10-19 FR Timothy Ruedeman.pdf

Wednesday
October 19, 2011, 8:00 pm
Kulas Recital Hall
Concert No. 28
Faculty & Guest Recital
Ann Roggen, viola
Steven Beck, piano
Tim Ruedeman, saxophone
Entartete Musik: Music Banned by the Third Reich
Serenade in F Minor, Op. 73 (1922) Robert Kahn
(1865–1951)
Suite, Op. 102b (1949) Hans Gál
Cantabile (1890–1987)
Furioso
Con grazia
Burla
Tim Ruedeman, saxophone Steven Beck, piano
Trio, Op. 47 (1928) Paul Hindemith
I. Solo, Arioso, Duett (1895–1963)
II. Potpourri: Schnelle Halbe, Lebhaft, Schnelle Halbe,
Prestissimo
Intermission
Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 117 (1948) Ernst Krenek
Andante (1900–1991)
Allegro Vivace
Andantino
Ann Roggen, viola Steven Beck, piano

Suite, Op. 25 (1921) Arnold Schoenberg
Präludium (1874–1951)
Gavotte-Musette
Intermezzo
Menuett-Trio
Gigue
Steven Beck, piano
Divertimento, Op. 75 (ca. 1929) Gottfried Rüdinger
Allegro ma non troppo, risoluto (1886–1946)
Andante sostenuto
Allegretto
Larghetto
Allegro risoluto
Please silence all electronic devices and refrain from the use of video cameras
unless prior arrangements have been made with the performers.
The use of flash cameras is prohibited. Thank you.

Program Notes
In the 1920s the Nazis adopted the term ‘entartete’ as a loosely defined technical
concept with which to condemn modern culture. The first exhibition of Entartete
Kunst (degenerate art) took place in Munich in 1937. The following year an exhibition
of Entartete Musik (degenerate music) took place in Düsseldorf. Atonal music, jazz,
and works by Jewish composers were branded as degenerate and banned throughout
Germany and the occupied territories. The Entartete Musik exhibit featured portraits of
‘defamed’ composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Ernst Krenek, Anton Webern, Paul
Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, and Kurt Weill, under which were written crude slogans
attacking their racial origins and moral character. Copies of banned scores, texts, and
listening booths playing banned music were part of the exhibit. Some music was
banned based on its content: atonality, modernism, or programmatic content that did
not conform to Nazi ideology. However, much of the music that was banned was done
so on the basis of the racial and religious origins or the political views of the
composers, regardless of the style and content of the music. Therefore a large swath of
music exhibiting a great diversity of style and genre was labeled as degenerate.
Tonight’s program reflects that diversity and represents music from an array of
composers all of whose lives and careers were irrevocably altered by the events of
mid-20 th Century Europe.
German composer, Robert Kahn (1865-1951), received his early musical training at
the Berlin Musikhochschule and the Munich Akademie der Tonkunst. The young
composer came to the attention of Brahms, who invited Kahn to study composition
with him, but that offer was declined out of youthful diffidence. After a period of
military service, Kahn settled in Berlin. Kahn enjoyed considerable success during the
later decades of the nineteenth century. His String Quartet Op. 8 was dedicated to and
performed by the Joachim Quartet, and his orchestral Serenade was given its premiere
by the Berlin Philharmonic under von Bülow. In 1894 he was appointed to the Berlin
Musikhochshule where he taught piano and music theory until 1930. In 1916 he was
elected to the Berlin Akademie der Künste. However, his career was halted in 1934,
when because of his Jewish origins, the Nazis forced his resignation. In 1937 Kahn
emigrated from Germany to England, where he played little part in the musical life
there. His forced resignation essentially ended his musical career. Kahn died in relative
obscurity in the village of Biddenden in Kent in 1951.
The Serenade in F Minor (1922) was first scored for a trio of oboe, horn, and
piano. However, the composer constructed the work to be played by a variety of
instruments, up to eleven different combinations, all with piano. In style it is not unlike
the early serenades of Brahms. However, unlike Brahms’ serenades, it is constructed in
a single continuous movement, broken into two distinct halves: an Andante sostenuto
in F minor with a contrasting trio, a brisk 2/4 Vivace, and an Allegretto non troppo e
grazioso in F major, with a faster central trio in D major.
Austrian composer, Hans Gál (1890-1987), was a prolific composer, teacher, and
scholar. Gál attended the New Vienna Conservatory, where he was a pupil of Richard
Robert. In 1915 he won the newly created “State Prize for Composition.” That same
year he was drafted into the Austrian army. He continued to compose during his
military service, completing his first important opera Der Arzt der Sobeide, which
launched Gál’s career as an opera composer. During the 1920s Gál experienced a

