...the Symphonies of the 20th Century

A venture

I decided to make the symphonies of the 20th century the topic of my analysis class I am going to teach this semester. This is an incredible huge field but I am convinced that it must be possible to handle a topic in a given time frame regardless of its dimensions.

My students are composers, musicologists, and conductors, and were, at least till now, quite eager about my choice. The 20th century offers a vast scope of symphonies, from Shostakovich to Ives, from Maxwell Davies to Pärt, from Henze to Glass. I am really looking forward to teach this class and learn at lot about 20th century music. 

The plan is to listen to symphonies from Germany and Austria, then Russia, Ex-USSR, and Poland, then France and Switzerland, and at least the UK and USA. Unfortunately there will be no time to talk about the vast history of symphonies of the Scandinavian countries.

I post a Google Drive spreadsheet on this blog, so you may keep yourself informed about what symphonies I have already listened to. I call it the "20th century symphony project" (20SP). Sounds pretty cool, huh?

Overview

The first lecture was last Thursday. I spoke about the symphonies form german-speaking countries. At first we were listening to the music by Anton Webern, Ernst Krenek, Paul Hindemith, and Karl Amadeus Hartmann as examples of pre-World War II symphonies. Everybody was struck by the huge difference between the music of Webern and his contemporaries. Even now Webern sounds fresh and radical, compared to Hindemith, whose music sounds old school and even a bit cheesy.

Anton (von) Webern. Quelle: wikimedia

It is always surprising for me to read that Hindemith was the hero of contemporary music in Darmstadt in post-World War II Germany, at least till 1949. After that the decline of his fame was as fast as the stars of Stockhausen and Boulez rose, but none of them wrote any symphonies.

There are a couple of noteworthy symphonies after 1945. Wolfgang Fortner and Bernd Alois Zimmermann wrote one each, and there is the "Deutsche Sinfonie" by Hanns Eisler. The "Deutsche Sinfonie" might be the best example of an antiquated music, which belongs to a Museum of Music, together maybe with the works by GDR-composer Ernst Hermann Meyer. But all the aforementioned symphonies disappeared from the repertoire.

Hartmann and Henze

Undoubtedly, Karl Amadeus Hartmann and his friend and fellow Hans Werner Henze rank among the most important and prolific composers of symphonies in the german speaking countries. Although Hartmann almost fell into oblivion, his 1. Symphony "Versuch eines Requiems" on a poem by Walt Whitman, his Violin Concerto, and his composition "Miserere" can still be found in concert programs. 

Hans Werner Henze was also a companion of Stockhausen and Boulez, but after asthetic differences they went their own ways. Henze did not chose serial composition, what made him "unnütz" ("useless") in the eyes and ears of Boulez. Detested by not a few of his peers, he nevertheless advanced to be one of the most important German composers. His music is full of overtly shown expression, a trait to which he committed himself already in the 1940's. 

 

Hans Werner Henze. Quelle: wikimedia/Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F008277-0008 / Unterberg, Rolf / CC-BY-SA

His ten symphonies can be divided into five early works, the more mature 6th symphony, and four late masterworks. All of them, from the first to the last, reveal his masterful instrumentation, but not before his 6th symphony he found a individual style. The 7th symphony, his engagement with Beethoven, will be the focus of my next lecture.

...Karl Amadeus Hartmann, 8th Symphony

The music of German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann has almost disappeared from concert life, despite his eminent importance for the musical landscape in early post-war Germany. He was the founder of Munich's famous MUSICA VIVA festival for new music, and with him contemporary classical music rose from the ashes of World War II.

But what happened ever since? Hartmann suffered from cancer and died already with 58 years in 1963. His contemporaries, like the ten years older Carl Orff outlived him by almost twenty years. Nevertheless, the music by Hartmann performed in the concert hall today is still more manifold than Orff's notorious "Carmina Burana." There is his Symphony No. 1, his Violin Concerto, or his piano sonata "27. April 1945."

In this post I will discuss his 8th and last symphony, premiered in 1963, the year of his death. The movements are:

1. Cantilene
2. Dithyrambe: Scherzo - Fugue

Every single bar in this symphony reveals the unmitigated craftsmanship of Hartmann, in instrumentation, originality, and form. One example is the instrumentation at the very beginning, where he combines a C-Clarinet with the Vibraphone to a sound of strange acuteness. An example for his lifelong interest in polyphony is not only the four-part counterpoint two or three minutes into the first movement, but also the fugue at the end of the symhpony.

The fugue construes the second part of the second movement, called "Dithyrambe", what means "song of joy that ends with rapturous exultation" (Hartmann does not miss to inform us about that in a footnote in the score). A fugues seems to me the perfect device to achieve this goal, since it allows to generate an complex yet not chaotic atmosphere. Besides, he is in good company with Mozart, who decided to employ a fugue in his last symphony, with the same results (at least to me).

His younger friend and contemporary Hans Werner Henze wrote "Three Dithyramben" for chamber orchestra in 1958, also the second movement of his Third Symphony is called the same. Whether there is an influence or not is not easy to decide. The music of the two sound not unalike. However, Hartmanns last work has a density and strong emotional impact unachieved by Henze, at least during that time.


There is a video on Youtube (audio only) with Hartmann's 8th Symphony, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, who recorded all of Hartmann's Symphonies.