BV 384 - Eisler-Studien, Bd. 4 by Breitkopf & Härtel

EISLER-STUDIEN – BEITRÄGE ZU EINER KRITISCHEN MUSIKWISSENSCHAFT Herausgegeben von Johannes C. Gall und Peter Schweinhardt im Auftrag der Internationalen Hanns Eisler Gesellschaft

Eisler-Studien

Oliver Dahin / Erik Levi (eds.)

Eisler in England Proceedings of the International Hanns Eisler Conference, London 2010

Eisler in England

England was one of a number of countries in which Hanns Eisler sought refuge after Hitler’s rise to power. Although the composer’s English residency was relatively short-lived and somewhat frustrating from a professional point of view, he nonetheless forged links with a number of significant British musicians including Alan Bush, Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett. Near the end of his life, England again assumed an important staging post for the post-war reappraisal of Eisler’s work when London hosted the first performance outside the GDR of the Deutsche Symphonie, a broadcast concert organised by the then young composer, Alexander Goehr. This fourth volume of the Eisler-Studien draws upon some fascinating papers that were presented at the International Hanns Eisler Conference held in London in April 2010. The topics covered are unusually wide-ranging bringing to light the close association that existed between Eisler and Alan Bush, and the impact of such an artistic liaison on the 1935 Strasbourg Workers Olympiad. There are pioneering studies of Eisler’s little-known contribution to the Richard Tauber film of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and the first detailed examination of the Eisler entry in the Comintern file. Different aspects of reception history are covered in a detailed documentary survey of the BBC performance of the Deutsche Symphonie in January 1962 and the more recent adaptation of the song An den kleinen Radioapparat by Sting. Preceding these is an overview of Eisler’s position in English musical life underpinned by the first close examination of the British Secret Service file on the composer which was only made available for public scrutiny in 2005.

Eisler-Studien

Band 4

Breitkopf & Härtel

ISBN 978Ͳ3Ͳ7651Ͳ0384Ͳ1

9 783765 103841 BV 384

Eisler in Englandfür den Film Kompositionen Proceedings of Praxis the International HannsFilmmusik Eisler Conference, Zu Theorie und von Hanns Eislers London 2010 Herausgegeben von Peter Schweinhardt Edited by Oliver Dahin and Erik Levi

Breitkopf & Härtel Wiesbaden · Leipzig · Paris

Abbildung Titelseite: Hanns Eisler, Freedom-Song, London 1934/35, Autograph, HEA 977, fol. 3v (Ausschnitt) ISBN 978-3-7651-0384-1 ÂŠ 2014 by Breitkopf & HĂ¤rtel, Wiesbaden Alle Rechte vorbehalten Umschlaggestaltung: Friedwalt Donner, Alonissos Satz: Kontrapunkt Satzstudio Bautzen Notensatz: Oliver Dahin, Berlin Druck: AZ Druck, Kempten Printed in Germany

Contents

Introduction: Eisler and England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Erik Le v i A Composer under Surveillance – Hanns Eisler and England, 1925–1962 . . . . . . . . 9 Joanna Bul l i vant The socialist composer in the ‘capitalist concert-hall’: Hanns Eisler and Alan Bush in 1930s England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 M aria K il adi The International Music Bureau and the Workers Music Olympiad in Strasbourg, 8–10 June 1935 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Pe ter Sch w einhardt ‘My Work was Nil’: An Attempt to Rescue Eisler’s Peculiar Pagliacci Production . . 73 Joy H. C al ico Eisler’s Comintern File: RGASPI F. 495, op. 205, d. 252 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Jürgen Scheber a Hanns Eisler, Walter Goehr and Alexander Goehr: The Long Road to the Deutsche Symphonie in London, January 1962 . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Ol i v er Dahin What’s in a Song? Eisler, Sting, and the Politics of Repoliticisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Abstracts and Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Zusammenfassungen und Autoren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Introduction: Eisler and England

At first glance, it may seem somewhat tenuous to devote a whole volume of the Eisler Studien to examining Hanns Eisler’s relationship with England. After all, England was but one of a number of countries in which the composer sought refuge after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Furthermore, since Eisler’s residency in England was so relatively short-lived and proved to be rather frustrating from a professional point of view (a not uncommon experience for Austro-German refugees seeking musical opportunities in Britain during the 1930s), the topic seemed to be one that would not merit much detailed academic scrutiny. Certainly, this was my initial reaction when Albrecht Dümling and members of the International Hanns Eisler Society made a tentative enquiry to the International Centre for Suppressed Music (ICSM) as to the possibility of hosting an Eisler conference in London which would pay particular attention to exploring the composer’s relationship to England. Although sceptical as to whether a potential call for papers would stimulate much widespread interest, a view incidentally shared by my colleague Michael Haas who is also closely associated with ICSM, both of us were nonetheless intrigued and excited by the possibility of organising one of the first conferences on Eisler to have taken place outside the German-speaking world. As it turned out, the call for papers elicited a response that far outstripped our expectations. Proposals were received from many corners of the globe offering topics that in many cases offered novel and unexpected perspectives on the composer. This of course made the decision as to what might or might not feature in the conference all the more difficult. In the end, however, Michael and I were able to draw up an exciting and stimulating programme, and we looked forward with eager anticipation to the conference. The conference was scheduled to take place in the middle of April 2010 at the University of London’s Institute of Musical Research. It proved to be a memorable occasion with notable contributions from composers Alexander Goehr and David Blake, both of whom had been closely associated with Eisler during the last years of his life. On the other hand, the whole event could so easily have been thwarted by the volcanic eruptions at Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland which took place at exactly the same time as the conference, causing enormous disruption to air travel throughout Europe. Inevitably, a number of distinguished guests, particularly from the United States and Germany, were unable to attend. But others were not so easily defeated by the elements and managed heroically to arrive in England to take a full part in the proceedings. The present collection of essays draws upon some of the excellent papers that appeared in the conference. The topics explored are wide-ranging, bringing to light in particular the close association the existed between Eisler and the British composer Alan Bush (Bullivant), and the impact of such an artistic liaison on the 1935 Strasbourg Workers 7

Olympiad (Kiladi). Equally fascinating are the pioneering study of Eisler’s little-known contribution to the Richard Tauber film of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (Schweinhardt), and the first detailed examination of the Eisler entry in the Comintern file (Calico). Explorations of the reception history of Eisler’s music in England are presented in an extremely detailed account of the documentary background that brought about the BBC performance of the Deutsche Symphonie in January 1962 (Schebera), and the more recent adaptations of the song An den kleinen Radioapparat by such popular artists as Sting (Dahin). Preceding these is an overview of Eisler’s position in English musical life, underpinned by the first close examination of the British Secret Service file on the composer which was only made available for public scrutiny in 2005 (Levi). The proposal to select certain papers to form a special volume devoted to Eisler and England emanated from Oliver Dahin, and it is to him that I give particular thanks for pushing forward the project with such enthusiasm. I am also deeply indebted to Peter Schweinhardt and Michael Haas for their strong commitment and support. Erik Levi Guildford, Surrey UK August 2013

Oliver Dahin What’s in a Song? Eisler, Sting, and the Politics of Repoliticisation

