Dear Dr. Mullenger,
Translation by Alexa Woolf
I have long tried to understand
what kind of lack it is that manifests
itself in so many English representations
which have such a deadening effect.
I have asked myself what is missing
from this nation. Kindness, love
of people, humour or aesthetic sense?
No, one can find all these attributes
in England , some of them more noticeably
than among ourselves. Finally I
have found something which distinguishes
English people from all other cultures
to quite an aastonishing degree,
a lack which everybody acknowledges
therefore nothing new but has not
been emphasised enough. The English
are the only cultured nation without
its own music (except street
music). This does not mean that
they have less sensitive ears but
that their life overall is much
poorer for it. To be immersed in
music, even ever so little, means
being able to lose yourself. To
tolerate even dis-harmonies, even
to spend time with such sounds since
they can be resolved in beautiful
harmony, music provides wings and
makes everything beautiful and fantastical
seem natural.
The Land without
music: some reflections on Anglo-German
cultural relations.
I would like to
add a few words to the interesting
and witty remarks on the subject
of the ''Land ohne Musik'' proffered
by Alexander Heinhold (see above)
and Paul Serotsky – see: Programme
Notes
The earliest source
yet given for this rather persistent
German generalisation – for the
French, I believe, have never concerned
themselves much with English musicality
at all – is Carl Engel's book of
1866, which Oskar Adolf Hermann
Schmitz in his Das Land ohne
Musik : Englische Gesellschaftsprobleme
quotes as a reference. In fact
the prejudice held by the Germans
in this respect must be adjudged
of rather earlier origin than even
that. In an earlier note on the
Bulletin Board of MusicWeb I dated
the sentiment back to Georg Weerth's
reports on his English travels undertaken
in the 1840s. Weerth (1822 Detmold
– 1856 Havana) was a young man at
the time, sent to the north of England
in 1843 by the wool company that
employed him. He there became acquainted
with Friedrich Engels, whose own
book on the condition of the English
working class in 1844 regrettably
omits to mention musical matters,
as I remember, but is nevertheless
very much worth reading today, particularly
in view of the widening chasm between
rich and poor. A few years later
Weerth made the acquaintance of
the great and much admired poet
and cultural observer Heinrich Heine
in his Parisian exile from the repressive
Prussian state. Weerth was himself
to get into hot water with that
state for publishing a satirical
novel, and his own generally satirical
poetry bears some resemblance with
those of Heine's verses that addressed
the injustices of his day (not,
I might mention, the early romantic
poems probably best known to readers
of MusicWeb in their settings by
Schubert, Schumann and others).
This acquaintance led me to investigate
Heine's prose more closely than
I had hitherto done (I have read
some but not all of the many pages
of the collected edition), and I
discovered that Heine had not only
penned a fairly acerb critique of
English society based on his trip
to England in 1827 but in his reports
from Paris for a German newspaper
in 1840 returned to his general
dislike of what he was often pleased
to call Albion – occasionally adding
the qualifier 'perfidious', as ironically
later German propaganda was also
to do (I have often heard older
Germans quote this expression in
a mocking tone). On the occasion
I shall cite he specifically adverts
to the English aptitude for music,
which I can only assume he based
upon his earlier experiences:
''As I hear, Taglioni
met with no applause last year in
London; that is truly her greatest
claim to fame. Had she given pleasure
there, I would begin to doubt the
poesy of her feet. The sons of Albion
are themselves the most awful of
all dancers, and Strauß assures
me there is not a single one among
them who could keep time. He too
fell sick unto death in the county
of Middlesex when he saw Olde England
dance. These people have no ear,
neither for the beat nor indeed
for music in any form, and their
unnatural passion for piano-playing
and singing is all the more disgusting.
There is verily nothing on earth
so terrible as English musical composition,
except English painting. They have
neither an accurate ear nor a sense
of colour, and sometimes I am befallen
by the suspicion that their sense
of smell may be equally dull and
rheumy; it is quite possible that
they cannot distinguish horse-apples
from oranges by the smell alone.''
