Gustav Mahler, Julius Korngold and the “Neue Freie Presse”

Normally, upon publication of a book I’ve written, I would be encouraging all the people who follow this blog to rush out and buy a copy. That probably will not be practical this time since Routledge has a policy of selling to public institutions and prices its books accordingly.  Routledge also has a policy of only accepting 100,000 words so the books themselves barely cover more than 200 pages, including index and numerous illustrations. It is not meant to represent value for money and presumably affords ambitious young academics a platform in their struggle to gain and retain a secure University position. E-books and paperbacks will be less expensive.

It’s a pity the book is priced in this manner, since I believe that there is a wider public for the reviews of Mahler during his lifetime in the Neue Freie Presse. At first glance, contemporary reviews of Mahler in any of the Austrian newspapers of the day would seem a marginal enthusiasm, of interest only to the most dedicated of music historians.  But please hear me out.  These reviews are important for a number of reasons. The first reason was to address the lazy accusation that Mahler was driven out of Vienna by an “antisemitic press”. The Neue Freie Presse was not just the principal newspaper of record, which in 1906 was proclaimed the “best newspaper in the world” by Joseph Pulitzer,  it was almost entirely Jewish-owned owned with many – perhaps most – of its important writers and journalists also Jewish.  Certainly, this was the case in its music coverage.  The Arts’ Editor was Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism and someone who could not easily be accused of antisemitism.  In fact, in the countless daily papers sold in Vienna around 1900, most music journalists were Jewish, including the ones who disliked Mahler and denounced every decision he took as director at Vienna’s “Hofoper” or Imperial Opera House.

The second reason was to offer today’s readers an account of music scholarship from writers describing works which at that point, could not be heard in any other manner than in performance. To describe a work in detail required enormous music literacy from both writer and reader. Julius Korngold received scores of new works in advance, which he studied scrupulously at the piano. Reviews – called Feuilleton – went on for three, often four pages, beginning on the front page of the paper.

The third reason was to present Julius Korngold as a musical thinker who has suffered terribly at the hands of history, fate, lazy prejudice and his unwholesome relationship with his son, the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

In this particular blog post about my book Gustav Mahler, Julius Korngold and the Neue Freie Presse, the first point can only be made by stating and restating the obvious. Most of Vienna’s most prominent music critics and writers were Jewish.  It’s something that, at the time, was so well known that the accusations of more recent scholarship claiming Mahler was driven out of Vienna by an antisemitic press would have been laughed at. There were more than a few critics who disliked Mahler, but most of these were Jewish, and their issues were to do with his innovations as opera director.  They rarely engaged with Mahler as a composer, and when they did, their views were often more circumspect. This is not to underplay the antisemitism of much of the aristocracy, who saw the opera as their social club, a practice Mahler was determined to stamp out. All appeals to Kaiser Franz Joseph, whose interest in opera and ballet was virtually zero, were met with “But, he’s the director of my opera house.” The protection of the Kaiser would never be sufficient to stop the intrigues of the court, and I include an anonymous editorial in the paper upon Mahler’s departure in 1907 that clearly makes this point.

Nor can I really elaborate on the writing at the time. I’ve published several reviews on this blog already.  Not all of the reviews on Mahler were written by Julius Korngold. I started with Eduard Hanslick’s review of Mahler’s completion of Weber’s comic opera Die drei Pintos, performed at the opera in 1889, years before Mahler’s appointment to the Opera and years before Julius Korngold’s appointment as music critic at the Neue Freie Presse.

Probably, and subconsciously I also wanted to redeem the reputation of Julius Korngold.  In fact, I would argue that Julius Korngold was less blindly devoted to his son, Erich Wolfgang than he was to Gustav Mahler. When Mahler left Vienna in 1907, Erich Wolfgang Korngold was only ten-years-old. Julius considered everyone who followed Mahler as director of the opera to be unworthy. Though there was no hope of Mahler returning to Vienna, in a peculiarly uncharacteristic lapse of logic and coherency, Julius appeared to hold Felix von Weingartner and Richard Strauss (and their supporters) personally responsible for Mahler’s departure. 

His suspicions of Richard Strauss are easier to understand since Mahler and Strauss were seen at the time as equal pillars of Austro-German Modernism, with Strauss’s antisemitic machinations in Bayreuth not going unnoticed.  Weingartner was merely seen (according to Mahler) as the “dutiful conservatory graduate”, and unequal to the task of following in his footsteps.  When both Weingartner and Strauss took a genuine interest in Erich’s music, Julius inevitably interpreted this as an attempt to win over the boy’s powerful father. This was particularly true of Weingartner, who is massacred in Julius’s welcoming feuilleton with such abundantly positive observations about him as composer and musician, that only halfway through does it come across as the slick character assassination Julius intended. Weingartner would go on to perform works by Erich Wolfgang against the express wishes of the father, making matters worse. The sixteen-year-old Erich added fuel to the fire by dedicating his Sinfonietta Op. 5 to Weingartner, who had premiered the work with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1913. All of this is recorded in Julius Korngold’s memoirs, Die Korngolds in Wien. I feel that the reviews I’ve chosen and translated offer context.

