Concert for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day: “Degenerate music”

Music by Gustav Mahler, Ilse Weber, and Robert Kahn, performed by teachers and students of the Conservatorio di Musica “Santa Cecilia” of Rome

An event of the Giuseppe Levi Pelloni Foundation

Actually tracing a clear identity of what was called ‘Entartete Musik’ (Degenerate Music), the object of the Nazis’ attacks, is rather indefinable. The Nazis’ attacks were directed against all music that they felt did not belong to the deepest German musical culture, which they assumed to be “pure” and uncontaminated by any other influence. The repressive system adopted towards Jewish artists (but not exclusively) silenced two generations of composers.
The modernity that had apparently destabilised 20th century German society was the reason why the Reich had armed racist policy, as innovative musical tendencies were an omen of social degeneration. Yet if we pause to think about the concept of art that the Reich advocated, it had points of contact with what was being promulgated at the time: just think of the music of Kahn and Mahler. Their compositions, in classical form and with a late romantic flavour, were not unlike those of Brahms, Wagner or Strauss in either character or harmonies. We cannot undo the injustice these composers suffered, nor can we give them back their lives. But we can give them a gift, which may have mattered more than others: reproduce their music and disseminate it; by keeping it alive, along with that of the other victims of totalitarianism, we deny the regimes of the past a posthumous victory.

PROGRAMMA

Gustav Mahler
Quartettsatz (1876)
Liliana Bernardi, violin (teacher Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia Rome)
Michela Marchiana, viola (student of class M° Sanzò)
Marco Osbat, cello (student of class M° Chiapperino)
Marina Cesarale, piano (piano accompanist Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia Rome)

Ilse Weber
Fünf Lieder für Singstimme und Klavier
Miriam Fußeder, soprano (student of class Camera del M° Ferrara)
Marina Cesarale, piano (piano accompanist Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia Rome)

Robert Kahn
Jungbrunnen Op. 46 for voice, violin, violoncello, and piano
Miriam Fußeder, soprano (student of class Camera del M° Ferrara)
Liliana Bernardi, violin (teacher Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia Rome)
Luca Peverini, violoncello (1st Violoncello Orchestra del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma)
Marina Cesarale, piano (piano accompanist Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia Rome)

Although it is an early work by Gustav Mahler (1860 – 1911), the result of only one year’s study of composition, the Quartettsatz (quartet movement) shows a remarkable mastery of compositional technique. The sonata form structure and the interesting piano writing show Mahler’s familiarity with the great piano repertoire, from Beethoven to Schubert, Chopin, Schumann and Brahms.

Ilse Weber (1903 – 1944) was a child prodigy. She composed children’s songs, lullabies and poems, which were a great comfort to her as a girl after the death of her father. She was first deported to Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz, where she died. In Theresienstadt, she used the time she had available during the night watch and after work to create a small space for herself and others in which she wrote around sixty poems during her imprisonment, all in German. She set many of them to music, accompanying herself on the guitar and using ‘deceptively simple’ melodies and images to describe the horrors she and her fellow prisoners had experienced and to keep the music alive despite everything.

Jungbrunnen by Robert Kahn (1865-1951) contains a series of songs from the collection of poems of the same name by the German poet Paul Heyse.The music is in the late Romantic style and is an outstanding example of Kahn’s mastery in the integration of instruments and voice. Kahn met Brahms, who supported him informally, and although his work shows his influence to some extent, Kahn is an eclectic and independent composer whose music has its own originality.Robert Kahn, who taught in Berlin and was a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts, emigrated to England in 1939 because the National Socialist regime had banned the publication and performance of his music.

Images: Gustav Mahler © CC0 (E. Bieber), Ilse Weber © CC0 (anonimo), Robert Kahn © CC0