"Barely concealed beneath the surface of Expressionist [opera]… runs a feeling of horror that sometimes bursts out in an agonized cry."[i] Schoenberg’s Student: The Artistic Development of Alban Berg Alban Berg was an Austrian born student of the influential musician, Schoenberg. Born in 1885 to an affluent family, Berg had a tumultuous childhood when the family grew financially destitute following the death of his father. Berg struggled with school, having to repeat several grades and got into serious trouble when he had an affair with a kitchen maid at the age of seventeen that resulted in an illegitimate daughter.[ii] Despite the hardship of these early years, Berg learned how to play piano from his governess—igniting his passion for musical composition. By the time Berg was a teenager, he began composing and performing musical works for friends and family.[iii] Recognizing their brother’s love and talent for music, Berg’s brother and sister responded to a newspaper advertisement posted by a man named Arnold Schoenberg looking for musical pupils. Shortly thereafter, Berg began his formal musical training under Schoenberg in 1904.[iv] The two would develop a highly influential and extremely volatile student-teacher relationship over the next eleven years. Berg’s musical ability developed rapidly under Schoenberg’s tutelage. He was a constant presence during the creation of Schoenberg’s radically innovative atonal period. This ground-breaking musical style, which lacked a focal tone or key, helped shape the music of Berg’s future work. It was also during this time that Schoenberg created his gesamtkunstwerk, the Expressionist Opera: Die Glückliche Hand. Although the opera was not performed until 1924, it was conceived and written in 1908 when Berg was studying under the musical innovator. The influence of both Schoenberg’s atonal period and Die Glückliche Hand on Berg’s artistic development cannot be overlooked. In fact, early into their relationship Schoenberg openly criticized Berg’s initial lack of imagination. Regarding his student, Schoenberg stated that Berg’s “imagination could not work…he was absolutely incapable of writing an instrumental movement or inventing an instrumental theme.”[v] As a result, Berg was pushed creatively during this period by his mentor who was breaking every established rule found in Classical music. Within a few years, Berg wrote a musical composition that was later developed and used for his Expressionist opera, Wozzeck.[vi] Despite experiencing this artistic growth, Berg saw little work or success in his earlier career (1911-1915). Although he was no longer Schoenberg’s student he devoted much of his time towards the musical endeavors of his mentors rather than his own.[vii] He did earn notoriety, however, during a very controversial performance in March of 1913 when he composed a musical arrangement to the modernist poet Peter Altenberg’s scandalous poems. His mentor Schoenberg conducted the performance, but it resulted in a riot and fisticuffs that led to police action.[viii] From this point on, Berg’s desire to shock the bourgeoisie increased, as did his interest in new artistic styles. He fell in love with the avant-garde and befriended many of its leading artists including fellow Austrian composer Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942) and painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918). In 1914, Berg went to Vienna to see the first stage production of Georg Büchner’s (1813-1837) Woyzeck. Immediately upon seeing the play Berg exclaimed, “Someone must set this to music!”[ix] Later that year he began developing the opera that would become Wozzeck. While doing so, “Berg… [was] torn between awareness of his debt to Schoenberg and the need to assert his personal and artistic independence.”[x] He had yet to fully embark on an independent musical pursuit and Berg also knew that his volatile father-like relationship with his mentor was now inhibiting his creativity. By 1915, Berg decided to cease all communications with Schoenberg. His progress on Wozzeck the opera was still to be delayed when he was later called to serve in the Austrian Army the same year.[xi] Nonetheless, following the end of the Great War, Berg returned to his magnum opus, Wozzeck—the masterpiece that introduced Expressionism to the operatic stage. Wozzeck Wozzeck is an opera that personifies the Expressionist social conscious during the Interwar period. Based on Büchner's nineteenth-century play, the story describes the life and tragic fate of simple Wozzeck. Throughout the opera, he hovers on the brink of madness as he is subjected to both his lover’s infidelity and horrific experiments by the Doctor. Wozzeck is a soldier oppressed by poverty, brutally exploited by his superiors and humiliated by his unfaithful lover, Marie. Eventually, Wozzeck is driven insane, murders Marie and, ultimately, commits suicide. Berg's Wozzeck “embodies…the fullness of the torment of the soul that constituted Expressionism as a ‘worldview.’”