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EXPRESSIONISM TN NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMAN OPERA
By

Molly Rose Cryderman

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
Department of Music

2006

ABSTRACT
EXPRESSIONISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMAN OPERA
By
Molly Rose Cryderman
The unique history of the German lands has had signiﬁcant inﬂuence on opera
composers of the early nineteenth century. As a consequence of German history, opera in
Germany developed mainly as a commercial genre. The situation obliged composers to
follow a rule of precedent rather than rules of aesthetic code, to which foreign critics
responded negatively. In their defense of German opera, critical theorists, including
Postel, Feind, Weichmann, Schlegel, Hiller, and Lessing, deﬁned the differences between
opera in the German lands and that of foreign countries as differences that made the
operas speciﬁcally German. These theorists negotiated what was a preferable “German”
aesthetic identity. The artistic nationalism generated by critical theorists supported
operas that followed a German tradition of expressionism. Expressionism, deﬁned as a
simultaneous representation of multiple realities, can be seen in elements of operas by
Hoffmann, Marschner, Spohr, and Weber. Threeof these commonly used elements are
the use of a baritone as protagonist, competing supernatural and natural worlds as the
focus of the drama, and composition using leitmotifs. The presence of these
expressionist elements in early nineteenth century German opera suggests that
expressionism is not an isolated twentieth century art movement. Expressionism is a
method of representation cultivated in the German lands by theorists, composers,
librettists, and audiences that gives early nineteenth century German opera 3 unique

cultural identity

Copyright by
MOLLY ROSE CRYDERMAN
2006

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................... iv

INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1

CHAPTER 1

WHO ARE THE GERMANS? ............................................................ 4

CHAPTER 2

INVENTING AN EXPRESSIONIST “GERMAN-NESS” ............................ 15

CHAPTER 3

CASE STUDIES ............................................................................. 31
The Baritone Protagonist ........................................................... 32
The Supernatural as Totengesprach .............................................. 39
Leitmotiv and Expressionism ..................................................... 53

CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 58

BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................... 60

iii

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1
“An jenem Tag," measures 1-4 ............................................................. 36
FIGURE 2
“Herauf,” measures 263-267 ................................................................. 37
FIGURE 3
“Wolf‘s Glen Scene," measures 1-38 ...................................................... 46
FIGURE 4
Leitmotifs identiﬁed by Brown in Spohr’s Faust ....................................... 54
FIGURE 5
Der Vampyr, no. 1, measures 8-13 ........................................................ 55
FIGURE 6
Der Vamprr, no. 13, measures 1-3 of Allegro section .................................. 56

INTRODUCTION

Expressionism, as an artistic approach, is particularly apparent in works from the
Gemian lands. In addition to several well-known pieces from the early twentieth century
(such as Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartw-zg and Pierrot Lunaire), German expressionism is
evident in works from a wide variety of time periods. The Sturm and Drang (storm and
stress) movement of the eighteenth century is often cited as an example of pro-twentieth
century expressionism.1 Expressionism can be seen in works of later time periods as
well. In “Modern German Art,” Irit Rogoff mentions the German “New Vehemence”
group of the 19805 as an example of expressionist tendencies in late twentieth century
visual arts.2 These examples suggest an expressionist inclination in art from the German
lands.

Expressionism in the German lands is not isolated in a particular time period or
limited to speciﬁc emotional manifestations. Early twentieth century expressionism can
be understood as an especially violent version of a more general type of expressionism
that occurs throughout history. This broader kind of expressionism is described by
historian John Willett as “a quality of expressive emphasis and distortion which may be
found in works of art of any people or period.”3 Historians Richard Samuel and R.
Hinton Thomas agree with Willett about the historical pervasiveness of expressionism,

saying that “modern Expressionism was in a general way the recurrence of certain

 

I William Rose, Men. Myths, and Movements in German Literature (London: George Allen, 1931), 201
and John C. Crawford and Dorothy L. Crawford, Expressionism in Twentieth-Century Music
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 2.

2 Irit Rogoff, “Modern German art,” in Modern German Culture, ed. Eva Kolinsky and Wilfried van der
Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998), 278.

3 John Willett, Expressionism (New York: McGraw-Hill. 1970), 25.

tendencies in art and life that had manifested themselves in the past."4 Expressionism as
a general trend, and not solely an early-twentieth century occurrence, can be deﬁned as a
striving for understanding and communicating the internal nature of an entity. The reality
expressionists aim to depict is a combination of surface reality and inner reality. The
main difference between expressionism and romanticism is the negative outcome
associated with contrasting realities. Expressionism is what modern art critic Herbert
Read calls “one of the basic modes of perceiving and representing the world around us.”5
It is an approach that resists chronological limits.

In this paper, I Will focus on expressionism in German opera in the ﬁrst half of the
nineteenth century, particularly the works of Hoffmann, Marschner, Spohr, and Weber.
By identifying expressionist elements in nineteenth century German opera, 1 will show
that expressionism is not limited to a single, twentieth century movement. It is a method
of representation cultivated in the German lands by theorists, composers, librettists, and
audiences that gives early nineteenth century German opera a unique cultural identity.

The forces of unity and division that shaped German history influenced the
development of a distinct German opera. The relatively late modernization of the
German lands created a situation in which most opera ventures were at least partially
dependent on commercial success for survival. Following what musicologist Gloria
Flaherty calls a “rule by precedence,”6 instead of an adherence to predetermined artistic
rules, composers and librettists experimented with different operatic elements in hopes of

creating a popular hit. Catering to the masses yielded an opera type that was accessible

 

4 Richard Samuel and R. Hinton Thomas, Expressionism in German Life, Literature, and the Theatre
(Philadelphia: Albert Saifer, 1971), I3.

5 Qtd. in Crawford and Crawford, 2.

6 Gloria Flaherty, Opera in the Development of German Critical Thought (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1978), 42.

to upper, middle, and lower classes. Writers, composers, and theorists defended German
works from foreign and local criticism, thereby constructing a German critical theory.
Both the connection of diverse German peoples to opera and the formation of German
critical theory generated a cultural identity where political identity was lacking. One
element of the German cultural identity is expressionist representation, evident in operas

of the early nineteenth century.

CHAPTER ONE
WHO ARE THE GERMANS?
In Germany, a land that lacked a united political identity up until the late 19m
century, the idea of a cultural identity is particularly signiﬁcant. Sociologist Anthony D.
Smith’s theory of “cultural—community” suggests that a cohesive cultural identity, or
“cultural-community,” is what gives a group its legitimacy, more so than political,
religious, or geographic identity. Smith writes, “It is history, and history alone, which
can furnish the bases of ethnic identity and the psychic reassurance of communal security
that goes with it.”7 In order to understand German identity then, understanding the
background of the creation of the German “cultural-community” is also necessary.

The German “culture-community” developed in a land marked by problems with
identiﬁcation. The plurality of German peoples causes trouble when one tries to describe
a single culture, especially in the years prior to 1871. Before 1871, Germany as a country
did not yet exist. Of course, the temi “German” had been used for centuries, but it is
signiﬁcant that the word did not denote a united people. In the ﬁrst century C E the
people of present—day Germany earned the name “Germans" from the Gauls (a tribe west
of the Rhine River) and the Romans. German historian Hagen Schulze writes “The word
‘German’ was not much more than a designation of origin for someone who came from
the little known regions east of the Rhine.”8 In the Middle Ages, the word “German” had

a negative connotation of a crude, uneducated, barbaric people. The fact that the

 

7 Anthony D. Smith, “The Formation of Nationalist Movements," in Nationalist Movements, ed. Anthony
D. Smith (London: Macmillan, 1976), 8.

8 Hagen Schulze, Germany: A New History, trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1998), 4.

“Germans” shared no common dialect further illustrates the heterogeneity of the land.
Although the word deutsch can be found in several eighth century documents, it was used
to mean “vernacular,” not a speciﬁc language. Schulze writes:

It [deutsch] referred not to one particular language but to any language

spoken by the people distinct from the learned Latin of the church, as well

as from the Romance and Slavic languages; theodiscus [the Latin term

from which deutsch was derived] included Alemannish, for example, or

Old Saxon, Bavarian, or East Frankish.9
Thus, from the beginning, Germans have been regarded as a group of “other” by their
neighbors. Instead of being recognized by common traits, “German” peoples were
grouped together because they differed from their describers.

Furthermore, the land where “Germans” lived lacked geographic uniformity.
Historian Peter Wende writes that the German lands were of “inﬁnite regional variety.
Patches of fertile soil. more numerous in the south and west, formed rather densely

”l0

populated islands in huge seas of wooded or swampy wilderness. The people called
“Germans” had no common geography or ethnicity. One could say that the only thing
“Gemians” had in common was the fact that they were not Romans or Gauls. Even the
naming of “Deutschland” is signiﬁcant, as it refers to a language family, not a tribe.
While “Germany” of the early 19th century was more heterogeneous than any of
its neighboring states, it would be misleading to suggest that the diversity of cultures
found in ancient times persisted as such until uniﬁcation in 1871. A major theme in
German history is the repetition of alternating periods of unity and division among its

peoples. One may recall legends of King Charles the Great (a Frankish king, also known

as Charlemagne, who reigned from 768-814) militarily conquering many of the Germanic

 

91bid., 16-17.
10 Peter Wende, A History of Germany (New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2005). 2.

tribes and bringing them under a loose common government, with local organization
provided by the structures of Roman Catholicism.ll Charlemagne’s reign was the ﬁrst
major period of uniﬁcation. It also marked the re-emergence of the Roman Empire'2 in
the year 800, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as emperor.‘3 The new empire
was called the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, reflecting the close
relationship between church and state. Over the centuries, this connection would
strengthen and weaken, depending on the emperor and pope, as both used one another’s
institution for personal gain. It was under the religious organization of the Carolingian
Empire (as the empire of Charlemagne is often called) that the beginnings of a uniﬁed
German culture emerged.

