Amerikanismus, Americanism, Weill. Die Suche nach kultureller Identität in der Moderne byHermann Danuser; Hermann GottschewskiReview by: Sabine FeisstNotes, Second Series, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Jun., 2004), pp. 970-972Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4487274 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 18:24

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Music Library Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Notes.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.253 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:24:50 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

970 NOTES, June 2004

Amerikanismus, Americanism, Weill. Die Suche nach kultureller Identitait in der Moderne. Edited by Hermann Danuser and Hermann Gottschewski. Schliengen, Germany: Edition Argus, 2003. [330 pp. ISBN 3-931264-23-8. C46] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index.

Amerikanismus, Americanism, Weill emerged from an international symposium in honor of the centenary of Kurt Weill's birth planned by the Department of Historical Musicology at Humboldt University, Berlin, and held in March 2000 at the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt and the Akademie der Kfinste in Berlin. As the unusual title of the volume implies, the organizers of the project, Hermann Danuser and Kim Kowalke, president of the Kurt Weill Foundation, aimed at studying Weill's life and work from a cultural and historical point of view and at examining the two-fold theme "Amerikanismus/Americanism" in an interdisciplinary fashion. "Amerikanis- mus" refers to the European or German perception of the United States and its influences in the early decades of the twentieth century. Americanism points to the image Americans themselves have of their country and culture. Though much discussed in other disciplines, these con- cepts seem vague and often interwoven with each other. Weill dealt with Ameri- kanismus in Germany and with American- ism when he settled in the United States in 1935 and thus experienced two Americas: "the one he imagined from afar and the one he embraced from within" (p. 15). The binary perspective Amerikanismus/ Americanism of this volume-reflected in its bilingual presentation (eleven essays are in German and nine in English)-also al- ludes to the now outdated dualistic critical reception of Weill's works which (question- ably) divides his persona and oeuvre into a European and an American half. Many es- says in this volume, however, do not ad- dress Weill's America-related experiences, ideas, and works, but rather delve into much broader historical, political, ethnic, technological, economical, cultural, artis- tic, and general musical contexts.

Amerikanismus, Americanism, Weill opens with separate contrasting introductions

by Kowalke and Danuser. In his essay "Kurt Weill's Amerika/America," Kowalke portrays Weill as the focal point and inspi- ration for the volume's array of textual and contextual explorations. He elucidates both Weill's pre-1935 treatment of Ameri- can themes and musical influences and his post-1935 identification with America and use of Americana. Danuser introduces and justifies the editors' stated interdisciplinary approach and methods, establishing Weill as a paradigm of cultural studies. These introductory ideas are followed by three sections of six essays each.

The first part, "Perspectives in Economics, Society and Culture," perhaps the most un- conventional section of the book for read- ers expecting musical discussions, includes essays by literary scholars, historians, and a media theorist. The literary scholar Michael Hoenisch, for instance, analyzes the situa- tion of ethnicities and migrant cultures in the United States and questions the influ- ential yet deceptive ideas of "e pluribus unum" and the "melting pot," which run counter to the marginalization of minori- ties such as African Americans and Native Americans and conflict with the legitimacy of ethnic pluralism and cultural diversity. Other essays in this section by Alexander Schmidt-Gernig, Egbert Klautke, and Richard Herzinger investigate in detail German and French views of America and its political and economic impact on Europe before and after the First World War. Embodying industrial modernization, Fordism, capitalism, and social and cultural changes, Amerikanismus became a model and major challenge for Germany and France in the first two decades of the twen- tieth century. Both countries faced the chal- lenge of reconstructing their economies. In the 1920s, however, Amerikanismus also developed into a dreadful vision causing strong criticism, fear of a loss of cultural identity and anti-American sentiments, es- pecially in view of capitalism's byproduct: materialism. American consumables mas- sively flooded European markets from about 1924 on. Media theorist Friedrich Kittler, on the other hand, analyzes the interrelations of the German-American technology transfer early in the twentieth century and the role of new media such as sound recording, radio, and film during the period of the Weimar Republic.

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.253 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:24:50 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Book Reviews 971

Yet, in such enlightening discussions, Weill's life and work seem almost com- pletely lost to sight as specialists of various nonmusicological disciplines explore Amerikanismus and to a lesser degree Americanism within their fields. Although there are, according to Danuser, "implicit and explicit references to the conditions under which Weill lived and created his artistic work" and under which his music was received as well as "references to imagological and symbolic contents" of his works (p. 24), there is no (or minimal) en- gagement between Weill and his cultural and political contexts in the framework of the individual papers.

