![Sample our Language & Literature journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5941/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Language-Literature.jpg"})
Abstract
In a radio address of 1957, Theodor Adorno praised what he called Eichendorff’s ‘unreliable [unzuverlässig]’ conservatism: a collection of qualities that allowed him to draw dynamically on a musical flow of conventional poetic elements while simultaneously affirming the promise of a shimmering utopian future beyond bourgeois trappings. This article considers these same qualities as valued by another writer Adorno admired, Thomas Mann, and his circle in the aftermath of the First World War. It argues, first, for Mann’s identification (in the Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, 1918) of an exemplary national-conservative attitude in Eichendorff’s Taugenichts, himself a musician wandering beyond the bourgeoisie; second, it observes the political potential of this attitude in Hans Pfitzner’s setting of Eichendorff’s poem ‘Klage’. Finally, the article turns to three musical acts c.1918–1921 — a performance, a composition, and the expounding of music theory — in order to demonstrate the close relationship of Mann and Pfitzner at this time, and to position their combined thought as inspirational for a new national conservatism in music in the early post-war period.
Notes on Contributor
Nicholas Attfield is Lecturer in Music at the University of Birmingham. He is author of Challenging the Modern: Conservative Revolution in German Music, 1918–1933 (Oxford University Press/British Academy, 2017), and co-editor of Music, Modern Culture, and the Critical Ear (Ashgate, 2017).
Notes
1 Theodor Adorno, ‘Zum Gedächtnis Eichendorffs’, reprinted in Adorno, Noten zur Literatur, 4 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1958), i, pp. 105–43. Quotations from Eichendorff’s poems at pp. 108–09 and p. 121; closing quotation is found on p. 123.
2 Adorno, ‘Zum Gedächtnis Eichendorffs’, p. 109.
3 Adorno, ‘Zum Gedächtnis Eichendorffs’, pp. 107–09 and, on Eichendorff’s Unzuverlässigkeit, pp. 115–19. On Adorno’s view of his contemporary conservatives — at whose uncritical advocacy of Eichendorff much of the early argumentation of the address is aimed — see also pp. 105–07, and particularly pp. 112–13.
4 Adorno, ‘Zum Gedächtnis Eichendorffs’, pp. 112–16. Quotations at p. 113 and p. 116 respectively. On Adorno’s more usual short shrift towards such life-work hermeneutics, see, for example, Ulrich Plass, Language and History in Theodor W. Adorno’s Notes to Literature (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 49–51.
5 Adorno, ‘Zum Gedächtnis Eichendorffs’, pp. 116–19. ‘Schöne Fremde’ is quoted directly on p. 118; Adorno describes this poem as ‘utopisch’ on p. 124.
6 Adorno, ‘Zum Gedächtnis Eichendorffs’, p. 113.
7 The edition I use in the following is Thomas Mann, Politische Schriften und Reden (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1960), i: Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen. As Mann makes clear in his Prologue (pp. 7–31), the Betrachtungen was far from his only polemical intervention around the time of the war; rather, it continued the binarizing trends of, for example, the essay ‘Gedanken im Kriege’, Neue Rundschau, 10 (November 1914), 1471–84.
8 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 139 (‘Gefühlshaltung’) and p. 349.
9 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 86.
10 See Stefan Müller-Doohm, Adorno: Eine Biographie (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011), pp. 479–80.
11 Adorno, ‘Zum Gedächtnis Eichendorffs’, p. 135 and Plass, Language and History, p. 69.
12 On this willingness of the poet, see, for example, Adorno, ‘Zum Gedächtnis Eichendorffs’, pp. 119–20; Selbstentäußerung and Selbstauslöschung are found on p. 123 and p. 127 respectively. ‘Weakness’ is specifically mentioned on p. 130: ‘die Kraft des Dichters aber die zur Schwäche, die, dem Sprachgefälle nicht zu widerstehen eher als die, es zu meistern’.
13 Adorno at first seems to argue against this claim, with the remark that ‘[d]ies Rauschen jedoch wird von der allzu hastigen Erinnerung an Musik versäumt’ (p. 128). The trajectory towards music is nonetheless clear. A page later, he speaks of Eichendorff’s language transcending itself, through its presentation of die Rauschende, to become music; the coda on Schumann’s Op. 39, as we have seen, emphasizes music’s realization of the potential of Rauschen.