[xii] The main character is isolated from society as he fails to make connections to those around him; Wozzeck waivers in and out of lucidity as hallucinations and reality become harder to separate. Berg created a “world without normality or humanity and peopled by grotesques, a haunted world of strange hallucinatory voices and visions of natural phenomena indifferent to the human tragedy being played out.”[xiii] German citizens identified with Wozzeck’s pain for they, too, felt the world was indifferent to their suffering—that the deaths of WWI had been rendered meaningless. Although Berg was inspired to write the play prior to the war, he did not finish composing the score or the libretto until 1921.[xiv] Thus, the bleak existence that constituted post-war society in Germany and Austria profoundly influenced the violent and tortured themes found throughout Wozzeck. As a result, it resonated powerfully with Berlin audiences when it premiered in December of 1925.[xv] Berg's introduction of Schoenberg's atonal and twelve-note system in Wozzeck allows the social commentary found within the opera to come to its full fruition. Berg fully conveys his Expressionistic worldview through the score’s jarring atonal sounds and ritualistic twelve-note progressions. The atonal language of Wozzeck, “constantly hovering on the edge of tonal confirmation, becomes a perfect metaphor for the emotional state of the opera’s chief protagonist” and post-war German society.[xvi] Citizens were still searching for meaning after the war, and many were left in broken emotional states that resembled Wozzeck or Kirchner in his Self-Portrait as an Invalid. The musical dissonance, created by the atonal score’s lack of an over-arching key or tone, symbolized the German people’s existential struggles at this time just as much as it represented Wozzeck’s emotional turmoil. Berg continued his social commentary on German Society in Wozzeck through another innovative musical device: the twelve-tone technique. As all notes are treated equally in the twelve-tone progression, it creates a sense of repetition, a feeling that the music will continue, but never evolve or reach resolution. The ritualistic nature of this musical style plays into the sense of fatalism that was so prevalent within Expressionism. Berg paints the tale of a society so consumed with moral decay, that the “disease is too far gone to remedy.”[xvii] Wozzeck is a good man, but the corrupt people within his life drive him into sharing their loathsome existence; the depravity is inescapable. Just like the musical notes being continuously repeated, so too will their actions. Society keeps marching on, but never changes, never evolves. During this time, many Germans felt that the new Weimar Republic was no different than the previous Wilhelmine Monarchy. Only a radical change could restore Germany to its former glory, but as Berg highlighted in Wozzeck, perhaps the opportunity for change was too late. All this had happened before, and it was probably going to happen again. “On We Go!”[xviii] Wozzeck declares ominously. Like the Expressionists before him, Berg proved to be eerily prophetic as Germany would continue in the footsteps of the past and march on towards another World War. Watch a later 20th-century rendition of Bergs masterpiece below Endnotes: [i] Padmore, “Expressionist Opera,” 47. [ii] “Alban Berg,” New Grove Dictionary of Music,” 312 [iii] Ibid. [iv] Ibid. [v] Ibid., 313. [vi] Ibid. [vii] Ibid., 314 [viii] Ibid., 315. [ix] Ibid., 316. [x] Ibid., 314. [xi] Ibid., 314-16. [xii] Biel, Total Expressionism, 40. [xiii] Douglas, “Alban Berg,” New Grove Dictionary, 317. [xiv] Biel, Total Expressionism, 40. [xv] Douglas, “Alban Berg.” New Grove Dictionary, 318. [xvi] Ibid., 317. [xvii] Padmore, “Expressionist Opera,” 44. [xviii] Ibid.
