# Schönberg and Entartete music



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

I don't know if it is appropriate to discuss a little politics here but when I stumbled upon this marvelous exposition of Schönberg's twelve-tone method by Bernstein






I couldn't help but to get a clearer picture of why the nazi's hated this music and how music/art and politics are deeply intertwined.

First of all I think it is important to notice that fascism and nazism perhaps even essentially arose out of (modern) art. The neomarxist Frankfurter Schule called upon the marxists to politicize the arts because the fascists had estheticized politics. I am not sure what the Frankfurter Schule was thinking about concretely but I think it is easy to see the truth of it anyway: not only Hitler acted the way he did because he saw himself as the heroic tenor in his self created Wagnerian opera with the whole world as it's stage but already the Italian fascism had it's roots in transforming politics into theatre (e.g. by the poet d'Annunzio who was Mussolini's rival for the fascists's leadership and who e.g. loved parades and declared music the fundamental principle of the state!) and in the hypermodern artistic movement of futurism which exalted modern life (and renewal/youth) with it's loud noise, speed, galvanized masses, excitement, thrills, lust for kicks, violence and total destruction of all traditions and institutions.

The fascists and nazi's were hypermodern indeed: in fact I regard them as typically expressionist movements with all it's boisterousness, brutality and disregard for traditions. Yet they were of course also essentially anti-modern: the nazi's hated modernity in the sense and in so far as the modernity was a Jewish 'invention'. The nazi's regarded the modern man essentially a Jew, that is a man who has lost it's embedding and anchor in his people's 'Blut und Boden'. The modern man is an 'ungrounded' individual without a people or history and liberalism - the individual right to exit all it's grounding! - is therefore the dominant modern ideology. The modern man is like The Flying Dutchman who has no home and only wanders around the globe looking unsuccesfully for a home to find his rest. Of course, the nazi's wanted to provide a new home for the Germans who still had some basis in Blut und Boten and therefore were not totally lost as a people. The Jews (in diaspora) could not be saved (here is a continuity with medieval anti-judaism in which the Jew is the sinner who rejected saviour Jesus) and were considered lost and the natural enemy of mankind in general and the Germans in particular, because the Jews were the embodiment of the modern alienation, home- and baselessness and soullessness (Jewish intellectuals were often materialists and the nazi's regarded the Jews indeed as pure matter and no soul because the Jews have lost their grounding in any Blut und Boten thus lost all of their character and will so the Jew was regarded as the typical liberal, egoistic individual who doesn't believe in anything but money).

Now let's return to Schönberg. Bernstein explains how Schönberg aimed to radically democratize music. A traditional piece of music has a grounding in a note (the 'key'), so that the music can wander around but always returns home to that note where the music finds it's rest (and this finding of peace pleases most of us). Atonal music is music that wanders but never returns home because it has no home or key. Atonal music is literally 'ungrounded' (Entartete) music! It is easy to see how the nazi's could regard atonal music as the typical expression of Jewish modernity. And yes, Schönberg was a Jew and I am sure that the nazi's didn't think that to be incidental. Yet Schönberg didn't want to make atonal music; in a way he was like the nazi's looking for a new home in the modern, 'atonal' world! Schönberg wanted to make tonal music but without some notes dominating the other notes like when playing in a key (where the key note dominates he piece): all twelve notes should be treated as equally important. So in his twelve-tone method all twelve notes must be played with equal importance; e.g. because high and low notes tend to dominate these notes had to be always played short as compensation. One can perhaps say: Schönberg didn't want to create anarchy (atonality) but democracy (dodecaphony) so his modern, dodecaphonic music fitted the modern world which is fundamentally driven by democratizing.

The Sovjets (who politicized art like the Frankfurter Schule insisted) rejected Schönberg's music as 'formalism' which also fits perfectly in the nazi ideology: Jews (the typically modern people) were regarded as people without soul so their music can only be formally music, that is music developed from mere rules instead out of content (one could call it machine music). Perhaps there is a connection with e.g. the formalization of mathematics (and the conceptual invention of the computer) around that time and with the liberal's love for the 'rule of law'. Obviously the nazi's couldn't accept this strongly liberal kind of music (as couldn't the communists) which was rule-driven and in which all notes were equal and free and no note could himself call the leader (and which perhaps is Jewish in that the Jews came up with the transcendence of God so all men became equal and free individuals in front of God).


