this earth without it?”
We agreed such a prospect was unthinkable.
“Still,” she went on, “would the history of music during the last hundred years be different if Mendelssohn had never lived? No, he did not change the course of music for a single moment. He was not an innovator. Merely a marvellous composer.”
“And who do you think has been an innovator since Wagner?” Teddy asked.
“Debussy,” Köllner replied after a moment’s hesitation. “Every composer you hear this week owes his musical life to him.”
“How interesting that you should say that,”Teddy remarked. “I was afraid you might name Stravinsky.”
“As a matter of fact, I was thinking of him,” Köllner admitted.
“Good thing you didn’t,” said Teddy. I admired his selfassurance. “In my view Stravinsky is the exact opposite of an innovator. Instead of developing and varying his themes, he gets his effect by displacing accents and improvising on rhythmic units. His music is inventive and effective. But it will lead nowhere. What a contrast to Schönberg, who is opening up entirely new worlds while working within the established tradition. By the way, are you going to hear Alban Berg’s Kammerkonzert tomorrow?”
“Yes, certainly,” Gretel Köllner said.
“Good. It will be the high point of the festival. I am so sorry he is not here. I just heard from him. He is in Baden-Baden where his Lyric Suite is being performed. May I tell you of other events you must not miss? Ernst Toch’s piano concerto, Kaminski’s Magnificat, and Janacek’s Concertino.”
Teddy omitted to alert us to another important event that we later attended, the Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony, which Furtwängler conducted. It had become public knowledge that during rehearsals Furtwängler disregarded the composer’s objections to his interpretation — so it was said — in a pompously cavalier manner. The work did not make much of an impression on us, unlike Bela Bartok’s extraordinarily violent First Piano Concerto, with Bartok himself at the piano. He treated it as a percussion instrument. There were no melodies.
“Oh, and tonight there is a concert you must not miss,” Teddy told us. “The richly polyphonic three-hour a capella oratorio The Life and Works of Saint Cyril and Methodius by the Croatian composer Bozidar Sirola.”
“We have already bought the tickets,” I said.
S AINT C YRIL AND M ETHODIUS
We did not regret we went. The brand-new work was based on ancient Gregorian chants and Byzantine themes and was performed by a choir and soloists with a conductor. Both Hanni and I were deeply engaged from beginning to end and not at all bored. It did not matter that we did not understand a word. Incidentally, we had not known that the two protagonists were Greek missionaries who lived in the ninth century and were credited with devising the Glagolitic alphabet, the precursor of the Cyrillic alphabet.
We had a memorable conversation in a café near the Saalbau afterward. A middle-aged man with steel-rimmed glasses sat alone at the table next to ours. He turned out to be Gerhard Pachmann, a client of Hermann’s, a partner in an iron-manufacturing company that was being sued for breach of contract. Hermann had won the case. Hanni greeted him and asked him to join us at our table. She remembered him as a man passionately interested in the arts. Once again I was impressed by her lack of self-consciousness about appearing in public with a man not her husband.
She introduced me.
“So there you are in the flesh. I am happy to meet you at last,” he said to me. We shook hands. He had a typical Frankfurt face — a little sad and amused at the same time. “Well, Herr Doktor Herzberg, this exotic work certainly gave you plenty to write about.”
I agreed wholeheartedly.
“So what would you say about it, Herr Pachmann?” Hanni asked, knowing I would never ask such a question.
“I would say that the two old missionaries
We agreed such a prospect was unthinkable.
“Still,” she went on, “would the history of music during the last hundred years be different if Mendelssohn had never lived? No, he did not change the course of music for a single moment. He was not an innovator. Merely a marvellous composer.”
“And who do you think has been an innovator since Wagner?” Teddy asked.
“Debussy,” Köllner replied after a moment’s hesitation. “Every composer you hear this week owes his musical life to him.”
“How interesting that you should say that,”Teddy remarked. “I was afraid you might name Stravinsky.”
“As a matter of fact, I was thinking of him,” Köllner admitted.
“Good thing you didn’t,” said Teddy. I admired his selfassurance. “In my view Stravinsky is the exact opposite of an innovator. Instead of developing and varying his themes, he gets his effect by displacing accents and improvising on rhythmic units. His music is inventive and effective. But it will lead nowhere. What a contrast to Schönberg, who is opening up entirely new worlds while working within the established tradition. By the way, are you going to hear Alban Berg’s Kammerkonzert tomorrow?”
“Yes, certainly,” Gretel Köllner said.
“Good. It will be the high point of the festival. I am so sorry he is not here. I just heard from him. He is in Baden-Baden where his Lyric Suite is being performed. May I tell you of other events you must not miss? Ernst Toch’s piano concerto, Kaminski’s Magnificat, and Janacek’s Concertino.”
Teddy omitted to alert us to another important event that we later attended, the Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony, which Furtwängler conducted. It had become public knowledge that during rehearsals Furtwängler disregarded the composer’s objections to his interpretation — so it was said — in a pompously cavalier manner. The work did not make much of an impression on us, unlike Bela Bartok’s extraordinarily violent First Piano Concerto, with Bartok himself at the piano. He treated it as a percussion instrument. There were no melodies.
“Oh, and tonight there is a concert you must not miss,” Teddy told us. “The richly polyphonic three-hour a capella oratorio The Life and Works of Saint Cyril and Methodius by the Croatian composer Bozidar Sirola.”
“We have already bought the tickets,” I said.
S AINT C YRIL AND M ETHODIUS
We did not regret we went. The brand-new work was based on ancient Gregorian chants and Byzantine themes and was performed by a choir and soloists with a conductor. Both Hanni and I were deeply engaged from beginning to end and not at all bored. It did not matter that we did not understand a word. Incidentally, we had not known that the two protagonists were Greek missionaries who lived in the ninth century and were credited with devising the Glagolitic alphabet, the precursor of the Cyrillic alphabet.
We had a memorable conversation in a café near the Saalbau afterward. A middle-aged man with steel-rimmed glasses sat alone at the table next to ours. He turned out to be Gerhard Pachmann, a client of Hermann’s, a partner in an iron-manufacturing company that was being sued for breach of contract. Hermann had won the case. Hanni greeted him and asked him to join us at our table. She remembered him as a man passionately interested in the arts. Once again I was impressed by her lack of self-consciousness about appearing in public with a man not her husband.
She introduced me.
“So there you are in the flesh. I am happy to meet you at last,” he said to me. We shook hands. He had a typical Frankfurt face — a little sad and amused at the same time. “Well, Herr Doktor Herzberg, this exotic work certainly gave you plenty to write about.”
I agreed wholeheartedly.
“So what would you say about it, Herr Pachmann?” Hanni asked, knowing I would never ask such a question.
“I would say that the two old missionaries