Furtwängler on Music

Essays and Addresses by Wilhelm Furtwänler

Ronald Taylor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351566131
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Musique

Wilhelm Furtw ler left not only some of the greatest interpretations of operatic and symphonic music on record, but also expressed his views on musical issues of the moment in a number of outspoken essays and talks. His writings range from practical matters of performance and interpretation to aesthetic reflections on what he saw as the alarming direction in which music was developing in the wake of Schoenberg and the twelve-tone system of composition. Professor Ronald Taylor has here, for the first time, translated and annotated a selection of Furtw ler's writings covering the four decades from the First World War to the conductor's death in 1954, and prefaced them with an essay on Furtw ler's controversial career and complicated personality. The result is a collection of stimulating pieces with a claim on our attention, made all the greater for reflecting the musical and philosophical ideals of one of the great conductors of the twentieth century.

Part I
The Practice of Music

1 Concert Programmes

A good concert programme, as one understands the term today, is not difficult to devise. All that is needed is a modest amount of historical knowledge, a certain regard for contemporary composers, and a kind of fashionable aesthetic label to stick on the finished product.

The label is particularly important. People today are demanding that a programme should not be just an arbitrary selection of varied items but should have a pattern to it, an individual character, with a theme or ‘device’ of its own, a reflection of some catch-phrase or other.

There are various such devices. One can arrange programmes on an historical basis, by epoch, for example – the pre-Classical period, the Classical period, the modern period; or by nationalities, ‘schools’, generations or historically demonstrable ‘influences’. One can also draw on fashionable areas of comparison, such as that between pre-Classical and contemporary music. In America a well-known pianist even devised a programme in C sharp minor. It does not matter so much what the actual underlying principle is – the main thing is that it is there and that people can see from the programme what it is.

What looks attractive on paper often turns out in practice, that is, on the evening of the concert itself, to be thoroughly boring. There is a difference between the impression made by a programme on the reader and that made by the music itself on the listener. Take the common example of an evening devoted to symphonies by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Someone seeing such a programme would find the combination ideal, to be subsumed under concepts such as ‘stylistic unity’, the ‘Viennese Classics’ or ‘the development of the symphony’.

But what about the listener? He would feel monotony and boredom, with the works played second and third having no effect at all. In short, not a programme designed for the symphony but against it. One must realize that to absorb even one of these symphonies, despite what appears to be the relatedness of their thematic material, and with the complexities of the internal links and correlations over long stretches, makes extraordinary demands on the modern listener, attuned, as he is, to experiences of brief duration. And then three such works on a single evening, plus the apparent similarity of their idiom!

What has largely been left out of account in such one-track ‘thematic’ programmes, are the psychological realities that condition the activity of listening. Indeed, they have to be left out of account. Whatever intellectual satisfaction – slight enough, in all conscience – a thematic title may give the earnest listener, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the essence of the music itself. Music is not there in order to be perceived, reviewed or categorized in terms of historical contexts. It is there in order to be enjoyed. If a thematic programme is successful, whatever its nature, then it is in spite of the theme, not because of it. Any concept of unity cannot but be at odds with the fact that, emotionally and by its inner nature, music lives by contrasts. The law of contrasts rules equally in an individual sonata movement as in a large-scale cyclical work, in the St Matthew Passion as in a sonata by Hindemith. And it must also govern the way in which a concert programme is put together.

By contrast, of course, I do not mean a set of arbitrary permutations but what I would call ‘creative contrast’, where even the most marked antitheses are never completely resolved (I will not pursue this matter further at the moment, especially as, however easy it is to talk about it in theoretical terms, it embodies a law which has to be constantly observed and applied in practice).

It is therefore the primary duty of a concert programme to position each individual work in such a way as to allow it to reach its full bloom – a task considerably more humble, and at the same time considerably more difficult, than devising attractive ‘thematic’ programmes, even though it may offer less scope for critics to grind their axes and indulge in historical speculation.

Taking the question one step further, we can see that crucial importance attaches to the order in which the works in a particular concert are played – a consequence of music being one of the Arts of Time. With two such different works as a symphony by Haydn and a symphony by Tchaikovsky, for example, it would be impossible to play the Tchaikovsky first. The Haydn would be left sounding thin and dry, and the listener would be unable to fully appreciate its more delicate, more graceful, more precise nature after experiencing the cruder techniques used in the Tchaikovsky. Vice versa to follow the Haydn with the Tchaikovsky is like moving forward into the world of human problems, our modern world, so to speak. And the Tchaikovsky will never appear to better effect than when placed after such works as Haydn’s.

