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Goethe and MusicAuthor(s): Mosco CarnerSource: The Musical Times, Vol. 97, No. 1356 (Feb., 1956), pp. 72-73Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.

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THE

MUSICAL TIMES

Goethe

nd

Music

By

MOSCO CARNER

GOETHE

(like

Shakespeare)

s

one of

those

rarepoets whomPolyhymnia as almostas

much

ight

o claimfor

herself s has her ister

muse

Euterpe.

Like another Pied

Piper,

Goethe

cast a

magic spell

upon

a

long

train f

composers,

attracting y

the iren all of his

verses

ome of

the

greatest.

He

was indeed the musician's

poet

par

excellence.

It

would

be

interesting,

or

xample,

o

speculate

on

the course the

Lied

would have taken

from

Schubert o

Hugo

Wolf,

had Goethe never

existed.)

Yet

what was Goethe's

own attitude

towards

n art

that

owes so much to the

nspiring

force

of

his

poetry

nd

plays?

And

equally

im-

portant,

was

Goethe,

whose

yrical enius uivered

and

glowed

with

nner

music,

musical

n the sense

in

which

we

comprehend

he term? The recent

publication of a booklet examiningGoethe's

relation to

Bach*

provides

convenient

ccasion

to

expatiate

n these

questions

n a

general

way.

After

reading

his famous

conversationswith

Eckermann

nd

ploughing

hrough

he

voluminous

yet

rather

ull

correspondence

hat

passed

between

him

and his

musicalmentor

elter,

ne

is left

n

no

doubt

that

Goethe's

nterestn music

nd its

prob-

lems

was

both sincere nd

profound.

Yet there

s

nothing

n

all these

writings

o show

that

his

interest,

ersistent

nd

searching hough

t

was,

was

prompted

y

more than

a

purely

ntellectual

curiosity.

We cannot resist

he

mpression

hat n

his

approach

o

music

Goethe vinced

he

mind f a

scientificnquirer ather han thatof an intuitiveartist. He seemedto

perceive

music,

notso much

as the

product

of the

creative

magination

ut as

a

fascinating

manifestation f natural

aws

in the

world of

organized

ound.

It

almost became

for

him

a

subject

of

natural

cience.

In his

unfinished

'Tonlehre'

(a

pendant

o his better-known

Theory

of

the

Colours')

he

sought

o

analyse

music

imply

as

a

natural

phenomenon,

ttempting

o

probe

into

the immanent aws which

he assumed

must

underlie

he

genesis

of ntervals

nd chords.

Sim-

ilarly,

n his

letters o

Zelter there

s

a

good

deal

about

the critical nterval

of

the third

and the

enigmatic

ontrast f mood

produced

by

ts

major

and

minor

mode. Such

inquiries

nd

speculations

bearwitness o an impulseto penetrate he secret

of

the musical art

from

predominantly

ational

angle.

As

he

said to

Eckermann,

'It

is

more

through reflection,

nd thus

in

a more

general

manner,

han

through

njoyment,

hat

approach

music

. And to Zelterhe

frankly

onfessed

hat n

his

endeavour

o

find

rational, ogical

explanation

for

whathe

enjoyed

n

music,

he

was

missing

third

of

life's

pleasure.

The crux of

the matter

s

that

Goethe,

so

uniquely

endowed

with

ntuition nd

perception

n other

pheres,

acked

that

mysterious

organ

which nables ts

owner

o

transform

isten-

ing

nto

musical

xperience-that

s,

to obtain

that

enrichmentfhis

aesthetic

elfwhich

nly

he

rtof

music

can

provide

and

in the last

analysis

defies

verbaldefinitions.To put t morebluntly, oethe

was

intrinsically

nmusical.

*

'Goethes

Verhiltnis

zu

Bach', by

Friedrich Smend. Carl

Merseburger,

Berlin.

There

was, moreover,

curious

suspicion,

ven

malaise, n his attitude o music. Of all thearts,

music was the one that

appeared

to

Goethe

to

possess

in the

highest

degree

a

quality

which

he

called das

Diimonische,

nd 'the

demonic',

he

revealingly

old

Eckermann,

is

not

in

my

nature

though

am

subject

to its influence'. To this

Olympian serenely

urveying

he

world from

his

little

Weimar

hrone,

musicwas themost rrational

of

the

arts,

unsettling,

isturbing,

ven

dangerous

in

its

general

ffect-which

was

perhaps

the

chief

reason

why,

for

all his

admiration,

he failed to

come

to

termswith

hemusicof

Beethoven,

o

him

a

musician

possessed by

demons

.