(Pariser Berichte: 29. Juli 1840).
It is clear that
the rancour in this text has been
worked up from a temperamental dislike
to a pitch of satirical abhorrence
calculated to appeal to his German
readers, but the observation contained
within it is nevertheless of interest
when we consider the more extended
comments of Weerth, from which I
now append a longer extract, in
order to give you an impression
of the context of the remarks on
music:
''One can live
well almost anywhere; but in an
English factory town – a Frenchman
would die there on the third day,
that's for sure! He wouldn't find
any society to speak of and nobody
to speak to! And the Italian would
shoot himself because he would often
not see any blue sky for two months
on end; and the Polish Jew would
hang himself – who knows why! It's
only the German, whom you find all
over the world, that you meet here
too, year in, year out. The German
never dies out. He gets accustomed
to everything and takes his quiet
sociability with him over land and
sea.
From Birmingham
I permitted myself to be sent off
to the West Riding of the county
of Yorkshire and I was delighted
by the charming landscape. I lived
in that part of England for two
years and still find myself yearning
to be back there again, or at least
for the country life in that region.
Everywhere the most magnificent
hills, the loveliest valleys and
the most smiling fields! Little
springs bubble up from every gorge,
purl through the rocks and are lost
beneath the branches of the alder
trees and in the emerald verdancy
of the meadows. Gnarled and frizzy-leafed
oaks wreathe round the sides of
the hills, which are seldom very
high and roll down towards the plains
on gentle slopes. These hills are
littered with villages and country
houses, where the ivy is encouraged
to grow luxuriantly aloft gaily
entwining the walls – and which
are almost always surrounded by
the daintiest gardens. The construction
style of these houses is extremely
simple; but as they are all made
of white sandstone, a material found
in large quantities throughout the
whole region, they have the pleasantest
and cleanliest appearance you can
imagine. Even the smallest and simplest
house in Yorkshire, if it is made
of this sandstone and is not too
old, looks like a little castle
against the background of the beauteous
green meadows and mountain swards.
Moreover there
blows on these Yorkshire heights
the purest and loveliest air; it
strews roses on the cheeks of all
the country maids, and one is genuinely
amazed at the host of blooming faces,
which are of course what the English
on the Continent noticeably lack.
The superb orderliness
that prevails in the arrangement
and fencing of the fields, in the
disposition of the paths and the
use of the meadows and watercourses
allows one to survey the whole area
with nothing but satisfaction.
The season had
already made considerable progress
when I first arrived in Yorkshire;
only a few meadows seemed yet to
resist the hand of approaching winter
and glimmered with a mellow green.
The people sitting
next to me on the coach delighted
in their beautiful countryside no
less than I, despite having seen
it perhaps a hundred times before.
With their coats buttoned up to
the top, their necks, mouths and
chins wrapped in a thick kerchief
and their hands in their pockets,
they sat so stiffly on the benches
fitted on the top of the coach that
one could not help seeing poles
before one's eyes. If someone wished
to regard his neighbour during their
conversation he had to turn his
whole body round, for their necks
were so firmly bound up that a simple
movement of the head was almost
impossible.
The conversation
turned almost exclusively upon the
construction of new railways by
which all the great and lesser towns
were to be joined up, so that coach
travel would soon be a thing of
the past. As my fellow-travellers
were almost all tradesmen and small
factory owners returning to their
villages from a neighbouring farmers'
market , they knew every meadow,
every hill and every wood in the
whole region and spent the journey
placing wagers concerning the terrains
which the head offices of the railway
companies would choose for their
rails.
One of them asked
me if I was from the tariff union,
and as I answered affirmatively
he never tired of requesting me
for all possible particulars concerning
this great community of peoples.