It is therefore quite wrong to maintain, as people often do, that such and such works do not go together. It all depends on the order in which they are played, and deciding on this order is a persistent problem. There are pieces that can only be put at the end of a programme, others that can only be put at the beginning. Some undergo a radical change of nature – even a trivialization – if they are put at the end of a long programme: Beethoven’s Overture Leonore No 3, for example, frequently loses its sublime quality under such circumstances and degenerates into a mere bravura exercise. The interval too can be given a specific function and serve to keep apart contrasting works which would otherwise be difficult to accommodate under one roof.

One can say, in general, that the greater the emotional and intellectual demands the composer makes, the more significant these psychological considerations become, and consequently the more difficult the arrangement of a concert programme. Such problems do not worry theoreticians or scholars in their ivory towers, for they are problems of musical reality. But as far as I am concerned, this reality is the only thing that matters, particularly as Germany today is in danger of drowning in a raging torrent of musical theories and ideologies.

At the same time there are a number of external pressures which cannot be ignored. One is the demand for contemporary works to be taken into consideration. This is both a social and an artistic demand, since music – that of the past as well – only has meaning in that it is part of life in the here and now, so that from one point of view a concern with the music of the present has a right to precede all other concerns. This must not, of course, be allowed to degenerate into a rivalry between old and new. The whole corpus of the music of the past stands before us as a living entity which is constantly changing its meaning and its relevance by virtue of the vitality throbbing through the individual works. New works have to merge with this corpus, justifying themselves at the bar not only of the present but also of the past. There is no point in a composer, or his critical supporters, trying to set up an artificial gulf between us and the past, or to diminish the past’s importance in an attempt to carve out a niche for himself and avoid the issue of rivalry or comparison. The issue has to be faced. Proposals one frequently hears for keeping modern works apart from those of the past and performing them in concerts of their own must be resisted. Indeed, far from working to the detriment of a powerful modern work, the presence in the same programme of pieces by the old masters can enable it to reveal its own special significance for contemporary audiences.

Where a series of concerts is concerned, it is legitimate to raise the question of comprehensiveness. Much depends on how far such a series of concerts sets out to be representative but there are limits to what can be done. It may be possible, for example, in a season of twenty-two concerts by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra to provide a conspectus of the orchestral repertoire. But in a series of twelve subscription concerts it is more difficult, and in a series of eight the very attempt becomes ridiculous. In an eight-concert series I came across recently in one of our larger provincial cities the name of Beethoven appeared only once – and that a minor work – while the rest of the programmes were mostly taken up by second- and third-class pieces from all around the world – a sure way of provoking a crisis in our concert halls.

The fact that external considerations are taken so seriously, and this whole question of concert programmes given such prominence, only goes to show how unsure of itself the public feels at the present time. In really productive ages there was no problem about devising programmes – take the era of Beethoven, for instance, or, later, that of Liszt and Bülow. What matters is not how one plans music but how one actually makes it. A single satisfactory performance of a truly great work, such as a Beethoven symphony – and how rare such performances are! – constitutes a better programme than all ‘thematic’ programmes put together. This is the moment, the only moment, when we discover whether or not a concert has become a true experiential reality.¹ If there is anything that can be demanded of a concert programme, it is that it should ensure that great music, old or modern, should be accorded the position that is its right, viz should become ever more firmly anchored in the human consciousness. A musician who puts together a concert programme must see himself not as a salesman pledged to offer something to everybody, but as a guide, willing and able to express judgements and opinions. The moment he ceases to do this, and thereby fails to make what is truly great and good the centre of attraction – accepting the risk that all manner of Philistine factions will make out that such works are over-familiar, hackneyed – he performs music a disservice. Unhappily, keeping abreast of the times, however one defines this, is no longer always the same as cultivating a living music. The latter seems to me incomparably more important, more responsible – and is itself more ‘abreast of the times’, if the truth be told.

2 Principles of
Interpretation

Our relationship to the past has become equivocal, no less in music than in all other spheres. As a result the questions surrounding the subject of how to perform the works of the past have acquired an importance which nobody had reckoned with, and the performer, the communicator of these works, finds himself bearing a crippling responsibility. The problem of interpretation has turned into a question of survival. This is a matter which requires our attention quite independently of contemporary political considerations – which, however, since they affect our everyday musical life, are also an important factor in the equation.

There are two slogans prominent in public discussion today. One is that of ‘literal’ performance, the other is that of ‘creative interpretation’. To any normal person the former, with associated concepts such as ‘adherence to the spirit of the work’ and ‘subordination of the performer’s personality to the composer’, must seem a matter of course. Every student takes it for granted that one does not contradict what the composer has written, and that it is our obligation to make our own personality take second place to the composer’s intentions.