And

if he

rejected

Schubert's

settings

f

his

verses,

t was

partly

because

they

struckhim as too

romantic,

which n Goethe's anguagesignifiedhe rruption

into

classical art

of the

purely

emotional,

.e.

of

irrational,

nstinctive orces.

(In

this context

t is

perhaps

worth

recalling

hat Thomas Mann held

similar

views

on

the

power

of

music,

going

even

furtherhanGoethe

by ascribing

o

t

an

insidiously

disruptive,

athological

quality.

Thus the

com-

poser-hero

of his

great symbolical

novel 'Dr.

Faustus ends in madness

and in

a

lesser-known

story, Walsungenblut',

t

is

a

performance

f

'

Walkiire'

that

finally

destroys

he last

barrier

which

had

so far

prevented

brother

nd a sister

from

orming

n incestuous

elationship.)

True,

to some extentGoethe's

viewson

music

wereconditioned ytheeighteenth-centuryation-alists who believed

firmly

nd

uncompromisingly

in

the

superiority

f

pure

reason over the

emotions

and

sense-perceptions.

Had

not Descartes con-

tendedthat there

re

elementary

priori

oncepts

from

which

he

whole

of

knowledge

an

be

deduced

mathematically?

As for

music,

had not Leibniz

defined

t as 'an unconsciousmathematical

rob-

lem

of the soul'?

Goethe,

who

at one

stage

of his

development

ad come

under

Leibniz's

influence,

seems to

echo

the dictum

f the German

philoso-

pher

when he once likened

some Bach

fugues

'to illuminated mathematical

problems

whose

themes are

so

simple though they

produce

such

extraordinary oetic

results'.

It is

certainly

most

remarkable hatGoethe,once thestormy etrel f

romanticism

n

German

literature

nd

a

close

witnessof

the

rise

of romantic

music,

should

in

later

years

have become

a

rigid

rationalist

who

would concede

a

piece

of music

raison

'etre

only

in

so far s

it

proved

susceptible

f

clear,

logical

exegesis.

To be

comprehensible

nd

have

meaning,

he would

postulate,

composition

hould serve

n

extra-musical

urpose

hat ould

readily

e

grasped

by

the ntellect.

He almost came

to

deny

music

a

purpose

in

itself,

nd, hence,

an autonomous

status.

The

principle

of Art

for

Art's

Sake

he

would no doubt

have

considered

not

only

ncom-

prehensible

ut alien to

the

very

nature

of

music

as he saw it. This

s a

point

of view

represented

n

our timeby the Soviet aestheticians, hose doc-

trines re

fundamentally

dentical

with

ighteenth-

century

ationalist

esthetics

hough

hey

re

now

pressed

nto

the ervice f a

political

deology.

The

purposes

Goethe wanted music to

serve were

72

February

956

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THE

MUSICAL TIMES

religious,

moral

and educational.

Thus,

he would

place

church

music

on

the

highest

innacle.

Even f

divorced rom

uch

ofty spirations,

music hould

provide

the

most

polished

form of

intellectual

entertainment:

it should

delight

the mind

by

beautiful

harmonious proportions, finished

craftsmanship,

nd a neat

expression

of refined

emotions.

Significantly,

e

preferred

ach, Haydn,

Mozart

and even

such

mediocrities as the

classicistic

Zelter and

Reichardt,

to

Beethoven

and

Schubert.

Given this

rationalist

ias,

it

was

inevitable hat

Goethe

should

have

derived

his

greatest leasure

from

word-inspired

music.

His

enjoyment

of

instrumental orks was

largely

onfined o such

as

would,

by

virtue

of

an

overtly rogrammatic

character,

uggest

o

his mind

something angible

and

capable

of

verbal

description.

One

of his

favourite

ieces

of

thiskind was the

young

Bach's

charming

rifle

Capriccio

sopra

la lontananza

del

suo fratellomatissimo. Yet even n suchmusic

therewas still ome

obscurity

s

to

the

exact

mean-

ing

of

this r that

passage.

No

such

difficulty

xisted

in vocal

compositions.

Here,

Goethe

felt,

he text

furnished im with a clear

pointer

to what the

composer

wanted

o

convey

o his isteners.

t

was

in

songs, ratorios,

nd

operas

hat

Goethe found

rational

equation

between

music

and

meaning,

seemingly

he sine

qua

non for his

enjoyment.

These

genres

were

free rom

he

tantalizing

lusive-

ness

which o

disconcerted

nd

baffled

im n the

higher

formsof instrumental

music.

There

is

a

scene

in his

great

novel

Wilhelm Meisters

Lehr-

und-Wanderjahre'

in

which

Goethe

makes

this

very point

through

the

'mouth

of his hero.

Wilhelmand his friendshave been listening o

an

old

harpist.