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"If this film…can help to point out, like a hand upraised to warn and to exhort, the unknown danger that stalks us, the chronic danger—the constant presence among us of men with unhealthy or criminal tendencies—then it will have accomplished its primary function…." -Fritz Lang on the purpose of creating M At the dawn of a new decade, the Weimar Republic was in ruin, and the National Socialists Party “declared itself best suited to renew Germany.”[i] Originally named the German Worker’s Party, the group identified its “worker” as the heroic frontline soldier giving his life and honor to his country. Shortly after the group was formed in 1919, a decorated WWI soldier by the name of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) joined the party. By 1921, he became the face of its ideologies and ultimately its leader.[ii] It took many years for Hitler and the National Socialists to rise to power within Germany. Yet, despite several failed elections they still held a hypnotic grip on thousands of German citizens. They waited until the precise moment when all was not well in the Weimar Republic. Through strategic use of propaganda and playing upon the pervading psychological fears of the German people, Hitler and the National Socialists Party eventually gained the power they sought. Hitler stoked the flames of the “stabbed-in-the-back” myth and spoke of seeking revenge on the traitors who did so: the Jews and Bolsheviks. In addition, the National Socialists’ largest demographic was the working-middle class, the very people who were destroyed by the extreme inflation instated years earlier by Weimar leadership.[iii] This became an increasingly volatile period as fears were exploited and paranoia increased through frenzied Socialist rhetoric that promised a regenerated Germany. Many felt Hitler would indeed restore their country to her glory years, while others feared him and the party’s seemingly ruthless tactics for supreme power. Prior to Hitler and the Nazi’s seizing total control over Germany and its cultural production, an Austrian filmmaker by the name of Fritz Lang (1890-1976) created an Expressionistic warning to the dangers that lie ahead in the 1931 film, M. As earlier films, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, commented on the depraved state of Germany after the First World War, films such as Fritz Lang's M depicted how Interwar society would lead to the next. By 1931, Hitler was swiftly rising to full power—a mere two years before being named Germany's Fürher. He thrived during the Interwar period by fostering an atmosphere of suspicion and terror. Many citizens turned on each other based on a mere implication or innocent action. Lang beautifully captures this heightened sense of danger and paranoia in 1930s Germany. Although M is not as stylized as Caligari, it still creates an atmospheric labyrinth filled with threats hidden within the shadows of every razor-sharp angle [Figure 1]. Highly representative of future life under Hitler and the increasing disintegration of the German people, M pointed towards the future with a prophetic power.[iv] M begins with the shadow of a man greeting a young girl in the city of Berlin. Through a poignant montage highlighting the girl's absence from her home, the viewer learns that the child has been murdered. She is but one of many children to have been mysteriously killed over the past few months. As the deaths increase, so does the tension within the city. Everyone suspects their neighbor, believing each and every man or woman to be the concealed predator that is preying upon their children. Police unsuccessfully search Berlin by raiding the seedy underbelly of the city, believing it to be the hidden whereabouts of the murderer. Soon the city's underground crime lords, led by a man named Schränker, take up the campaign of searching for the murderer, worried that the continuous raids will be bad for business. Meanwhile, the killer is revealed to the viewer—a simple man named Hans Beckert [Figure 2], who makes grotesque faces in mirrors to try and reveal the monster he knows himself to be. Eventually, Beckert is identified as the killer by his trademark whistle and a chase ensues. It is a race between the Law and Berlin's criminal underground as they both pursue the frightened Beckert through the angular nighttime shadows of Berlin. Ultimately, he is captured by the criminals and tried in an underground "court of law." Beckert's angst-ridden monologue to the people of the "courts" is full of turmoil, as he claims that he has "no control over this, this evil thing inside me."[v] Just as the jury of his peers begins to riot and take the law into their own hands, Berlin's police officers step in and take Beckert to the true court of Law. As the film concludes, it becomes apparent that what initially appears to be a statement about mental health and the judicial system is actually an incisive critique of Hitler and the imminent collapse of the Weimar Republic. True to Expressionism, M is a film of shadows. In the film's opening scene, the viewer's first glimpse of Beckert is his silhouette cast upon a wanted poster [Figure 3]. Shadows are a recurring motif throughout M. Every character seems to either inhabit or emerge from the shadows—living within the darkness that has consumed them. Therefore, it is quite intentional that the men who form the criminal underground--as well as Beckert--are the characters most frequently shot as "men seen in shadows."