A Symphony Called "Symphony"
Henze's 7th Symphony, composed and premiered in the early 80s, is his first contribution to the genre which he entitled "Symphonie" and not "Sinfonia" or "Sinfonie." It is a work commissioned by the Berliner Symphoniker, and thus a work with a political statement per se. Henze's struggle with his German heritage, culminating in his move to Italy, finds its solution in this work and, at least in the mind of the composer, an answer to the question: How to write Symphonies after Auschwitz?
According to the sketches to this symphony which are kept at the Paul Sacher Stiftung, and the comments of Henze on the music, one of its main topics is the romantic German poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843). Hölderlin, who is nowadays known as one of the most accomplished poets of his time, was (more or less) incarcerated in the clinic of Doctor Autenrieth. Treated for assumed madness, he was tortured (compared by today's medical standards) and not being able to care for himself for the rest of his life.
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| Friedrich Hölderlin, painted by Franz Karl Hiemer (1792) Source: zeno.org |
Henze parallelizes Hölderlin's agony with the victims of the atrocities committed in the Third Reich and is hence establishing a link to the 20th century. However, the efficiency of this link has yet to be proven.
The 7th Symphony is a work with an immense orchestration. It features such rarely used instruments like a Heckelphone (kind of a tenor oboe) and is demanding for every single player as well as for the conductor. Following the score while listening to the music might be a futile attempt at first because of Henze's extreme dense but almost always lucid handling of the orchestra.
Fighting through the Score
I managed to lay hands on three scores for my seven students. One was a conductor's score, so three students could follow the music, the others had to share a pocket score (Edition Schott - Music of our time) by two. I never talked about a piece that big - the symphony has a duration of more than 30 minutes - or that complex, so I decided to focus on the first and third movement. Unlike other symphonies (like the 9th), Henze returned to the old four-movement form, which is another hint of his occupation with the German symphonic tradition.
My strategy was to let the students listen to the first movement while pursuing the form, followed by a discussion on the practicability of terms like exposition, development and so on for Henze's music. I was the only one without a score, and it was baffling to experience that the different parts of the sonata form of the first movement were actually distinguishable, even in an atonal context. Before that I was always reading the score along which must have distracted me from the music.
My students weren't that impressed by the music and viewed the organisation of the parts rather arbitrary. Terms like first and second theme seemed to be useless since this theoretical framework had no impression on the actual sound. I derived an outline of analyses by Albrecht Dümling and Benedikt Vennefrohne, who wrote his dissertation on Henze's Symphonies, but it seems to be less convincing on paper than in the ear. I presented charts provided by Vennefrohne, which obviously did not match the experiences my students had. I have to confirm them: The ties between the parts are loose and faint, difficult to argue and not necessarily convincing. Experiencing the parts that clearly during the lecture certainly was justified by my repeated listening to the Symphony before, kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A Scherzo of Torture
From the dissertation by Vennefrohne, who evaluated the sketches of Henze as well as a master thesis and an article by Peter K. Freyberg, we learn that the third movement is the real center of the symphony. In this movement, considered a Scherzo, Henze assigns different motives to means of torture, and of course, to Hölderlin himself. The problem is that none of this assignments accurately drafted by Henze and faithfully analyzed by Vennefrohne and Freyberg is compelling at all. The whole conception of the torture instruments "the swing" (a torture practice used in Auschwitz) and "the wheel" (a torture practice used in ancient Greek), resembled by certain motives stands and falls with the knowledge that Vennefrohne derives from the sketches. But even if the liner notes or program notes inform the audience about this circumstances, nobody is obliged to accept this interpretation. Of course, Henze had the notion that music conveys a distinctive message, but we know that this attempt is as futile as ridiculous and an insult of the audience.
Other composers had this crazy idea, too. Think about Karlheinz Stockhausen and his allegedly decent from planet Sirius. But nevertheless, the dominating behavior of Henze seems more serious to me, since it affects directly the reception of the music. That might be the reason why he is so rarely discussed in the University. Henze wants to reign, he tries to hem the listener to his own conception. This is a notion that cannot be accept in the 21st century.
One last example: The last movement is a scoring of Hölderlin's poem "Hälfte des Lebens", but without an actual singer. How is one supposed to recognize this relation? I will not argue that this is not a valid compositional approach, I would use it myself as a composer, and others did it, too. But it is certainly not a valid means of telling the audience, they have to hear Hölderlin's poem out of the music, if they please. In my opinion, this symphony is fantastically written orchestral piece, but I can't accept Henze's urge to control my reception which also smothers a valid analysis. I see it as my obligation as a teacher, to point this out to my students.
Therefore, I am sure, Henze's music will only take its place it deserves in music history when Henze and his scholars will finally set it free.
References:
Vennefrohne, Benedikt: Die Sinfonien Hans Werner Henzes, Hildesheim, Zürich: Verlag Georg Olms 2005.
Freyberg, Peter K.: "Henzes Siebte - Eine Hölderlin-Symphonie", in: Hans Werner Henze (= Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, Bd. 20), hrsg. von Peter Petersen, Frankfurt a. Main: Peter Lang 2003, S. 91 - 111.
Dümling, Albrecht: "Ein reflektierter Freudentanz. Versuch einer Interpretation des 1. Satzes von Hans Werner Henzes 7. Symphonie", in: Musik, Deutung, Bedeutung. Festschrift für Harry Goldschmidt, hrsg. von Hartmut Lück und Hans-Werner Heister, Dortmund: Edition V im Pläne-Verlag 1986, S. 107 - 111.
Further reading on the internet
Tom Service: "A guide to Hans Werner Henze's Music"
Further reading on the internet
Tom Service: "A guide to Hans Werner Henze's Music"
