History can be a cruel, unforgiving judge of the arts. The music of the Austrian composer Erich Korngold (1897–1957) is but one example of history’s cruelness. Distinguished as a prodigy from his childhood, Korngold received high accolades from Mahler and Strauss before reaching adolescence. At this time his music was performed by leading ensembles in Austria and even won the attention of so a discriminating pianist as Artur Schnabel, who toured Europe with Korngold’s 1910 Piano Sonata. His early fame was marked by two operas, Der Ring des Polykrates and Violanta, both of 1916, the latter of which earned the praise of Puccini. These were followed in 1920 by the opera Die tote Stadt, which was acclaimed internationally with dual premiere performances in Hamburg and Cologne, the former under the direction of Otto Klemperer. By 1928, he was ranked as one of the two greatest living composers in Europe, the other being Arnold Schönberg.
Things changed dramatically for Korngold in the 1930s, at which time he was forced to flee Austria because of his Jewish faith. He immigrated to the United States, settling in Hollywood and quickly making a reputation as a composer of film scores. Two of his scores, The Adventures of Robin Hood and Anthony Adverse, received Oscars. Despite the success of his work in film, he soon tired of the Hollywood industry and abandoned it altogether in 1946. He eagerly returned to concert music, although his post-Hollywood scores were greeted with far less enthusiasm; the erstwhile Wunderkind had become a middle-aged man.
In the decades after the war and after his death, Korngold’s music suffered neglect and harsh criticism, largely because of the Hollywood association and because of his obstinacy to abandon a musical style that was regarded as passé. To this day, his legacy is associated primarily with his Hollywood work. One wonders what he might have achieved had the war not interfered with his musical activities.
Korngold’s third opera, Die tote Stadt (“The Dead City,” the city being Bruges), is a remarkable score, completed when the composer was twenty. The libretto, written jointly by Korngold and his father, tells the story of the obsessive refusal of a man (Paul) to accept the death of his wife (Marie) and to abandon her memory. So intense does his obsession become that he imagines meeting a woman named Marietta, a dancer in an opera troupe touring through Bruges, whom Paul believes to be his wife reborn. Paul suffers extreme anxiety and hallucinations from this meeting, and his increasingly erratic behavior ostracizes him from his friends. In the third and final act, his behavior reaches such a level of hysteria that he imagines murdering Marietta, which becomes the turning point in his realization that this has all existed in his imagination. The shock of this realization snaps him out of his stupor and cures him of his obsession with his dead wife.
It is tempting to draw comparisons with Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck, composed at approximately the same time, though first performed in 1925. Both operas feature an antagonist named Marie, who is brutally murdered by the protagonist. Both feature strongly Expressionist music that mirrors the deteriorating mental states of the characters. Hysteria, anxiety and obsession are important themes in both. Additionally, both operas feature extended musical interludes between scenes, transitory music that concludes one scene and anticipates the next. This might suggest some sort of mutual influence between the two composers—Berg surely would have been aware of the then-more-famous Korngold—or perhaps the psychological elements of the stories were a powerful Zeitgeist after World War I.
One aspect that even the uninitiated listener of Die tote Stadt will perceive (this being another point of comparison between the two operas) is its stylistic plurality. The score features lush Romantic music typical of Brahms, Wolf or Mahler in their happiest moments alternating suddenly with fiercely Expressionist music that could be mistaken for Schönberg’s or Berg’s music from the same time. Stylistic plurality was certainly not an isolated phenomenon in the early twentieth century; for example, Strauss’ 1916 version of Ariadne auf Naxos exploits it unashamedly. These composers and various others might have seen this as a means to preserve listener accessibility in a hectically changing musical climate. However, the stylistic changes in Die tote Stadt are most likely a means to depict Paul’s varied mental states, one moment happy and rapturous, the next moment bewildered and confused. The shifts in style that become increasingly haphazard as the opera progresses draw us more deeply into Paul’s bipolar condition leading up to the imagined murder.
The score features a virtuosic handling of a massive Straussian orchestra, including a wind machine, church bells, organ, harmonium and a variety of behind-the-scene instruments. All of these resources are called upon in Scene 3 of Act 2, a fantastic musical depiction of a hallucination in which Paul imagines Marietta rehearsing the resurrection scene from Meyerbeer’s opera Robert le diable (Meyerbeer, like Korngold, was a Jewish composer, whose operas deeply impressed Korngold). However, the rehearsal degenerates into a decadent burlesque, which horrifies the already unhinged Paul. The surreal bizarreness of the scene, something akin to the Prologue of Berg’s second opera Lulu, is matched by an original and imaginative harmonic vocabulary and a kaleidoscopic whirlwind of orchestral color. The scene is introduced by a massive build-up in the orchestra, with music that is as harmonically advanced as anything of its time:
Things changed dramatically for Korngold in the 1930s, at which time he was forced to flee Austria because of his Jewish faith. He immigrated to the United States, settling in Hollywood and quickly making a reputation as a composer of film scores. Two of his scores, The Adventures of Robin Hood and Anthony Adverse, received Oscars. Despite the success of his work in film, he soon tired of the Hollywood industry and abandoned it altogether in 1946. He eagerly returned to concert music, although his post-Hollywood scores were greeted with far less enthusiasm; the erstwhile Wunderkind had become a middle-aged man.