[vi] In addition, this form of shadow play heightens the sense of an imminent threat lurking within the darkness. Paranoia only increased after the war and with the rise of Hitler. There was always a fear of a concealed enemy, like Beckert, waiting to attack a fellow German citizen. A group of men discussing the murderer in M eloquently capture this pervasive mindset when one states, "the danger is often hidden… [the] danger which always threatens."[vii] Furthermore, the chase scene showcases Berlin as a city of angles filled by an all-encompassing blackness, a dark maze that consumes Beckert, the criminals, police officers as well as the viewer. Indeed, the entire set is encumbered by long shadows that cast themselves upon the foreground, slowly encroaching on the space of the viewer. Berlin was the seat of Hitler, it was a city filled with deceit and political corruption during the 1930s. Lang accurately captures the ominous spirit of the city through his Expressionistic use of shadow. Heavily influenced by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Lang elaborates on the earlier film's profound stylistic influence to further comment on Berlin and Germany's foreboding pre-war atmosphere. The atmospheric depiction of Berlin in Lang’s M is the “portrait of a diseased society;”[viii] It is a city filled with menacing shadows, stark lighting and labyrinthine streets; Berlin is claustrophobic and its people are filled with moral decay. Bright whites are juxtaposed against deep blacks and buildings become mazes that devour all who enter. Camera angles crop rooms and the individuals within them, forcing the viewer to become part of the film’s anonymous crowd. Scenes are shot either in extreme close-ups, creating a feeling of intense claustrophobia, or from a voyeuristic perspective, as though “sinister surveillance”[ix] was being conducted by a hidden predator. Both camera shots serve to heighten the anxiety felt by the viewer as the film progresses, for this is the state in which Germans were living during the final years of the Interwar period. The pervasive sense of unease and distrust stems from the fact that the Weimar Republic was collapsing from within. Beckert as the murderer symbolizes the pathological infestation overtaking individuals and how it was bringing German society “to the point of disintegration.”[x] Lang comments on the impending collapse as a result of this moral depravity when an innocent old man is falsely accused of being the suspected murderer by his fellow German citizens. He is horribly beaten as the scene captures the frenzied mob-mentality that is bred from heightened mistrust. In Pre-World War II Berlin, everyone suspected their neighbor of being Jewish, a Bolshevik or some other form of dangerous revolutionary. M is an Expressionistic “reflection on the gathering storm that was to sweep away Germany’s first democracy.”[xi] Yet, the ambience of M is less Expressionistic than The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari because the focus of the film is on the people. Berlin is a real, three-dimensional city, not as flat or angular as Caligari’s town of Holstenwall. Thus, Lang saves his Expressionistic distortions for his characters as Beckert and the crime boss Schränker come to symbolize all that is wrong with 1930s German society. Beckert as a film character embodies the “imprisoned spirit… [and] panic stricken souls,”[xii] that defined Interwar German Expressionism. His face is presented in a series of exaggerations that reveal his troubled soul. Indeed, even the actor chosen to play Beckert, Peter Lorre (1904-1964), was known for his distinctive voice and large, unusual eyes. The final scenes of M include Lorre’s tormented confession as Beckert But I… I can’t help myself! I have no control over this, this evil thing inside of me, the fire, the voices, the torment! … It’s there all the time, driving me out to wander the streets, following me, silently, but I can feel it there. It’s me, pursuing myself! I want to escape, to escape from myself! But it’s impossible. I can’t escape, I have to obey it. I have to run, run… endless streets. I want to escape, to get away! And I’m pursued by ghosts. …Don’t want to, but must! And then a voice screams! I can’t bear to hear it! I can’t go on! I can’t… I can’t… [xiii] Lorre delivers the lines through “exaggerated vocal inflections”[xiv] and distorted features. He claws at his face, unable to escape the infection within him. Beckert’s cries of pain, confusion and mercy as he holds his face arouses the same “interior psychic event”[xv] as Edvard Munch’s The Scream (Figures 4 & 5). Ultimately, Beckert is representative of every German, suffering from the societal corruption that has taken over the country. It is inevitable, it is too late—they can no longer escape Yet, Beckert is also symbolic of the disease as well as the crisis that is overtaking German society. Who will catch Beckert poses a crucial question: Who can save Germany: the leaders of Weimar Republic or Hitler and his Nazis?