Anton Webern: Was He a Nazi?
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- This is something that seems to come up as a controversial topic in every music history textbook: was Anton Webern a Nazi, or was he an innocent bystander? The answer is- it's not nearly so simple. And all silliness aside, it's a fascinating question. So click to learn a bit more about Webern, his music, his life, and the history surrounding him.
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First of your posts I've seen: I found it very interesting and it show's how easy it is to accuse some of being a Nazi simply
because they stayed in Germany before and during the war. I think much of what you say would also apply to Richard Strauss - it's complicated.
Agreed! Thank you for taking the time to watch!
It would also apply in some degree to Fürtwängler, and even more so to the composer Franz Schmidt, whose postwar reputation has been severely compromised by ill-founded accusations of Nazism (despite vigorous denials of this by his close friend and long-time colleague Oskar Adler and by Hans Keller, who played chamber music with him as a young man in prewar Vienna - both Jewish). This has catastrophically affected the dissemination, performance, reception and understanding of his music outside Vienna, where he is still rightly revered.
@@neilsaunders9309 Back in the seventies I met Hans Keller at Morley College and he spoke of Schmidt highly - I’d never heard of him at the time - but he never told me he actually knew him.
@@henrygingercat Hans Keller mentions Schmidt en passant in several of his books, but the anecdote about performing chamber music with him appears in The Great Haydn Quartets.
A direct answer to a direct question. Yes. Anton Webern supported the National Socialist party of Adolf Hitler. Did he support its policies regarding the genocide of jews? No. At best he was naive. As were so many. But this kind of naivety is what emboldened National Socialism to become what it did. Many artists left. Webern stayed. But even the manner of your staying is significant.
The music is mixed too loud when Mr. Filshtinskiy is speaking. Better to let both Mr. Filshtinskiy and the music speak in turn.
I love history and music. A great combination for a video. You guys are great instructors. Thanks for sharing. I am a fan of baroque music but this is an interesting video.
Thanks for watching! This is definitely a step out of your comfort zone if you're more of a baroque fan, so thank you for that! The history, I think, helps inform the music for the listener. It's not easy music, and could use some more understanding!
Really great video!!!
you guys are a great team!
This is outstanding! You guys should expand into the documentary format. Of course you should do the scores as well. I don't think enough emphasis is put on politcs when discussing music. Also keep the violin reviews. I think you will get a bump in suscribers after this vid.
Oh my god, thank you for this- you have no idea how much I was agonizing over if releasing this was too much or not!! I literally just checked for comments because I was convinced it would be all negative lol. Thank you for this little lift in our confidence, it’s super appreciated! :)
Brilliant discussion!
Very enjoyable video.
Ah, the lure of Nationalism! It fueled the Romantic era and wound up corrupting generations of young people throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I appreciate the way you have discussed Webern here. I think the main point is that whatever his politics, his music demonstrated a skill and nuance that was utterly non-political, not a representation of any political theory. I don’t particularly care for Webern’s music, but I am grateful to you for showing how much you do care and for giving us all an intelligent perspective on the value of art in our lives.
Thank you for such a nice comment! I really felt a kinship to Webern in researching him a bit more for this video. Wading your way through the craziness of history, as an artist, takes an incredible amount of soul searching and dedication to your art. I think Webern did just that! Thanks for watching, and happy holidays!
I like your creative approaches to the cinematography in your video, and the playing is wonderful. I didn't know Webern's son was a Nazi. It certainly seems hard to imagine that Webern was "mildly anti-Semitic". That is a shocking claim for which you need to provide textual evidence. This is different from being fervently nationalistic (which in itself needs to be defined), and it is yet different again to consider Austrian culture to be the solution to the Bolshevism of impetuous young Austrians. What was the frame of reference to this "solution"? It seems hardly plausible that he was proposing that Austrian culture would be the solution for everyone everywhere. For British people too? For Chinese people? It seems unlikely. In light of this, I can't see that his cultural nationalism possessed an implied universal applicability to all mankind.
But remember that both Dutch and German pronounce the "v" in the preposition -- "van" or "von" -- as an English "f".
I didn't know that, so something new to learn! :)
In Dutch we normally pronounce the ''v'' as in ''very''
Good discussion! Krasner had some interesting theories about Webern-- apparently, when they went to Barcelona to do the Berg Concerto, Webern insisted on taking a train that changed in Munich. Webern wanted to make a point to his Jewish friend that Germany wasn't lost to civilization. Of course, an international train station would have been shielded from the worst that was going on in the late 30s.
Anyway, his theory was that Webern regretted all of this at the end, and that his death was more of a suicide than a pure accident.
What fiddle were you using for these cuts? Very attractive.
Thanks for watching! Yeah, there's so much interesting stuff on Webern! I'm actually just finishing up another plan for another Webern video. Too much interesting historical stuff to waste!
@@aTonalHits Some interesting comments on Webern's work as a performer-- sadly, though, with only those two recordings to document. Erich Leinsdorf was his assistant with the Workers' Chorus, and noted that Webern was one of the few who intuitively adopted the tempo markings that Brahms had put on, then removed from, his German Requiem. Otto Klemperer attended a lecture he did on the Beethoven piano sonatas, and found it quite fascinating. Lots of lucid playing, although Webern was also quite un-mechanical in his use of rubato to make rhetoric clear. A real romantic in that respect. Finally, the BBC Symphony respected him and played very well, and there may well be press clippings of the concerts that weren't recorded.