The second section focuses on the "Popularization and Technicalization of the Arts," exploring artistic facets of Amerikanismus/Americanism in Weill's artis- tic and musical environment, thereby con- verging more toward Weill the composer. The contextual rapprochement to Weill is realized in the form of survey-like and para- digmatic treatments of various perspectives from architecture, Hollywood film, Tin Pan Alley songs, Zeitoper, and American litera- ture. Bryan Gilliam traces the impact of Hollywood film on opera in Germany in his thought-provoking essay "From Hollywood to Berlin: The Influence of American Film on Weimar Music Theater." Hollywood movies, westerns, and most importantly Charlie Chaplin's slapstick comedies not only became a topical and technical inspi- ration for Weill and his librettists Ivan Goll and Bertolt Brecht (Royal Palace, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, Happy End), but left their mark on almost every Zeitoper of the 1920s. The use of cinematic ideas or elements distinguishes Hindemith's one- act opera Hin und Zuriick, Max Brand's Maschinist Hopkins, and George Antheil's Transatlantic, which feature such tech- niques as split-screen and cross-cutting pioneered by D. W. Griffith.

Other essays in this section explore musi- cal examples of Amerikanismus. Michael von der Linn sheds light on the influence of' American popular music and above all rag- time on operas like Ernst Krenek's Jonny spielt auf and Weill's Mahagonny. In a case study, Andreas Eichhorn analyzes the mani- fold reception of the often-discussed Jonny spielt auf, which abounds in American clich6s and was immensely successful in

German-speaking countries during the late 1920s. The emphasis of the second section lies again more on the European images of America. Only Gisela Schubert explores the perspective of Americanism, tracing ideas of the melting pot, ethnic elements, and conflicts in the American musical and in jazz, aptly described by George Gershwin as "all colors and all souls unified in the great melting pot of the world" (p. 188).

The final section, dedicated to "Kurt Weill-Studies about His Life and Work," opens with Stephen Hinton's important discussion of various biographical methods and their realization by Weill's biogra- phers. Hinton analyzes the changing views of biographers, who initially wrestled with Weill's integrity as a composer, playing off the "German" against the "American" Weill.

Underpinning their biographical narra- tives with David Riesman's concept of "other direction" (considering Weill's con- temporaries and external situation as a source of development) as opposed to "in- ner direction" (fusing Weill's life and work as a natural development), Weill's biogra- phers now arrive at an image marked much more by continuity than discontinuity (p. 215). In her comprehensive, insightful essay on Weill's Jewish-German identity before 1933, Tamara Levitz points out shortcomings in Weill biographies in which the composer's Jewish identity during the 1920s is downplayed or ignored. Weill never rejected Judaism, but practiced it privately from 1924 on when the German- Jewish culture was a "fragmented universe" (p. 223). Levitz pleads for a more differen- tiated biographical approach to the German-American-Jewish composer Weill, taking into consideration the complexity of his "multiple identity" (p. 245).

The last four articles of this section con- centrate on selected America-inspired works by Weill. J. Bradford Robinson ex- plores a new source of the Mahagonny- Songspiel and Hindemith expert Giselher Schubert traces the complex genesis of Der Lindberghflug, a work Weill co-wrote with Hindemith. Nils Grosch analyzes Die sieben Todsiinden written in Paris. Yet only Kowalke, in his outstanding concluding es- say, focuses on two works Weill conceived in his new homeland, the Broadway opera Street Scene and the school opera Down in the

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.253 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:24:50 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

972 NOTES, June 2004

Valley. With Street Scene manifesting ethnic pluralism and conflicts, and manifold ver- nacular musical idioms, and Down in the Valley based on scenes from American life and folk song, Weill not only immersed himself in Americana, but created new models for American opera. Kowalke as- sesses the impact of both works and contex- tualizes them. He also elucidates Weill's in- teractions with the American musical scene and his many projected, but unrealized, collaborations with a number of illustrious American writers-projects cut short by his untimely death at age fifty.

Amerikanismus, Americanism, Weill offers an open-minded approach to musicology and a novel presentation of interdiscipli- nary research, granting the curious and in- quisitive reader insight into an intriguingly wide array of topics. On the one hand, mu-

sicologists have avoided in their essays the pitfalls of dabbling in unfamiliar territory and negotiating between musical text and extramusical context, and have left the nonmusicological contexts to specialists. On the other hand, this treatment of con- textualization rarely illuminates the rela- tions between disciplines, and the number of contextual essays limits discussions of Weill's oeuvre. This volume is neither a comprehensive nor a balanced study of its professed subject. One might especially wish for more coverage of manifestations of Americanism and Weill's American works. Nevertheless, this anthology is a significant contribution to early-twentieth-century cul- ture and music and to Weill scholarship.

SABINE FEISST

Arizona State University

~r~4/1077 -. .,400.?o

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.253 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:24:50 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions