and German cinema means paving the way for a rather unorthodox research path, one which has been little explored up until now. Those who take certain hasty conclusions about the topic at face valueâsuch as âmusic did not have any apparent structural influence on the evolution of cinemaâ (Prox 1995, p. 251) , or âthe birth of the new cinematic medium did not in effect leave any visible trace in the history of musicâ (Emons 2014, p. 10) âwill be taken aback when they learn that the main figures of musical Modernism, from Alban Berg to Paul Hindemith , and from Richard Strauss to Kurt Weill , had a significant relationship with cinema. True, it was a complex and contradictory relationship in which cinema sometimes emerged more as an aesthetic point of reference than a factual reality: while the concrete collaborations with the film industry were small in number, the reception of the language and aesthetics of cinema had significant influence on the domain of music.
This book examines the connections between musical Modernism and German-language cinema between 1913 and 1933. Our survey opens by examining the period of the Autorenfilm between 1913 and 1914, a reform movement whose earliest authors were active in the avant-garde intellectual circles of Vienna and Berlin. The Autorenfilm caused the end of German cinemaâs âpre-literaryâ phase and laid the foundations for the cinematic mediumâs competitive role with respect to the traditional arts. This original alliance between the artistic and literary avant-garde and the German film industry formed the basis for a series of interrelations among cinema, literature, and music, which unfolded throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. The rise of Nazism, however, would drastically disrupt the musical and cinematic avant-garde following the exile of protagonists such as Fritz Lang , Hans Richter , Oskar Fischinger among the directors, and Paul Hindemith , Hanns Eisler , Kurt Weill , Paul Dessau among the composers, as well as the physical destruction of countless works.
Starting with the Autorenfilm period, the cinematic paradigm began to penetrate deep into the aesthetic and compositional horizon of musical Modernism. The cinematic collaborations of art music composers, in the silent film era and later in the Weimar sound film period, were never, as we well see, merely face-value experiences. On the contrary, they left deep traces on composersâ artistic activity.
It is worth remembering that the notion of musical Modernism has long been at the core of a debate that has exposed some of the artistic movementâs problematic aspects, beginning with what can undoubtedly be described as its âmaximalistâ character (Taruskin 2005, p. 5) . This discussion has adopted a strongly critical tone in recent English-language literature.1 From the point of view of compositional techniques, there are obvious drawbacks to a discussion that insists on setting tonal and post-tonal music against each other in a rigid dichotomy, while twentieth-century music in fact shows extremely diverse stylistic traits. From a national point of view, one feels the need to overcome a restrictive German-centred perspective by also including composers from other European and non-European areas. As for the temporal level, it is significant that the historical boundaries of this epoch are still contested. The starting point is usually set at 1889 (the year of Gustav Mahlerâs First Symphony and Richard Straussâs Don Juan, see Dahlhaus 1989, p. 330) âhowever , Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt placed the beginning of âModern musicâ further on, with Claude Debussyâs PellĂ©as et MĂ©lisande (1902) (Stuckenschmidt 1951, p. 6). Some set the ending point of Modernism at 1907, while others at 1923: for Dahlhaus the transition to atonality in the works of Arnold Schönberg in 1907 marks the end of musikalische Moderne and the beginning of Neue Musik (Dahlhaus 1989, p. 391). For Richard Taruskin , however, the premiere performance of Igor Stravinskyâs Octet for wind instruments , in 1923, is to be taken as the beginning of âthe ârealâ Twentieth centuryâ (Taruskin 2005, p. 447). Moreover, other authors would extend the temporal boundaries of Modernism to just before WWII.
This is merely a brief summary of the prevalent arguments regarding the precise timeframe for musical Modernism and its defining characteristics, on which there is a wealth of literature.2 What matters here is to reaffirm Dahlhausâs claim that the choice of criteria for the beginning and the end of an epoch also has implications on the historiographical method used to select and relate the events in that epoch (see Dahlhaus 1989, p. 391). Now, by selecting 1913 and 1933 as the start and end points of our discussion, we rely on the consideration that the new cinematic mediumâs influence on early twentieth-century music can be properly recognized in the profound changes invested not just in the technical elements of composition, but also in the aesthetic sphere and the history of ideas.