To the Little Radio O little box I carried in my flight So carefully your lamps and tubes protecting From house to boat, from boat to train held tight, So that my enemies could still address me Beside my bed and much to my dismay Last thing each night and first thing every day, About their victories (defeats for me), O please do not fall silent suddenly!1

The text of Eisler’s song An den kleinen Radioapparat (‘To the Little Radio’), taken from Bertolt Brecht’s Steffin Collection and presumably composed in April or May of 1942, has its literary origins in one of Brecht’s Journal entries from June 1940: ‘Recently, since the news has become so bad, I am even considering switching off the radio in the morning. The little box sits next to my bed, my final act in the evening is to turn it off, my first act in the morning to turn it on’.2 This pithy text became the reflective single-page song within Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook, a musically disparate (and later dissolved) gathering of 47 songs composed between 1942 and 1948, of which An den kleinen Radioapparat has since achieved the status of most frequently-performed work in this collection. But apart from the many classical singers who have performed and recorded it, An den kleinen Radioapparat has also attained a remarkable following in the world of popular music, with covers by such diverse artists as Eric Bentley, Theo Bleckmann, Chumbawamba, and, most famously, the English singer-songwriter Sting. Although these appropriations of Eisler’s music for re-use in contexts in which he could probably not have imagined it is by no means unique to this song, its particular fascination is worthy of consideration and forms the basis for answering the questions: what possibilities do geographical and temporal distance offer those who choose to engage directly with ‘old’ works? Is ‘cultural baggage’ to be dispassionately abandoned, or should an attempt be made to mediate between original and reinterpretative experience? And, ultimately, what’s in a song? Eisler’s original, recounting the exile who obsessively relies on his radio and its wellbeing to inform him of the victories of his enemies far away, speaks the language of the 1 2

Bertolt Brecht, ‘An den kleinen Radioapparat’, translated by Philip V. Bohlman, in Jewish Musical Modernism Old and New, ed. Philip V. Bohlman (Chicago and London, Chicago University Press, 2008), 201. ‘[... ] in der letzten Zeit, seit die Nachrichten so schlecht werden, erwäge ich sogar, ob ich das Frühradio abstellen soll. Der kleine Kasten steht neben dem Lager, meine letzte Handlung am Abend ist, ihn aus-, meine erste am Morgen, ihn anzudrehen’, entry of 11 June 1940, in Marianne Conrad and Werner Hecht, eds., Bertolt Brecht Werke. Große kommentierte Berlin und Frankfurter Ausgabe, XXVI Journale 1, 1913–1941 (Berlin, Weimar and Frankfurt/Main: Aufbau and Suhrkamp, 1994), 377.

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‘exile in exile’. This was the persona addressed by Ernst Bloch in his 1939 article, ‘Disrupted Language, Disrupted Culture’,3 in which he probes the question of translation, in all its senses, facing the newly-arrived immigrant to the United States. Two types of exile are identified here; the first type who ‘wishes to cut himself completely adrift from everything on the other side of the water’ and his antithesis, the group who ‘wishes to retain its old existence and consciousness, as if the journey to America had changed nothing’. 4 The first group is accused of submissive kowtowing to a culture it knows very little about and is characterised by ostentation, arrogance, and mimicry, while the second would prefer to sit in a (German) ivory tower, equally arrogant and presumptuous in its derogatory attitude towards America. Against these extremes, Bloch posits the idea of the artist with double, as opposed to divided, loyalties: drifting neither to the one extreme of adaptation nor the other of resistance, the exile must ‘bring his roots with him’ and ‘test [...] and quicken [...] his powers of expression on the new stuff of life’.5 Central to this form of reckoning with the old and the new is the idea of the double life, in contrast to the divided life. Doubleness here involves activity encompassing two-sided, mediating, or conflicting ideals, production and conditions, and may express itself in combinations of text and music displaying strategies of adaptation and resistance, as well as articulations of insider and outsider positions. While he may have been thinking in terms of literature, in music this might well apply to form, style, and accepted and understood convention as well as literal language in the case of vocal works. Lydia Goehr has expanded on Bloch’s ideas, arguing that there are many forms of doubleness he leaves only implicit. Furthermore, as the artist may very well feel ‘foreign’ even where he is ostensibly ‘at home’, she develops the concept to embrace both simultaneous vertical and horizontal doubleness, describing a situation in which mediating or conflicting ideals, productions and conditions co-exist, expressed in ‘music-text mergers of languages and idioms [...] articulations of insider and outsider positions’.6 This bidirectional doubleness arises on account of the fact that the typical artistic paradigm of vertical doubleness, expressed as the distinction between the everyday and the transcendental is, in geographic exile, admixed with the horizontal distinction between the old and the new. In the case of the present Eisler song, this is primarily expressed through the stated geographical distance between the poet in his plight and the country he has escaped from. It could also be observed in the gently Schubertian tone of the composer’s voice, certainly not a typical Eislerian form of expression prior to his years of exile. Indeed, of the 47 songs which make up the Hollywood Songbook, An den kleinen Radioapparat is one of only two to bear a key signature (the other, Der Schatzgräber, also has a two-sharp signature but is more clearly in a framing D major), sharpening the recollection of the German Lied tradition. However, the two-sharp key signature (D major / B minor) remains ambiguous. 3 Ernst Bloch, ‘Disrupted Language, Disrupted Culture’, Direction (December 1939), 16–17 and 36. 4 Ibid., 17. 5 Ibid., 36. 6 Lydia Goehr, The Quest for Voice. On Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy (Berkeley / Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 178.

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Example 1: Hanns Eisler, An den kleinen Radioapparat, bars 1 to 8.

# & ## & # # & ## & #

j j ‰ œj œj œj œj œj œj j j j j ‰ Du œ Ka œ - sten, œ klei œ - ner œ den œ

‰ ‰ ? ## ˙ ? ## ˙

{{

œœ œœ

# & ## œ œ œ œ & # brä - chen, ## brä - chen, & # ‰ œœ œœ œœ & # ‰ œœ œœ œœ ? ## #˙ ™ ? ## #˙ ™

5 5

{{

œœ œœ

Du klei - ner

œœ œœ

œœ œœ ˙™ ˙™

j j œj œj œj œ ™ j œ œ œ œ™ ich flüch - tend trug, œœ œœ

œœ œœ

Ka- sten, den ich flüch - tend

œœ œœ

‰ ‰ ˙ ˙

trug,

œœ œœ

j œj œ daß

œœ ‰ œœ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œœ œœ œœ n˙ n˙

œœ œœ #œ #œ

œœ œœ

œœ œœ nœ nœ

œœ œœ

œœ œœ bœ bœ

œœ ‰ œ œ œ œœ ‰ œœ œœ œœ œœœ ˙™ ˙™

be-sorgt vom Haus zum Schiff,vom Schiff zum Zug,

œœ œœ

daß sei - ne

‰ j j œj œj j j œj œj j œ Œ ‰ œj œj œj œj œj œj œj œj œj œ Œ œ -sorgt œ vom Haus zum œ Schiff,vom œ œ Zug, be Schiff zum

œœ œœ

j j j j j j j j œj œj œj œj œj œj œj œj œ -pen œ nicht œ zer œ - neœ Lam œ mir œ auch œsei œœ œœ œ œ