Although the C arolingian Empire was well organized, this form of the empire
could not last, and after Charlemagne’s death, the German lands entered a period of
division. The two main reasons for this failure at maintaining unity were the size of the
empire and its rules of succession. C onceming these problems, Wende writes:

[The empire’s] sheer vastness [. . .] made efﬁcient communication

impossible: sending a message from Aachen to Rome would take three

months. Moreover, severe problems were caused by the customary rules

of hereditary succession. There was no rule of primogeniture by which

the heritage would be passed to the eldest son. Instead, according to Salic

Law [the laws governing royal succession] all the legitimate sons were
entitled to an equal share of their father’s estate.l4

 

H Some Germanic people had converted to Christianity earlier than this. A wave of Germanic peoples
migrated south to the Western Roman Empire in the fourth and ﬁfth centuries. These migrants were
allowed to settle with the empire in return for military service. Some of the “Germans” even became
Roman citizens. Most of the Germanic people who migrated to Roman lands also adopted the Roman state
religion of Christianity. (Mary Fulbrook, A Concise History of Germany (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1990), 10).

'2 The last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, was overthrown in 476.

'3 Wende, 3.

M Wende, 3.

The implication of the rule of succession was that only an empire with a single heir could
preserve its size after the death of an emperor. Eventually, the C arolingian Empire was
divided up between Charlemagne’s three grandsons, Louis, Charles, and Lothar. The
western region controlled by Louis became France and the eastem region controlled by
Charles became Germany.”

Ironically, the reason the eastern region became so much more politically
fragmented than the western region was actually because it tried to perpetuate the Holy
Roman Empire. In 962, Otto 1, King of the eastern region, was crowned Holy Roman
Emperor by Pope John XII. According to historian Mary Fulbrook, “The union of the
German monarchy and the Roman empire was unique among European states and lasted,
with all its attendant strengths. obligations, tensions and contradictions, until 1806.”'0
The Holy Roman Empire was also unique because it was not an absolute monarchy. Until
1257, all nobles were pemiitted to participate in the election of the emperor. After 125 7.
this privilege was only afforded to a group of seven princes, known as the Council of
Electors.'7 While the existence of electors helped maintain peace and goodwill between
the emperor and his subjects, they also prevented the development of a single dynasty
and the powerful central government a dynasty affords.l8 There was even a point at
which the Holy Roman Empire had no leader (termed “the Interregnum,” c. 1254-1273),

due to disagreements over succession. Complicating this system was the fact that the

ruler of the Holy Roman Empire was also the ruler of his own estate. Frequently, the

 

‘5 Lothar’s region was annexed to the western portion in 870 (Schulze, 9).
l6

Fulbrook, 16.
'7 Wende, 9.

'8 While the Hapsburg dynasty in the South was a leading force (it held the crown of the Holy Roman
Empire from 1273-1918), there were other dynasties (the Hohenzallems of Brandenburg. for instance), that
thrived alongside of the Hapsburgs, and acted as a political check against extensive Hapsburg expansion.

notion of Hausmacht took over, which occurred when rulers directed their energies
towards making their‘own familial properties powerful, even at the expense of the
empire.

The situation in “Germany” was a marked contrast from other lands, like England,
France, and Denmark, where “single dynasties established themselves in the thirteenth
century as strong nuclei around which nation-building forces could coalesce?”
Regarding the situation in the German lands, Wende writes:

[The] loose and shifting pattern of ethnic, economic and cultural variety

was overlaid by another pattern of political diversity. Though the Empire

provided the outlines of a general framework, this was far too weak and

too uncertain to serve as the foundation for a future nation-state.20
While the kingdoms of other lands gained strength during the medieval period,
“Germany” stagnated as an assorted collection of small-scale governments. To illustrate
the variety of governments coexisting, Schulze writes, “There were electoral
principalities, ordinary principalities, duchies, bishoprics, counties, imperial cities, abbey
lands, and districts controlled by military religious orders such as the Knights of the
Teutonic Order.”2' The varied political make-up and absence of a main cultural center of
medieval “Germany” had important consequences for its musicians and composers.

In the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, all of Europe underwent a
dramatic drop in population. This phenomenon was due to wars, overpopulation, and

food shortages, which in turn led to outbreaks of disease and rebellion. Dutch historian

Johan Huizinga described the conditions under which people of the time lived:

 

'9 Schulze, 19.
20 Wende, 27.
2' Schulze, 25.

The people could not perceive their own fates and the events of their time

other than as a continuous succession of economic mishandling,

exploitation, war and robbery, inﬂation, want and pestilence. The chronic

form that war tended to take, the constant threats to the town and the

country from all kinds of dangerous riff-raff, the eternal threat from a

harsh and unreliable administration of justice, and on top of all this, the

pressure of the fear of hell and the anxiety about devils and witches,

nourished a feeling of general insecurity. ‘

In other European countries, strong central govemments could provide some structure to
daily life, but in “Germany,” people did not have conﬁdence in their weak and often-
changing ruling administration. Furthermore, the political fragmentation of the German
lands created more internal conflicts in “Germany” than anywhere else. Fulbrook writes,
“In Germany the notion developed that local princes were responsible for keeping the
peace within princely territories, while it was permissible to wage war between princes —
and indeed with anyone — within 'the Empire.”23 Because the Gemran lands had no strong
centralized authority, and because emperors were elected, there was a constant struggle
for power.

The decline in political unity was accompanied by a decline in the power of the
Roman Catholic Church. After the “Great Schism” of 1378-1417 (when there were two
popes), the church was reunited by the Council of Constance (1414-1418), but the
church’s power had been severely weakened. During the Renaissance, the Roman
Catholic Church came under increasing criticism for its worldliness. In addition to
dissatisfaction with church extravagance, German people were discouraged by the fact

that the church did not have a solution to the famine and disease that was causing social

upheaval. Regarding the Roman Catholic Church, Wende writes, “In Germany the

 

22 Qtd. in Schulze, 4243.
23 Fulbrook, 24.

position of the Church was more complex than elsewhere, because there was no
unequalled sovereignas in France or England to extract conditions from the Papacy.”24
The German people had no way of checking the powers of the church, and the church
took advantage of this situation. Schulze writes. “The lavish style deemed necessary for
the papal court [. . .] cost enormous sums, which were raised by demanding heavy taxes
from the faithful without regard for their circumstances.”25 In contrast to the way
religion worked to unify Germanic peoples in the early Middle Ages, the Renaissance
was marked by shared sense of growing disgust with the church.

One of the products of this dissatisfaction united Germanic peoples in a manner
unprecedented in signiﬁcance. The unrest of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance
proved fertile ground for the reforms of Martin Luther, a monk from Wittenberg who
challenged the “clerical monopoly on meditation between God and humankind.”20
leading to the Protestant Reformation. One of Luther’s greatest contributions was a
German translation of the Bible, which he completed in the 1520s. Fulbrook writes, “The
importance of this [. . .] exercise can hardly be overstated [. . .] his translation served to
standardize and regularize written German, with New High German coming to dominate

"2

regional differences in dialect. 7 Thus it was not until well into the sixteenth century
that one language began to take precedence over others. Luther’s translation was one
more step towards unifying the people of “Germany.”

While Luther was a unifying force with his literary and linguistic contributions,

the Protestant Reformation was also religiously divisive. Since there was no single,

 

24 Wende, 32.
25 Schulze, 43.
2" Ibid., 52.

27 Fulbrook, 38.

10

powerful monarch to select a state religion, each ruler dealt with the religious question
individually. This led to conﬂicts like the wars of religion in the 17th century, also known
as the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). During the war years, other countries participated
in the ﬁghting, but the Gemian lands were the real battle-zone of the conﬂict.
Consequently, the Thirty Years’ War was devastating to the small states involved. The
end of the war with the Peace of Westphalia marked a new era of international
agreement. One of the essentials of the Peace of Westphalia was recognition of different
religions; Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists were afforded the same rights.28 This was
signiﬁcant because it cemented into place the religious division of the country. Rulers
had the right to choose religion and their subjects had the right to emigrate to another
territory if they preferred another religion. Wende writes that “the near-sovereignty of
the princes was reafﬁrmed [. . .] at the expense of the power of the Emperor.”20 From the
nationalist point of view, the Peace of Westphalia was a great setback because it allowed
the land to remain divided.

In contrast to the power gained by small territorial rulers in the German lands, the
seventeenth century concept of absolutism led to the increased growth of the monarchies
in France and England. Fulbrook writes that it was “the German pattern of ‘small
principalities’ or Kleinstaaterei which has led some observers to see Germany as a petty,
small-scale provincial backwater compared to the increasingly powerful western

European states.”30 While the lavish court of Louis XIV established a very “French”

 

28 Wende, 48.
2" Ibid., 49.
30 Fulbrook, 70.

ll

image in Paris, there was no comparable cultural center or national image cultivated in
the German lands. ’

The German lands remained divided well into the nineteenth century, though
political events produced varying degrees of uniﬁcation. A key unifying force came in
1792 when the French army under Napoleon I invaded Gemran lands. One result of
French occupation was political and geographical reorganization. According to
Fulbrook, “around 350 free Imperial knights and counts lost their independence and
‘unmediated’ status below the Emperor [. . .] Around 112 political units were
abolished.”3 ’ In 1813, the German lands struck back at the French, with a goal of
liberation in mind. A common goal united German peoples; Wende writes that “a surge
of nationalist rhetoric veiled the differences between various groups with various
interests; they were united by their common resistance against French oppression.”32
However, after the French were defeated, the nationalist current was subdued by
negotiations at the Congress of Vienna. Instead of maintaining a single uniﬁed body, the
congress agreed to a loose confederation of the “sovereign princes and free cities of
Gemrany” in which “the independence and indefeasibility of the separate German states”
was the highest priority}3 With the Congress of Vienna, the division of the German
lands was permitted to continue.