He had

played

an instrumental

piece

and now Wilhelm

sks himto

sing song:

'Give us

something

that

shall

entertainthe

spirit

and the

heart

as

well

as the

senses',

said

Wilhelm.

The instrument

hould

but

accompany

the

voice;

for

tunes

and melodies

withoutwords

and

meaning

eem

to me like butterflies

r

finely

variegated

irds,

which

hover round

us in the

air,

which

we

could wish

to catch and make

our

own;

whereas

ong

s

like

a blessed

genius

hatexalts us

towards

heaven,

and

inspires

he better

elf

n

us

to

attend

o him.'

This

brief

excerpt

alludes to

three

important

aspectsof Goethe's attitude o music: themoral

purpose

he ascribes

o

song,

his marked

preference

forvocal

music nd

the

reason

for

t,

nd

finally

is

views

on the relation between

words

(voice)

and

music,

he

eternal

one

of contention

etween

oet

and musician.

It is

this

ast

aspect

which needs

elaboration.'The instrument hould but

accompany

the

voice',

says

Wilhelm-Goethe.

In this

emphasis

on the

purely

ccompanying

unction

f music

n

a

song

the

great

poet

reveals

himself

true hild of

the

eighteenth

entury.

Like the

majority

f

con-

temporary

writers

nd

musicians,

Goethe

con-

tended

that the

principal

ask of

a

song-composer

lay

in

merely

throwing

he verses

into

slightly

sharper

elief

nd in

intensifying-yet

ithin

ery

narrow

imits-the emotional

uality

f the words.

The effect f

the words

s

such,

their

ccentuation

and

inflexion,

must

on no account

be

endangered

by

the

musical

etting.

This

aesthetic,ncidentally,

still

governs

most French

composers

n their

ong

settings nd is responsiblefor one of the chief

stylistic

ifferencesetween

he German

Lied and

the

French

melodie.)

To recreate

poem

n musical

terms-that

s,

to

set

t in such

a manner

hat

the

music will

represent

perfect

ransmutation

f the

mood

and

imagery

f

the

verses,

with

words and

setting

now

coalescing

into

a new

entity-this

Goethe considered

an

arrogant

and

intolerable

encroachment

n the

poet's

sacred

primacy.

He

thus

believed

the measure

of a successful

ong-

composer

to

lie in the

extent

o which

the latter

subserved he

poet

:

prima

e

parole

dopo

a

musica

was

the

angle

fromwhich

he

udged

the

settings

f

his own verses.

Small

wonder,

hen,

hathe should

have

lavished

uch

praise

on the

ongs

of

Reichardt

and Zelter,whowereboundbythenarrow esthet-

ics of

their

ge

and

scarcely

ver

dared

questioning

the

poet's

hegemony

over

the musician.

They

served

Goethe's deal

to

perfection.

Yet not

many

years

passed

before

the

young

Schubert,

with

a

single

stroke,

wept away

these

obsolescent

on-

ventions

when

in his

'Erlk6nig'

he raised

the

music

to the

plane

of Goethe's

great

dramatic

ballad.

It

was

like the

writing

n the

wall. But the

Sage

of Weimar

coldly ignored

t.

What

would

Goethe have

thought

of Wolf's

settings

of his

verses?

He

mightpossibly

have

approved

of

the

fastidious

declamatory

treatment

f

the

words

but

he

would

have

certainly

been

dismayed

at

Wolf's ymphoniciano.

John

Braham

1774?-1856)

By

FRANCES COLLINGWOOD

JOHN

BRAHAM,

who

died

on

17

February

hundred

years

ago,

was

a

small,

round

man,

of

Jewish

rigin

nd

appearance,

whose voice

s

said to

have

rung

ike

a

trumpet.

He held

the

centre f

the

operatic tage

n this

ountry

rom 796

till bout

1825,

lthoughhe

idnot

finally

etire ntil

four

years

before

his death.

At theheight f his careerhe had a compass of

nineteen

otes,

with

falsetto rom

''

to

a"',

and so

perfect

was his

control,

hat

t was

almost

mpos-

sible to

detect where the two

voices met.

There

were

certain critics who

considered

Braham,

particularly

owards the end of

his

career,

ittle

better han

vulgar

howman.

His use of theatrical

effects

nd

endless

cadenzas,

and

his

partiality

for

florid

passages

when these had

gone

out of

fashion,

brought

him into a certain

amount

of

disrepute.

An

amusing

example

of

the

sort

of

flourish

indulged n by this ittleman comes fromHere-

ford,

where

he was

singing

The

Bay

of

Biscay'.

As

he came

to the

words'

A sail

a

sail

he

flopped

down

on one knee to such

dramatic ffect

hat

he

disappeared

from

view

behind

the

platform

February

1956

73

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