New performance sources and old modernist productions: Die Jakobsleiter in the age of mechanical reproduction

Journal of Musicology

Volumn 19, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 434-460

  Shaw, Jennifer ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950178008     PISSN: 02779269     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/jm.2002.19.3.434     Document Type: Review

References (48)

1. "Is this the face of the Son of God?" by Bruce Wilson, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), item posted on www.news.com.au on 28 March 2001
2. See also "Skull and software generate 'real face' of Jesus," article by Paul McGann in the Times (London), 27 March 2001, pp. 1 and 3
3. reprinted in an edited version as "Good Lord, he's the image of Jesus," The Australian, 28 March 2001, p. 1
4. Daily Telegraph, www.news.com.au on 28 March 2001. While the resulting image has that blank expression typical of Identikit composites, there is an obvious and crucial difference in the methodology of its construction, since Identikit, Photofit, and recent computerized versions, such as E-fit, are defined as "systems for reconstructing the facial appearance of a suspect from details recollected by witnesses" (Macmillan Encyclopaedia 2001, cited on www.xrefer.com; emphasis added). With no detailed witness descriptions of Christ's appearance, the BBC had to resort to other means. For the hairstyle given to the image, for example, we can thank the BBC experts' consultation of first- and third-century frescoes in northern Iraq, while the skin color was "determined by the known climate of the time" (Times, 27 March 2001, p. 3)
5. Bragarde, quoted in the Times, 27 March 2001, p. 3
6. and on the Daily Telegraph website
7. See, for instance, the arguments of Peter Le Huray, Authenticity in Performance: Eighteenth-Century Case Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990), 1-5
8. For a more complex approach to authenticity, see Peter Kivy's monograph, Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performances (Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1995)
9. and the review by John Butt of Kivy's study in the Journal of the American Musicological Society 53 (2000): 402-11
10. For a virtuoso account of similarly misconstrued (and reconfigured) sources and their resulting features see Robert Fink, "'Rigoroso (eight note sign=126)': The Rite of Spring and the Forging of a Modernist Performing Style," Journal of the American Musicological Society 52 (1999): 299-362
11. On the development of the concept of Werktreue, authenticity's 19th-century ancestor, see Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Performance of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 1-9
12. Dorrotya Fabian also compares the historical development of both concepts in "The Meaning of Authenticity and the Early Music Movement - A Historical Review," International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 32 (2001): 153-67
13. Like "authenticity" in musical performance, Werktreue is a fluid concept that ranges from a complex consideration of whether performers should be faithful to the musical text - and what, then, constitutes both the text and "true" actions - to just another euphemism for second-guessing the composer's intentions from evidence in the score. On Werktreue as Notentreue see Eric Van Tassel, "'Something Utterly New': Listening to Schubert Lieder," Early Music 25 (1997): 703-14
14. For accounts of the symphony's genesis see Walter B. Bailey, Programmatic Elements in the Works of Schoenberg (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984), 79-118
15. Ethan Haimo, Schoenberg's Serial Odyssey: The Evolution of his Twelve-Tone Method, 1914-1928 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), 42-60
16. and Martina Sichardt, Die Entstehung der Zwölftonmethode Arnold Schönbergs (Mainz: B. Schott's Söhne, 1990), 34-39
17. For a brief discussion of this point see Arnold Whittall, Schoenberg Chamber Music (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1972), 16
18. Letter to Scherchen, 22 May 1950, Arnold Schoenberg: Letters, 280
19. repr. Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 16 (1961): 193-204
20. Works performed included Boulez's Le marteau sans maître and several other compositions by Schoenberg: Among these were his Moses und Aron fragment and the premieres of the Three Pieces for Chamber Orchestra (1910), the 55-measure fragment Israel Exists Again (1949-) for chorus and orchestra (in a performing version by Zillig), and Am Strande, a song that Schoenberg had composed in 1908 or 1909. Details of the program are found in reviews by Klaus Wagner, " 'das neue werk' zum fünfzigsten Male" Melos 25 (1958): 97
21. and Heinz Joachim, "Das 50. 'Neue Werk' im NDR in Hamburg. Uraufführungen -Der Nachlaß Arnold Schönbergs," Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 119 (1958): 224-26
22. The 1961 performance was reviewed in many music Journals including Dansk Musiktidsskrift 36/6 (1961): 209-11