The polycentricism of the German lands may be viewed by some as a double-
edged sword for culture in Germany. One the one hand, it was beneﬁcial, as different

styles were permitted to coexist and each locale maintained a distinctive character. This

pluralistic background made Germany especially receptive to the Romantic cult of the

 

3' Ibid., 98.
33 Wende, 82.
3" lbid., 85.

12

individual. On the other hand, there was no court large enough to support an
establishment equivalent to that of the French. This meant that opera was more likely to
be a public commodity than a courtly product in Gemian cities and towns. For example,
musicologist Thomas Bauman writes:

Three concepts dominated theatrical enterprise in North Germany -

patronage, Prinzipalschaft, and the national theater. They are by no means

mutually exclusive. The system of pure court patronage, for example, is

relatively rare for German opera [. . .] More often one ﬁnds a court

extending its protection or a “privilege” granting exclusive rights to

perform within its lands to a private entrepreneur, or Prinzipal.34
While French opera could be produced based on theoretical ideals, most German operas
were produced for proﬁt. Instead of writing works to conform to predetermined ideals,
German composers and librettists tried to write works that would be economically viable
and left Gemran theorists to defend their successes. Historian Gloria Flaherty describes
this difference as “rule by precedent” rather than “rule by code.”35 French writers
criticized Gennan composers, librettists, and producers for pandering to the masses.
which, they felt, led to the creation of inferior art-forms.

While some may view this situation as damaging, the polycentrism of the German
lands was advantageous. By creating art for the masses, Gemran public opera houses
yielded works that better represented the whole of Germany. Opera was well within the
reach of bourgeois audiences through public opera houses. Furthermore, the accessibility
of opera and other arts, led to widespread fascination with, and participation in, music

among the non-academic, non-aristocratic classes. Concerning the subject of musical

involvement in the middle and lower classes, musicologist Celia Applegate writes:

 

34 Thomas Bauman. North German Opera in the Age of Goethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),
1985. 4.
35 Flaherty. 37-65.

13

Just between 1800 and 1843, over 120 musical societies were founded in
the predominantly German-speaking lands. Musical performance, a major
activity of these societies [. . .] took place on countless domestic occasions
and numerous public ones. Extensive publication of new and old musical
works facilitated performance, and perfomrance in turn engendered more
publication, in the form of musical journals and regular musical columns
[. . .] Required musical instruction in the primary and secondary schools
and an increasing number of chairs of Musikwissenschaft in the
universities insured the continuation and deepening of this musical
culture.” ’

The access to art music across class lines created cultural nationalism where no political

nationalism yet existed.

The phenomenon of German cultural nationalism is an example of Smith’s

concept of “cultural-community.” In the absence of political, religious, and geographic

unity, Germans were able to create a sense of community based on artistic preferences.

The German lands’ unique historical circumstances and the commercially-based theater it

produced both necessitated and encouraged participation from a diverse public. The

contributions of a variety of people to German opera make it a genre in which the

community is unquestionably involved. “C ultural-community” gave Gemrans legitimacy

as a group and makes possible our discussion of “Gennan-ness” in early 19’h century

“German” opera.

 

3“ Celia Applegate, “What Is German Music? Reﬂections on the Role of Art in the Creation of the
Nation,” German Studies Review 15 (1992): 30.

14'

CHAPTER TWO

INVENTING AN EXPRESSIONIST “GERMAN-NESS”

In the previous chapter, I suggested that long before the German lands
experienced political or religious community, people in the German lands created a
“culture-community” based on artistic preferences. One may wonder how such a divided
land could share any common traits, including artistic preference. Common values
regarding art did not materialize independently. A nationalistic, or speciﬁcally
“German,” view of art emerged gradually, as a product of artistic debate. This “German”
view favored works that centered on the imagination, distortion, and emotions,
characteristics that are also highlighted in expressionist representation.

Critical theorists were involved in negotiating artistic preferences on behalf of
audiences in the German lands. Through this negotiation of preference, German critical
theorists created nationalism in the cultural sphere. Author Anne McClintock explains
the invention of nationalism by writing that, “Nations are elaborate social practices
enacted through time [. . .] Nationalism both invents and perfomrs social difference.”37
German nationalism was created by the writings of theorists who defended the
differences in German art that set it apart from the art of other countries. The defense of
German opera and the concurrent creation of cultural identity materialized from a diverse
collection of opinions into an increasingly focused debate. This discussion claimed

certain operatic elements, including the emphasis on imagination, distortion, and

 

37 Anne McClintock, “‘No Longer in a Future Heaven’: Women and Nationalism in South Africa,”
Transition 51 (1991): 104.

15

emotion, as “German.” Thus, the wn'tings of theorists in the Gemran lands provided the
theoretical basis that allowed expressionism to pemreate German opera.

The development of expressionism in Gemran opera was also facilitated by the
European-wide romantic movement of the nineteenth century. Karin Friedrich identiﬁes
the themes of European romanticism as follows: “The search for the inﬁnite [. . .],
Romantic love, pantheism and the mysticism of natural philosophy with an ever more
immanent God, the revival of medieval culture, the rediscovery of folklore [. . .], the

”3” In this light, romanticism

enchantment with deep, dark forests and sunny landscapes.
is in many ways similar to expressionism. Expressionism may be understood as a subset,
or unique “version,” of romanticism. However, the negative outcomes associated with
contrasting inner and outer realities differentiate expressionism from the themes of
redemption found in most romantic works. This differentiation between “expressionist
romanticism” and a more general romanticism resulted in part from the theories of
German writers, which matured alongside the development of opera.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, opera had emerged as a brand new
genre. Theater in the German lands had long incorporated music in drama. Both
Protestant and Jesuit leaders encouraged the use of music in drama and school plays for

pedagogical purposes. For example, a popular Protestant play, Der verlorene Sohn,

written by Burkard Waldis in 1527, used hymns in between the acts to reinforce the

 

38 Karin Friedrich, “Cultural and Intellectual Trends,” in Nineteenth Century Gerrnariv: Politics. C ulture,
and Society I 780-]9/8. ed. John Breuilly (London: Arnold, 2001), 105-106.

16

message.30 In the secular sphere, English traveling troupes became popular in the
German lands in the 15805. Many of these plays included musical interludes.40

However, despite these northern forerunners, the ﬁrst fully-sung operas were born
out of experimentation at the Florentine court, where composers J acopo Peri and Giulio
Caccini attempted to reinvent the combination of drama and song they believed the
Ancient Greeks practiced?l These operas were closely tied to the political strength of the
Medici court. Musicologist Tim Carter writes that the ﬁrst operas were designed to
“articulate power and sovereignty.”42 Elsewhere in Italy, courts sponsored operas to
entertain and showcase wealth and might. In Paris, Louis XIV commissioned Jean-
Baptiste Lully to create a speciﬁcally French opera that would combine dancing into the
mix of drama and music.43

As we saw in the ﬁrst chapter, Germany did not have any courts comparable in
size or wealth to these foreign models. Musicologist Thomas Bauman describes the
condition in the German lands:

The diffuseness of German culture — the so-called Kleinstaaterei —

prevented the rise of one [or a few urban centers with competing theaters

demanding new works each season [. . .] nothing like the stagiorre system

in Italy can be said to have existed anywhere in Germany.“

Moreover, the ambition to create a strictly “Gemran” opera was not particularly evident

at the beginning of the seventeenth century. On the contrary, German princes chose to

 

30 John Warrack. German Opera: F rorn the Beginnings to Wagner (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 5.

4" Ibid., 12.

4' Tim Carter, “The Seventeenth Century,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, ed. Roger Parker
(Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1994), 11.

‘2 lbid., 16.

‘3 lbid., 33.

44 Thomas Bauman, North German Opera in the Age ofGoethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1985), 7.

l7

import Italian operas, in the form of hiring Italian professional touring troupes or Italian
music directors. For example, Gloria Flaherty writes that when opera was introduced to
German lands, “The ﬁrst opera was performed in Salzburg in 1618 by the predominantly
Italian group of musicians and singers assembled by Archbishop Marx Sittich von
Hohenems.’”’5 Martin Opitz, a seventeenth century German critic, appealed to German
artists to develop a national style that would, “bring their country up to the artistic level
of other polite nations.’”’(’ His request carries the implication that art of the German lands
was somehow “beneath” that of its neighbors. Based on their preference for imports, it is
likely that German rulers shared this attitude.

This practice of importing musicians, conductors, and operas continued well into
the nineteenth century, which supports the notion that cultural nationalism is developed
gradually. over decades and even centuries. Of the large courts that did sponsor German
theatres (such as the courts at Silesia. Gotha, and Vienna), they did so relatively late (the
earliest was in Gotha in 1775)’7 and none of these courts were able to sustain their
German theatres for any signiﬁcant length. Musicologist John Tyrrell writes that, due to
Italian inﬂuence, “Even an area as culturally vigorous as Germany was unable to sustain

”48

a continuous tradition of vernacular opera until the early nineteenth century. As far as

the German courts were concerned, Italian opera dominated for at least two centuries.

 

4” Gloria Flaherty, Opera in the Development of German Critical Thought (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1978), 10.

“1151a, 11.

47 Bauman, 4.

48 John Tyrrell, “Russian, Czech. Polish, and Hungarian Opera to 1900.” in The Oxford Illustrated History
of Opera, ed. Roger Parker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 237.

18

The courts were not the only places to see an opera, though. Traveling troupes
were popular in the seventeenth century, but most troupes were short-lived. Bauman
describes their situation as follows:

In many smaller towns such troupes might well be refused permission to

perform on the grounds that they were drawing local money away from

the town; often the clergy took an active role in condemning the character

and morals of itinerant actors. Traveling left little time for preparing new

works, and in general it constituted such a hand-to-mouth existence that it

. . . 4t)

rs exceptronal to ﬁnd the better performers in such troupes.

