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Audio / Video files of songs mentioned in this story
Now an incredible stroke of luck- a surprise hit like nothing else in this period, apart from Brecht’s Threepenny Opera - had made it possible for me to move into my own eyrie.
This young man Brecht enticed, enchanted, entangled, and enraptured everyone, above all by his overwhelming musicality, which continued to operate throughout all his future work. Of course the music of the Threepenny Opera is by Kurt Weill. But anyone who knew Brecht’s intonation, anyone familiar with his own melodic diction (as it emerges, for example, in the song of the pamphlet seller in the Life of Edward II, a song for which he himself wrote the music), must realize that the famous organ-grinder bars of ‘Mac the Knife’ are due to his inspiration and suggestions.
The peasant children would come in to preform an old play about the birth of Christ; among the dramatic bits were scattered many Salzburg folk songs that Mozart probably heard in his youth.
. . . he had discovered on his own The Well-Tempered Clavier and regarded Bach as the crowning glory and guiding star of music - a verdict by no means taken for granted at the turn of the century.
As my brother grew up, talented musicians of different ages began coming to the house. They played chamber music, when I reached a tolerable degree of skill on the cello they sometimes let me play along with them. I began with the lovely G-major Trio of Hayden, with its easy cello part, and moved on to Mozart and Brahms.
In the decade before the First World War, modern trends were represented by the orchestral suites of Richard Strauss, whose Eulenspiegel I especially loved and by the works of Gustav Mahler.
Mahler’s brand-new music, attempting to unite the popular element with the new, bold instrumentation, exerted a tremendously stirring and inspiring effect upon us.
A high point for me was the appearance in Mainz of the then little-known Spanish cellist Pablo Casals, who played a cycle of all Bach’s solo suites for violoncello.
At the close of the evening the military band played, in slow tempo, the ‘Song of the Good Comrade,’ and we sang the words without suspecting the meaning of the stanza .
It is a curious thing about war songs: they preserve the atmosphere of such a time and reflect its temper like nothing else. In the First World War we had our sentimental ‘Annemarie,’ and later the sad ‘Argonnerwald bei finistrer Nacht.
The French had their bold, lighthearted ‘Madeline,’ the English their ‘Tipperary,’ the Americans ‘Mademoiselle from Armentieres.’
In the Second World War the radio made ‘Lile Marlene’ the beloved song of all combatants.
His (Haubach’s) favorite piece was the marching motif from Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony (Entrance of Summer).
It was the ‘fifth spring,’ as Brecht has called it in his ‘Ballad of the Dead Soldier,’ the first spring and summer after four years of war, the first time that we were able to live freely and safely.
Paul Hindemith came also. I had already met him through my brother, and all of us were in the habit of going to Frankfurt for performances of his provocative one-act operas.
Pavlova whispered briefly with the violinist, who began the melody of The Dying Swan, and for five minutes she floated about the narrow space like a phantom, then with a deep bow of her whole body sank to the stone floor.
His (Herr van Hoboken) books on Joseph Hayden and his Hayden archive, the product of much earnest labor, are still regarded by professionals as indispensable, a significant contribution to the musical history of the eighteenth century.
There was a silly ballad called ‘Johann Gottlieb Seidelbast’ which used to be sung at student drinking bouts.
The peasant children would come in to preform an old play about the birth of Christ; among the dramatic bits were scattered many Salzburg folk songs that Mozart probably heard in his youth.
Late in the autumn of the year 1937 a quiet party for a small group was given at Eleonora von Mendelssohn’s and Jessenski’s Kammer Castle. That wonderful violinist Arnold Rose and his Vienna String Quartet played. To end the evening they played part of Hayden’s Emperor Quartet, the movement which gave rise to the Austrian Imperial anthem, which in turn subsequently became Deutschlandlied, the German anthem
From his dungeon tower Richard Coeur de Lion hears the voice of the singer Blondel. It is a voice that goes to the heart more purely than the sweet accents of courtship, the mellifluous lines of the minnesong, for it is without lust.
Her enthusiasms included . . . all of opera, especially Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Wagner’s Tristan and Leoncavall’s I Pagliacci.
. . . he had discovered on his own The Well-Tempered Clavier and regarded Bach as the crowning glory and guiding star of music - a verdict by no means taken for granted at the turn of the century.
As my brother grew up, talented musicians of different ages began coming to the house. They played chamber music, when I reached a tolerable degree of skill on the cello they sometimes let me play along with them. I began with the lovely G-major Trio of Hayden, with its easy cello part, and moved on to Mozart and Brahms.
In the decade before the First World War, modern trends were represented by the orchestral suites of Richard Strauss, whose Eulenspiegel I especially loved and by the works of Gustav Mahler.
Mahler’s brand-new music, attempting to unite the popular element with the new, bold instrumentation, exerted a tremendously stirring and inspiring effect upon us.
A high point for me was the appearance in Mainz of the then little-known Spanish cellist Pablo Casals, who played a cycle of all Bach’s solo suites for violoncello.
At the close of the evening the military band played, in slow tempo, the ‘Song of the Good Comrade,’ and we sang the words without suspecting the meaning of the stanza .
It is a curious thing about war songs: they preserve the atmosphere of such a time and reflect its temper like nothing else. In the First World War we had our sentimental ‘Annemarie,’ and later the sad ‘Argonnerwald bei finistrer Nacht.
The French had their bold, lighthearted ‘Madeline,’ the English their ‘Tipperary,’ the Americans ‘Mademoiselle from Armentieres.’
In the Second World War the radio made ‘Lile Marlene’ the beloved song of all combatants.
His (Haubach’s) favorite piece was the marching motif from Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony (Entrance of Summer).
It was the ‘fifth spring,’ as Brecht has called it in his ‘Ballad of the Dead Soldier,’ the first spring and summer after four years of war, the first time that we were able to live freely and safely.
Paul Hindemith came also. I had already met him through my brother, and all of us were in the habit of going to Frankfurt for performances of his provocative one-act operas.
Liszt, Chopin, and Wagner played with flippers certainly proved more amazing than when played with fingers.
Pavlova whispered briefly with the violinist, who began the melody of The Dying Swan, and for five minutes she floated about the narrow space like a phantom, then with a deep bow of her whole body sank to the stone floor.
His (Herr van Hoboken) books on Joseph Hayden and his Hayden archive, the product of much earnest labor, are still regarded by professionals as indispensable, a significant contribution to the musical history of the eighteenth century.
There was a silly ballad called ‘Johann Gottlieb Seidelbast’ which used to be sung at student drinking bouts.
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