Railways and steamships remained
the principal subject of our discourse,
naturally, and when I assured him
that his German cousins were hardly
acquainted with carriages and mailcoaches
any more, being wrapped nearly all
day in a fog of coal steam and tobacco
smoke, his yearning for such a cultivated
nation became so great that I had
to calculate for him in shillings
and pence how much would be needed
for a tour of the blessed groves
of my native land. But then he fell
again into throes of enthusiasm
musing upon his native land; Olde
England, he believed, was the crown
of all that existed in the world,
and he became so eloquent in his
description of the beauties of the
various counties that in the end
I conceded the justice of all he
said and sang the praises of Great
Britain myself, which moved him
almost to tears.
When night finally
fell he assured me that it truly
vexed him that the moon was not
to be seen in the sky that night,
for it meant that I could not see
the canals and the new church towers
and his bleachery – then he leaped
off the coach and hastened towards
his farmsteads.
I regretted as
much as my worthy fellow-traveller
that the moon was not standing in
the sky.
I love the moon.
Not because it once provoked me
to write a wretched elegy; no, I
love the moon only for its own comely
self and for that reason I have
formed an inseparable friendship
with it; the moon is my passion,
I dote on it, and I can almost believe
that it feels just as great an affection
for me. I even have the best reasons
to suppose this, for if I reproach
it and say ''Shame on you, moon,
you are full!'' it is ashamed and
shortly relinquishes its waxing
style of life in order to stroll
about the sky as a sensibly elongated
star once more.
In Germany I last
saw the moon as it was just setting.
''Stop!'' I called to it. ''I am
travelling to England now, God knows
how I will get on there; old acquaintances
cannot be found everywhere; how
about you, my dear friend, determining
to set out on the same journey,
and what if we two were to meet
again in a few weeks over a bottle
of Burton Ale, if we should suddenly
encounter each other in a county
of Olde England? Say, what do you
think? Take care of your family
arrangements and, dear moon, don't
be a fool, slip over the channel
like me. One travels so fast nowadays;
in Cologne in the morning, Antwerp
in the evening, the next day you're
in London already and finding amusement
in Windsor Park the following night!
It's a go!'' Then the moon disappeared
behind the hills.
Days and weeks
passed; one evening I was wandering
around in a small town in Yorkshire
with no other thought than to rent
a pleasant dwelling in which I might
quietly and without disturbance
spend the following days reading
the first three chapters of Tristram
Shandy. There were many fine
houses on either side of the street
and now and then a church, a chapel
or a meeting-house on green lawns.
Yet for a long time there was no
building that allowed me to suppose
me that its rooms might take me
in. I soon arrived at the end of
the street and involuntarily remained
standing before the last house.
''Should you or should you not?''
The good people could at worst only
make a disdainful face and tell
you to go away, so I determined
to merrily sound the bell! I strode
up to the door: ''Woodcock'' I read
on a plate, that is ''Schnepfe''
in German.''Let us call on this
Schnepfe!'' - and from inside the
house straight away there was a
merry ringing. A moment later and
the door was opened. A young girl
inclined her head towards me and
said a few words that I did not
understand. I hardly took any notice
of them, however, for all of a sudden
so many happy plans, such wonderful
conclusions and deductions arose
in my mind that I had enough to
do with myself and remained standing
there sunk in thought. Where there
is a young girl in the house, there
may be a pair of lovely eyes; where
there are lovely eyes, there will
be red lips; where there are red
lips, a kiss cannot be lacking;
where one kisses, there is love;
where one loves, one should see
one's way to settle!
Ergo, I rent this
dwelling! Ergo, I stay here! Ergo
– ''Ah, forgive me, dear miss'',
for the miss was still standing
in the open front door waiting rather
impatiently for me to declare what
I wanted. ''Excuse me, is it not
true that Mrs.Woodcock lives here?''