German troupes also had to compete with foreign troupes. According to Bauman,
“Pressure from wandering companies of French and Italian operatists encouraged
German troupes to adopt a signiﬁcant number of foreign musical works, limiting the
demand for domestic production.”50 While foreign works were undoubtedly popular,
they did have to undergo German alterations to earn their popularity. In a tradition that
began with the English troupes in the sixteenth centuries, a Gemian narrator gave
explanations for what was going on in the drama.5| However, any popularity touring
troupes gained in the early seventeenth century was severely compromised by the
beginning of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618. The havoc, devastation, and disease caused
by the war contributed to the individual courts’ and towns’ inability to support opera or
even touring troupes at any length.

After the Thirty Years’ War, the northern city of Hamburg was the only major
city in the German lands left relatively unscathed. It was in Hamburg, a center of

international trade, that the Hamburg Opera, a public opera house, was established in

1678. The Hamburg Opera was signiﬁcant for many reasons. Besides being the ﬁrst

 

49 Bauman, 5.
501bid., 7.
5’ Warrack, 14.

I9

public opera house outside Italy, it stayed in business for a relatively long period of time
(61 years).52 Furthermore, Hamburg existed without court support or control, as
Hamburg was a free imperial city. ruled by a coalition oftwenty men, and was a member
of the alliance of trading cities known as the Hanseatic League. The ﬁrst operas
produced in Hamburg were biblical stories, chosen to placate religious authorities who
had disapproved ofthe creation ofa public opera.53 Later works often included elements
drawn from Italian, French, and English opera. Musicologist David Schulenberg writes
that the type of opera in Hamburg, “included French overtures and dance scenes, but the
texts of most works were either all Italian or a mixture of Italian for the arias and German
for the recitatives.”54 While no speciﬁcally “German” style existed yet, Warrack argues
that “Certainly there is a new amalgam of styles [...] and it could be said that this was in
itselfa characteristic of Gemran opera in times when it was still at an early stage oftrying
to form a national identity.”55 Thus, the enterprise at Hamburg was of considerable
importance to the development of cultural nationalism. Hamburg’s inclusion of elements
drawn from a variety of sources was an economically successful precedent, one that
opera producers elsewhere tried to emulate.

Hamburg. as well as other, smaller venues for opera in the German lands in the
seventeenth century and eighteenth centuries, affected the ways German opera developed
and contributed to its differentiation from French and Italian models. While Italian opera
was used as a foundation, Italian opera in the German lands was not an exact replica of

Italian opera in Italy. Recitatives were often translated into German so that audiences

 

52 Buelow, George J, “Opera in Hamburg 300 Years Ago,” The Musical Times 1 19, no. 1619 (1978): 26.
53 Warrack, 37.

54 David Schulenberg. Music of the Baroque (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 166.

55 Warrack, 39.

20

who didn’t speak Italian could follow the story.56 According to Warrack, German
director Josef Anton Stranitzky followed a common practice when he “set about adapting
Italian librettos to his own purposes, cutting down the number of arias, and adding comic
scenes for himself as Hanswurst [a popular German comedic ﬁgure]?57 Since many
theaters relied on public support, such adjustments were deemed necessary, as they
helped locals enjoy foreign works.

The modiﬁcations made by German opera companies did not go unnoticed by
critics. The Operas produced by theaters in the German lands were most heavily
criticized by the French. The critic with the most enduring effect was Charles de
Marguetel de Saint-Denis, Seigneur de Saint Evremond (1610-1703). Saint Evremond
criticized opera in general as a “magniﬁcent folly” and German opera in particular as a
style that consistently broke important aesthetic rules.58 He believed there was no place
for singing in theater, because he felt it was irrational. Concerning “unnaturalness” in
German opera, Saint Evremond wrote:

There is another Thing in Operas so contrary to Nature, that I cannot be

reconciled to it: and that is the singing of the whole Piece. from beginning

to end [. . .] Is it to be imagin’d that a Master calls his Servant, or sends

him on an Errand, singing; that one Friend imparts a Secret to another,

singing: That Men deliberate in Council singing; That Orders in time of

Battle are given, singing; and That Men are melodiously kill’d with Sword

and Darts. This is the downright way to lose the Life of Representation,

which without doubt is preferable to that of Harmony.”

Saint Evremond was also opposed to, what he called, “a confused Assembly of Gods,

Shepherds, Heroes, Enchanters, Apparitions, Furies, and Devils” because of their sheer

 

50 Schulenberg, 166.
57 Warrack, 126.

58 Flaherty. 38.

5" Qtd. in Flaherty. 39.

21

outlandishness."U While Saint Evremond’s attacks were aimed at opera in general. many
of his contemporaries (for example, Jean de la Bruyere, Francois de Callieres, Nicolas
Boileau—Despre’aux, and Jacques Bénigne Bossuet) chose to direct their criticisms more
speciﬁcally at opera in the German lands. For example, Flaherty writes that Christian
Wemicke (a later contemporary), “singled out the Hamburg opera as the most offensive
example of what it [German poetic heritage] had brought forth?"1

A similarly critical point of view was adopted by the German critic Johann
Christoph Gottsched (1700-1766). Gottsched’s criticisms were aimed at improving opera
in Germany; he wanted German art to be on par with that of France. Gottsched believed
that the music in Baroque Italianate opera was used inappropriately. For example, when
complaining about characters’ excessive demonstrations of virtuosity, Gottsched wrote,
“When they take their own lives in despair, they delay the heroic deed until they have
completed their trills.”(’2 Gottsched believed the use of music should not detract from
realism in portraying an event. Regarding Gottsched’s beliefs, Warrack writes:

True art, Gottsched concluded, must be governed by intellect and moral

purpose, and must not result from a mysterious moment of irrational

inspiration; and it was this that led him towards the French canons of

tragedy, upholding the unities on the grounds that all other options were

too ‘magical’ in their claim on the audience."3

Regarding the purpose of the arts, Gottsched was a ﬁrm believer in moral education.

Wilkinson writes that Gottsched wanted the theater to be used as a “link between the

 

6" Ibid., 40.

6' Ibid., 31.

62 Qtd. in Warrack, 74
63 Warrack, 74.

22

academic and practical world?“ Thus, in Gottsched’s view, the theater should serve the
aims ofthe academics.

Saint Evremond and Gottsched’s criticisms were monumental because they
instigated counter arguments from proponents of German opera. Instead of seeking to
implement their critics’ suggestions, German writers responded by defending the
“unnaturalness” and “irrationality” of German works and claiming that the rules of the
French neoclassical code (especially the unities of time and place) do not need to apply to
every work. The proponents of German opera, however, did not have a uniﬁed strategy
for dealing with criticism. Warrack writes that it was “characteristic that these [counter
criticisms] should take the form not of a united front defending a particular case, since it
was the idea of an imposed orthodoxy that was being resisted, but a series of heterodox

"()5

theses. A collective aesthetic identity did not yet exist. It was the combination of
these writings that provided a foundation for creating a uniﬁed cultural identity.

Christian Heinrich Postel (1658-1705), a librettist who worked for the Hamburg
opera, was one of the ﬁrst vocal defenders of the Hamburg enterprise. Postel rejected the
idea of faithful representation of reality or historical record. He believed the librettist
could invent parts of the story to enhance the drama. Postel, who was quite famous with
Hamburg audiences, likely realized the economic necessity of embellishing details, in
order to create works the public would be interested in seeing more than once. Regarding

Postel’s consideration of audience, F laherty writes:

Postel’s deference to the audience as the supreme arbiter in operatic
matters indicates not only his Showmanship but also his acceptance of the

 

(’4 Elizabeth M. Wilkinson, Johann Elias Schlegel: A German Pioneer in Aesthetics (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaﬁ, 1973), 9.

65 Warrack, 50.

23

Horatian dictum about appealing to the entire range of spectators by
making as many concessions as artistically feasible?”

In appealing to the audience, Postel used mythological ﬁgures to represent “the

”"7 With this in mind, he felt that he could

underlying secrets of nature they represented.
relate the stories of antiquity to modern day sensibilities. Postel inﬂuenced
contemporaries and younger generations by defending ﬂexibility in the creation of
librettos.

Barthold Feind (1678-1721) codiﬁed the views of the Hamburg librettists and
encouraged future writers to expand on his rejection of French values. He believed opera
should be focused on communication between characters and the audience, instead of
upholding abstract ideals. Feind was able to support his views with classical references,
which gave his argument credibility?” Feind criticized other critics, because he felt their
complaints stiﬂed the creativity of young German writers.

Like Postel, Feind was convinced that opera should be entertaining, not
particularly didactic or academic. With entertainment in mind, Feind felt that librettists
should exploit stage possibilities ~of surprise and suspense. He thought librettists should
come up with new stories, instead of always using ancient models. With regard to rules,
Feind wrote “All rules are not also simultaneously laws” — the librettist was free to pick
and choose rules to follow. F eind was not generally opposed to rules, but he felt that

entertainment value should take precedence over following rules. Concerning Feind’s

attitude towards rules, F laherty writes, “as long as they did not hamper an opera’s

 

()0 Flaherty, 34.
“7 Ibid., 35.
68 Warrack, 31.

24

99 9 - . . , .
" Srmrlar to Postel, Femd s vrews

successful reception, he found no quarrel with them.
reﬂected the public nature of the opera company he supported.

Christian Friedrich Weichmann (1698-1770) was one of the ﬁrst decidedly
patriotic supporters of German opera. He planned and edited a periodical called Der
Patriot from 1724 to 1726. In it, Weichmann claimed German audiences had different
aesthetic preferences than other audiences, preferences that necessitated a different style
of opera. Weichmann also believed that opera created another type of reality, and that
singing and special effects were necessary to make spectacular events seem possible. In
a characteristically German concern for the economics of opera, Weichmann also
supported German opera because it created jobs and attracted tourism.70

Weichmann’s concept of opera as “another reality” ﬁt with the general trend of
the supporters of German opera. which found departure from reality as a common theme.
Many writers felt that opera had its own logic and that improbability only resulted from
poor performance quality. Ludwig Friedrich Hudemann (1703-1770) and other
supporters condemned critics for failing to create appropriate criteria for evaluating a
brand new genre.7| The eschewing of the rules that supporters encouraged led to
increasing individuality in German operatic compositions.

