1936 as a parataxis of various « totalitarian successes »
1936 comme parataxe de divers « succès totalitaires »
Résumé
We focus here on one year: 1936. François Colbert recognizes four models of State (State in the sense of nation). The models concern the cultural politics of each type of State. One State model is the Sponsor State. The typical example is England. But in 36, this Sponsor State was not very active yet. The BBC just decided not to promote any continental modernism, and particularly not the Germanic one. Edward Clarck, who was a Schönberg’s pupil, left then the Corporation. Finally, we couldn’t find any remarkable work composed in England (or in Canada, another sponsor State), during 36. But it is true that Elgar just died two years before and Britten would start to compose only one year after.
France would present another model. It might be an Architect State, notably from 36 on, because of the new social government, le Front Populaire of Leon Blum. In june, it generated the first “congés payés”, the first payed holidays: two weeks of vacation given to the workers. A song of 36 (Quand on se promène au bord de l’eau performed by Jean Gabin) speaks about this new society of hobbies, now possible for every worker.
Christopher L. Moore underlines the cultural interventionism of this French Architect State, a research of a real « modernisme populaire ». The result has not passed clearly the exam of posterity. There is, for example, the Suite provençale by Darius Milhaud. This Mediterranean work perhaps resounds with the idea of holiday, so with the new “congés payés”. That occupies the popular aspect. For the modernist one: it is polytonal.
But another Mediterranean music, recorded in august 36, is far more famous in France today, perhaps more than any orchestral work of 36, even Litanies à la Vierge noire by Poulenc or Poèmes pour mi by the young Messiaen. This Marinella, song by Tino Rossi, doesn’t work for a “modernisme populaire”, but for an industrial aesthetics, that of the recording company. Adorno’s great fear about cultural industry is already pertinent in this time. Because Marinella has become the “music of the front populaire”, according to Yves Borowice, and perhaps the most famous French musical work of 36, still now.
Another model is the Aesthetical State, that of the totalitarian regimes. The dictators personally rule many affairs, including aesthetical ones. Stalin wrote a musical critic of Chostakovitch in January (36). According to Laurent Feneyrou, the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk was the model of the Nazi State. And Hitler began with studying painting. Goebbels wrote a novel, during his youth, in which he pretended : “politics is the plastic art of the State”. One could have imagined that the works, written in these regimes and approved by these regimes, now would have been totally forgotten by history.
This doesn’t seem to be the case of Karl Orff’s Carmina burana. At this time, the political pressure on musicians is strong in Germany, between the nazi critics represented by Gerigk, the cultural politics of Rosenberg (for the party) and Goebbels for the ministry of propaganda. In this impossible context, Albrecht Riethmüller wonders “how composition was actually possible in the Reich in 36”. A little cantata by Georg Blumensaat seemed possible, also an Anthem by Werner Egk, written for the Olympic games in Berlin this year, and The Carmina burana by Carl Orff, because “Car Orff and Egk were both disposed to fully negociate their aesthetics with the nazi State”, according to Eva Hanau. Carmina Burana was first rejected by Gerigk but rehabilitated by Rosenberg in 40. Rosenberg heard in it “the clear, burning and disciplined music that is demanded by its time”
Another composer, the same year, but somewhere else, in another dictatorship, another aesthetical state, chose to return in his country after a long exile 18 years. He composed the ballet Romeo and Juliet, in 36, for his new totalitarian government. Was it Opportunism? Or a paradoxal and late sovietic conviction ? One could think that Prokofiev was victim of a Stockholm syndrome, Stalin (and his new hardened regime of 36, where death penalty was then possible for children) becoming a kind of hostage taker, finally “cherished” by Prokofiev. For Deborah Rifkin, the composer wanted a new simplicity for a long time, already present in Lieutenant Kijé (1933) or the Second violin concerto (1935). But Romeo and Juliet goes far more than on a new “simple” way. It is a machine built for Stalin and Prokofiev together. The brass in the low register, familiar to Prokofiev already, but here with the simple arpeggios of the strings, become, in a way, the march of the Red Army. Neoclassicism, is the fastest parts, is put to its climax of seducing energy. And the work is not only martial and neoclassic. For the first time at this level, a work by Prokofiev contains neo-romantic textures. It is because of this love story by excellence: Romeo and Juliet. But it is also because Staline was fond of Tchaïkovski.
At the opposite side appears the Facilitator State. The State, in this case, is almost inexistent. But the pressure (perhaps the violence), is also strong in this case : the composer knows he’s totally alone. The “public law” becomes his. That gave this work for example, also in 36: Adagio for strings by Samuel Barber. In a way, Barber had to become his own cultural industry, his own pressure. The State “came”, but after, electing the work for the national funerals, that of Roosevelt in 1945 and Kennedy in 1963. But the cultural industry was not so far from this aesthetics, and the proof is that industry ravished the work, took it, particularly during the Reagan decade, the postmodernist one. This “saddest music ever written” (according to Thomas Larson) was “customised” in many American films like Elephant man by David Lynch, Platoon by Oliver Stone, Lorenzo's oil by George Miller, also in TV serials (Seinfeld or The Simpsons), or in recent popular music (Puff Daddy, William Orbit, DJ Tiësto). Like in Carmina burana, the notes are often conjunct, the ambitus is narrow. It is a music also technically under pressure. Diether de la Motte was wondering about Carmina burana : Darf Musik 1936 so einfach sein? » : « Can Music in 36 be so simple ? » For Diether de la Motte, it is a real aesthetical provocation. In Orff’s case also, the bound with cultural industry will be natural: the work will be used in the film Excalibur by John Boorman. It will strongly serve its ambiguous aesthesis of violence, of Barbarian fascination, perhaps building a neo-Nazi aesthetics in a way, which seems to show that a problematic aesthetics would be deeply related to the work from the beginning, not only historically but viscerally.
Cultural industry and totalitarian regimes finally show a common position of pressuring music. And they finally had a relative success in this exercise, at least in 1936. Another example would be this other work by Prokofiev, also composed for Stalin in 1936, in the joy of the return home. Let’s consider here a modified version of the work (Peter and the wolf): captured by cultural industry, to show, once again, the paradoxal bound, finally the common authority, (the common politics), between Staline and Walt Disney pictures.
The final question is: Who has written musical history ? Seeing the particular year of 1936, we build a parataxis which emphasizes that the winners may have been more Industry and dictatorships than European democratic states and their modernist views. The posterity would not be moral, in this way. Amaury du Closel has already shown that the Nazi had decided for us what we had to listen and specially not to listen: not to listen the Entachtete Musiken which are still not really rehabilitated today, Schreker the first.
Or the paratax shows a critic of historicism. It may show that we shoudn’t trust in posterity, that posterity is not working.
Let’s consider a last example, also composed in 36. It is one of the most famous works, nowadays, of the modernist tradition, so of the real Hegelian “historicist history”. The Work is posterity like it is attempted. Every reader here, then, will choose if this work, Music for strings, drum instruments and celesta, by Bartók, is more the centre, the reason, the justification of 1936 than the others we mentioned before and then, what is real history in general.
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)
Loading...