meteoric rise in his career as a composer. His opera Die Heilige Ente (The Sacred
Duck) was his greatest success. It was performed in more than twenty theaters,
receiving hundreds of performances, and remained in the repertoire until 1933. Gál’s
growing popularity brought him into contact with conductors George Szell and Erich
Kleiber, and composers Alban Berg and Anton Webern. During this period Gál coedited
the complete works of Brahms, and numerous other volumes as well. In 1929 he
was named Director of the Conservatory in Mainz, supported by, among others, Fritz
Busch and Furtwängler. Gál was a leading figure in German musical life, but that
distinction came to a complete and abrupt end in March of 1933. Shortly after the
Nazis occupied Mainz, Gál was summarily dismissed from his position at the
conservatory and the public performances of his works were banned throughout
Germany and the occupied territories. Gál returned to Vienna and tried to protest his
dismissal, based on his military service to Germany and its Allies. Realizing that his
situation would not improve, in 1938, he emigrated from Austria to England. England
was not a refuge for long. In 1940 Gál was arrested and interned at the Isle of Wight as
an “enemy alien.” During the war years, Churchill imprisoned many foreign nationals,
imprisoning actual Nazis side by side with Jewish and political refugees who were
fleeing Nazism. Although the post-war years were filled with uncertainty for Gál, he
did finally receive a teaching position in Edinburgh in 1948. He became an essential
part of Edinburgh’s musical life, but never regained the popularity and importance he
enjoyed during the Weimar years in Germany and Austria. Gál continued to compose
until his death in 1987.
Unlike that of many of his contemporaries, Gál’s music does not feature a great
use of dissonance. His use of harmony is inventive, but rarely does it range into the
world of conventional modernism. The Suite for Saxophone and Piano, Op. 102b, was
completed in the years 1949–1950, written during his first years in Edinburgh.
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) was one of the foremost German composers of his
generation, and was a figure central to both music composition and musical thought
during the interwar years. He was a prolific composer, theorist, teacher, violist, and
conductor. During the post-war years until his death in 1963 Hindemith remained one
of the world’s most respected musicians. In recent decades there has been renewed
interest in and scholarship of Hindemith’s music and theories including the
establishment of a Hindemith Foundation, a complete edition of his works, and
celebrations of the centennial of his birth in 1995. Finding a new creative voice that
could be a champion of the cause of National Socialism was of great importance to the
Nazi party. Older composers such as Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner were thought
of as masters of the German Romantic tradition, but not seen as the trailblazers that
would lead German music into the future. A number of people in National Socialist
circles, including conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, thought that Paul Hindemith might
be that voice. However, Hindemith’s collaborations with Jewish musicians and his
work with twelve-tone music and atonality, did not comply with the National Socialist
aesthetic. Hitler himself took exception to Hindemith’s music and by April of 1933
over half of Hindemith’s works had been banned in Germany. In 1938 Hindemith’s
music figured prominently in the Entartete Musik exhibition in Düsseldorf. Realizing
that the situation for him in Germany was worsening, Hindemith emigrated first to
Switzerland and eventually to the United States. In a 1939 diary entry Hindemith was
self-critical of his behavior under the Nazis: “I always see myself as the mouse who