œœ œœ

œœ œœ bœ bœ

Lam - pen mir auch nicht zer -

œœ œœ

œœ œœ nœ nœ

œœ œœ

j j j œj j j œj œj œJ œJ œj œj œ œJ œ œj œ œj #-neœj Fein œ -deœjwei J -ter zu mir daß mei œ #œ daß mei - ne Fein - de wei - ter œ œ zu mir œœ œœ œœ # œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ # œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œ #œ nœ œ œ #œ nœ œ ‰ ‰

At a simple structural level, the song can be viewed as pursuing an A (bb. 1–9), A1 (bb. 10–14), B (bb. 15–19), coda (bb. 20–23) form. While it ostensibly begins in D major (in 6–4 position), there is no final resolution to a root-position triad, and the ending is rather more reminiscent of the relative B minor, the ‘B’ and coda sections following a typical 6–5 G # –G–F # course from bars 15 to 23, with an interpolated A at bar 20 initiating a concise repetition of this motion. In fact, the primary musical substance of the song arises from these whole-tone and semitone shifts: the vocal part from bars 1 to 14 proceeds almost entirely within this scheme, the few poignant ‘departures’ from it highlighted by the lack of piano right-hand accompaniment at those points (see the C # , bar 3, or the G, bar 6). The bass line, too, moves almost entirely by chromatic step, exceptions here including the motion A–B in bars 1–3, subtly mirroring the vocal line, and the cadential-like F # –B at bars 7–8. The general feel of the song is one of restlessness, the metrical irregularity of the barring in the A and A1 sections further confused by the decrescendo markings which partly contradict them, while the phrasing of the bass line causes further unrest with its irregular groupings but may suggest a motivic relationship underlying the song: in his book Der Gesang als Asyl, Markus Roth briefly discusses the slurred groups in bars 1 to 9:

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The internal structure of the accompaniment is based on a system of carefully counterbalanced metrical irregularities and asymmetries. Eisler’s slurs in the left hand subdivide bars 3 to 7 into small phrases of 4, 7, and again 5 crotchets [...] In comparison, the right hand features groups of 9 (bars 1/2), 11, 5, 7 and again 5 crotchets; if the many decrescendo markings in the right hand are seen as a further indication of internal irregularity, a distinctly elemental disquiet and confusion is brought into play.7

Roth sees this as further evidence of Eisler’s compositional strategy of creating a gently flowing yet disturbed musical surface, which despite using ‘fascinatingly simple resources’ reflecting the textual simplicity of the source poem ultimately results in a work of considerable complexity.8 Another possible way of understanding these clearly delineated yet seemingly unstructured groups concerns their linear relationship to the unfolding harmonic events: the first three groups trace a pattern from the held initial A, passing the lower third of F # in D major, to F È in bar 6. The next group moves from this ‘uncertain’ third down to E, accompanying an E minor chord (possibly II) in the upper parts. And the final group in the A section (harmonically passing through the relative minor), lands on a G # , which might be understood as V/V. I would argue that these directional bass motions give the song much of its piquant flavour, insofar as they present false relations in the underlying harmonic scheme: the much-repeated F # in the right hand of the piano accompaniment in bars 1-4 is abandoned from bar 5 and stands diametrically opposed to the F È goal of the third bass phrase. Likewise, the G È of the E minor harmony in bar 7 similarly relates to the G # in the bass at bar 9. As example 2 shows, these motions might be understood as part of a linear progression in a projected D major tonality with a presumed bass ‘D’ underlying bar 1, leading to V/V at bar 9 before recommencing with a final (unfulfilled) descent. Example 2: An den kleinen Radioapparat, potential linear progression of bars 1 to 14. 3^

& #œ

{

^ 2

œ nœ

? œ nœ I

œ #œ



#œ

œ nœ

V/V

‘Die interne Struktur des Begleitsatzes beruht auf einem System genau ausbalancierter metrischer Unregelmäßigkeiten und Asymmetrien. Eislers Bogensetzung in der linken Hand unterteilt die Takte 3–7 in Kleinphrasen von 4, 7 und wieder 5 Vierteln Umfang [...] In der rechten Hand ergeben sich demgegenüber Gruppen von 9 (Takt 1/2), 11, 5, 7 und wieder 5 Achteln; begreift man die Vielzahl der auf die rechte Hand bezogenen Decrescendo-Vorschriften als Hinweis auf ein weiteres Moment interner Unregelmäßigkeit, so kommt – ein nicht allzu schleppendes Grundtempo vorausgesetzt – eine merklich untergründige Unruhe und Irritation ins Spiel.’, Markus Roth, Der Gesang als Asyl: Analytische Studien zu Hanns Eislers Hollywood-Liederbuch (Hofheim: Wolke, 2006), 208. 8 Ibid., 209.

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Of course, this interpretation merely emphasises the fact that the song is essentially constructed on the principle of the second, both major and minor – and this is an aspect which continues in the B section and to the very end, where the voice seemingly ‘emancipates’ itself from the accompaniment but still proceeds almost exclusively in groups of seconds. Nonetheless, the idea of a ‘false relation’ is an intriguing immanent musical reference to the status of the exile as outlined above (in this context, the German term, ‘Querstand’, implies much the same thing and might be literally translated as an awkward relationship between two things). So much for the original. On 1 May 1987, Sting performed live in Hamburg in two shows on the same evening. The programme he selected consisted of 22 songs, all with lyrics by Brecht, the majority of them Brecht-Weill collaborations. However, the final two pieces of the evening, given as encores, were songs by Eisler and Brecht.9 After a performance of Wie der Wind weht, Sting concluded his concert with An den kleinen Radioapparat, given in English translation. In line with the conventions of the typical popular song, Sting added a full repetition of the music, the second occurrence beginning with a saxophone solo before the singer’s re-entry. In addition, the song is transposed up from the nominal key of D to F # (probably simply to better suit Sting’s voice). It may not be known when Sting became personally acquainted with Eisler’s music, but his jumping-off point appears to have been the Eisler songbook compiled by the English playwright, translator, and singer Eric Bentley, as the score can be seen on his music stand in the video.10 It is therefore no surprise that Sting unquestioningly reproduced the translation error to be found in Bentley’s edition. This relates to the second line of the poem and can be traced back to Eisler himself: in his first sketch score, Eisler had correctly written ‘dass seine Lampen mir auch nicht zerbrächen’ (equivalent to the line of the ‘So carefully your lamps and tubes protecting’), referring to the valves inside the radio. However, in the autograph, which became the basis for the Lieder und Kantaten edition from which Bentley worked, his notoriously slack attitude to such matters meant that the nonsensical slip of the pen ‘meine Lampen’ (‘my lamps’) got into print, made even worse in Bentley’s sentimental translation which implores the box ‘not to break the radio tubes inside me’.11 Despite Sting’s own biographical knowledge of Eisler erring on the shaky, as his later liner notes reveal,12 and notwithstanding the error in translation, this song must have occupied him a good deal more, for it appeared again, five months after the Hamburg performance, as the final track on his album Nothing Like the Sun, and here the changes are 9 As Michael Custodis notes, this is the first recorded reference to Eisler in Sting’s work. The concert was recorded by broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk and also featured Gianna Nannini and Jack Bruce, Tilo Prückner and Eberhard Schoener conducting the orchestra of the Hamburg State Opera. Custodis reports that Schoener first hit upon the idea of a joint concert evening with Sting involving Weill (but not yet Eisler) during a meeting with the singer in Tokyo in 1985. See Michael Custodis, Klassische Musik heute. Eine Spurensuche in der Rockmusik (Bielefeld: transcript, 2009), 201–2. 10 Eric Bentley, Brecht-Eisler Song Book (New York City: Oak Publications, 1967). 11 Ibid., 38. 12 ‘“The Secret Marriage” was adapted from a melody by Hans [sic] Eisler. Eisler was a colleague of Bertolt Brecht, who like him fled to America to escape the Nazis who hounded him for the rest of his life in various disguises’, liner notes to Sting, Nothing Like the Sun (A&M Records, 1987).