- ''Yes!'' said the miss. ''Very
well!!'' I replied and was on the
point of commencing the daintiest
turn of speech when a coincidence
occurred that of all things I had
least expected. For at the very
same moment, you see, my most beloved
moon from Germany glided over the
housetops and smiled down on the
lane. You can imagine my joy. ''So
you kept your troth, my trusty creature,
you have escaped your native woods
and swum after me over the salty
flood? A thousand thanks! Lo, I
am well on the way to settling down
in a fine vicinity; confess that
this girl is worthy of being the
daughter of a woodcock; observe
the brown hair, the enchanting eyes,
the slender shape!'' And sunk in
revery I did not notice the increasing
embarrassment of the charming child;
at last she stamped angrily with
her little foot and opened the door
wide once again as if to say: ''Either
– or! In or out! Yes or no!'' Then
I awoke and was on the very point
of pouring out my heart when the
moon, who had entered the street
but slowly and, trembling over the
path with its silvery light, was
just casting its beams as far as
the courtyard before the house,
now suddenly made its way to the
door and in the instant kissed the
youthful belle in the middle of
her comely face.
During this critical
moment I involuntarily grasped the
key of the door, which was held
by a soft hand, and indeed, if the
moon had dared such an impetuous
attack, wherefore should not I do
the same? What's sauce for the goose
is sauce for the gander! Hey, you
lovely woodcock child! Then a strange
sound was heard and all was over.
I lived well in Mrs. Woodcock's
home. My sitting room looked on
to the garden, which was kept very
clean and thus offered a pleasing
view. Inside it was all furnished
in a most comfortable manner. The
carpet, the sofa, the armchair,
all were in the best condition;
on the little table on one side
there were Chinese jugs and vases,
on the other was the fireplace,
in which I always kept a bright
fire burning despite the mild climate.
An English home is nothing without
a brightly burning fireplace. Books,
pipes and spill lay around on the
chairs.
I would have been
almost happy in such a setting,
but unfortunately my hosts had learned
that I was a German, unfortunately
they imagined that all Germans were
musical and idiotically ''fond of
music'' – and now the singing went
on all day long! Hardly had I arisen
from my bed at eight o'clock in
the morning with a devout spirit
and begun to prepare my tea, glad
not to have done anything bad yet
so early in the day, but the eldest
son had already felt my presence.
He put down the newspaper and sat
himself down at the piano. First
a prelude, soft tones and solemn
chords – all proceeded excellently,
it was the beginning of some piece
that he had been attempting to learn
for years; he even played fast and
with some accomplishment when he
had happily reached the actual melody;
now he was in the middle of the
sheet of music, twice or thrice
his fingers hit the wrong keys,
he was possessed by a certain apprehension
– you could hear it clearly; the
notes stumbled over one another
like country oafs tumbling down
the church steps. It was impossible
to continue properly, despair took
hold; his hands galloped ever more
wildly and rapidly over the groaning
instrument, the confusion grew with
every moment, the piano moaned as
if suffering from raging consumption,
the melody made one more leap, but
it was the last, for it ended suddenly
with a heartbreaking cry, with the
most terrifying discord. The musical
Briton realised that he had not
yet attained to perfection – and
was silent. Refreshed, I breathed
a sigh of relief and dreamed, of
course, of the bliss of having escaped
all terrors, but then holy Musica
recommenced. Even if one cannot
drum out the beat of the waltz one
can at least play ''God save the
Queen!'' This was the idea of the
eldest son and he gave free rein
to his enthusiasm. The national
anthem was the motto for general
jubilation. In the lowest room of
the house the kitchen maid drummed
the beat with her spoons, Mrs.Woodcock
passed on her matutinal orders and
sang on the same note, the pretty
daughter trilled like a wagtail,
and the paterfamilias, just leaving
the house to go about his business,
was still heard murmuring on the
street: ''God save, God save the
Queen!''
Pity him who was compelled to listen
to this concert! Sublime Spirit,
thou gavest them all; thou gavest
them Shakespeare and Milton, thou
gavest them Westminster Abbey so
that both great and small might
be comfortably buried there, thou
gavest them fleets and oceans, India
and China, thou madest them supreme
above all other nations. Sublime
Spirit, thou gavest them all - but
not music! The English can neither
sing nor play music. An Englishman
will sooner learn how to earn a
million pounds than how to keep
a tune in his head. They take only
two or three songs learned in the
cradle with them in their further
lives, anything else is utterly
closed to them. The fact that this
is the case is proved by their eternal
repetition of only these two or
three songs; the few exceptions,
the musical talents that have arisen
among the people, that very numerous
people, prove the same, and it is
proved again by the immense efforts
the Englishman will make only to
appear just a tiny bit musical.
