Musik & Ästhetik, 2018, Jg. 22, Ausgabe 87

In the foreword to his Foundations of Music History (1977), Carl Dahlhaus names three reasons for writing the book: the lack of theoretical reflection in his own field, the problem of mediation between methodological maxims and their political implications, and also the difficulties he encountered when preparing his history of 19th-century music. Each of the three reasons can now be understood more precisely and contextualized using newly-uncovered letters and notes. In the 1980s, the controversy regarding the work-character of ­political music – contrary to a popular claim by Anne Shreffler (2003), the methodological critiques were directed mainly at the ›western left‹ – became intertwined with historiographical questions regarding the concept of event that was reinforced in publications by the group ›Poetik und Hermeneutik‹. There is also a postscript on the English translation of the book and structure-historical historiography in late Dahlhaus.

Theorists and Theory Teachers: Carl Dahlhaus and Musik Theory at German-Speaking Universities – This article deals with (I) Dahlhaus as the manager of German-speaking thought on music in his time, (II) historicizing tendencies in music theory and the historical context of theorizing around 1970, (III) the role of the left, (IV) the interest of composition and theory students in Dahlhaus’s courses – Dahlhaus as a discussant, (V) relics of Dahlhaus’s thought, (VI) desiderata in the music-theoretical reception of Dahlhaus, (VII) Dahlhaus’s stance towards »practical theory« and (VIII) the effect of his teaching.

Varietas and ratio in Ockeghem’s Missa Quinti toni – This text is an analysis of the Kyrie from Ockeghem’s Missa Quinti toni. The point of departure is the explanation of varietas by his contemporary, the composer and music theorist Johannes Tinctoris, who considered Ockeghem (along with Antoine Busnois) one of the »outstanding« composers, and names his music as an example of varietas. Varietas, as becomes clear from Tinctoris’s explanation and is confirmed by analysis, is not an instruction to avoid being systematic; on the contrary, it is varietas, which Tinctoris states must be applied »at all times with the utmost degree of method [ratio]«, that provides a compositional structure in the first place. The text also makes a case for the cultivation of varietas in performance practice.

Finale II – The paradigm shift in New Music after the war resulted from the experiences gathered by composers with the new medium of electronic sound production. Many studios were set up, only to fold some 15 years later. At the intersection of electronics and music, New Music and pop came closer together than ever before (Stockhausen/Jazz, Berio/Beatles and Rap, Boulez/Zappa, Ligeti/Beatles); a shared future seemed within reach. Subsequent generations cut off this rapprochement. The second part of the text concerns the subject of New Music and Film (Eisenstein/Adorno/Kagel). The final section recalls two winners of the Nobel Prize for physics who had close connections to music (Planck, Heisenberg).

Richard Wagner in Germany: Hitler, Knappertsbusch, Mann – Hans Rudolf Vaget’s book follows the trail of Thomas Mann’s assertion that the way to explain National Socialism was not so much by looking at political, economical or sociological factors, but rather that its genesis only became comprehensible if one sought to grasp its cultural and mentality history, recognizing it as a consequence of German art religion and musical idolatry, as well as an amoral aestheticism that found its home specifically in the German middle classes. The works of Wagner, he argued, were a particular crystallization point for this. Thomas Mann, who had himself been culturally socialized in this sense, but also given a certain immunization early on through the antidote of Nietzsche’s polemics, which allowed him to cultivate a modern, cosmopolitan view of Wagner, was able to recognize a ›brother‹ in Hitler, the other of the two inseparable faces of Germany, as it were. Vaget develops this analysis in detail through a parallel consideration of three personal histories (Hitler, Knappertsbusch, Mann) and extends it to the present day; for Hitler’s Wagner is also our Wagner.

Musical Constructions of German National Identity? – Barbara Eichner’s book History in Mighty Sounds: Musical Constructions of German National Identity, 1848-1914 is a weighty contribution to the question of the relationship between »nationalism« (here the German variety) and works of music (primarily operas, but also choral and symphonic works). One particular difficulty is the fact that during said period, German was only an incipient nation – a »belated nation«, as Helmuth Plessner puts it – but also that it is not easy to make a clear distinction between »patriotism« and »nationalism« in comparison with countries like France and England, for example, but also – as discussed here – with a multicultural small state like Switzerland. Ideological positions appear in a far more easily comprehensible form in the texts set that in »sublime« music; intentions, contexts and their reception must also be taken into account, especially genre-specific preconditions.