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more dramatic: ‘Actually, I completely rewrote Brecht’s lyric [...] and I just kept his collaborator’s music’.13 Sting’s claim is slightly disingenuous, for his revision concerns both the music and the text, although the text, indeed, is outwardly the most salient change effected here: the lyrics to the song now renamed The Secret Marriage tell of the union between two people which knows no formal recognition and requires no outside approval but is – to paraphrase Sting’s words – everlasting. In contrast to the Hamburg performance, the recorded version is closer to a ‘new version’ and in a sense combines Sting’s interest in both Eisler and Brecht. The text, evidently a love song to his partner Trudie Styler (whom he would only formally marry in 1992) is more than simply inspired by another song Sting sang in Hamburg, the Liebeslied from Brecht/Weill’s Dreigroschenoper. Where there, Polly and Macheath sang ‘And though we’ve no paper to say we’re wed’ (‘Und gibt’s auch kein Schriftstück vom Standesamt’), Sting proclaims that ‘no earthly church has ever blessed our union, no state has ever granted us permission’. The lack of flowers on the altar is taken directly from Brecht, while the Myrthen (officially translated as the ‘ring’) have become a ‘white veil’. In fact, the only serious textual divergence can be found in Sting’s chorus, which in comparison with Brecht’s equivocal ‘Die Liebe dauert oder dauert nicht’ is now rendered absolute: ‘The secret marriage never can be broken.’ As Michael Custodis has recently claimed, Sting’s substitution of Brecht’s text for one he wrote himself did not necessarily inadvertently depoliticise the song’s content.14 In fact, The Secret Marriage textually combines what might be designated not Sting’s ‘own’ text (regardless of what the CD booklet claims) but rather his ‘adaptation’ of Brecht’s Liebeslied, which in itself could be construed as at some contemporaneous level ‘political’, say in the context of the general conservative tendency in the UK of the 1980s, with a more popular tone expressing love for his partner, thus veiling the political as subtly as the marriage itself. Before looking at the music, I would like to quote from an interview Sting gave to the music magazine Q in December 1987, two months after the album was released: What I’m trying to do is to look for the roots of popular music before the 1950s. I don’t think pop music started with Elvis Presley. That’s why I included this song “Secret Marriage” which was adapted from a melody by Han[n]s Eisler. Kurt Weill, Eisler and those people were classically trained musicians, students of Schoenberg who crossed a bridge to Broadway shows, to popular music. That bridge still exists. So I’m going from pop music, finding out about them and how they wrote chromatically, and hopefully bringing it back. There’s a source here that is not used.15

Sting is now well-known for his willingness to adapt and sing music by ‘classical’ composers, a characteristic which has embraced Prokofiev, Bach, and latterly earlier forms of music. But his reference to Weill and Eisler in 1987 is intriguing for his mention of ‘how they

13 Quoted in Joy Calico, ‘Hanns Eisler, Marxist Polyglot’, www.furious.com/perfect/hannseisler.html (accessed 20 January 2012). 14 Custodis, Sting als Songwriter, 203. It is also worth mentioning that the album Nothing Like the Sun is as a whole by no means apolitical: the song They Dance Alone unambiguously addresses the subject of torture and murder in Augusto Pinochet’s Chile. 15 Q magazine, 12 January 1987. Quoted from www.sting.com/news/article/71 (accessed 20 January 2012).

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wrote chromatically’, and having considered the text, I will now look at the musical changes made to Eisler’s original. These changes mark the song as recorded on the album as quite a different version to the performance given by Sting in Hamburg: most clearly, the form is modified – the brief A, A1, B, coda of Eisler is now, using the same essential musical blocks as formal denominators, A, A, B, A1, B, coda, whereby the B sections, which here form the chorus (‘The secret marriage vow is never spoken / The secret marriage never can be broken’) and are thus textually identical, on both occasions include a passage of the A section (bars 7 to 9) which in Eisler is melodically clear but harmonically reduced to a minimum. Perhaps to make up for this more literal repetition in the Sting, the A1 section (bars 23 to 27) is an original variation on the Eisler model. In this latter section, Sting reveals something of his sympathy with Eisler’s ‘chromatic language’. Below an essentially unchanged vocal line, the bass now rises from A through D to arrive on an F # minor chord at ‘hair’, replacing the ‘yearning’ C # appoggiatura over a G-major chord (compare Eisler’s original in example 1, bars 2 to 3). Example 3: The Secret Marriage, bars 24 to 26.16

#4 & #4 œ œ œ œ œ™

#4 & # 4 œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ™™ ? ## 44 œ œ ˙

white veil in your hair.

{

j j œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ No

mai - den dress to

al - ter;

j j œœ œœ œœ œœ n œœ œœ œœ #˙

n˙

j j œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œœ œœ œœ

Bi - ble oath to swear.

bœ

Subsequently, the music continues largely in accordance with the original, save for a subtle chromatic motion in an inner part from C # to C È and then to D. The ‘new’ harmonic progression is of interest for the fact that it effects a false relation from A È in bar 24 to A # in bar 25, reminiscent of Eisler’s style in the A sections. While this alteration to the song is both an apparent ‘poppy’ simplification (a triad in place of the original) and a harmonic nod to Eisler’s own musical strategies in the song, Sting’s other musical alteration comes at the most popular point for such changes in An den kleinen Radioapparat – the close. In his final five bars, where he accompanies the bass line in octave unison, Sting makes the unusual change in his arrangement of thinning out the right-hand chords; previously, he had tended to add a chordal member where Eisler remained with two. This change initially appears to diminish the harmonic ambiguity in

16 Here and in example 4 below, I have transposed the written score transcription of The Secret Marriage down a major third for ease of reading. The key Sting uses, an ostensible F # major, was without doubt chosen to accommodate his singing register. The score is available as Sting ... Nothing Like the Sun (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 1988), 106–11.

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these chords, the D-major to D-minor motion in bar 33 directly referring to the substance at the opening. The following bar accords with Eisler’s diminished harmony, while the next two bars present an intriguing change: where Eisler’s right hand ended on C # , Sting at the last moment shifts up a semitone to end the song on an augmented triad of F # , A # , and D È . This replaces the dominant of the relative minor feel of Eisler’s original with a genuine harmonic uncertainty. Example 4 shows the respective endings of the two versions as a combined score laid out note-for-note on top of each other for comparison of the formal and barring differences. Example 4: Bars 30 to 37 of The Secret Marriage and 18 to 23 of An den kleinen Radioapparat.