As far as we know, Mahler never expressed an interest in performing a work by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who was only a few days shy of his fourteenth birthday when Mahler died.  On the other hand, we know that Mahler was aware of Korngold’s Piano Trio Op. 1 and congratulated him on its success when they met in Amsterdam. Erich Wolfgang Korngold would join Arnold Schönberg as the only two composers to attend Mahler’s funeral. Julius was unable to come to terms with Mahler’s death and had his fourteen-year-old son represent the family. Did Mahler discuss Erich’s progress as a composer with Julius? Did he lead Julius into believing Erich was being exploited by opportunists? These are not points that are mentioned in Julius’s memoirs. The only comment Julius makes in this regard is Mahler’s recommendation that the nine-year-old boy be placed in the care of Mahler’s assistant at the opera, Alexander Zemlinsky, and taken away from Mahler’s own harmony teacher at the Conservatory, Robert Fuchs. This was advice Julius did not immediately follow.

This is why reading Korngold’s reviews of Mahler are revealing. He writes as the inquisitive disciple, nervous of treading terra incognita. Holding his hand through all of this was Gustav Mahler, who was able to convince Julius Korngold that even abstract, absolute music could be “realistic”, which was itself a modern concept.  Mahler was at least open to Arnold Schönberg and believed he needed to be taken seriously. This explains why Korngold’s most unforgiving review of a work by Schönberg was Pelleas und Melisande, which he felt to be “French” and formless. It was a review he wrote before knowing Mahler’s thoughts. Julius Korngold’s subsequent reviews of more unconventional works by Schönberg are met with the acknowledgement that he’s proceeding down uncharted paths. He even shows some understanding of these new paths in his review of Wozzeck, by the Schönberg pupil Alban Berg. It was the Schönberg proselytizers he tended to attack most often. Reading his reviews, one can understand why they counter-attacked, and saw him as a stick-in-the-mud, partisan conservative. He was dismissive of departures from tonality and his tone was that of the harmony professor who wrapped knuckles at the sound of parallel fifths. Equally, he showed little understanding of unwarranted dissonance and admitted to being baffled by what the younger generation of Schönberg admirers were trying to prove.

And this is where our conflicts today begin: Schönberg and his circle as well as Julius Korngold were devotees of Gustav Mahler. It therefore becomes obvious to see where tensions lie and how explosive these would become. The question of where Mahler is positioned has yet to be resolved. Was he the last nineteenth-century Hyper-Romantic, or the first Modernist?  Bearing in mind that today, we think of twentieth-century “Modernism” as departures from tonality, it’s difficult in this context to understand any concept of Mahler as the “first Modernist”. Julius Korngold describes in an article from 1901, (which also happens to be the very first time he mentions Gustav Mahler), what was understood as “Modern” in 1900. It was most certainly not the same thing as “Modern” in 1920, 1950 or 2000. After the war, it would become impossible to reconcile the contrary positions of Schönberg and Julius Korngold, both following Mahler as their lodestar. Schönberg’s ideas opened the door to new music in the second half of the twentieth-century, and history decided that Julius Korngold could have no further claims on Mahler. It explains why he barely features in biographies of Mahler despite their many similarities: both born in 1860 as Moravian German-speaking Jews; both studied in Vienna at one point with Bruckner. Both had parents who were spirit merchants. Mahler confided in Julius Korngold while playing on his influence in the press at the same time. After Mahler’s death, the feel of “insider” information notably vanishes from Korngold’s reviews of Mahler’s compositions.

In this collection of reviews, I included a number of Feuilletons by other writers as well. As a result, it becomes apparent that “Modern”, as understood at the time of Mahler and  Schönberg, was more than just a style of artistic expression, it was a an entire world-view. Mahler’s innovations at the opera house were as much an engine of progress as his symphonic theatrics.  It clarifies why he was seen at the time as the godfather to Schönberg’s Second Viennese School. “Modern” meant, if anything at the turn of the century, music was an expressive discipline that was meant to convey new and great ideas and not just a pleasant indulgence. 

This slim volume only adds context to Julius Korngold’s dilemma and mixed loyalties. In his blind devotion to Mahler, he was incapable of seeing how he was hurting the development of his son. Erich Wolfgang Korngold would turn against the father, leave the paths of what Julius believed to be “great art” and moved into the world of operetta.  At the same time, he shared his father’s view that he needed to write music that would remain long after everyone’s departure. It’s why he continued composing his largest and most monumental work, the opera Das Wunder der Heliane. It remained his last attempt at reconciliation. Julius’s accusations of artistic betrayal and familial disloyalty would continue to torment his son to the end of his days. Julius had been knowingly edged out of Erich’s life by Max Reinhardt and Luzi Sonnenthal, soon to become Erich’s wife. With his son’s collaborations with Reinhardt, he was assured financial security and with his marriage to Luzi, Julius’s control as Pater familias was lost. By the time Hollywood came calling, Julius was powerless. He had created an infernal circle that he could no longer control. His devotion to Mahler led him to attack the opera directors who came afterwards. His son was genuinely flattered and pleased when these same conductors showed an interest in his music. Since Julius would not review performances of his son’s music himself, he saved his vitriol and attacked these musicians when they performed anything else. Such attempted displays of impartiality backfired terribly.

The development of Erich Wolfgang Korngold as a composer was dependent on the relationship with his father Julius, but Julius’s relationship with Gustav Mahler was ultimately key to understanding his relationship with his own son. This book offers a literary slice of music history that unwittingly goes beyond just an assessment of Mahler and Vienna.