14 See Adorno, ‘Zum Gedächtnis Eichendorffs’, pp. 119–20, and the epigraph to the essay (p. 105, from Verlaine). The ‘Unterstrom’ of German literature is mentioned on p. 121.
15 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 19.
16 Mann, Betrachtungen, pp. 19–21 (p. 21); Mann’s emphasis.
17 This proposal on the relationship of music and politics is largely inspired by John Street, Music & Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012), especially pp. 161–74.
18 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 8; see also p. 209 and p. 215.
19 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 8.
20 The quotations in this paragraph and the next are taken from Mann, Betrachtungen, pp. 279–80.
21 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 289.
22 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 287.
23 This expression is specifically found in Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 279, and is often paraphrased in the chapter that follows. See, for example, the section on the politischer Literat and the link he enforces between die Vernunft and die Tugend (pp. 289–90).
24 Adorno, ‘Zum Gedächtnis Eichendorffs’, p. 116.
25 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 16, p. 101 and p. 77 respectively.
26 Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Leipzig: Naumann, 1886), pp. 200–03 (p. 201).
27 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 24.
28 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 81.
29 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 80.
30 Mann, Betrachtungen, pp. 280–81.
31 Mann, Betrachtungen, pp. 237–78.
32 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 282. Compare Eichendorff, Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1970), pp. 20–21 and pp. 41–42, with Mann, Betrachtungen, pp. 280–83.
33 Eichendorff, Taugenichts, p. 21; Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 282 and p. 288.
34 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 280.
35 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 163.
36 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 137.
37 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 284. Or, as Mann puts it more broadly elsewhere, ‘man [müsse], um ein Mensch zu sein oder zu werden, vor allem Nation haben’ (p. 329).
38 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 284.
39 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 119. See also p. 29: ‘[Deutschlands] größte Schwäche aber ist seine Unbereitschaft zum Wort. Es spricht nicht gut; und faßt man es in Worte, so klingen sie mesquin und negativ’. Mann’s emphasis.
40 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 60.
41 On the emergence of this position, see, for example, Celia Applegate, ‘How German Is It? Nationalism and the Idea of Serious Music in the Early Nineteenth Century’, 19th-Century Music, 21 (1998), 274–96.
42 Germany is characterized as ‘böswillig’ on p. 36 of the Betrachtungen; Nietzsche is praised as having stated ‘das Böseste’ about the German character on p. 57. The link between an absolute ‘happiness [Glück]’ and political thought is explored on, for example, pp. 242–43.
43 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 50 (p. 29).
44 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 297.
45 Mann’s quotation from the Palestrina libretto is found in Betrachtungen, p. 313.
46 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 314
47 For the complete poem, see, for example, Eichendorffs Werke: Auswahl in vier Teilen, ed. by Ludwig Krähe (Berlin: Bong & Co., 1908), i, pp. 105–06.
48 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 296.
49 See, in particular, the Politik chapter of the Betrachtungen, pp. 179–88 (p. 188).
50 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 297; also p. 237 and p. 317. Pfitzner emphasizes the dedication (and its acceptance) to his publisher in a letter of August 1916, reproduced in Hans Pfitzner Briefe, ed. by Bernhard Adamy (Tutzing: Schneider, 1991), i, p. 240.
51 For Mann’s account of Pfitzner’s politics, see Betrachtungen, p. 192 and pp. 316–18.
52 See the piano-vocal reduction of the orchestral score, made by Otto Wittenbecher and published by Brockhaus-Verlag in 1915.
53 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 19. See also the discussion in Hermann Kurzke, Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Irrationalität: Thomas Mann und der Konservatismus (unpublished dissertation: Julius-Maximilians-Universität zu Würzburg, 1972), pp. 124–27.
54 Mann, Betrachtungen, pp. 296–97. Mann’s emphasis. For ‘bösartige Marschmusik’, see Betrachtungen, p. 296: the immediate contexts for this are Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique and Wagner’s overture to Tannhäuser, a typical evocation of the German-Russian axis underlying many of the book’s cultural reference points. On this axis (‘Es ist für mich keine Frage, daß deutsche und russische Menschlichkeit einander näher sind als die russische und die französische’), see, for example, p. 327.