# 5 & #4 œ

# 5 & #4 ‰

spo -

{

? ## 5 ˙™ 4

‰ œ

ken;

œ #œ

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3 4œ œ œ œ œ œ

mar - riage ne - ver can be

bro

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‰

# & # ˙™

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‰

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‰ nœj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ

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ppp

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#3 & #4 ˙™

‰ œj

Müh.

#3 & #4 ‰

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j j j œ œj œJ œJ œ #œ

Ver-sprich mir,nicht auf ein - mal

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‰ nœ œ ‰ œœ œœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœ œœ œœ #˙ ™

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∑ fp j œ

˙™

What might this mean? It is clear that Sting’s process of taking a song, replacing the text with a relatively new one in large part a tribute to Brecht and adding to the music with extra bars in large part a tribute to Eisler, has firmly detached it from its original context of meaning. It is, partly literally, partly metaphorically, and to return to the nomenclature of Ernst Bloch, a translation. In linguistic usage, the practice of translation may be formulated as the domestic inscription of a foreign text while applying specific strategies to retain or reconstitute certain aspects of that text which resist such investment. Translation can never be an untroubled practice, because the translator must ‘negotiate the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text by reducing them and supplying another set of differences [...] drawn from the receiving language and culture to enable the foreign to be received there’.17 At the same time, at the centre of the translation process is the establishment of an invariant, a series of features in the foreign text which must be carried over in order for it to retain its communicative personality. However, the reconstruction of the invariant in the target language with its accompanying cultural shifts gives rise to a ‘domestic remainder’, an addition constituted by the local historical and social peculiarities necessarily invoked by the translator to provide the text’s new audience with a frame of reference. In practice, however, what constitutes the invariant aspect of a text can remain highly nebulous and open to differing interpretation. What is being discussed here is, in many ways, what is known in the world of pop music as the process of covering, and is simultaneously a highly apt, if in some situations anachronistic, way of describing both how Eisler approached his own music and others have subsequently appropriated it: Covers spawn multiple offspring and span multiple generations. Covers bridge the gaps between oral and written transmission, and they repopulate the border areas between genres. Covers become meaningful through their mobility and their migration from one musical medium to another.

17 Lawrence Venuti, ‘Translation, Community, Utopia’, in Lawrence Venuti, ed., The Translation Studies Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 482–502, here 482.

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On the move, covers are claimed by new singers wanting to make old songs their own. The use-value of covers increases as versions enter the everyday, where they are revoiced as people’s music. Thus, for a committed creator of people’s music such as Hanns Eisler, covers spread the aesthetic and political cause across a vast genealogy.18

The case of The Secret Marriage is more complex than many conventional covers, encompassing the partial estrangement and arrangement (to borrow Bloch’s language: both a translation and a transliteration) of a vocal work which in its original form may well also be seen as subject to the laws of translation; it is a song which essentially embarked on a round-trip from Germany to the U.S. and back again. Whereas Eisler may have adapted to his enforced new home in America with a move away from the ‘progressiveness’ of the 12-tone system (as, to an extent, his friend and mentor Arnold Schoenberg did) and towards a reminiscence of a more easily understood Romanticism, together with a text which explicitly positions him as external to the political events he sings of, so Sting wilfully grasps the tender wistfulness of the music to push its immanent non-referential nature into the service of what appears to be a quiet ode to love. These ‘remainders’, the local specific features which mark the song as the works of both authors, are tempered by the clear invariant aspects underlying what might be termed the Ur-form of the song, for example the typical Eislerian unwillingness, even in seemingly tonal works, to end on a tonic (highly unusual in pop music) or the longing which underlies both texts (that the almost explicit homage to Brecht’s Liebeslied has previously been overlooked is more a sign of a willingness to invest Sting’s version with contemporary relevance than anything else.) While a small share of audiences may have noticed these references, it is ultimately as an original work that this version must stand its ground. Various further interpretative points could be made: Sting’s own political stance, far more strongly accentuated elsewhere on the album Nothing Like the Sun, together with his stated desire to bring something more into popular music may have imbued upon him the status of being an ‘exile at home’, while his performance in Hamburg could represent the horizontal dimension, an all-German programme now enriched with the complementary sound of a highly distinctive British pop musician. Music and musical structures, with their forever non-referential status, may be viewed as questioning the absolute vow of love in Sting’s text with a less than harmonious conclusion to the song – perhaps a musical approach to letting in the equivocation of the Brecht model from the Dreigroschenoper through the back door? Thus, far from effecting a desemantisation of Eisler, Sting offers repoliticisation in a highly personal form: he takes the invariants of Eisler and imbues them with several layers of new mean18 Andrea F. Bohlman and Philip V. Bohlman, ‘(Un)Covering Hanns Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook’, Danish Yearbook of Musicology 35 (2007), 13–29, here 15. This understanding of covering appears better suited to more obviously ‘quoted’ versions of the song: the album commonly referred to as The Boy Bands Have Won (2008) by British group Chumbawamba also features a version of An den kleinen Radioapparat, far closer to the original in terms of text and music, if not instrumentation. Here, it seems, it is rather the spectre of Eric Bentley which is being recalled, now presented in the group’s recently typical ‘acoustic’ setting with guitar and close-harmony singing. A direct political message appears furthermore confirmed by the fact that it segues seamlessly into the following song which directly comments on the works of Bertolt Brecht as ‘spreading the word’.

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ing, immanently contained but unspoken in the original. In a sense, and to quote perhaps one of Sting’s most famous songs, The Secret Marriage invites us to get the ‘message in the bottle’.19 These ideas must necessarily remain at the level of conjecture, but it is still curious to note the fascination this particular song has exerted on many musicians from across the stylistic spectrum. While a taxonomy of the classic love song would require extensive discussion and many exceptions, in the present case it is clear that the neighbour-note motions (especially those giving rise to added-sixth chords), the yearning appoggiaturas, and the mood of tense quietness which pervade the song are at the very least conducive to reinterpretation within contexts not so overtly related to exile as in the Hollywood Songbook: The Secret Marriage is at once Eisler and Brecht and Sting. It remains to add a brief legal footnote to Sting’s exploration of and encounter with the music of Eisler. The singer’s avowal of authorship of both the music and text in the liner notes to the album Nothing Like the Sun was unlikely to have presented a copyright issue at the time of its release in 1987, when the rights to Eisler’s music were held on the other side of the Iron Curtain in East Germany. Since then, however, it is worth noting that the copyright holder, publisher Deutscher Verlag für Musik, has reached agreement with Sting, respectively with his legal representation: 20 today, contrary to the copyright information on the album when released in 1987, Sting is officially listed in the database of the German performance rights organisation GEMA as merely the lyricist and no longer the composer of The Secret Marriage – this role is credited to Hanns Eisler.21 While this, as discussed above, ignores Sting’s interventions and modifications to the song for his own version, it underscores the difficulty in evaluating authorship and subjectivity in new versions, covers, and translations.

