1920s – Frankfurt and post-war decadence

I now changed hands yet again, when Nelly Barth decided to lend me to one of her cousins, Fritz Hoffman, a member of ‘das Frankfurter Rundfunk-Symphonie-Orchester’. I was aware of the intoxicating strains of jazz, the Charleston rage, and the sounds of the ‘roaring twenties’, the music now filling my body and frame was an amazing mixture of styles and nationalities, cultures and influences.

Remembering all this post-War exuberance, with its new found freedom of mind and body, has caused me to reflect on the place of sexuality, whenever I am handled, taken out to play, and how my players can be affected erotically (sometimes unknowningly or subconsciously).  These thoughts are in line with the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud, whose influence was becoming widespread.  I have a feeling that Karl Barth, with his dialectic theology, might have been reacting against such thoughts.

(Sigmund Freud)

When music is analysed, I have heard of ‘climaxes’, release of inner tension, chromatic sensuality, ‘feminine endings’, etc.  My own physical body has often been described in sensual terms, and as Fritz Hoffman exposed me to the ‘decadent’ night life of the post-War Weimar Republic, there was a distinctive feeling of repressed sexuality ‘in the air’.

The word ‘decadence’ has musical overtones – a ‘cadence’ describes the sounds at the ending of a musical phrase, either ‘perfect’, ‘plagal’ or ‘interrupted’.  Is ‘de-cadence’, therefore, a description of a decaying end?

I wonder if these thoughts can be applied to post-War theology and philosophy, as well as to Music – not only to Karl Barth’s dialectics but also to the existentialism of Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Heidegger, and others.  Is it possible to be sensitive, even sexually aware, when examining, challenging and criticising a tradition or sacred text, which is deeply loved, respected and admired?

On one occasion with the Frankfurt Symphony Orchestra in 1926, I was deeply affected and moved by a performance of the Austrian Enst Kreneck’s new opera ‘Jonny spielt auf! (Jonny strikes up!)’, which tells the story of a black jazz violinist. The work typified the cultural freedom of the ‘golden era’, and the ‘decadence’, of the Weimar Republic.

 An intellectual composer Max meets Anita, a singer, during an expedition to the Alps. She has sung a leading role in one of his operas and will now undertake a new role in Paris, leaving Max in the city where the two have settled together. In a Paris hotel the maid Yvonne is tidying the room of Daniello, a violin virtuoso. Jonny, a black jazz fiddler, shows interest in Daniello’s Amati violin, which he takes and hides in the banjo case that Anita has brought, a prop for her performance. In the morning she leaves Daniello, taking the case with her, with Yvonne, dismissed as a suspect in the theft of the violin, and a ring that Daniello gives her for Max. Home again, she gives Max the ring, confirmation to him that she has been unfaithful, while Jonny, helped by Yvonne, takes the violin again. Max contemplates suicide, as he climbs once more in the Alps, but is deterred when he hears Anita singing an aria from his opera, broadcast on the hotel radio. There follows Jonny’s band, with the violin, recognised by Daniello, who is also at the hotel. Intending to escape to America, Jonny puts the violin in the luggage of Max and Anita, who are also going to America. Max is arrested and Anita and Yvonne are under suspicion. When Daniello tries to stop them leaving, he falls under a train and is killed. Escaping from the police, Max is reunited with Anita and they set out for America, while Jonny plays the violin from above on the station clock.

Krenek’s opera is heavily symbolic, with Jonny representing freedom and the future, Daniello and his violin the weight of European culture. It all resonated through my body too!

In a few years’ time it will be repressed and censured by growing National Socialism in Germany and Austria.