One of the most inﬂuential supporters of German opera, Johann Elias Schlegel
(1719-1749), helped to eradicate the reliance of artistic technique on exact imitation.

Like the writings of his contemporaries, Schlegel’s early writings are primarily concerned

with the practical aspects of opera and theater, which again indicates the inﬂuence of the

 

69 Flaherty, 60.
7" Ibid.. 78-81.
7' Ibid., 110.

25

public (not courtly) nature of opera in the German lands. Schlegel’s later writings
focused more on dramatic theory, but he never lost his concern for audience preference.
Schlegel argued that in art, imitation must be ﬂexible. Regarding Schlegel’s
theory of imitation, Wilkinson writes, “No theory which sees art as the imitation of
reality can ever dispense with a purpose beyond that of merely producing an imitation,
and Schlegel makes the giving of pleasure an integral part of his deﬁnition.”72 Schlegel
strengthened his argument by considering imitation in other artistic media. In other
media, Schlegel argued, imitation is not exact, and no one is offended by it. As an
example of this theory, Wilkinson writes, “In the case of a head in stone, imitation takes
place only in respect of shape; colour, the relative hardness and softness of the different
parts of the face, are ignored.”73 Schlegel believed that in theater, one should be able to
achieve this kind of similarity to reality without being criticized for inexact imitation.
According to Schlegel, replicas were not art; art involved creating similarity
between the medium and an individual’s view of reality. In the aforementioned example
of the stone head, the artist removed all aspects of reality except for shape. Schlegel
believed that a dramatist could similarly remove all aspects of reality except for
character. These other aspects could then be distorted to exaggerate the character of a
ﬁgure on stage. Wilkinson termed this part of Schlegel’s dramatic theory “his anxiety to

defend dramatic exaggeration of character.”74

In this aim to exaggerate character,
Schlegel never supported abstraction. Imitation of reality was not abolished; instead new

avenues for imitating reality were opened by Schlegel.

 

72 Wilkinson, 53.
’3 1131a,, 54.
7" Ibid., 61.

26

Johann Adam Hiller (1728-1804), was a critic who continued to move theoretical

emphasis away from exact replication and towards individual expression. Hiller believed

;

that feeling, not rules, should govern both art and art criticism? He felt that German art
was suffering from lack of patriotism, not because it didn’t follow artistic rules. Hiller’s

concern for aesthetic nationalism led him to found an academy for German musicians,

7 (1

where critical discussion was encouraged.

During the 18th century, one man, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), acted

”77

as a “clearinghouse for critical ideas, reﬂecting on and organizing the critical theory of

centuries. From his position as resident critic in Hamburg, Lessing was able to inﬂuence
generations of composers and librettists. Lessing’s role at Hamburg became the model
for the fomration of a new theatrical occupation, the dramaturge. Peter Hoyng writes the
following about Lessing’s contribution to the profession:

The work of a dramaturge is speciﬁc to the German stage tradition and can

be explained by Lessing’s overall vision of what he intended for the

Deutsche Nationaltheater in Hamburg: to create a stage as a public forum

that combines critical entertainment and entertaining enlightenment at the

same time. [. . .] The theater should serve as a public sphere in which

matters of politics and morality should be negotiated by artistic means. In

other words, it is this very combination of theoretical underpinnings and

theatrical practice that makes Lessing a key ﬁgure in German theater

history.78 -
Lessing’s theories were focused on the art of the individual. In rejection of French

neoclassical code, Lessing stated that a real genius makes his own rules. He also

considered emotions and feelings to be of utmost importance in drama. Lessing wrote,

 

75 Flaherty, 180.
761bid., 184.
77 lbid., 216.

78 Peter deng, “Lessing’s Drama Theory: Discursive Writings on Drama, Performance, and Theater,” in
A Companion to the Works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, ed. Barbara Fischer and Thomas C. Fox
(Rochester: Camden House, 2005), 214.

27

“The expression of the passions, upon which everything depends, is still uniquely the
work of the genius.”70 Lessing’s identiﬁcation of the “genius” in drama formed the basis
of critical thought against which theatrical works of 18’h century Hamburg were judged.
Lessing’s codiﬁcation of Gemran critical theory represents an increasing
recognition of an emerging cultural community, a cultural community that theorists
outside the realm of the arts also embraced. Justus Moser (1720-1794), a German
political essayist, used ideas of the aforementioned theorists to ascertain the nature of the
“German culture.” This very undertaking represents the degree to which the creation of
cultural community affected nationalism in general. Moser believed that imagination was
the most distinguishing feature of humans and that this created “man’s innate inclination
toward the unusual, the abnomral, the strange, and the dreamlike.”80 He argued that
opera was the best symbol of artistic expression because opera, with its abstract music
and theatrical exaggeration, could best cater to the imagination of audience members.
Moser was not the only person to advocate the use of appeals to imagination. In
his defense of opera as a “little art world,” Johann Mattheson argued that artistic reality
should differ from actual reality and use imaginative elements to do so.8| Wilhelm
Adolph Paulli believed opera must concentrate on imagination above all else, and
attributed magical powers to opera, writing that “like a queen in proud majesty, it [opera]
raises itself from the common decoration of the stage and, endowed with the power of
converting souls, forces even its detractors to listen approvingly.”82 Johann Wilhelm

Hertel’s defense of rule-breaking in German opera was based on opera’s use of

 

79 Qtd. in Flaherty, 226.
80 F laherty, 239.

8' lbid., 88.

82 Qtd. in Flaherty, 177.

28

imagination: “They are to be tolerated in opera more than in spoken tragedies, because
music engages the soul so strongly that the imagination lets itself be deceived more

”8" With the writings of these critics and others, suspension of disbelief became a

readily.
major tenet in the critical theory of German opera.

In addition to focusing on imagination, German critical theory also advocated
exaggeration. Historian Karin Friedrich described a tendency in the German lands’
“national and cultural character towards exaggeration, irreality and unpolitical
abstraction?“ Moser supported this notion when he “concentrated on the grotesque [. . .]
[he] explained it as an intentional deviation from all the norms of beauty, real or ideal.”85
This exaggeration of elements seems to be a blatant refusal to follow the French
neoclassical prescription for minresis.

One ﬁnal aspect of German critical theory was a concentration on emotions.
Historian Gordon Craig called this characteristic, “that peculiarly German sense of
inwardness and remoteness from reality?“ Composers such as Christoph Martin
Wieland considered emotion the most important elenrent. Wieland wrote that “mood,
feeling, and sentiment were foremost considerations in his ranking of potential subject

”87 Instead of form or any other factor, the emotional potential of a subject

matter.
became of primary interest.

Thus the cultural community of the German lands came to support works that

focused on the imagination, distortion, and emotions. These traits were key differences

 

8" Ibid., 187.

8" Karin Friedrich, 105.
8’ Flaherty, 23o.

8" Qtd. in Friedrich. 105.
87 Flaherty, 264.

29

between opera of the German lands and that of other countries. One might argue that
German theorists did not create the differences between German and Italian or French art.
There is some merit to this argument, as the development of the genre was inﬂuenced
heavily by political organization. However, German theorists embraced these differences
and, instead of calling for imitations of foreign styles, encouraged the creation of a
domestic style. German critical theory developed alongside the development of opera,
from heterogeneous rebuttals of foreign criticism to more homogeneous principles of a
cultural nationalism. This critical theory gave German opera a unique ﬂavor, one with an
expressionist point of view. The inﬂuence of the theorists cannot be overlooked in an

examination of expressionism in German opera.

30

CHAPTER THREE

CASE STUDIES

As opera developed as a genre, certain elements in the German lands were
cultivated that made German opera unique compared to French, Italian, or English opera.
In the previous chapter, I discussed how the characteristics that set German opera apart
created heated debate between critics. This debate eventually led to critical defense of an
organized German aesthetic. In this chapter, I will examine those elements that set
German opera apart from French, Italian, and English models. I will focus on three
related elements, the baritone as protagonist, the central role of the conﬂict between
supernatural and natural worlds, and the use of leitmotivic composition. The
expressionistic nature of these elements, so often identiﬁed with opera speciﬁcally from
the German lands, shows the nature of expressionism as an approach to artistic
representation. The main hallmark of this expressionism is an attempt to display two
realities simultaneously. This type of expressionism provides operas from the German
lands with a unique “German” identity.

To illustrate expressionism in early 19th century opera, I have chosen to focus on
the works of ﬁve prominent composers of the time: Ernest Theodore Amadeus
Hoffmann (1776—1822), Heinrich Marschner (1795-1861), Louis Spohr (1784-1859), and
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826). I chose these composers because they were
relatively well-known and commercially successful in the early 19'h century.
Furthermore, these composers’ successes ensured inﬂuence on contemporary and future

trends. While each of the composers alone could be the focus of a paper, I decided to

31

study several composers, as Opposed to one or two, to show expressionism as a general
trend. With this same goal in mind, I have organized the following sections according to

operatic element, rather than by composer or work.
The Baritone Protagonist

A distinguishing feature in early 19th century German opera is the dramatic
baritone as a lead voice type. Bemd defert writes that “The most typical character-type
of the times, particularly in the 18308, was the character baritone.”88 In contrast to
common French and Italian practice, composers from the German lands popularized the
baritone range for lead roles. The choice of the baritone as a serious lead voice type had
signiﬁcant implications for dramatic roles. The baritone lead was midway between the
evil bass and heroic tenor; he could portray a character that is neither bad nor good, but a
conﬂicted individual. This duality of character supported an expressionist method of
representation.