19 Interestingly enough, the idea of a ‘message in a bottle’ was also one employed by Eisler, albeit negatively in relation to Theodor W. Adorno. See, also with reference to Sting, Eisler-Mitteilungen 32 (June 2003), 3 and 9–11. 20 I thank Vivian Rehman from the licensing department at Breitkopf & Härtel/Deutscher Verlag für Musik for this information. 21 The relevant entry (for Gordon Matthew Sumner) can be found at https://online.gema.de/werke/, work number 3141490-001 (accessed 20 June 2013).

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Abstracts and Contributors

Erik Levi A Composer under Surveillance – Hanns Eisler and England, 1925–1962 Hanns Eisler spent a relatively short amount of time in England during the mid-1930s. Yet from the moment he set foot in the country, and even after he had departed for the USA, his activity was placed under close scrutiny by the British Secret Service who were most concerned about his left-wing orientation and what they believed to be the potentially destabilising impact of his work. This essay examines Eisler reception in England during his lifetime making special reference to the file on the composer in the National Archives that remarkably was only made available to the public as recently as 2005. Erik Levi is Professor of Music and Director of Performance at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is author of the books Music in the Third Reich (1994) and Mozart and the Nazis (2010), and is co-editor with Florian Scheding of Music and Displacement (2010). A regular contributor to the BBC Music Magazine and an experienced broadcaster, he also works as a professional accompanist. Joanna Bullivant The socialist composer in the ‘capitalist concert-hall’: Hanns Eisler and Alan Bush in 1930s England The relationship between Hanns Eisler and the English communist composer Alan Bush (1900–95) has been little discussed and often in negative terms, reflecting perceptions of both composers as Stalinist, reactionary, and concerned with simplification and propaganda in their music. This chapter presents an alternative view based on a much more detailed examination of Bush’s writings and activities in the 1930s during the period when the composers became acquainted in England. I argue that far from learning the art of propaganda from Eisler, Bush shared a belief in the need to create workers’ music which rejected bourgeois musical culture and which embraced modern music. Furthermore, I discuss how the priorities of both composers changed under the growing threat of Nazism in the late 1930s. Following this initial discussion, Bush’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, op. 18 (1937) is examined as a particular vivid case study of Eisler’s influence on Bush. Completed while the composers were holidaying together in Denmark in 1937, and setting a political text, the work not only betrays intriguing parallels with Eisler’s work but also indicates some of the uncertainty and experimentation of Bush’s efforts to combine music and politics in this period. Ultimately, what emerges is a much more complex view both of Bush and Eisler’s relationship and the nature of Bush’s politicised music in this period. 129

Joanna Bullivant is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Music at the University of Nottingham, having previously held the post of Junior Research Fellow and Lecturer in Music at Worcester College, Oxford. Arising from her doctoral thesis on ‘Musical modernism and left-wing politics in 1930s Britain’, she has a range of articles and book chapters published or forthcoming on twentieth-century British music and politics. She is currently working on the first major monograph on the English communist composer Alan Bush, entitled Modern Music, Alan Bush, and the Cold War: The Cultural Left in Britain and the Communist Bloc, for Cambridge University Press. Maria Kiladi The International Music Bureau and the Workers Music Olympiad in Strasbourg, 8–10 June 1935 During the early 1930s, the rise of Fascism in Germany created the necessity for a co-ordinated action on behalf of the workers. A number of workers’ music organisations were founded at an international level, the most significant of which was the Communist-led International Music Bureau, an organisation that had as its main task the co-ordination of the activities of the international workers’ music movement. The Workers Music Olympiad of Strasbourg was an attempt to demonstrate the workers’ united front against the threat of fascism. Altogether, around 3,000 members/singers from various countries participated. The event became a significant anti-fascist campaign. The London Labour Choral Union, under the conductorship of Alan Bush, represented the British Workers Music Movement. This was the first time that a British representative participated at an international workers’ music event of such significance, and the occasion was greeted with much enthusiasm on behalf of the international movement. The chapter gives an account of the event and assesses the importance of the British delegation. As well as offering an opportunity for ‘cultural exchange’, the Olympiad also became an expression of Comintern’s newly approved ‘popular front’ line, with the British socialist-supported Union, participating in a Communist-led event. Maria Kiladi is a PhD student at the Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses on the London Labour Choral Union and the musical activities of the Labour Party in London during the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the various socialist and communist Pageants and Festivals of the 1930s, where the Union participated. Peter Schweinhardt “My Work was Nil”: An Attempt to Rescue Eisler’s Peculiar Pagliacci Production Among the handful of works linking Eisler and England is his musical arrangement for Karl Grune’s 1936 filmic adaptation of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. Veristic opera in general and the dramaturgical and aesthetic conception of this commercially oriented film

130

designed around the star tenor Richard Tauber was certainly far off Eisler’s own artistic track. No wonder, perhaps, that in retrospect Eisler belittled the aesthetic value of the adaptation and stated that his share in the production was practically ‘nil’. This chapter describes Grune’s Pagliacci adaptation as an adaption and as an exile film at a problematic point in British film industry, and it explores Eisler’s contribution to the production and assesses the significance of it with respect to Eisler’s oeuvre and to the genre of opera adaptations. As a result, the article shows that Eisler’s work was in fact far from ‘nil’, either quantitatively or qualitatively – and uncovers some unexpected original Eisler compositions on the soundtrack. Peter Schweinhardt teaches music, history, politics and ethics at the babelsberger filmgymnasium in Potsdam, Germany. One focus of his musicological interest is the work of Hanns Eisler, resulting for instance in the initiation of the Eisler-Studien or the edition of the volumes Höllenangst (2006) and Die Maßnahme (forthcoming) within the complete edition of Hanns Eisler’s works.

Joy H. Calico Eisler’s Comintern File: RGASPI F. 495, op. 205, d. 252 This chapter is a report about a personal dossier on Hanns Eisler kept in the Comintern collection of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) in Moscow. The file consists primarily of newspaper clippings and is mostly benign, with one important exception: the transcript of a conversation with Antonín Novotný recorded in June 1953 and marked ‘top secret’, in which Eisler is mentioned as belonging to a circle of friends in Vienna that included one or more individuals named as American spies in the Slánský Trials. The contents of the file are described, with particular emphasis on this document and the threat it might have posed to Eisler in the dangerous political context of that particular year. Joy H. Calico is Associate Professor of Musicology and Director of the Max Kade Center for European and German Studies at Vanderbilt University. Her work focuses on opera, and on cultural politics during the Cold War. Jürgen Schebera Hanns Eisler, Walter Goehr and Alexander Goehr: The Long Road to the Deutsche Symphonie in London, January 1962 This chapter presents a reconstruction of Hanns Eisler’s multiple efforts to secure a performance of his magnum opus, the Deutsche Symphonie, written between 1935 and 1947 in American exile. On Eisler’s return to Europe in 1948, neither Vienna nor the young GDR was prepared to risk a performance of this largely dodecaphonic work. From 1952, the

131

composer thus attempted to convince his old musical companion Hermann Scherchen in Switzerland to arrange a performance, albeit without success. In 1956, Eisler focussed his efforts on the London-based conductor Walter Goehr. After the East Berlin world premiere of the Deutsche Symphonie in 1959, Goehr’s son Alexander, now a producer at BBC, upheld his father’s dedication to the work. A long road had been travelled before England saw its first performance, in London, in January 1962. Jürgen Schebera obtained his PhD from Leipzig University in 1976. From 1981 to 1991, he was a member of the Zentralinstitut für Literaturgeschichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR in Berlin, after which he worked from 1992 to 2004 as an editor at a Berlin publishing house. He has authored various books on the art and culture of the Weimar Republic and anti-fascist exile, and is a biographer of Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler. Oliver Dahin What’s in a Song? Eisler, Sting, and the Politics of Repoliticisation Although it would be fair to say that Hanns Eisler’s works have been subject to greater reinterpretation than any of his contemporaries, none has inspired such a variety of ‘covers’ and ‘re-hearings’ as the brief 1942 song To the Little Radio from the Hollywood Songbook. In just 23 bars, Eisler’s song forms a musical corollary to Brecht’s textual invocation of exile with its unsure tonality, implied major/minor ambiguities, and equivocal closure. This chapter focuses on Sting’s reading of the song as The Secret Marriage, which with some sophistication adopts and adapts the original music and adds a new text authored by the songwriter. Eisler’s musical subtleties are put in the service of a different concern which foregrounds sexual politics, and the result, whilst not outwardly radical, subtly subsumes and repoliticises the original as a kind of modern ‘translation’. Oliver Dahin is a freelance musicologist and translater based in Berlin, Germany. Since completing his DPhil on music and politics in the works of Hanns Eisler, he has authored various articles on the composer and is presently co-editor on the volume dedicated to the film music for Nuit et Brouillard within the complete edition of Eisler’s works.

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Zusammenfassungen und Autoren

Erik Levi Ein Komponist unter Beobachtung – Hanns Eisler und England, 1925–1962 Hanns Eisler verbrachte Mitte der 1930er Jahre eine relativ kurze Zeitspanne in England. Von dem Moment an aber, als er erstmals einreiste und sogar, nachdem er schon in die USA weitergereist war, wurden seine Aktivitäten vom Britischen Geheimdienst genauestens überwacht. Besorgt war man dort vor allem über seine linke Orientierung und den vermeintlich destabilisierenden Einfluss seines Werkes. Dieser Artikel untersucht die Eisler-Rezeption in England zu Lebzeiten des Komponisten und richtet dabei besondere Aufmerksamkeit auf seine Akte im Nationalarchiv, die bemerkenswerterweise erst im Jahre 2005 öffentlich zugänglich gemacht worden ist. Erik Levi ist Professor of Music und Director of Performance an der Royal Holloway University in London. Er ist Autor der Bücher Music in the Third Reich (1994) und Mozart and the Nazis (2010) sowie Koautor (mit Florian Scheding) von Music and Displacement (2010). Überdies ist er regelmäßiger Autor für das BBC Music Magazine, langjähriger Radiomitarbeiter sowie professioneller Klavierbegleiter. Joanna Bullivant Der sozialistische Komponist im ‚kapitalistischen Konzertsaal‘: Hanns Eisler und Alan Bush im England der 1930er Jahre Die Beziehung Eislers und des englischen kommunistischen Komponisten Alan Bush ist bislang wenig und oft mit negativem Zungenschlag betrachtet worden, der ihre Wahrnehmung als stalinistisch und reaktionär widerspiegelte und ihre musikalische Arbeit unter dem Aspekt der Simplifizierung und Propaganda verbuchte. Dieser Aufsatz präsentiert eine alternative Sicht, basierend auf einer gründlichen Untersuchung von Bushs Schriften und Aktivitäten während der 1930er Jahre, dem Zeitraum, in dem die beiden Komponisten sich kennenlernten. Es wird deutlich, dass Bush nicht so sehr die Kunst der Propaganda von Eisler gelernt hat, sondern die beiden vielmehr der Glaube an die Notwendigkeit verband, Arbeitermusik zu schaffen, die die bürgerliche Musikkultur ablehnte und gleichzeitig die moderne Musik aufnahm. Weiterhin wird erörtert, wie sich die Prioritäten beider Komponisten sich durch die Bedrohung des Nationalsozialismus in den späten dreißiger Jahren veränderten. Anschließend wird Bushs Klavierkonzert op. 18 (1937) als besonders anschauliches Beispiel Eisler’schen Einflusses vorgestellt. Das Werk wurde während eines gemeinsamen Ferienaufenthaltes in Dänemark fertiggestellt, komponiert einen politischen Text und weist nicht nur offenkundige Parallelen zu Eisler-Musik auf, sondern verrät auch 133

Bushs tastend-experimentelles Bemühen dieser Zeit, Musik und Politik zu kombinieren. Insgesamt ergibt sich ein komplexes Bild sowohl von Bushs und Eislers Beziehung als auch vom Charakter von Bushs politisierter Musik dieser Zeit. Joanna Bullivant ist Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Music an der University of Nottingham. Zuvor war sie Junior Research Fellow und Lecturer in Music am Worcester College, Oxford. In Folge ihrer Dissertation über ‚Musical modernism and left-wing politics in 1930s Britain‘ entstanden zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen über britische Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts im politischen Kontext. Gegenwärtig arbeitet sie an der ersten großen Monographie von Alan Bush mit dem Titel Modern Music, Alan Bush, and the Cold War: The Cultural Left in Britain and the Communist Bloc (erscheint bei Cambridge University Press). Maria Kiladi Das Internationale Musikbüro und die Arbeitermusik-Olympiade in Straßburg, 8–10 Juni 1935 Während der frühen 1930er Jahre erzeugte der aufsteigende deutsche Faschismus die Notwendigkeit einer koordinierten Aktion auf Seiten der Arbeiter. Die bedeutendste einer ganzen Reihe von Arbeitermusikorganisationen, die damals gegründet wurden, war das kommunistische Internationale Musikbüro, das die Aktivitäten der internationalen Arbeitermusikbewegung bündelte. Die Arbeitermusik-Olympiade in Straßburg war ein Versuch der Demonstration der Arbeiter-Einheitsfront im Angesicht der faschistischen Bedrohung. Insgesamt nahmen daran etwa 3000 Mitglieder/Sänger aus verschiedenen Ländern teil, und die Veranstaltung wurde zu einer deutlichen antifaschistischen Manifestation. Die London Labour Choral Union, geleitet von Alan Bush, repräsentierte dabei die britische Arbeitermusikbewegung. Es war dies das erste Mal, dass ein britischer Repräsentant an einer internationalen Arbeitermusikveranstaltung dieser Größenordnung teilnahm, was dort mit großer Begeisterung registriert wurde. Dieser Aufsatz würdigt die Veranstaltung und die Bedeutung des britischen Beitrags. Über den kulturellen Austausch hinaus drückte sich – mit der von den britischen Sozialisten unterstützten Choral Union auf einer kommunistisch bestimmten Veranstaltung – in der Olympiade auch die damals aktuelle Volksfront-Idee aus. Maria Kiladi ist Doktorandin an Royal Holloway, University London. Ihre Forschung konzentriert sich auf die London Labour Choral Union, die musikalischen Aktivitäten der LabourPartei in London während der 1920er und 30er Jahre sowie die sozialistischen Feierveranstaltungen und Festivals der 1930er Jahre, an denen die Choral Union teilnahm. Peter Schweinhardt ‚Meine Arbeit war null‘: Versuch, Eislers eigenartige Pagliacci-Produktion zu retten Zu der Handvoll Werke, die Eisler mit England verbinden, gehört seine musikalische Einrichtung von Ruggero Leoncavallos Pagliacci für Karl Grunes filmische Adaption der Oper (1936). Die veristische Oper lag gewiss ebenso abseits von Eislers künstlerischer Orien134