Beautiful music you two make together, in all senses!
(In 1962, I played the Variations Op 27 at a recital at Los Angeles City College, so it was fun to 'revisit' the piece this way, after such a long interval -- nearly 60 years. You play it beautifully.)
As for your very interesting topic (Was Webern a Nazi?), here is a footnote to that: One of great ironic tragedies of WWII is that Schoenberg and Einstein, TOO, were very pro-German (in the broader sense that includes Austria): Schoenberg thought he was securing "the future of German music" and Einstein thought he was securing "the future of German science" (paraphrase) -- -- until the ground fell out from under their feet, and both had to flee to the US.
This pinpoints exactly what I was saying- that pro German, in a Nationalistic sense, with the pride of German history and culture, is a very different thing from being a Nazi, even if Nazism had it's roots in this movement. The same thing can be seen in many different countries! Thanks for this extra little note! :)
The great music analyst, Heinich Schenker - a Galician Jew (born to German-speaking parents) who settled in Vienna - was also an enthusiastic German nationalist. He died in 1935, but it is surely inconceivable that he would or could have become a Nazi.
What an unusual history lesson. I have on and off watched a lot of documentaries on the rise of nazism and while I doubt the environment of today would produce it again, today's environment is still capable of producing true horrors under the right circumstances. I am lucky I live in OZ where the historical approach to authority is less than enthusiastic, its hard to get an idiot fringe idea off the ground here. If you are truly bored and are interested in this area of modern history, a very long documentary called "Hitler A Career" was an eye opener.
I agree with your sentiment- I think something like Nazism would be difficult to recreate word for word- it's just a different time. That being said, the times continue to surprise us! Let's hope humanity never becomes so collectively foolish again. If you're into that sort of history, there is a fascinating book on Hitler by John Toland. It's thick as hell, but sheds so much light onto that time, and more of Hitler as the man he was. Turns out, he really was a nutjob! I will check out that documentary, thanks for the suggestion! Oh- and a documentary rejoinder- World War II in color on Netflix. Also super long, and packed with information!
I've never heard the music performed more admirably. There are many, many, many artists of all types in our history whose work we have to separate from personal choices on their part. It's only when those choices inform the work that we can begin to discern what we should think about the work. It might still be "great" technically (or any similar term) but found wanting for it's connection to repugnant thinking/behavior. I understand the historical importance of the Second Viennese school even while the content doesn't touch me personally.
Again, though, I know great playing when I see it!
Thanks for watching Tim! It's so important to know our history, we were glad we could put this one out there!
he was a monarchist and therefore not fascist..
Schoenberg was an avowed monarchist as well. Actually, of the core members of the Second Viennese School (I include Wellesz and Eisler as well as Berg), I think only Hanns Eisler was explicitly left-wing in politics.
"without discipline nor cultural cultivation" 8:34
Merci pour ce vidéo !
Ah, c'est mon plaisir Maurice! Je te manques!! (did I get it right? :) )
@@aTonalHits Not exactly ! Je te manque : You miss me - Tu me manques : I miss you. Although, I also miss you !. Are we having « an affair » on UA-cam ?
German culture is mad superior. Berlin techno proves this. And Gerhard Richter. And... Webern.
Detroit techno was better
don't use Anton Webern to promote your own shit!
''van'' is not per se 'Belgian', but Dutch/Flemish if you will :)
Good to know!! This is part of what I like about UA-cam- no matter how much I research something, there are always things that other people just have a basic knowledge of that I can learn from :) Thank you!
I’m 7:12 in
I just have to go out for a smoke
You should pronounce "von" as "fonn" (with a short, closed o, /fɒn/, pretty much like in British English), not as "vaahn". The same thing with "van": it should be pronounced "fun".
Anton "fonn" Webern. Ludwig "fun" Beethoven.
wow thats great,
Thank you.
Enjoyable and informative; nevertheless, I disagree that such conjecture 90 years after-the-fact is relevant. Simply put: so what? More to the point: what's the goal of attempting to make such a determination? No posthumous non-musical discoveries should result in adverse impact to his incredible contributions to formal Western art music. For my two cents, such presentations are needless; rather, we should focus on the art he created.
I get where you're coming from, and in some ways I completely agree. In other ways, I think music such as Webern's could benefit from a little historical information, especially for the uninformed listener. Agreed, it should not change the music, or it's affect on our souls, but it does shed a little extra light. If you don't know this composer, check her out- Galina Ustvolskaya. I think her music is a great example of music that so forcefully and unabashedly speaks to the listener- but once again, understanding her background does nothing more than illuminate the music! Thank you for watching, and for your perspective!
@@aTonalHits You're welcome! Apologies given I came off a bit strong. It's simply that I fear your headline will attract non-music extremists who may utilize your content for their unscrupulous agendas -- which, at its worst, will reflect unnecessarily adverse upon Webern's legacy. (To be sure it's neither you nor I for which I am concerned; rather, it's the UA-cam "agitator" and his/her potential actions that are unnerving.)
Thank you for the Ustvolskaya recommendation. I shall give it a go. Currently, I'm surely enjoying chronicling Schumann symphonies at the moment -- it's always a pleasure to re-review the 1st and 2nd waves of post-Beethoven action!
Von=Van=From
as a leftists whos into history Id like a diskussiun with you ^^
but I understand your arguments
Was khe nazi?