[xvi] M is not a police procedural about capturing a child murderer, but rather social commentary on the current state of Germany in the 1930s. It is the battle between the current leaders of the Weimar Republic and the rising National Socialists Party, as both seek to find the means to restore stability back to Germany. M’s police officers operate within the law and the realm of rationality, like the leaders of the Weimar Republic; this is sharply contrasted by the criminals who reflect the Nazis in their ruthless tactics. They operate outside of the law and see results based on their exploitation of fears and paranoia. Crime lord Schränker’s frenzied speech and rhetoric refers directly to Hitler’s signature style as he calls for the eradication of the problem troubling Berlin. “This monster has no right to live. He must disappear. He must be eliminated without pity, without scruples!”[xvii] Throughout the film Beckert is repeatedly referred to as a brute, beast or animal. He is described as subhuman, just like the Jews of pre-war Germany.[xviii] For Schränker, the problem is Beckert, for Hitler the problem was the Jews and Bolsheviks. M depicts Schränker as Hitler and the criminal underground as the Nazi Party. They ruthlessly pursue what they feel is the source of Germany’s disintegration and persuasively convince others to follow their plan of action. Initially, even the viewer is seduced by Schränker’s words and methods. Beckert is a child murderer after all. Every German citizen just wanted what was best for their country, wanted to restore it back to its proud pre-war prominence. Therefore, eradicating the source of the problem appears only necessary. Yet, the film asks, at what cost should this path be pursued? Released a little more than a year before Hitler assumed full control over Germany, M is a film that tries to warn against the dangers of life under Nazi rule. The viewer senses how much “Lang hated the people around him, hated Nazism, and hated Germany for permitting it.”[xix] Originally, M was to be entitled Murderers Among Us, but Lang faced pressure from the Nazi’s to change the film title. Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), believed the title to be a direct reference to the Nazi Party, and rightly so.[xx] Indeed, it is quite shocking that Hitler and the Minister of Propaganda even allowed such a film to be produced if they felt the name itself was threatening to their political image. Nonetheless, it was the last film directed by Lang to be shown in Germany and one of the last forms of Expressionism ever allowed within Interwar society.[xxi] Two years after M’s release, Hitler became Fürher and assumed full control over Germany’s art and cultural production. Lang claimed to have fled Germany in the night after Goebbels simultaneously informed him his film, The Testament of Dr Mabuse, was being banned and that the National Socialists intended for him to become the head of the country’s film studio. The Third Reich eventually denounced Expressionism as a form of “degenerate” art, touting it as the artistic production of the psychologically abnormal. Hitler ensured Expressionism’s eventual death by placing its artists at the forefront of his Degenerate Art Exhibition in 1937. The Exhibition included over 600 modernist works and was the counter point to the First Annual Exhibition of Great German Art. Despite the claims made by Hitler and his art exhibition, it is possible that he did not disapprove of Expressionism’s “degenerate” distortions; rather as a master of propaganda himself, Hitler fully understood the power wielded by Expressionist artists such as Lang. Expressionism had to be eliminated because these men were the prophets of Interwar Germany, boldly warning against the dangers of depraved men like Hitler and the “apocalyptic purge” they would bring in the form of the next world war. Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 [i] Schivelbusch, Culture of Defeat, 239
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