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Agamemnon said:


> Schönberg didn't want to create anarchy (atonality) but democracy (dodecaphony)


Heh... if democratic ideals influenced Schoenberg's beliefs about musical composition, they certainly didn't influence his beliefs about musical performance and consumption, which were as exclusionary and elitist as it gets. Here's how he put it: "If it is art, it is not for everyone; if it is for everyone, it is not art." That doesn't exactly scream "democracy."


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

I actually don't know the political beliefs of Schönberg: I tried to interpret his music in a political way and came to the conclusion that he kinda invented liberal music in which all notes are equally important (which Bernstein and I call 'democratic'). But now I looked at Wikipedia and learned that he regarderd himself "a "bourgeois" turned monarchist". Luckily, that fits the picture perfectly because the bourgeois has traditionally liberalism as it's ideology (and it explains why both communists and nazi's despised his music). Liberalism is not populism and evidently Schönberg's music isn't populist (while socialism and fascism are indeed populist).


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

You clearly don't understand his music. His system is an expansion of the traditional tonal system. You can't escape the hierarchy. There is no democracy. The chromatic scale still has a base note. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_root_of_two
He thought that he was progressive genius. Unfortunately remembering operations with 12 pitches is kind of hard. (And if your 12et music is not based on circle of 5ths or 4ths, good luck, because all other relations are distorted.)
What is the major scale. Take the first, third and fifth harmonics. 1/1 - 5/4 - 3/2 = CEG. If you use the geometrical transformation called translation on 3/2 which is the first harmonic that gives a different note, you will get GBD. If you do the same thing, but on F, which is the first subharmonic and the first different note in the undertone series, you get FAC. This gives use the diatonic major scale and the I V and IV chords. Gestalt patterns are very important for the human perception. 3/2 and 4/3 are the most closely related frequencies to our starting point and you are repeating the same sonority on them. The scale we got is not only an Euclidan algorhythm, but also a Moment of symmetry, if we look at the 12 notes that we get before spiraling into another circle of fifths/fourths within a comma distance.
Music is just mathematical transformations in the frequency spectrum that we hear as sounds and appreciate, because of the great symmetry. Rotations, translations, reflections etc. Some composers use more advanced math than others (compare Bartok's reflective mirroring of motives to Bach's use of this technique - Bartok will most of the time use axis that creates _distorted _mirror images )
Now generate 12 pitches related to a root and start doing mathematical transformations (inversion, retrograde, retrograde inversions, rotations, modulations etc) while restricting the times you can repeat a pattern. Compare this to operation with 3 pitches that generates the major scale. There is a reason why his music is hard to appreciate for us. But is far from being atonal, random, democratical etc.

The return to the base note is not necessary in any type of music. This is just a circular structure that you can find in other art forms like literature and is a symbol of eternity, life and death etc. You can modulate to other base note, if you want.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

You sure know much more about this than I so I guess you are right. I simply based my view on what Bernstein says about it and in the clip in my OP you can hear him say from around 4'22 that the goal of serial music is to democratize the twelve tones...


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

Agamemnon said:


> to democratize the twelve tones...


 Isn't just a metaphor for ; to make a complex music with 12 notes. I doubt that idea of democracy has much to do with art. In the end "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others", like Orwell said.
Even if we could say that the 12 pitches are equal, the lowest, the highest, the one in the middle, the ones that repeat more often or are orchestrated with more interesting timbre will be "more equal", because of how our perception...


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I won't claim to know anything about Schoenberg or Bernstein or Nazis or Entartete music ... but it seems to me that artists are seldom friends of conservative political thinkers. Art itself defines itself by change, by newness, by challenging norms. Which also seems to me why certain conservative political parties can't wait to defund arts. It's probably hard to hold onto power when the minds of the society have been reshaped by new, progressive ideas. I'm sure the first couple of cave painters were clubbed to death by their more conservative thinking hunter/gatherers. "He should be hunting and gathering, helping the community, not wasting time painting on the cave wall. We can't eat that bison he paints. Kill him before everybody abandons hunting and gathering and becomes a wall painter!" Of course, science is progressive thinking, too, and goes hand in hand with artistic developments. I suspect that while one guy was painting the bison on the wall, another guy was figuring out that a round object rolls. Which doesn't surprise me either why certain conservative political parties are mistrustful of science, too.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

In a general sort of way, I would be very reluctant to read politics into music. The real meaning of "degenerate art" was "whatever Hitler doesn't like." And of "formalism", "whatever Comrade Stalin doesn't like." Of course, they couldn't come out and say that, so they invented some very scientific-sounding arguments to try to show that this sort of art/music is objectively bad. 

But composers and artists have been everything from saints to psychopaths, and their politics run the gamut from ultra-right wing to ultra-left. It is almost impossible to catch any glimpse of any of that in their music.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Agamemnon said:


> Obviously the nazi's couldn't accept this strongly liberal kind of music


Then again, there were a few serial composers, like Paul von Klenau and Winfried Zillig, who had successful careers under the Third Reich. Like any other style, serialism isn't inherently this or inherently that. Any style can be adapted to any ideology if you're determined enough.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

SONNET CLV said:


> artists are seldom friends of conservative political thinkers


If only it were that simple. The list of 20th century artists who were attracted to fascism is a long one indeed and, though it hurts to admit, includes some of the era's most creative talents. Literary scholars still have a hard time coming to terms with Eliot or Pound's fascism. In music, Stravinsky once proudly claimed that "no one venerated Mussolini" more than he did. And imagine modernists' agony when it was discovered that Webern was a Nazi sympathizer.


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## Lenny (Jul 19, 2016)

Fascinating OP! My firm belief is that music cannot be really understood without its connection to underlying ideology.

I wonder what Agamemnon thinks about Adorno.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Lenny said:


> My firm belief is that music cannot be really understood without its connection to underlying ideology.


My firm belief is that it fails as music if that's the case.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

DeepR said:


> My firm belief is that it fails as music if that's the case.


Shostakovich makes for an interesting test case, because some of his music was connected to ideology while some was not. I'll leave it to the individual to decide whether a connection to ideology made a difference in the quality of his music.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Lots of good music is connected to ideology. It's only necessary to mention Bach's religious music, and Beethoven's "heroic" music from his middle period. The list could go on and on...


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## Lenny (Jul 19, 2016)

DeepR said:


> My firm belief is that it fails as music if that's the case.


Let me clarify. All music is ultimately an expression of the underlying society, it doesn't come out of thin air.

For example, monumental german romantic symphonic expression tells us something about german idealism. Gangsta rap tells us something about... well forget it.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I understand music isn't created in a vacuum but I think ideally a listener is able to connect to the music in a vacuum. The underlying ideologies of music, if there are any, are but optional background information, not a prerequisite for understanding and enjoying the music itself.


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## Lenny (Jul 19, 2016)

DeepR said:


> I understand music isn't created in a vacuum but I think ideally a listener is be able to connect to the music in a vacuum. The underlying ideologies of music, if there are any, are but optional background information, not a prerequisite for understanding and enjoying the music itself.


You are absolutely correct! English is not my native language, so maybe that's the reason for this misunderstanding. Music can be enjoyed, or "consumed" without any understanding at all, in a sense I was talking about.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

DeepR said:


> understanding and enjoying


One of the cruxes of the matter is whether these two things are the same, and whether they have the same prerequisites and the same rewards.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I agree and I think it can be broken down as follows.
There's the actual experience of listening to the music on one hand and then there's understanding the music in general (outside of the listening experience) on the other hand.
There are certain favorite pieces I've listened to so many times that I can say in confidence that they hold no secrets to me, in terms of what's audible. I enjoy these pieces as much as anyone possibly could, I fully understand their expression, I can easily follow the music and have a clear mental picture of its structure (in a non technical way). Yet I may know nothing or very little of the score of these pieces, all its compositional technicalities, the composer, his ideas, ideologies and philosophies and the very time and place it was written in. All these things may help me understand the music (and its background) better, in general, but this will not change my experience and enjoyment when listening to the music for one bit.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

SONNET CLV said:


> but it seems to me that artists are seldom friends of conservative political thinkers. Art itself defines itself by change, by newness, by challenging norms.


