Page 43 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2024. Glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes ▪︎ Music Criticism – Yesterday and Today. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 7
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innovation, art, society, and life: deliber ations on music cr iticism’s past, pr esence ...
Disregarding the political background and the specific idea of the new
that emerges here, with Debussy we see that the function of the critic with-
in the bourgeois cultural life gets precarious. Taking his standpoint as an ex-
ample we can thus conclude that at the beginning of the twentieth centu-
ry art was considered able to express itself sufficiently without any help and
professional mediation. The gap between the artist and the bourgeois insti-
tutions appears to grow, and in the course of this development, the gap be-
tween art and those same institutions also widens. The comments on the re-
ception of the Dreigroschenoper by Brecht and Weill also underscore this
process. Bertolt Brecht explained in a self-interview in 1933, from his point of
view, what caused the success of the Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera):
I’m afraid all the things I didn’t care for: the romantic attitude, the love
story, the musical. When the Threepenny Opera had been successful,
they made a film out of it. For the film, they took everything that I had
mocked in the play, the romanticism, the sentimentality, etc., and left
out the mockery. There the success was even greater.17
What was important for him was the critique of society inherent in
the piece:
I had tried to show that the world of ideas and the emotional life of the
street bandits bear an immense resemblance to the world of ideas and
the emotional life of the solid citizen.18
Art critique becomes cultural critique. It might seem astonishing, that
the critic now seems to change sides and is defending novel artistic devel-
opments against a more traditionally oriented society. Theodor W. Ador-
no writes in 1929:
lustre, qui tourna, je dois le dire, tout à la gloire du lustre. Ce jeu charmant semblait
défendre la délicatesse des mélodies du bruit barbare des bravos.” Cf. Ibid., 27.
17 “Ich fürchte, all das, worauf es mir nicht ankam: die romantische Haltung, die Liebes-
geschichte, das Musikalische. Als die Dreigroschenoper Erfolg gehabt hatte, machte
man einen Film daraus. Man nahm für den Film all das, was ich in dem Stück verspot-
tet hatte, die Romantik, die Sentimentalität usw., und ließ den Spott weg. Da war der
Erfolg noch größer.” Bertolt Brecht, “Autobiographische Notizen 1921 bis Juni 1938,”
in Bertolt Brecht: Werke. Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, vol.
26: Journale 1, ed. Werner Hecht et al. (Berlin, Frankfurt: Suhrkampf Verlag, 1913–
1941), 299.
18 “Ich hatte zu zeigen versucht, dass die Ideenwelt und das Gefühlsleben der Straßen-
banditen ungemein viel Ähnlichkeit mit der Ideenwelt und dem Gefühlsleben des soli-
den Bürgers haben.” Ibid., 299.
43
Disregarding the political background and the specific idea of the new
that emerges here, with Debussy we see that the function of the critic with-
in the bourgeois cultural life gets precarious. Taking his standpoint as an ex-
ample we can thus conclude that at the beginning of the twentieth centu-
ry art was considered able to express itself sufficiently without any help and
professional mediation. The gap between the artist and the bourgeois insti-
tutions appears to grow, and in the course of this development, the gap be-
tween art and those same institutions also widens. The comments on the re-
ception of the Dreigroschenoper by Brecht and Weill also underscore this
process. Bertolt Brecht explained in a self-interview in 1933, from his point of
view, what caused the success of the Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera):
I’m afraid all the things I didn’t care for: the romantic attitude, the love
story, the musical. When the Threepenny Opera had been successful,
they made a film out of it. For the film, they took everything that I had
mocked in the play, the romanticism, the sentimentality, etc., and left
out the mockery. There the success was even greater.17
What was important for him was the critique of society inherent in
the piece:
I had tried to show that the world of ideas and the emotional life of the
street bandits bear an immense resemblance to the world of ideas and
the emotional life of the solid citizen.18
Art critique becomes cultural critique. It might seem astonishing, that
the critic now seems to change sides and is defending novel artistic devel-
opments against a more traditionally oriented society. Theodor W. Ador-
no writes in 1929:
lustre, qui tourna, je dois le dire, tout à la gloire du lustre. Ce jeu charmant semblait
défendre la délicatesse des mélodies du bruit barbare des bravos.” Cf. Ibid., 27.
17 “Ich fürchte, all das, worauf es mir nicht ankam: die romantische Haltung, die Liebes-
geschichte, das Musikalische. Als die Dreigroschenoper Erfolg gehabt hatte, machte
man einen Film daraus. Man nahm für den Film all das, was ich in dem Stück verspot-
tet hatte, die Romantik, die Sentimentalität usw., und ließ den Spott weg. Da war der
Erfolg noch größer.” Bertolt Brecht, “Autobiographische Notizen 1921 bis Juni 1938,”
in Bertolt Brecht: Werke. Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, vol.
26: Journale 1, ed. Werner Hecht et al. (Berlin, Frankfurt: Suhrkampf Verlag, 1913–
1941), 299.
18 “Ich hatte zu zeigen versucht, dass die Ideenwelt und das Gefühlsleben der Straßen-
banditen ungemein viel Ähnlichkeit mit der Ideenwelt und dem Gefühlsleben des soli-
den Bürgers haben.” Ibid., 299.
43