As a goal this concept of the ‘literal’ performance is woefully inadequate; at the most it represents the ideal of the pedant, the pedagogue, quite apart from the fact that it is simply not practicable, even in the simplest of cases. For instance, a score cannot give the slightest clue as to the intensity of a forte or a piano, or exactly how fast a tempo should be, since every forte, every fast or slow tempo has in practice to take account of such things as the size and composition of the orchestra and the characteristics of the hall in which it is playing. Moreover as far as German classical composers are concerned, the dynamics are quite deliberately not literal but symbolic, not with a precise practical meaning for each individual instrument but of a broad significance, added with the sense of the work as a whole in mind. Thus these dynamics often have to be interpreted differently for different instruments. Fortissimo for the bassoons is quite different from fortissimo for the trombones. In fact, the whole notion of ‘literal interpretation’ belongs rather to the sphere of literary criticism than to music, to which it is so irrelevant as to be scarcely worth discussing. The only matter of interest is how and why it has come to be seen as so important by the public at the present time.

On this subject the first thing to be said is that we appear to be dealing with a reaction. The late Romantic age of Impressionism, which has just passed, was characterized by an extreme individualism of interpretation, including the works of the past – a tendentious preference for individualistic emotionalism and vague, colouristic self-indulgence at the expense of formal structural values. Weingartner used to complain about rubato conductors, while rubato pianists still continue to dominate the scene, and are, moreover, largely to be blamed for the fact that public interest in the pianoforte and the works written for it – the wealth and beauty of which far exceed those written for any other instrument – has been steadily in decline. In the face of this it is fully understandable that there should be a concern with the composer’s instructions and a demand for clarity and objectivity of performance, however inadequate a way this is, in itself, to approach the works of the great composers.

More importantly, it has never been the performers, today or in the past – the musician’s confinement of his activity to one of performance is in any case not all that old – who defined the style of reproduction but the creators. This they did either indirectly, through the new challenges and new visions in their works, which also changed our perspective on the past, or directly as performers themselves. It was the creators, the composers, who provided the performer with the raison d’être of his activity: their very existence gave him a sense of direction and acted at the same time as a constant, if unconscious controlling influence which protected him from the most blatant of misconceptions.

All this was only possible, however, as long as composers felt themselves to be the natural heirs and consummators of the past, to which they had a living relationship. But since the ‘New Music’, that is to say, since contemporary composers began to see themselves as being in opposition to the ‘Old Music’ and thus to their own past, they inevitably lost all inner relationship to this past. They were neither willing nor able to create a style of performance for a past that no longer interested them, leaving it instead to the professional interpreter.

This was the moment when the question of interpretation raised its head and when the public somehow grasped, unconsciously, what an alarming degree of importance the interpreter had suddenly acquired. He found himself holding in his hands a treasure of incalculable value – the whole of the past – with no higher authority to which to appeal for help. This moment marked the beginning of the ludicrous overestimation of the interpreter, the performer – an overestimation to which he himself had tended from the outset, alone as a result of perpetually confronting the public. But it also marked the onset of a move to escape from his power, to restrict his influence, to lay down the path he should follow, to check his activities at every possible turn. On the one hand there emerged the view that there was no such thing as an objectively ‘correct’ performance but that everything was a matter of taste, and that each individual and each age had the right to refashion the past according to its own requirements. Accompanying this were slogans like ‘creative interpretation’ and performances ‘in keeping with the spirit of the times’, primitive, naive intellectualizations which did not shrink from the most palpable nonsense so long as the terms of the theory could be made to justify it.

On the other hand we had the crabbed, soul-destroying demand for ‘literal’ interpretations. Those propounding this view would dearly love to pronounce sentence of death on anyone who departs one iota from the composer’s written text, restricting performance to exactly what is recorded and thereby reducing any subjective freedom to the smallest degree imaginable.

We can now begin to understand why it is no accident that these two apparently contrary trends in performance should make their appearance in one and the same age. There even seems to be a causal connection between them, as though they had a common origin, were like the two sides of a coin, or two streams flowing from a single spring. This common origin is in fact simply the sense of uncertainty that has taken hold of all aspects of our contemporary musical life, the sudden, enormous decline of our sure, natural instinct when confronted with the phenomenon of music in all its purity and power.

This is obviously not a situation that can last. Our relationship to ourselves – for what is our past but our own selves? – must become clearer, more vital, more fruitful and productive. We must find what is right in our dealings with the masterpieces of the past and what is wrong – what is good and what is bad. We must discover guidelines for interpretation which take us beyond the sterile worship of the literal text on the one hand and the totally vague, all-or-nothing shibboleth of ‘creative interpretation’ on the other.

This brings us to the heart of the problem. But first we must seek to define what it is that distinguishes the activity of the creator from that of the reproducer.

Consider the situation of the creator, the composer. He starts from...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I – The Practice of Music
• Part II – On Composers
• Part III – On Art and Life
• Notes
• Index