To some extent you are right I think. It is my impression anyway that 99% of all 'intellectuals' (i.e. academics, artists, etc) are strongly left-winged. But I believe that the majority of all really great thinkers and artists are to be found in that 1% that isn't progressive/leftish! The reason has to do with dialectics. It is quite easy to rationally criticize the status quo and be progressive/leftish. And of course there is truth to be found in this left-winged critical discourse. But it is only partly true. The true great thinker takes the next step and sees that the 'intelligent' left-winged position can be criticized as easily as the 'dumb' right-winged position and that there is truth and non-truth to be found in both positions. At least the true great thinker manages to criticize his own progressive beliefs as well. In the end, the true intellectual transcends all political partisanship: he kind of takes the position of God and stands above all human affairs like left-winged and right-winged politics! That's why great thinkers (and artists) generally can not be labelled as left-leaning or right-leaning in politics.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Lenny said:


> Fascinating OP! My firm belief is that music cannot be really understood without its connection to underlying ideology.
> 
> I wonder what Agamemnon thinks about Adorno.


Thank you! About Adorno: I like him as I like all great thinkers. But I do not know him very well. Maybe he falls victim to my criticism of progressive thinkers (see above) but I am not sure about it. I believe I have read about his views on art once or twice which views I then liked very much.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

KenOC said:


> Lots of good music is connected to ideology. It's only necessary to mention Bach's religious music, and Beethoven's "heroic" music from his middle period. The list could go on and on...


We tend to regard all art as a closed world, produced as l'art-pour-l'art, but actually a lot of art is not made as l'art-pour-l'art. I think it would have made Beethoven very grumpy if he knew that we would just enjoy his music without even caring about the social-political messages for which he wrote the music! But then it makes me wonder: if you like Beethoven's music very much, does that imply that you must share his political view (subconsciously) because otherwise you would not understand his music deeply so it would not have a great impact on you?


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Agamemnon said:


> I think it would have made Beethoven very grumpy if he knew that we would just enjoy his music without even caring about the social-political messages for which he wrote the music!


Did anything ever NOT make him grumpy?


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

brianvds said:


> Did anything ever NOT make him grumpy?


First I wrote "even more grumpy" but then I decided not to repeat this cliché.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Agamemnon said:


> To some extent you are right I think. It is my impression anyway that 99% of all 'intellectuals' (i.e. academics, artists, etc) are strongly left-winged. But I believe that the majority of all really great thinkers and artists are to be found in that 1% that isn't progressive/leftish! ... In the end, the true intellectual transcends all political partisanship: he kind of takes the position of God and stands above all human affairs like left-winged and right-winged politics! That's why great thinkers (and artists) generally can not be labelled as left-leaning or right-leaning in politics.


Well said. My original comment that "artists are seldom friends of conservative political thinkers" was more a comment on the often narrow, short-sighted mindset of _political thinkers _rather than any sort of commentary against artists. Artists often hold rather conservative values in their day to day existences as family members, employees, and voters; but art evolves from more enigmatic spaces and one can seldom pin down the sources of inspiration.

I remain amazed at photos such as those below:








Composers' Row: From left, Samuel Barber, Igor Stravinsky, Lukas Foss, Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions - all assembled, it is believed, in honor of Stravinsky at New York City's Town Hall on December 20, 1959.









John Cage (center) poses with composers (from left) Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, David Tudor and Morton Feldman in 1962. A decade earlier, Tudor premiered Cage's "4'33"" at a benefit concert in Woodstock, N.Y.

We see several of the most famous avant-garde artists in the history of music, folks who have challenged definitions, styles, forms, sounds, and the very meaning of music. Yet, these photos could be mistaken for an assemblage of tax accountants or businessmen, just guys in their conservative attire (suits and ties) seeming to enjoy convivial society. Hardly are there any signs of the defiance their music making promotes and provokes.

Then compare to these guys:








Kiss is now selling air guitar strings.

This is a photo of four comparatively (musically speaking) conservative artists whose music harmonically and melodically, form-wise, and instrumentation-wise remains quite ... old fashioned, may we say? One could hardly confuse it with that of Lukas Foss or Roger Sessions, Stravinsky, or John Cage, Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, or Morton Feldman. Yet, we'd hardly like to think of Kiss the band as being less than liberal, especially in their lifestyles.

It's a conundrum of sorts. But art remains something of a mysterious force, and though it may have political undertones (or overtones) it can also be politically neutral. And sometimes the politically neutral can prove threatening to those who think too deeply in political terms. Is there some "hidden message" in the art that threatens?