In the decades after the war and after his death, Korngold’s music suffered neglect and harsh criticism, largely because of the Hollywood association and because of his obstinacy to abandon a musical style that was regarded as passé. To this day, his legacy is associated primarily with his Hollywood work. One wonders what he might have achieved had the war not interfered with his musical activities.
Korngold’s third opera, Die tote Stadt (“The Dead City,” the city being Bruges), is a remarkable score, completed when the composer was twenty. The libretto, written jointly by Korngold and his father, tells the story of the obsessive refusal of a man (Paul) to accept the death of his wife (Marie) and to abandon her memory. So intense does his obsession become that he imagines meeting a woman named Marietta, a dancer in an opera troupe touring through Bruges, whom Paul believes to be his wife reborn. Paul suffers extreme anxiety and hallucinations from this meeting, and his increasingly erratic behavior ostracizes him from his friends. In the third and final act, his behavior reaches such a level of hysteria that he imagines murdering Marietta, which becomes the turning point in his realization that this has all existed in his imagination. The shock of this realization snaps him out of his stupor and cures him of his obsession with his dead wife.
It is tempting to draw comparisons with Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck, composed at approximately the same time, though first performed in 1925. Both operas feature an antagonist named Marie, who is brutally murdered by the protagonist. Both feature strongly Expressionist music that mirrors the deteriorating mental states of the characters. Hysteria, anxiety and obsession are important themes in both. Additionally, both operas feature extended musical interludes between scenes, transitory music that concludes one scene and anticipates the next. This might suggest some sort of mutual influence between the two composers—Berg surely would have been aware of the then-more-famous Korngold—or perhaps the psychological elements of the stories were a powerful Zeitgeist after World War I.
One aspect that even the uninitiated listener of Die tote Stadt will perceive (this being another point of comparison between the two operas) is its stylistic plurality. The score features lush Romantic music typical of Brahms, Wolf or Mahler in their happiest moments alternating suddenly with fiercely Expressionist music that could be mistaken for Schönberg’s or Berg’s music from the same time. Stylistic plurality was certainly not an isolated phenomenon in the early twentieth century; for example, Strauss’ 1916 version of Ariadne auf Naxos exploits it unashamedly. These composers and various others might have seen this as a means to preserve listener accessibility in a hectically changing musical climate. However, the stylistic changes in Die tote Stadt are most likely a means to depict Paul’s varied mental states, one moment happy and rapturous, the next moment bewildered and confused. The shifts in style that become increasingly haphazard as the opera progresses draw us more deeply into Paul’s bipolar condition leading up to the imagined murder.
The score features a virtuosic handling of a massive Straussian orchestra, including a wind machine, church bells, organ, harmonium and a variety of behind-the-scene instruments. All of these resources are called upon in Scene 3 of Act 2, a fantastic musical depiction of a hallucination in which Paul imagines Marietta rehearsing the resurrection scene from Meyerbeer’s opera Robert le diable (Meyerbeer, like Korngold, was a Jewish composer, whose operas deeply impressed Korngold). However, the rehearsal degenerates into a decadent burlesque, which horrifies the already unhinged Paul. The surreal bizarreness of the scene, something akin to the Prologue of Berg’s second opera Lulu, is matched by an original and imaginative harmonic vocabulary and a kaleidoscopic whirlwind of orchestral color. The scene is introduced by a massive build-up in the orchestra, with music that is as harmonically advanced as anything of its time:
The music of this passage fills a massively wide pitch spectrum, with virtually all orchestral instruments participating. Jarring, unresolved dissonances are created through a crushing bitonality of Eb major and D major, with hints of Ab major and G major. In fact, this assembly of differing harmonies is somewhat reminiscent of an Ives symphonic score. Just imagine how effectively this passage illustrates Paul’s tortured mental condition, as he witnesses the abominations of this rehearsal. The listener is left as bewildered and overwhelmed as Paul similarly is.
Yes, history has been cruel to Korngold’s music, but Die tote Stadt, rightly so, is enjoying something of a revival in the twenty-first century, nearly one hundred years after its completion. According to operabase.com, there are 132 performances of 23 productions in 22 cities of this neglected masterpiece between 2012 and 2015. Perhaps history can be kind after all.
Yes, history has been cruel to Korngold’s music, but Die tote Stadt, rightly so, is enjoying something of a revival in the twenty-first century, nearly one hundred years after its completion. According to operabase.com, there are 132 performances of 23 productions in 22 cities of this neglected masterpiece between 2012 and 2015. Perhaps history can be kind after all.
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