55 See Paul Egon Hübinger, Thomas Mann, die Universität Bonn und die Zeitgeschichte: drei Kapitel deutscher Vergangenheit aus dem Leben des Dichters (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1974), pp. 59–68. For a more apologetic view of Mann’s Betrachtungen against its reception, see also Frances Lee, Overturning Dr. Faustus: Rereading Thomas Mann’s Novel in Light of Observations of a Non-Political Man (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2007), pp. 42–46.
56 Mann, Betrachtungen, pp. 272–74 (p. 274).
57 See the letter to Thomas Mann in Thomas Mann und Alfred Baeumler: eine Dokumentation, ed. by Marianne Baeumler, Hubert Brunträger and Hermann Kurzke (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1989), pp. 74–89 (p. 87). Mann calls ‘finis musicae’ a ‘Traumsymbol für die Demokratie’ (Betrachtungen, p. 30).
58 On the founding of the Pfitzner-Verein, see Helmut Grohe, ‘Zur Geschichte und zum Schicksal zweier Vereinsgründungen im Zeichen Hans Pfitzners’, in Festschrift aus Anlaß des 100. Geburtstags am 5 Mai 1969 und des Todestags am 22. Mai 1969 von Hans Pfitzner, ed. by Walter Abendroth and Karl-Robert Danler (Munich: Winkler, 1969), pp. 69–83.
59 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 272.
60 Mann, ‘Aufruf zur Gründung des Hans-Pfitzner-Vereins für deutsche Tonkunst’, reprinted in Rede und Antwort: Gesammelte Abhandlungen und kleine Aufsätze (Berlin: Fischer, 1922), pp. 289–90. The date of the address is incorrectly given here as 1919.
61 Mann, ‘Aufruf’, p. 290.
62 See Willibald Nagel, ‘Hans-Pfitzner-Verein für deutsche Tonkunst’, Neue Musik-Zeitung, 18.39 (June 1918), 259–60.
63 See Grohe, ‘Zur Geschichte und zum Schicksal zweier Vereinsgründungen im Zeichen Hans Pfitzners’, p. 75.
64 A detailed account of Pfitzner’s Lieder for voice and piano — of which 19 are settings of Eichendorff, far more those of any other poet — can be found in Richard Mercier, The Songs of Hans Pfitzner: A Guide and Study (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998). On Pfitzner’s fondness for the poet, see, for example, the letter to Felix Wolfes of March 1941, in Hans Pfitzner Briefe, i, p. 883.
65 See the account of Josef Hofmiller, another member of the Pfitzner-Mann circle, in Josef Hofmillers Schriften: Revolutionstagebuch, ed. by Hilda Hofmiller (Leipzig: Rauch, 1938), ii, pp. 93–94. The sceptical remarks were apparently made by Paul Busching, a founding member of the Pfitzner-Verein and one of the editors of the Münchner neueste Nachrichten.
66 See Hans Pfitzner Briefe, p. 216.
67 See the review of the recital by Alfred Einstein, Münchener Post, 5 November 1919, in which the event is called an ‘Experiment’, and specific mention is made of the unusual ‘Verdunkelung des Saales’. This review is reproduced in Kurt Dorfmüller, ‘Alfred Einstein als Musikberichterstatter’, in Festschrift Rudolf Elvers zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. by Ernst Herttrich and Hans Schneider (Tutzing: Schneider, 1985), p. 134. For broader context, see also Arthur Neißer’s review of an earlier Pfitzner concert in Der Merker 1 (1910), 909: again, a practice of ‘Saalverdunklung’ is indicated here for a performance of Schumann’s song cycles.
68 On these practices, see Brian Kane, Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 102–08.
69 See, for example, Wagner’s ‘Bericht über die Aufführung des “Tannhäuser” in Paris’ (1861), reproduced in Richard Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen (Leipzig: Fritzsch, 1873), vii, pp. 190–01; see also Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, iv: Oper und Drama, p. 274.
70 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 299.
