Abstract
AbstractThe voice of Berg's Wozzeck has been characterized by his Sprechgesang, heard as manifestation of his abnormality or even ‘hysteria’. However, Wozzeck often sounds more lyrical and emotive in relation to his oppressors, whose sense of authority is undermined by their caricatured vocal lines and vocal types. Rather than representing a ‘broken’ voice, Wozzeck's Sprechgesang is reserved for moments shared with his fellow low-ranking comrades, suggesting that it served as a voice of solidarity and empathy. In this article, I historicize the première of the opera at the Berlin State Opera; indeed, a glance at the singers who played the central roles suggests how the characters were perceived. It reveals an intertextual web of suffering shared between Berg's traumatized soldiers, and the perverse exercise of authority. Wozzeck therefore opens up questions about the expression of ideals in post-First World War Germany: the ideal of a stoic man demanded by the army, and the ideal of a voice.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Reference132 articles.
1. Ibid.
2. Kutsch and Riemens, Großes Sängerlexikon, iv, 3164.
3. Schützendorf, Eugen , Künstlerblut: Leo Schützendorf und seine Brüder (Berlin: Deutsche Buchvertriebs- und Verlags-Gesellschaft, 1943), 323–4. Richard Sheppard, ‘Proletarische Feierstunden and the Early History of the Sprechchor 1919–1923’, Literatur, Politik und soziale Prozesse: Studien zur deutschen Literatur von der Aufklärung bis zur Weimarer Republik, Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, Sonderheft 8 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1997), 147–83. Among those involved in the musical activities of the USPD, Sheppard discusses Alexander Moissi, Max Reinhardt (who offered his Großes Schauspielhaus to the party), Herman Scherchen and – briefly – Waldemar Henke. Many of them would, in the late 1920s and 1930s, downplay their association with the USPD.
4. Berg, Alban , ‘What is Atonal? A Dialogue’ (1930), in Pro mundo–pro domo, ed. and trans. Simms, 219–27 (p. 223). Berg's original typescript, entitled ‘Was ist atonal? Ein Dialog’, is preserved in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, F21.Berg.105, 1–10.
5. Poore, Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture, 7. Holger H. Herwig documents the equally devastating Austro-Hungarian side of numbers; see his The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914–1918, 2nd edn (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014).
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