Soviet era Russian poet and children's book author Daniil Kharms disappeared one night in 1941 (after receiving that infamous knock on the door) from his home in part because he wrote absurdist style, "meaningless" little verses which befuddled the minds of the suspicious Soviet officials.

Here is Kharms's verse titled "Symphony No. 2".


Anton Mikhailovich spat, said "yuck", spat again, said "yuck" again, spat again, said "yuck" again and left. To Hell with him. Instead, let me tell about Ilya Pavlovich. 
Ilya Pavlovich was born in 1893 in Constantinople. When he was still a boy, they moved to St. Petersburg, and there he graduated from the German School on Kirchnaya Street. Then he worked in some shop; then he did something else; and when the Revolution began, he emigrated. Well, to Hell with him. Instead, let me tell about Anna Ignatievna. 
But it is not so easy to tell about Anna Ignatievna. Firstly, I know almost nothing about her, and secondly, I have just fallen of my chair, and have forgotten what I was about to say. So let me instead tell about myself. 
I am tall, fairly intelligent; I dress prudently and tastefully; I don't drink, I don't bet on horses, but I like ladies. And ladies don't mind me. They like when I go out with them. Serafima Izmaylovna have invited me home several times, and Zinaida Yakovlevna also said that she was always glad to see me. But I was involved in a funny incident with Marina Petrovna, which I would like to tell about. A quite ordinary thing, but rather amusing. Because of me, Marina Petrovna lost all her hair - got bald like a baby's bottom. It happened like this: Once I went over to visit Marina Petrovna, and bang! she lost all her hair. And that was that.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

By the way, among the discs in my collection are three series that I quite enjoy musically, though listen to with a deep sadness as well.

The first is a number of discs in Decca's Entartete Musik collection: I have quite a few of the series on my shelves, among my favorites are 






and








You can learn more about that series here: http://www.deccaclassics.com/au/series/comp_series?ID=ENTMUS
and here: https://classicalpippo9.com/category/decca-entartete-musik/

Too, some while back I picked up an Etcetera box set (10 CDs) titled Forbidden Music in World War II, which features Dutch composers:









There is much to explore there.

As well, I have the first 12 discs in KZ Musik's "Encyclopedia of Music Composed in Concentration Camps (1933-1945)", several of the discs of which present stunningly profound music.







, from which this is disc one:








I originally bought the discs while they were being issued in single format, but the second set of 12 is included only in the complete 24-disc box set (at least it was at my last query with the company) and I haven't bothered to purchase the entire set which would duplicate the first 12 in the series. Perhaps KZ Musik will release the final 12 discs individually and I can complete the series. But these discs are well worth exploring, even if they are often poorly recorded and present often lesser known works by lesser known composers.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

DeepR said:


> Yet I may know nothing or very little of the score of these pieces, all its compositional technicalities, the composer, his ideas, ideologies and philosophies and the very time and place it was written in. All these things may help me understand the music (and its background) better, in general, but this will not change my experience and enjoyment when listening to the music for one bit.


I've experienced it both ways. At one extreme is Stravinsky, for whom all the "background" stuff (i.e. his politics) I find to be repellent, and it's all the more a shame because I think there are specific, identifiable ways in which that stuff can be traced to specific features of the music. And yet the music he wrote when his politics were at their most objectionable (the 1930s) is, to me, Stravinsky at his compositional best. So on most days, the appeal of the music is enough for me to overlook the background stuff.

At the other extreme (appropriately enough) is Schoenberg, who I tend to think of as the least interesting of the serialists. (Both Berg and Webern far surpassed their teacher, in my humble opinion.) And yet when I learned about the crazy New Age-y theosophical mysticism that Schoenberg cited as an inspiration behind serialism in the first place, it did make the music more compelling to me. I know some would say it is the ideas rather than the music that I'm responding to, and I'm not terribly bothered by that; I do firmly believe that what exactly we're enjoying when we listen to music with its background in mind is a question for philosophers, not listeners.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I guess so.
Personally, I really think I'm enjoying nothing but the music itself. Having the music's background in mind doesn't change anything in my experience of and reaction to the music.
I'll add that I'm an amateur pianist and in some cases I have indeed studied the music, played the music, and learned quite a lot about the music, its composer, his ideas, etc. ... all this deepens my understanding and appreciation of the music (when I'm not actually listening), but changes nothing in the way I experience the music when I'm listening: I still enjoy those pieces in exactly the same way as before.


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