23. Melos, 28 (1961): 245-48
24. Musica 15 (1961): 432-33
25. Musical Quarterly 47 (1961): 534-39
26. Musik und Gesellschaft 11 (1961): 698-99
27. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 122 (1961): 313-16
28. Florence's La Nazione, Die Presse, and the Wiener Zeitung. The performance was recorded by West German Radio and was rebroadcast on the WDR3 "Neue Musik" program on 12 July 2001, in honor of the 50th anniversary year of Schoenberg's death
29. According to a program note quoted in Klaus Wagner's review of the 1958 premiere, Zillig had claimed merely to have "clothed the original score of 1917 in the garb of Schoenberg's suggested instrumentation of 1944" ("'das neue werk' zum fünfzigsten Male," Melos 25 [1958]: 97)
30. Franz Willnauer, reviewing the 1961 performance, claimed that Zillig had not had to compose a single note, a claim not made by Zillig in his article in the Score or in its German-language reprint: See Willnauer, "Das 35. Weltmusikfest der IGNM," Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 122 (1961): 314
31. Lothar Knessl, "IGNM im Wiener Monstre-Festival," Melos 28 (July-August 1961): 246 ("Man hört eine Musik, die so klingt, wie Schönberg sie 1917 geschrieben haben könnte"). Willnauer too praises Zillig's "highest possible fidelity to the instrumental technique and sound of Schönberg's atonal period" and notes that Zillig had acted "in accordance with Schoenberg's last wishes" - somewhat strangely voiced by Schoenberg in 1944, seven years before his death (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 122 [1961]: 314-15). All translations are mine
32. While Zillig's contribution is played down, Rudolf Stephan's editorial role in "revising" Zillig's misreadings, as well as Jean Christensen's detailed corrections to Zillig's scores in her dissertation, are almost never acknowledged. See Stephan's Preface to the orchestral score of Die Jakobsleiter in the Gesamtausgabe, section 8, series A, vol. 29 (1985), vi-ix
33. The first quote is from Willnauer, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 122/7-8 (1961): 315
34. the second from H. H. Stuckenschmidt's review of the 1961 production in the Musical Quarterly 47 (1961): 537-39
35. It is unclear who made the final decision to employ tapes in the 1961 production: It may have been the result of a joint decision made by Kubelik as conductor, the producer, Egon Seefehlner, then director of the Vienna Konzerthaus, and the 1961 Vienna festival director, Egon Hilbert. The initial suggestion, however, must have been proposed by Zillig, who singled out Schoenberg's interest in spatially separated "sound-complexes" as "a prophecy of electronic music and of the most recent experiments in spatio-acoustics" ("Notes on Arnold Schoenberg's Unfinished Oratorio 'Die Jakobsleiter'," Score 25 [June 1959]: 16)
36. See for example Patrick J. Smith's review of the August 1968 North American premiere by the Sante Fé Opera in Musical Quarterly 55 (January 1969): 103-4
37. The existence of the libretto and its "substantial musical sketch" was noted by Josef Rufer, Das Werk Arnold Schönberg (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1959), 147
38. Boulez, "The Vestal Virgin and the Fire-Stealer: Memory, Creation and Authenticity," Early Music 18 (1990): 356-57
39. While Boulez's article seems especially controversial in the context of this particular journal, it is important to note that his article originally appeared in Inharmoniques 4, IRCAM's in-house journal, and was reprinted in translation at the request of Nicholas Kenyon, editor of Early Music, as a deliberately provocative attempt to engage readers in the issues of "'authenticity'" and "tradition in performance styles": Kenyon, Editorial, Early Music 18 (1990): 354
40. and Glock, "With Boulez at the BBC," op. cit., 29-34
41. Fleischmann, "Full of Phantasy, Uncompromising: Boulez the Conductor and Impresario," 17
42. See for example Patrick J. Smith's comment on Schoenberg's "lack of marked verbal ability," untitled review, Musical Quarterly 55 (1969): 103-4
43. Stuckenschmidt's description of Schoenberg's libretto as "the product of a spiritual turbulence" that contains "obscurities and weaknesses," untitled review, Musical Quarterly 47 (1961): 537
44. and Willi Reich, Schoenberg: A Critical Biography, trans. Leo Black (New York: Praeger, 1971), 119-22
45. While it has long been known that the public readings and lectures of Karl Kraus made a strong impact on certain members of the Schoenberg circle, John Covach has more recently argued that Rudolf Steiner's mystery plays were also profoundly influential in shaping Schoenberg's concept of the musical idea. See Covach, "Schoenberg and the Occult Some Reflections on the Musical Idea," Theory and Practice 17 (1992): 103-18
46. Arnold Schoenberg: Letters, 283
47. Schoenberg, Die Jakobsleiter Oratorium libretto, filed as copy S32c4 at the Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna
48. See Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1968), 221