71 For Atmosphäre, see Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 226 and p. 420.
72 On these piano interludes, again see the review of the concert in Dorfmüller, ‘Alfred Einstein als Musikberichterstatter’, p. 134.
73 Mann, Tagebücher 1918–1921, ed. by Peter de Mendelssohn (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1979), p. 310.
74 Adorno, ‘Zum Gedächtnis Eichendorffs’, pp. 122–23.
75 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 40 and p. 56.
76 On the genesis of the cantata, see John Williamson, The Music of Hans Pfitzner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 259–60.
77 For the score, see the piano reduction published by Adolph Fürstner (Berlin, 1921). The environs of the instrumental section entitled ‘Ergebung’ (pp. 102–07) are a good example of the work’s Gefühlsverworrenheit: this section’s wandering solo flute, marked sehr ausdrucksvoll, are immediately succeeded by the violent percussion and driving rhythms of ‘Der jagt dahin, daß die Rosse schnaufen’.
78 On these prior titles, see Hans Pfitzner Briefe, p. 321 and p. 324.
79 A literary member of Pfitzner’s circle, Josef Hofmiller’s dismissal of works with such national titles can be found in Josef Hofmillers Schriften, pp. 20–21; the concerns of Pfitzner’s publisher are found in the letter of June 1921 in Hans Pfitzner Briefe, pp. 327–28.
80 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 231.
81 For these returning melodies, see the piano reduction (Berlin: Fürstner, 1921) and compare, for example, p. 158 (‘Faß das Steuer … ’) with p. 3; also p. 163 with p. 54.
82 Pfitzner’s comment on Eichendorff’s essence is found in a letter to Johannes Oertel, in Hans Pfitzner Briefe, p. 302.
83 Thomas Mann, Tagebücher 1918–1921, ed. by Peter de Mendelssohn (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1979), p. 347.
84 On this exchange, see, as one example, Walter Frisch, German Modernism: Music and the Arts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 254–55.
85 Thomas Mann, ‘Von deutscher Republik’, in Politische Schriften und Reden (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1960), ii, p. 102 and p. 120.
86 Mann, ‘Von deutscher Republik’, p. 118 and p. 126.
87 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 15.
88 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 111 and p. 188. The description ‘romantisch-politisch’ is Mann’s, in a diary entry of June 1919, reproduced in Tagebücher 1918–1921, p. 274.
89 See, for example, Mann, Betrachtungen, pp. 97–99.
90 Pfitzner, Die neue Ästhetik der musikalischen Impotenz: ein Verwesungssymptom? (Munich: Süddeutsche Monatshefte, 1920), pp. 83–86 (p. 86).
91 Pfitzner, Die neue Ästhetik, p. 83. His emphasis.
92 See Pfitzner, Die neue Ästhetik, pp. 66–67, and Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 296.
93 Pfitzner, Die neue Ästhetik, p. 88. His emphasis.
94 Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 22. His emphasis.
95 See Hübinger, Thomas Mann, die Universität Bonn und die Zeitgeschichte, pp. 63–64.
96 Nagel, ‘Hans-Pfitzner-Verein für deutsche Tonkunst’, p. 260.
97 Karl Blessinger, Die Überwindung der musikalischen Impotenz (Stuttgart: Filser, 1920), p. 80.
98 See Alban Berg, ‘Die musikalische Impotenz der ‘neuen Ästhetik’ Hans Pfitzners’, Musikblätter des Anbruch, 2 (1920), 399–408, and Hugo Kauder, ‘Gedanken und Betrachtungen zu Pfitzners Streitschrift’, Musikblätter des Anbruch, 3 (1921), 69–72. See also the more measured approach of Hanns W. David, ‘Betrachtung eines Musikalisch-Unpolitischen’, Musikblätter des Anbruch, 3 (1921), 143–45.
99 R. S. Hoffmann, ‘Von deutscher Seele’, Musikblätter des Anbruch, 4 (1922), 88.
100 Hermann Schmeidel, ‘Aus einer Besprechung der Berliner Uraufführung’, Musikblätter des Anbruch, 4 (1922), 89.
101 Mann, ‘Von deutscher Republik’, p. 113