ecklessly danced in front of the trap and even ventured inside; quite by chance, when
it happened to be outside, the trap closed!”
Hindemith composed his Trio Op. 47 for viola, heckelphone, and piano in 1928.
The heckelphone, an instrument akin to a tenor oboe, was newly invented at the time
and Hindemith included an alternate part for tenor saxophone (replacing the
heckelphone) in the very first publishing of the piece. The trio, like much of
Hindemith’s music from this period, uses all of the notes of the chromatic scale, but
often melodically distributed to create individual lines that are wholly diatonic.
Ernst Krenek (1900-1991) was one of the most prolific composers of his time, active
for more than seven decades until his death in 1991. He played a role in many of the
20th century’s significant artistic movements: atonality, neoclassicism, jazz-influenced
writing, serialism, and avant-garde electronic music. Krenek began his musical studies
in Vienna with Franz Schreker. In 1920 he moved to Berlin. Between 1923 and 1925
Krenek spent time in Switzerland and Paris, returning to Berlin. During this time his
musical and artistic circle included Busoni, Hermann Scherchen, Artur Schnabel, the
poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Theodor Adorno, Milhaud, Stravinsky, Berg, Webern, and
Schoenberg. Krenek’s earliest music was written in a Romantic idiom, but by the early
twenties he had adopted an uncompromising atonal style. Krenek’s music reflects
myriad styles and influences, which were apparent in Krenek’s only unequivocal
public success: the opera Jonny spielt auf (1927). Set in nightclubs, glaciers and trains,
and referencing almost all the available styles of the time, including jazz, Jonny was an
instant success. It was performed in dozens of different opera houses and made its way
to New York as early as 1929. Ironically, the very success of Jonny brought Krenek to
the attention of the Nazis. The vernacular styles, especially its “jazziness” and the
character Jonny, a black jazz musician, made Krenek’s opera a convenient target for
the Nazis. Jonny was a major focus at the 1938 Düsseldorf Nazi exhibition of
degenerate music. Krenek made his second visit to the United States in 1938 and had
originally planned to return to Austria; however, the Anschluss of 1938 made that
return impossible. Krenek remained in the US and accepted a teaching position at
Vassar College. In 1942 he accepted a position at Hamline University in St. Paul,
Minnesota, and in 1947 he moved to California, where he spent the rest of his life in
Los Angeles and Palm Springs. Krenek’s time in the US was extremely prolific. He
produced over 100 compositions during his time in California. Starting in the 1960s
Krenek regained some of the recognition he had received as a younger man and was
honored in many ways. His music was often programmed and many festivals of his
work were mounted, especially in California.
The Viola Sonata, Op. 117 was completed in Los Angeles in just four days.
Krenek departs from conventional 12-tone rules, using a freer atonal and serial
technique. It is structured in three movements: Andante, Allegro vivace, and
Andantino.
Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1847-1951) was the leader of the Second
Viennese School of composition and a pioneer of twelve-tone music. During the 1920s
and early 1930s Schoenberg was one of the leading figures in German musical life.
Among his most famous pupils were Alban Berg and Anton Webern. In 1933
Schoenberg was forced to leave his position at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin after
the Nazis announced that all Jewish elements were to be removed from the academy.
Schoenberg and his music figured prominently in the 1938 Entartete Musik exhibition

in Düsseldorf. Citing Schoenberg as the father of twelve-tone music, Nazi critics often
identified twelve-tone or atonal music as specifically Jewish. In 1933 Schoenberg fled
Germany, immigrating to the United States where he found work as a teacher, first in
Boston, then in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California. Although
Schoenberg continued to compose and held teaching positions he was never again to
enjoy the stature and success that he did in the prewar years in Germany.
Schoenberg began composing the Suite for Piano, Op. 25 in 1921 and
completed the piece in February and March of 1923. The suite is the first of
Schoenberg’s pieces that is wholly dodecaphonic. It is structured in five movements:
Prelude, Gavotte-Musette, Intermezzo, Minuet-Trio, and Gigue.
Gottfried Rüdinger (1886-1946) was a German composer and teacher. He studied
composition with Max Reger in Leipzig and church music under Wilhelm Widmann at
Eichstätt Cathedral. In 1920 Rüdinger was hired as a member of the theory staff at the
Academy of Music in Munich. In 1938 he was named as a full professor and continued
to teach there until his death.
In 1933 the Nazi regime started a series of loosely connected efforts to foster
the development of local music talent. An attempt was made to recruit new artists
willing to cultivate a style that was consistent with the tenets of National Socialism:
bolder than the Romantic music of the past, but stopping short of ‘Jewish’ atonal or
twelve-tone composition. The result of that narrow and somewhat ambiguous agenda
was the purging or silencing of the most talented composers in Germany and the
occupied countries. Gottfried Rüdinger was among a younger generation of German
composers who were allowed to continue to compose music. That group included
lesser-known composers such as Kurt Stiebitz, Otto Besch, Albert Jung, Hermann
Simon, Ulf Scharlau, Bruno Stürmer, and Cesar Bresgen. Rüdinger’s music received
attention in the press, including a feature article in the Algemeine Zeitschrift fur Musik
in January of 1934. There are several notices of performances of his works throughout
Germany documented in that journal during the years 1934–1935, but very little
mention of Rüdinger after that. It is likely that Rüdinger was a beneficiary of the
purging of Germany’s pool of composers, and rose to more prominence than he would
have otherwise. Of his approximately 150 compositions, the last third (from the war
years) remain unpublished.
The Divertimento for viola, tenor saxophone, and piano, Op. 75 was composed
in the late 1920s, around the same time as Hindemith’s Trio (1928) for the same
instrumentation. The piece reflects the influence of Rüdinger’s teacher Max Reger, as
well as his use of Bavarian folk-tunes in his concert music.
~ Notes by Tim Ruedeman