Modernist composersâ encounters with both film music and cinema as an art form become more significant when considered as part of a process already under way in the first decades of the twentieth century, and which could be defined as âmedial competitionâ (MĂŒcke 2008, p. 7) . This term refers to a true conflict of forces between the new mediaâthat is, cinema and radioâand the traditional arts that takes place on several levels: institutional, socio-cultural, and even compositional. In this context, the notion of medium does not simply describe a vehicle for information transmission. As Irina Rajewsky writes, a medium should be understood in the much wider sense of a distinctive semiotic system: a âconventionally distinct means of communicationâ (Rajewsky 2002, p. 7). If we extend the analysis of medial competitionâas Michael Wedel suggestsâto include the pragmatic context of production, modes of distribution, and strategies of public presentation, we come to an understanding of why, at the dawn of the Autorenfilm, the relationships between theatre, literature, and cinema were viewed in terms of a fierce competition between their respective cultural practices and a vehement institutional rivalry (Wedel 2007, pp. 37, 40). The collapse of the walls between high-brow culture, along with its traditional institutions, and cinematic mass culture in the second decade of the twentieth century led to a debate on the threat that cinema potentially posed to the very survival of the so-called âold artsâ.3
This institutional clash, however, was followed by the gradual reception of cinema as an aesthetic phenomenon between the 1910s and the 1920s. The initial competition gave way to a medial convergence, in other words a growing appropriation of the new media into the system of traditional arts, in the framework of rethinking artistic languages and their means of expression. This trend had enormous repercussions on musical developments in the twentieth century. The years between the two world wars saw a fruitful exchange between the old and the new arts: a huge number of filmic adaptations of literary, theatrical, and operatic works were produced, along with the first operas and instrumental works specifically written for the radio. New art forms were also created based on medial combination, such as theatrical works that incorporated film projections and gramophone or radio inserts (cf. MĂŒcke 2008, p. 7).
In this cross-pollination of media one can recognize a semiotic phenomenon that Rajewsky terms intermediality (2002, 2005), a term that indicates those art forms that bridge the boundaries between different media and, as a consequence, generate interferences, contaminate discourses, and hybridize different forms of expression. Rajewsky identifies three main mechanisms that will serve as reference points also in our discussion: remediation (Medienwechsel), medial combination (Medienkombination), and intermedial reference (intermedialer Bezug). Remediation describes the transposition of a proto-text from its original form of presentation into a new semiotic system (Rajewsky 2002, p. 16). An example of this would be the countless filmic adaptations of literary novels, theatrical dramas, and operas that were the initial result of the aspiration to lend artistic and cultural dignity to the new cinematic medium. Medial combination hints at the mixture of linguistic elements and art forms belonging to older and newer media languages (Rajewsky 2002, p. 15) : in this category are the filmic interludes that invaded the music theatre of the 1920s and 1930s. Finally, intermedial reference alludes to the assimilation of stylistic features peculiar to cinematography into the domain of the traditional arts and their genres (Rajewsky 2002, pp. 16â17). The scope of such references reaches well beyond quotations or allusions to individual cinematic texts, and may also include the evocation, simulation, and partial reproduction of the cinematic medium, as such, as a distinctive semiotic-communicative system.
By penetrating deep into the aesthetic and compositional horizon of Modernist composers, cinema produced interesting phenomena in the hybridization of musical language. The results of these interactions between composers and cinema are not all alike. Sometimes there are superficial thematizations to cinema, as merely exterior signs of modernity (as intended in its etymological meaning of âfashionableâ [lat. modus] phenomenon). Along with countless experiments in remediation, more complex forms of medial combination were part of a strategy to modernize traditional genres, musical theatre in particular. As we will see, cinema was often incorporated in the form of vertical montage or scenic collage. More subtle appropriations of cinematic language can be recognized in the technical aspects of musical composition in the form of intermedial references, that is, how art music composers employed compositional techniques inspired by cinematic grammar. Examples include the principle of juxtaposing different parts as an analogon of filmic montage (see Schrekerâs Vier StĂŒcke), palindromic construction as a musical correlative of the reverse projection of a film (in Hin und zurĂŒck by Hindemith, as well as in the film interlude from Bergâs Lulu), and the borrowing of certain musical stylizations of pantomime, which openly refer to the motoric illustration peculiar to film music of the time (as in Hindemithâs Cardillac) .
The process ...