But that is all
one, though it does rather strike
you in England how the English,
incapable of singing as they are,
always maintain in the most ridiculous
way that they lead all other nations
in this as in other things. Any
Englishman will swear that his country
is home to the greatest composer
in the world because Carl Maria
von Weber is buried there. In fact
the strong desire to be musical
seems even to extend to the animal
world in England. – Beneath my window
a snow-white donkey was grazing
on the site of the bleachery. This
exceptionally fine animal had been
very close to my heart since my
entry into the house of Mrs. Woodcock.
I began to admire it even more after
I read in Punch of the discovery
that donkeys were immortal. ''But
it is true', the reporter added,
''nobody thinks of one exception
known to history: they forget the
dead donkey in Sterne's Sentimental
Journey!'' Be that as
it may, it is enough that to me
it was of the greatest importance
to have a white immortal English
donkey as my neighbour; for after
all it just might be immortal. The
grace which the dear animal displayed
as it wandered through the flowers
or looked up to the morning sky
had put the idea into my head that
it must conceal some special quality.
For a long time I could not make
my mind up on this question; then
one day as the eldest son was just
abusing his piano to the point of
severe alteration I was standing
at the window, counting how often
he repeated ''God save the Queen!'',
finally crying in extreme wrath:
''A hundred and one times, already!
It is too much! No, indeed, there
is a limit to everything!'' – when
a powerful baritone voice interrupted
me. I leaped up appalled. ''God
knows, I am mistaken, no, one hundred
and two times!'' But then I saw
how ignominiously I was deceived;
it was the white donkey, stirred
by the musical furor, expressing
its loyal sentiments in song that
sounded for all the world like ''God
save - '', which was still droning
on in my ears. (from: ''England,
eine Reise ins Innere des Landes'',
Kölnische Zeitung circa 1843,
later published in a book).
As we see, Weerth
too places some emphasis on the
English inability to sing either
in time or in tune. Of course neither
he nor Heine had much acquaintance
with the upper classes and seem
not to have frequented cultivated
concerts or soirées musicales,
so their remarks might even be interpreted
as the rather snobbish put-down
of the pretensions of the English
nouveaux riches by German middle-class
jeunesse dorée. It certainly
suggests rather higher expectations
of musical sensibility than could
be fulfilled in the circles in which
they moved. In this they were not
so different from the later commentators
Engel and Schmitz, both of whom
stress the English affinity for
popular music, as does Weerth by
implication. Schmitz's text is interesting
for highlighting what one might
call the psychological and philosophical
aspects of music in general. I will
quote the same excerpt from the
book in my own translation because
it differs from Ms. Woolf's in certain
respects which make it more suitable
to my purpose.
''I have long sought
to understand the nature of that
lack which repeatedly becomes apparent
behind so many English good qualities
and has such a dulling effect. I
have asked myself what is missing
from this nation, perhaps kindness,
love of humanity, piety, humour,
aesthetic sense? No, all these qualities
are present in England, some even
more visibly than in our country.
Finally I discovered something that
distinguishes the English from all
other civilised nations to an amazing
extent, a lack which everyone admits
– thus no discovery at all – but
the implications of which have probably
not yet been emphasised: THE ENGLISH
ARE THE ONLY CIVILISED PEOPLE WITHOUT
MUSIC OF THEIR OWN (apart from street
ballads). That does not mean that
they have less fine ears but that
their whole lives are the poorer
for it. To have music in oneself,
even if ever so little, means being
able to forget oneself and to tolerate
dissonance, even linger with it,
because it is resolved in harmony.