tierung wie die dramaturgische und ästhetische Ausgestaltung dieses kommerziellen, völlig auf den Star-Tenor Richard Tauber zugeschnittenen Films. Es mag daher nicht verwundern, dass Eisler den ästhetischen Wert der Produktion in der Rückschau heruntergespielt und seinen eigenen Anteil daran als praktisch „null“ bezeichnet hat. Dieser Aufsatz beschreibt Grunes Pagliacci-Adaption als Adaption und als Exilfilm in einer für die britische Filmindustrie schwierigen Zeit. Weiterhin wird Eislers Anteil untersucht und mit Blick auf sein Gesamtwerk und auf das Genre der Opernadaptionen betrachtet. Dabei stellt sich heraus, dass Eislers Arbeit bei weitem nicht „null“ war – und zwar weder quantitativ noch qualitativ – und dass die Tonspur unerwartete Originalkompositionen Eislers birgt. Peter Schweinhardt unterrichtet Musik, Geschichte, Politik und Ethik am babelsberger filmgymnasium in Potsdam. Einen Fokus seines musikwissenschaftlichen Interesses bildet das Werk Hanns Eislers, etwa in der Initiierung der Eisler-Studien oder in der Herausgabe der Bände Höllenangst (2006) und Die Maßnahme (in Vorbereitung) innerhalb der Hanns Eisler Gesamtausgabe. Joy H. Calico Eislers Komintern-Akte: RGASPI F. 495, op. 205, d. 252 Dieser Aufsatz berichtet über ein persönliches Dossier zu Hanns Eisler, das in der Komintern-Sammlung des Russischen Staatsarchivs für Sozio-Politische Geschichte (RGASPI) in Moskau aufbewahrt wird. Die Akte besteht überwiegend aus Zeitungsausschnitten und ist vorwiegend wohlwollend, mit einer wichtigen Ausnahme: der Transkription eines Gespräches mit Antonín Novotný, aufgenommen im Juni 1953 und mit ‚streng geheim‘ gekennzeichnet. Darin wird Eisler als Mitglied eines Wiener Freundeskreises erwähnt, zu dem eine oder mehrere Personen zählten, die während der Slánský-Prozesse als amerikanische Spione genannt wurden. Der Inhalt der Akte wird beschrieben, mit besonderer Gewichtung dieses Dokuments und der Bedrohung, die es für Eisler im gefährlichen politischen Kontext des Jahres 1953 darstellte. Joy H. Calico ist Associate Professor of Musicology und Leiterin des Max Kade Center for European and German Studies an der Vanderbilt University. Ihre Arbeit weist einen Schwerpunkt im Bereich der Oper und der Kulturpolitik während des Kalten Kriegs auf. Jürgen Schebera Hanns Eisler, Walter Goehr und Alexander Goehr: Der lange Weg zur Deutschen Symphonie in London, Januar 1962 Dieser Beitrag rekonstruiert die vielfältigen Versuche Hanns Eislers, eine Aufführung seines opus magnum, der zwischen 1935 und 1947 in den USA entstandenen Deutschen Symphonie, zu erreichen. 1948 nach Europa zurückgekehrt, war man weder in Wien noch danach in der jungen DDR bereit für ein über weite Strecken dodekaphones Werk. So versuchte Eisler, beginnend 1952, seinen alten musikalischen Weggefährten Hermann 135

Scherchen für eine Aufführung zu gewinnen, am Ende ohne Erfolg. 1956 konzentrierte Eis ler seine Bemühungen auf den in London wirkenden Dirigenten Walter Goehr. Nach der Ost-Berliner Uraufführung des Werkes 1959 setzte Goehrs Sohn Alexander, damals Pro duzent bei der BBC, die Bemühungen seines Vaters um das Werk fort. Eine weite Strecke war zurückzulegen, bevor es im Januar 1962 in London zur britischen Erstaufführung des Werkes kam. Jürgen Schebera promovierte 1976 an der Universität Leipzig. Zwischen 1981 und 1991 war er Mitglied des Zentralinstituts für Literaturgeschichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR in Berlin, von 1992 bis 2004 arbeitete er als Verlagslektor in Berlin. Er ist Autor von Büchern über Kunst und Kultur der Weimarer Republik und des antifaschistischen Exils sowie Biograph von Kurt Weill und Hanns Eisler. Oliver Dahin Was ist in einem Lied? Eisler, Sting und die Politik der Repolitisierung Obwohl es wohl zutrifft, dass Hanns Eislers Werke in stärkerem Maße der Reinterpretation unterlagen als diejenigen irgendeines seiner Zeitgenossen, so wird doch keines davon eine solche Vielfalt von Coverversionen und Neuinterpretationen angeregt haben wie das kurze Lied „An den kleinen Radioapparat“ (1942) aus dem Hollywooder Liederbuch. Brechts poetische Beschwörung der Exilstimmung wird von Eisler in dem nur 23 Takte langen Lied kongenial mitvollzogen: durch verschleierte Tonalität, implizite Dur-Moll-Mehrdeutigkeiten und eine uneindeutige Schlusswirkung. Dieser Artikel behandelt Stings Lesart des Liedes als „The Secret Marriage“, die die originale Musik auf subtile Weise übernimmt und bearbeitet sowie einen neuen Text des Liedermachers selbst hinzufügt. Eislers musikalische Feinheiten werden in den Dienst eines anderen Inhalts gestellt, der Ge schlechterpolitik in den Vordergrund stellt. Das Resultat ist nicht offen radikal, doch es umfasst und repolitisiert das Original in der Art einer modernen ‚Übersetzung‘. Oliver Dahin ist freischaffender Musikwissenschaftler und Übersetzer in Berlin. Nach Abschluss seiner Dissertation zu Musik und Politik in den Werken Hanns Eislers publizierte er zahlreiche Artikel über den Komponisten und ist gegenwärtig Mitherausgeber der Filmmusik zu Nuit et brouillard, die im Rahmen der Hanns Eisler Gesamtausgabe erscheint.

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EISLER-STUDIEN – BEITRÄGE ZU EINER KRITISCHEN MUSIKWISSENSCHAFT Herausgegeben von Johannes C. Gall und Peter Schweinhardt im Auftrag der Internationalen Hanns Eisler Gesellschaft

Eisler-Studien

Oliver Dahin / Erik Levi (eds.)

Eisler in England Proceedings of the International Hanns Eisler Conference, London 2010

Eisler in England

Eisler-Studien

Band 4

Breitkopf & Härtel

ISBN 978Ͳ3Ͳ7651Ͳ0384Ͳ1

9 783765 103841 BV 384