Several popular operas of the early 191h century included dramatic baritone leads.
For example, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Undine (1813-14; revised, 1816) featured a baritone as
Huldbrand of Ringstetten, the mortal whom Undine loves. Louis Spohr and Heinrich
Marschner also contributed to this trend. Spohr’s Faust (1813; revised, 1852) uses a
baritone for the title role and his Jessonda (1822-23) has a baritone lead in Tristan,

J essonda’s lover. Similarly, Marschner’s Der Vampyr (1827-28) features a baritone as

Lord Ruthven, the vampire. In Marschner’s Hans Heiling (1831-32), the title role is also

 

88 Bemd defert, Stimmtypen und Rollencharaktere in der deutschen Oper von [815-1848 (Wiesbaden:
Breitkopf und Hartel, 1977), 74. “Die typischste Zeitﬁgur besonders seit den 30er Jahren des 19. Jh. lst der
Charakterbariton?

32

sung by a baritone. The baritone lead was clearly a popular choice for composers in the
Gemran lands between 1813 and 1832.

Before the emergence of the dramatic baritone lead, high voices dominated
serious operatic lead roles. In early Italian and French operas, male leads were sung by
tenors, as is evidenced by the male leads of Claudio Monteverdi and Jean-Baptiste Lully.
Castrati, or surgically-altered male sopranos, became commonplace in Italian opera in the
early seventeenth century?) Castrati and counter-tenor falsettists sang both male and
female lead roles in Italian opera throughout the seventeenth century and into the
eighteenth. Castrati did not dominate Opera in England, France, or the German lands, but
leads were still in the higher ranges of counter-tenors and tenors. Low-range lead voice
roles were not unheard Of before the 19th century, but these consisted of the serious bass
lead and the comic buffo baritone secondary. Therefore, the appearance of a dramatic
baritone lead was a novel addition to the standard set Of voice types.

Within the standard voice types. vocal range Often implied speciﬁc character
types in opera of the 17”’-19’h centuries. K. Mitchells writes that the ability to hear
difference in pitch levels between vocal ranges, “reaches beyond a merely auditory realm
in so far as we ﬁnd in them expressive qualities which we can also experience through
other senses, and which connote characteristics of the external world and of the inner
world of the human psyche.”0 Mitchells identiﬁes several characteristics that one may
hear in accordance with particular male vocal ranges. High voices may be used to

. 9 . . . .
represent youth and low vorces for old age. I Hrgh vorces can express emotronal passron

 

89 Matthew Boyden, The Rough Guide to Opera (London: Rough Guides. 2002). 15.

90 K. Mitchells, “Operatic Characters and Voice Type,” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 97
(1970-1971): 47.

(

’ ' Ibid., 49.

33

and a heroic character.”2 The solenrnity associated with the bass voice Often implies
wisdom, seriousness,’and power."3 Mitchell also argues that vocal range can allude to
moral qualities, writing:

A good character is usually adorned by the brightness Of a high voice whilst an

evil character is afﬂicted with the darkness Ofa low voice [. . .] The equation

between hi gh-mindedness and high voice on the one hand, and between low-

mindedness and low voice on the other, is connected with our natural inclination

to interpret the Opposition between high and low in terms of value. This

symbolism ﬁnds its fullest expression in the images relating to Heaven and Hell.04
Mitchell cites numerous examples in operas composed between 1600 and 1800 that
support these ﬁndings.

The association of vocal range to character type is a signiﬁcant consideration in
the case ofthe Gemran dramatic baritone. In light of prevailing notions of voice and
character type, the 19’h century baritone could be viewed as neither the passionate hero
nor a powerful, wise king. Just as the range of the baritone is located sonically between
the higher tenor and the lower bass, the character Of the baritone could be viewed as
somewhere between good and evil. The baritone range provided a unique Opportunity for
composers to associate the baritone lead with a new type of character.

Heinrich Marschner’s title character from Hans Heiling (1831-32) is a notable
example of the baritone as a protagonist. In the opera, with a libretto by Philipp Edward
Devrient, Hans Heiling is the Prince of the Earth Spirits, and the child of an immortal
mother and mortal father. After falling in love with Anna, a mortal woman, Heiling

leaves his underground realm and his magical powers to become an ordinary man on

Earth. Through a series of disappointments, Anna rejects Heiling and instead falls in love

 

’2 lbid., 50, 52.
’3 Ibid., 51.
°" lbid., 52.

34

with Konrad, a mortal man. Heiling tries unsuccessfully to kill Konrad and in the end,
Heiling nrust retum’to his underground land broken-hearted.

Thus, the character of Heiling is neither wholly bad nor wholly good. The
audience can appreciate the heroic quality Of Heiling’s sacriﬁce Of power in the
underworld in exchange for a chance at love in the above-ground world. The audience
may feel sympathy for Heiling in the face Of Anna’s insensitivity in Act I. They may also
take pity on Heiling because he has to deal with the overbearing inﬂuence of is mother,
the Queen of the Earth Spirits. In contrast, Heiling’s brooding jealousy in Act I creates a
negative connotation for his character. Furthermore, Heiling’s attempt on Konrad’s life
in Act 11 displays Heiling’s potential for evil. Based on the Devrient’s libretto alone, it is
difﬁcult to compartmentalize Heiling as a hero or a villain. Even Heiling’s status as the
product of a mortal and immortal union suggests a dualism that cannot be reconciled by
remaining in the underworld.

Marschner’s score supports the dual nature of Heiling’s character. Heiling’s aria
“An jenem Tag,” from Act 1, seems to characterize Heiling as a heroic character. The
text is full of Heiling’s declarations of love for Anna. Heiling sings, “I only live in you!
I love you without obstruction, I love you with a thousand pains, with the agonies of hell
I love you!”95 Heiling’s willingness to undergo hardship for Anna shows his love, his
heroic spirit, and his pure aims. The higher tessitura of the 8010 may suggest a positive
outlook. Mitchells writes that when the male lead, “sings a melody that rises toward, or

stays nearer, the upper end of his vocal compass, this may depict a passing joy

 

95 Devrient, Eduard and Heinrich Marschner, Hans Heiling (Leipzig: Friedrich Hofmeister, l8--), 57-58.
“In dir nur lebe ich! Ich liebe dich so ohne Schranken, ich liebe dich so ohne Schranken, ich liebe dich mit
tausend Schmerzen, mit HOllenqualen lieb’ ich dich!”

35

9,00 The da capo form of the aria, the higher range

engendered by a happy turn of events.
of the solo, and the E’major key recall Italian-style heroic tenor arias. Musicologist
Kevin Burke supports this notion, writing that “the aria is closer to the Italian tradition
with its lyrical line, regular phrasing, and melismatic ﬁguration and thus assures the
audience of Heiling’s role as the protagonist?”7 Other illuminating features of the score
are the prevalent ascending ﬁgures that occur throughout the aria, which suggests hi gh-
mindedness of character. Besides the frequent ascending arpeggios in the orchestral
accompaniment, Heiling’s melodic ﬁgures are characterized by opening leaps (of a fourth
in the A sections, and a third in the B section). See Figure 1 below for an example of the

ascending orchestral ﬁgure and the Opening leap in the melody.

Figure l — “An jenem Tag,” measures 1-4

Heiling can til/elm

Baritone

Arr je- nem Tag da durrrir Treu
Blaser Quart.

Piano

 

Other prominent ascending ﬁgures include the orchestral chromatic ascensions in the
transition from the B section back to the second A section. These prevailing diatonic

ascending ﬁgures imply a sense of optimism while the rising chromatic sequences

 

96 Mitchells, 48.

97 Kevin Burke, “Opera, the Nation, and the Ideology of Genre in Early Nineteenth Century Germany,”
(MA Thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2004), 59.

36

suggest a high level of passion. Based on the text, high tessitura, and ascending ﬁgures,
“Anjenem Tag” seems to depict Heiling as a heroic character at the beginning ofthe
Opera.

Conversely, the scene “Herauf’ from Act III shows Heiling as a much different
character (see Figure 2 below).

Figure 2 — “Herauf,” measures 263-267

- richtl

 

37

 

 

 

 

In this portion of the Opera, Heiling asks for help from the Earth Spirits. The text, “Up,
you Spirits from caves and chasms, up! The master, the king callsl’m’ implies that
Heiling is perhaps not so eager to give up his magical powers for a chance at love, and
casts doubts on the purity Of his motivation. Regarding the music, not only is the
tessitura lower than in “An jenem Tag.” but also the end of the piece is dominated by
descending ﬁgures, both diatonic and chromatic, in the orchestral accompaniment. The
lyricism Of “An jenem Tag” is replaced with pitch repetition and angular rhythms. The
spirits, who sing in response to Heiling’s summons, refuse to help and laugh at Heiling’s
request. In measures 101 and 102, the basses’ laughter mimics the melodic contour of
Heiling’s Opening phrases of “An jenem Tag.” Heiling’s original motivation of love has
been tainted by jealousy, and the music reﬂects this transformation of mood.

Based on the musical examples mentioned above, Heiling does not easily ﬁt into
the category of a heroic protagonist or an evil antagonist. Hans Heiling is not unique in

this regard; the Operas mentioned earlier also display a duality of character in baritone

 

98 Devrient, 140. “Herauf, ihr Geister aus HOhl’ und Kluft, herauf! Der Meister, der KOnig ruft!”

38

leads. The use of the baritone lead, therefore, had important effects on how characters in
an Opera were viewed. Instead Of being purely good or purely bad, baritone leads were
portrayed with inner struggles and conﬂicting motivations. In most cases, the baritone
lead toils with his contradictory self throughout the Opera and does not get a “happy
ending” at the conclusion of the piece. In this manner, the baritone lead can be
considered an expressionist element, both for the inner reality it portrays and for the
fatalist attitude that is attendant with such inner strife. The choice of a baritone lead by
Opera composers in the early 19th century reﬂects a prevailing expressionist manner of

representation.