Music gives us wings and makes everything
miraculous easy to understand.''
As Paul Serotsky
has already remarked, the attitude
taken here was already rather dated
in 1904, though having a certain
truth in 1866 when Engel's book
was published – or, I might add,
when Hans von Bülow, the great
conductor and first husband of Cosima
Wagner, presumably made a similar
comment (see the notes by Meirion
Bowen on Elgar's musical background:
http://www.meirion-bowen.com/mbartelgar.htm
). But the essential point about
higher musical meaning is in my
opinion a simplified and popularised
echo of what earlier German writers
on music had attempted to describe.
Here is E.Th.A. Hoffmann, best known
as the author of what we would now
call fantasy fiction but also a
passionate supporter of Mozart and
Beethoven as Romantic composers:
''Music opens up
an unknown realm to man; a world
that has nothing in common with
the external world of the senses,
a world that surrounds him and in
which he leaves behind him all feelings
definable by concepts in order to
surrender to the ineffable.'' (Allgemeine
Musikalische Zeitung, Leipzig, 12.
Jahrg., 4. 7. 1810)
This suggests the
miraculous and ineffable world alluded
to by Schmitz, one in which one
loses or forgets oneself; in Hegel's
more or less contemporaneous philosophical
writing on aesthetics one can find
other similarities:
'' ''In such a
treatment, now, the more profound
music not only may drive
its motions to the limits of immediate
consonance, and even violate that
consonance in order to return to
it, but it must on the contrary
tear the simple first consonance
apart to form dissonances. For only
in such opposites are the profounder
harmonic relationships and secrets
of harmony – in which there lies
a necessity per se – founded, and
so the deeply penetrating movements
of the melody can only find their
basis in these profounder harmonic
relationships. The boldness of musical
composition therefore leaves the
merely consonant progression, proceeds
to opposites, calls up all the strongest
contradictions and dissonances and
demonstrates its own power in the
stirring up of all the forces of
harmony, whose struggles it has
the certainty of being able to subdue,
thus celebrating the satisfying
victory of melodic appeasement.
This is a struggle of freedom and
necessity: a struggle of the freedom
of imagination to take wing with
the necessity of those harmonic
relationships it requires for its
expression and in which its own
significance lies.'' (G.W.F.Hegel:
Lectures on Aesthetics III.The system
of the individual arts III. The
Romantic arts I. Music 2. The particular
determination of musical means of
expression.c. Melody)
Here the idea of
flight that we find in Schmitz is
associated with the imagination
and the concept of the necessary
difficulty and harmonic complication
of an art that takes account of
the struggle inherent in human nature
and social existence. There is no
doubt that a Schoenberg could fully
subscribe to what Hegel is declaring
here with passionate intellectual
conviction. It is certainly my impression
that on the whole the Anglo-Saxon
attitude to music has been less
sternly philosophical and more concerned
to integrate popular or folk elements
into a basically descriptive and
more practical musical discourse.
This general attitude, even more
common in both England and America
in the mid-twentieth century, is
what led German philosophical writers
on music like Theodor W. Adorno
to express his contempt for those
like Sibelius and Elgar whom he
saw as popular escapist composers
(not to mention his loathing for
jazz) and form the taste of a whole
generation of post-war German music-lovers.
(There was a time when similar attitudes
affected the policy of that august
sponsor of serious music, the BBC
Third Programme – but that is another
story...) In Germany, the musical
establishment is only slowly beginning
to come to terms with the two composers
I have mentioned, for example, despite
the very real complexity of their
work, and few German conductors
are willing (or permitted?) to conduct
them in concerts or on record. Yet
to a world in which popular music
has a much higher status than in
former times, of course, to call
England – home of the Beatles and
Rolling Stones, to name but two
of the most prominent – ''the land
without music'' must seem like a
nonsensical paradox. All comparatist
cultural history is full of absurd
misunderstandings and grotesque
new developments!
(This text and
all translations from the German
included in it © M.J.Walker
2008)