The Supernatural as Totengesprach

One of the key characteristics of an expressionist representation is the dual nature
Of the reality that is depicted. William H. Sokel noted the duality of expressionist works,
writing that expressionists “embodied the traditional German tension between intellect

..99 Instead of simply copying outside appearances,

and anti-intellectualism.
expressionists usually seek to show a hidden inner world and an exposed outer world, or
what theatrical critics Kenneth Mac gowan and Robert Edmond Jones call “a meeting of
the fringes of the conscious and the unconscious?‘00 The difﬁculty of creating

expressionist works lies in how one establishes tension in a simultaneous representation

of two worlds. In the twentieth century, expressionist painters used distortion to

negotiate the boundaries between inner and outer reality. In the nineteenth century,

 

99 Walter H. Sokel, The Writer in Extremis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959), 1.

’00 Kenneth Macgowan and Robert Edmond Jones. Continental Stagecraft (New York: Benjamin Bloom.
1922), 31.

39

composers and librettists in the German lands showed multiple views by writing dramas
in which elements Of the supematural and natural worlds interact. The prominence of the
supematural world in early nineteenth century Opera from the German lands demonstrates
an expressionist approach to artistic representation.

The use of supernatural themes was certainly not a new idea in the nineteenth
century. From the beginning, many popular Opera stories employed supernatural
elements. For example, Monteverdi’s Orfeo ( 1607) and C avalli’s Giasone (1649), with
their tales of gods and goddesses, are clearly not Of the natural world. English Operas like
John Blow’s Venus and Adonis (1682) are also based on legends of gods and goddesses.
These Operas, however, deal only with the supernatural rcalnr and thus portray only one
reality. For this reason, they cannot be considered expressionistic. Furthemrore, critical
theorists in the German lands resisted limiting Opera tO only the supernatural sphere. For
instance, in the late 17408 and early 17508, the French neoclassical theorist Charles
Batteux developed a new drama classiﬁcation system and assigned the temr “opera” for
works based on the stories of gods and goddesses. Gemran critic Johann Adolph
Schlegel refused to accept the new system, because according nrusicologist Gloria
Flaherty, he believed “that Opera not be restricted to the realm of the wondrous.”IOl
Critical theorists like Schlegel considered the interaction of supernatural and natural
elements an important dramatic possibility that must be protected in the face of criticism.

Despite Batteux’s classiﬁcation, pre-nineteenth century supernatural Opera all

across Europe was not limited to simple recreation of mythology. The theme of

supernatural elements within the natural world was employed by several composers and

 

10! Gloria Flaherty, Opera in the Development of German Critical Thought (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1978), 156.

40

librettists throughout Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For instance,
Mozart’s Die Zauberﬂb’te (1791) contains several instances of magic used in the natural
world. The Ladies of the Night uses magic to padlock Papageno’s mouth and the Queen
of the Night gives Tamino a magic ﬂute and Papageno magic bells to help them on their
journey. The interaction Of supernatural and natural was a long-standing custom in opera
by turn of the nineteenth century.

What makes the use of supernatural in early nineteenth century German opera
unique is that the interaction between the two worlds forms the axis Of the drama.
Magical items and characters are not employed just for the sake of moving the plot along,
to act as a dens ex machina, or to explain away a dramatic inconsistency. The conﬂict
between the very existence Of a supernatural world and the natural world is at the heart Of
several operas written in the German lands in the early nineteenth century.

Examples of interactions between supernatural and natural worlds in early
nineteenth century German Opera are numerous. Several Operas Of the time feature a
main character that belongs to the supernatural world, yet yearns to become a mortal
human. This theme exists in Hoffrnann’s Undine (1813-l4; revised, 1816), in which the
water spirit Undine, tries to get a human soul by marrying a human being, Huldbrand of
Ringstetten. In Spohr’s Faust (1813; revised, 1852), Faust, who belongs to the
underworld of Mephistopheles, attempts to regain his old human self by doing good
works. Similarly, the vampire, Lord Ruthven, from Marschner’s Der Vampyr (1827-28),
belongs to the underworld, but tries to buy more time on earth by sacriﬁcing three

virgins. Perhaps not so coincidentally, all three operas mentioned above end with the

41

protagonist’s destruction, a reﬂection Of the fatalist outlook associated with expressionist
works.

Using otherworldly elements to show differing viewpoints was a well-known
technique among writers in the German lands. In literature from the German lands, a
genre known as the T otengesprc'ich (dialogue of the dead, plural is T oterrgespriiche) was
extremely popular, with over 500 German T oterrgesprt'iche produced in the eighteenth
century”): In a Totengesprt‘ich, deceased historical ﬁgures discuss any subject, usually
politics or philosophy, with either another deceased person or a living person.
Oftentimes, the speakers in a T otengesprr’ich compare natural and supernatural worlds.
Historian John Rutledge writes that it was common for a writer to “set his dialogue on the
shores Of the river Styx. This arrangement permits the contrast between earthly and

”NB

netherworldly life, upon which the moral Of the dialogue is Often drawn. Another
favorite setting was the Elysian ﬁelds. an earthly setting where the dead may roam?”
From the multitude of T otengesprr'iche available from eighteenth century German writers,
it is apparent that the idea Of juxtaposing the supernatural and natural was around well
before the turn of the nineteenth century.

The similarities between eighteenth century T otengesprc‘iche and early nineteenth
century German opera suggest that the use of the supernatural in German opera was part

of a long-standing German expressionist tradition of depicting more than one concept of

reality. For example, Rutledge writes that “The T otengespra'ch is ideally suited to the

 

’02 John Rutledge, The Dialogue of the Dead in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Bern: Herbert Lang, 1974),
14.
'03 Ibid., 12.

'0‘ Ibid., 13.

42

It): - - - -
‘ Thrs rs srmrlar to

eighteenth-century passion for expressing multiple points of view?
the way Operas like Marschner’s Der Vampyr used supernatural and natural inﬂuences on
the Lord Ruthven to show the protagonist’s inner conﬂict. T oterrgespriiche and early
nineteenth century German opera are also similar in their reliance on mythology. While
most eighteenth century T otengesprc'iche writers drew from Greek mythology, nineteenth
century librettists took stories from Teutonic mythology. However, the goal of using
mythology was the same. Presumably, the audience would recognize the characters, their
personalities, and the implications Of the characters’ backgrounds. The assumptions
generated by audience familiarity would add another layer of representation to the dual
realities shown on stage. The parallels between T otengespriiche and early nineteenth
century German Opera indicate the existence of an expressionist trend in the German
lands.

German composers in the early nineteenth century developed special devices to
refer to the supernatural sphere. One such composer was Carl Maria von Weber, whose
opera Der F reischiitz (1817-21) contains several examples of musical indication of the
supernatural. Der F reischiitz, with libretto by Johann Friedrich Kind after a story by
Johann August Apel and Friedrich Laun, tells of Caspar, a character caught between two
worlds. Caspar, whose soul belongs to the evil, devil-like spirit Samiel, tries to ﬁnd a
substitute for himself, to get out of his agreement with Samiel. Caspar tries to manipulate
Max, a marksman, but ultimately fails and must return to the underworld with Samiel. In

the course of the story, magic is invoked several times, and Caspar and Samiel are used to

represent the supernatural.

 

'05 Ibid., 14.

43

One technique Weber used to refer to the supernatural world was the juxtaposition
of loud, dramatic chords with much softer passages. This procedure can be heard in the
ﬁnale to act two, the famous “Wolf’s Glen Scene” (see Figure 3), where Caspar and Max
cast magic bullets. In measures 13-38, pianissimo f# minor chords are interrupted by
arresting fortissimo a°7 outbursts. At this moment, the chorus of invisible spirits is
singing the following text:

The milk of the moon fell on the herbs. Uhui! Uhui!

Spider webs dabbed with blood. Uhui! Uhui!

Before another evening darkens, Uhui! Uhui!

Will she die, the lovely bride. Uhui! Uhui!

Before another night falls,

Will the sacriﬁce be offered. Uhui! Uhui! Uhui!106

The association of vivid dynamic contrast with the supernatural is clearly noticeable.
While Weber’s use of dynamic contrast is striking, it was not a new technique.
Mozart used similar loud seventh chords against softer harmonics in his Fantasia K. 475
(I785). Musicologist Robert T. Laudon writes that Mozart used the passage “to capture
something of a world of fantasy, in Mozart’s case a sort of unfathomable depth of feeling

that is almost mystical.”“"7

Weber’s effect is comparable, although his fully diminished
sevenths suggest something more sinister than do Mozart’s dominant sevenths, open
octaves, and triads.

Another way Weber implies supernatural inﬂuence is with his use of string

tremolos. An example of string tremolos can be heard in the “Wolf’s Glen Scene”

mentioned earlier. The tremolos suggest uneasiness, as there is no resting point on any

 

'00 Translation from Claude V. Palisca, ed., Norton Anthology of Western Music, vol. 2, Classic to
Modern, 4’h ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 ), 516. “Milch des Mondes ﬁel auf’s Kraut, Uhui! Uhui!
Spinnweb’ ist mit Blut bethaut! Eh’ noch wieder Abend graut, Ist sie todt, die zarte Braut! Eh’ noch
wieder sinkt die Nacht, Ist das Opfer dargebracht! Uhui! Uhui! Uhuil”

’07 Robert T. Laudon, Sources of the Wagnerian Synthesis: A Study of the F ranco-German Tradition in
19'" Century Opera (Mtinchen: Musikverlag Emil Katzbichler, 1979), 100.

44

 

note while the spirits sing the incantation until the distant clock strikes twelve. The use
of string tremolos was not itself an innovation. For example, Monteverdi wrote out
measured tremolos (as sixteenth notes) in his dramatic madrigal ll cornhattimento di

T ancrea’i e C lorirrda (1624) to accompany the passionate battle between Tancredi and
C lorinda. However, Weber’s use of the string tremolo to create a sense of anxiety
associated with the supernatural became a model technique for later composers.
Marschner especially favored this practice, using the string tremolo extensively in his
Operas Der Van1p_1'r‘(1827-28) and Hans Heiling (l83l-32).

The evocation of the supernatural thus became an important focus in early
nineteenth century opera from the German lands. Librettists mixed mythology with
human drama and composers used special effects to create a dual world of supernatural
and natural elements. The heart of several Gemran Operas of the time period is centered
on a character’s negotiation between the supernatural and natural spheres. In this
manner, the use of supernatural elements is similar to the use of T otengesprt'iche in
eighteenth century literature. Both T otengcsprc'iche and early nineteenth century opera

belong to the same tradition of expressionist representation in the German lands.

Figure 3 — “Wolf's Glen Scene,” measures 1-38

45

10. Finale

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Leitmotiv and Expressionism

Early nineteenth century German opera is Often characterized by the use of
leitmotivs. Short fragments representing a character, object, or idea give coherence to
these larger works and give the orchestra a greater role than just that of the accompanist.
With leitmotivs, composers were able to portray multiple realities onstage. For instance,
a composer may use a motif associated with evil in reference to an apparently good
character, suggesting alternative motives for action on stage. Thus, the use of leitmotivs
contributes to an expressionist outlook in early nineteenth century German opera.

Critics and composers alike recognized the value of the orchestra in expressionist
opera. Music critic J. F. Reichardt noted in his work Uber die deutsche comische Oper-
that the orchestra, not character types, libretto, or acting, was the most powerful tool for

"’8 Opera composer Louis Spohr acknowledged

expressing the true meaning ofthe text.
the expressionist potential of the orchestra in his preface to the libretto of his Faust
(1813; revised, 1852), writing that “the composer has tried in the overture to make

F aust’s inner life apprehensible to the listener by means of sound pictures.”"’° By

employing leitmotivs, the composer could depict two realities simultaneously — the
reality of the action on stage, and the possibly oppositional reality suggested by the
music.

Composers in the early nineteenth century used a variety of leitmotivic

techniques. A popular technique was to assign melodic fragments to a character or idea.

In his article “Spohr, Faust and Leitmotif,” author Clive Brown identiﬁes three main

 

’08 John Warrack, “German Operatic Ambitions at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century,” Proceedings
of the Royal Musical Association 104 (1977-1978): 86.
’09 Qtd. in Warrack, 86.

53

leitmotivs that permeate the score of Spohr’s Faust: the “hell” motif, the “love” motif,
and the motif representing “Faust’s inner tunnoil.”I '0 These motifs all have distinct

melodic proﬁles, as seen below in Figure 4.

Figure 4 — Leitmotifs identiﬁed by Brown in Spohr’s Faust

"Hell" motif
"Love" motif

   

"Faust's inner turmoil" motif

 

 

Melodic leitmotivs can also be heard in Weber’s Euryanthe (1822-23), for example, in
the motif musicologist Stephen C. Meyer calls “Eglantine’s deception.”I " In the story of
Euryanthe. a duke named Adolar tries to prove the faithfulness Of his wife, Euryanthe.
Eglantine, a woman who desires’Adolar, tricks Euryanthe and causes Adolar to believe
Euryanthe was unfaithful. In the end, Eglantine’s trickery is discovered, and Adolar and
Euryanthe are reunited. The aria for Eglantine naturally uses the motif of “Eglantine’s
deception,” but it also includes other motifs. Meyer writes that “Weber manipulates the

various motives associated with Eglantine to create a complex musical image of her

 

”0 Clive Brown, “Spohr, Faust and Leitmotif,” The Musical Times 125, no. 1691 (1984): 27.

m Stephen C. Meyer, Carl Maria von Weber and the Search for a German Opera (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2003), 131.

54

personality.”’ ’2 In this case, melodic leitmotivs work to create greater depth Of character
and suggest multiple inﬂuences on a character’s thoughts and actions.

Besides distinct melodic leitmotivs, composers also used recurring accompanying
themes to express a character or idea. In Marschner’s Der Vampyr (1927-28), Lord
Ruthven’s lines are Often accompanied by a descending chromatic line, to represent the
evil nature of the vampire.’ ’3 The use of a descending line to suggest evil can also be
seen in the “Wolf’ 8 Glen Scene” in Weber’s Der F reischiit: (see Figure 3). As the
excerpts in Figures 5 and 6 (from Pamela C. White’s “Two Vampires of 1828”) illustrate,
different instances of the chromatic descent in Marschner’s Der Vampyr use different
notes and rhythms, but the meaning of the accompaniment is always related to Ruthven’s
malevolence.

Figure 5 —- Der Varnpyr. no. 1, measures 8-13

- het diesenAufent-halt, denn eins der Op-fer naht sich

 

 

"2 lbid.. 133.
”3 Pamela C. White, “Two Vampires of 1828,” Opera Quarterly 1 (1987): 37-38.

55

Figure 6 — Der Vampvr, no. 13, measures 1-3 of Allegro section

jetzt ist sie

 

Accompanying material with similar leitmotivic associations is noticeable in E. T. A.
Hoffmann’s Undine (1813—l4; revised, 1816). The orchestral material often reminds the
audience that Undine is not a mortal, but a supernatural water spirit. Concerning the
orchestral accompaniment, musicologist Gerald Abraham writes: “The almost all-
pervading sense Of a watery background is conveyed by — admittedly rather conventional

9991 I4 .
Therefore.

- murrnuring ﬁgures that Often remind one Of ‘Die schOne Mi'rllerin.
leitmotivs need not be a speciﬁc melody to contribute to the dual reality depicted by the
composer.

A third leitmotivic technique used by composers was the association of orchestral
color to a character or idea. Although certain instruments had been associated with
speciﬁc emotions since the seventeenth century, German composers surpassed their
predecessors in the variety of combinations they used and in the complexity of meaning

associated with such timbres. Musicologist Robert T. Laudon writes the following about

the use of orchestral color in early nineteenth century German opera:

 

”4 Gerald Abraham, “Hoffmann as Composer.” The Musical Times 83, no. 1 194 (1942): 235.

56

 

[German composers] tried to invest that color with magic power, with

romantic mystery. The soft Violas, clarinets in chalumeau register, and

soft taps of the timpani conjured up the devil in Der F reischz‘itz with a

delightful shudder that attained a quality of superstitious awe. [. . .] The

shimmering muted divisi violins in Euryanthe made Emma’s ghost almost

palpable to listeners. The foreboding timpani strokes of death in [Spohr’s]

Jessonda, the ﬁendish horns of Der Vampr'r, the stonn-tossed six-part

divisi low strings in Hans Heiling; all seem part Of an irrational world of

spirit life and adventure. Such symbolism far exceeded the more rational

French use of instrumental color within the drama.’ ’3
As one can see from Laudon’s examples, orchestral color was a common element
exploited by composers to depict a world beyond that Of reality.

Leitmotivic composition contributed to the expressionist point of view of early
nineteenth century German composers in a number of ways. First of all, leitmotivs
associated with a variety Of ideas could be used simultaneously to depict the multiplicity
of inﬂuences acting upon a character at one moment. This supports the expressionist
notion that an individual may be controlled by a wide variety of pressures and desires.
Secondly, leitmotivic orchestral colors could be used to evoke the fantastic, supporting
the expressionist idea Of multiple realities. Furthermore, leitmotivs speciﬁcally from
early nineteenth century German Opera Often hint at something evil or unnatural before its
appearance onstage. This technique is used in Marschner’s Der li’ampyr. The
descending line representing Lord Ruthven’s evil nature is heard just before Ruthven tries
to seduce J anthe, foreshadowing J anthe’s murder. The use of such “warning” leitmotivs
heightens the tension onstage and contributes to the fatalism associated with expressionist
representation. Overall, leitmotivs, as melodies, accompanying material, and orchestral

colors, helped create the expressionist viewpoint characteristic of early nineteenth

century opera from the German lands.

 

"5 Laudon,, 137.

57

CONCLUSION

The early nineteenth century was a deﬁning moment for Operatic aesthetic in the
German lands. Two centuries of critical theory were put into practice in the works Of
Hoffmann, Marschner, Spohr, and Weber. These Operas, noted for their representation Of
competing realities, are an example of an expressionist tradition in the German lands.

The history of the German lands had a signiﬁcant impact on the development Of
Opera. In comparison to neighboring lands, where states followed a general course of
ever-increasing strength, size, and power, the political history of the German lands is
marked by alternating periods of division and unity. The result was that there were far
fewer large cities in the German lands and no cultural center akin to Paris or London by
the nineteenth century. The development of opera was also hindered by the absence Of
large courtly enterprises and the Gemran lands’ position as a war-zone for several
decades during the ﬁrst century OfOpera.

The commercial nature of German Opera, itself a consequence of German history,
created a debate between critics-and theorists. Initially, no uniﬁed stance in support of
German opera was apparent. Instead, the writings of critical theorists gradually created a
German aesthetic to defend. A host of critical theorists, including Postel, F eind,
Weichmann, Schlegel, Hiller, and Lessing, deﬁned the differences between opera in the
German lands and that of foreign countries as differences that made the operas
speciﬁcally German. These theorists were essential to the creation of an aesthetic

nationalism to which later composers would subscribe.

58

The artistic nationalism generated by critical theorists supported Operas that
followed a German tradition of expressionism. Expressionism, deﬁned as a simultaneous
representation of multiple realities, can be seen in elements Of operas by Hoffmann,
Marschner, Spohr, and Weber. Three of these commonly used elements are the use Of a
baritone as protagonist, competing supernatural and natural worlds as the focus of the
drama, and composition using leitmotifs.

In this paper, I hoped to show that early nineteenth century opera from the
German lands followed a nationalist, not universal, course. Composing Operas and
writing Operatic criticism was a way for Gemran people to create a cultural community
and aesthetic identity where there was no political identity. The trend of expressionist
representation, as seen in the Operas I studied, supports my argument that expressionism
is a preferred method Of representation in many works from the Gennan lands. and that

expressionism is evident in works composed before the twentieth century.

59

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abraham, Gerald. “Hoffmann as Composer.” The Musical Times 83, no. I 194 (1942):
233-235.

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