Hermann Scherchen memoirs

letters to be typed in

Did he express any opinion of the obscure Italian conductor who donated his time for that orchestra's first concerts?

Seriously, thanks for this essay, and in particular for that second poem.

I know about Scherchen's books on conducting and 'the nature of music', and there's a collection of Scherchen's letters (published as '...alles hörbar machen'. But I didn't know of any memoirs. What's the title?

-david gable

Mr Tepper:

I am afraid that the book doesn't mention Toscanini's name, either positively or negatively. I can tell you though that Scherchen describes Busoni's last public apparitions

For some reason he's being coy about the title.

-david gable

No need to use obscenities!

Larry,

Thanks for the kind words. The book is long OOP, I am afraid, it appeared as a limited edition in France, under the title 'Hermann Scherchen: Mes deux vies'. I would add that the memoirs cover, somewhat chaotically, only the period from 1895 (the conductor's first memories since he was a toddler) to 1950 (+- around the time when he turned back to Germany). If it's of such a vivid interest for at least some of the readers, I will quote more from it in the future. However, if my information is correct, an English language edition (surely better translated) of this little book is already in the works.

regards,

On 17 Jun 2003, David7Gable wrote:

Samir, that's an indirect way of solilciting (again) the title, which you've now supplied. I just did a search at a couple of out-of-print book sites for titles by Scherchen and all that comes up are three titles, the selected letters, the book on conducting, and the book on the nature of music.

-david gable

letters to be typed in newsine.GSO.4.31.0306171241190.10354-

Must have something to do with steroids. ;

For those interested in his art, a number of Scherchen's writings are quite rewarding. His two books that exist in English translation, 'Handbook of Conducting' and 'The Essence of Music', are instructive in a variety of ways. The former is valuable for the layperson insofar as his explanations of how conductors can handle particular difficulties with which scores confront them also bring into focus aspects of interpretation that are otherwise easily overlooked. The book also provides helpful examinations of individual works: his analysis of a movement from Beethoven's 1st perhaps helps one understand why he was such a wonderful Beethoven conductor. The latter work is a strange mixture of philosophy, history, and criticism, worthwhile mainly for the treatment of specific pieces, e.g. his illuminating commentary on the first movement of Schubert's 'Unfinished' and how the opening phrase is a unifier in furnishing the material for a surprising number of other elements in the work.

However, imo much of the more philosophical writing in the latter and elsewhere suffers from unclarity and from being informed by a strange kind of pantheism that is not worked out at all convincingly. (Scherchen mentions somewhere that as a young man he carried a pocket edition of Spinoza's 'Ethics' around with him and would read it during rehearsals, etc. This seems to have been a strong influence.) It's impressive that someone who had so little formal education became so intellectually sophisticated; nonetheless, his ventures into the terrain of idealism strike me as unsuccessful and don't go very far in helping us understand the music under scrutiny. (An accessible example of this is his brief essay on Mahler's 3rd reprinted in the Tahra Leipzig Mahler set.)

Still, in terms of the practical aspects of making music, Scherchen had more than a few interesting ideas, on everything from acoustics to directing opera, and one wishes that musicians of today might develop such intellectual passion and curiosity. Many of his views are iconoclastic, yet worthy of serious consideration. For example, the cuts we know from live recordings of a couple of the Mahler symphonies were not anomalous, but rather sprang in part from his conviction that the works themselves change with time and are made false when they are accorded the 'respect' of being performed complete and thus not recognized as living and breathing creatures transformed, along with humans, when new social and spiritual conditions arise. His 'Idomeneo' in Italy apparently lasted only 90 minutes!

As for Scherchen the person, there is no doubt that he was a strong personality. Anyone curious about this side might want to look at the section on Scherchen in Canetti's 'Play of the Eyes'. It's not a flattering portrait. While Canetti's account must be taken with a huge grain of salt- he was a notoriously harsh and uncharitable observer of human weakness- there is something accurate in it, I suspect. In a lecture, Scherchen once stated (after recounting a swipe at Karajan made by someone else), 'artists are the most malicious of people'; and perhaps he meant this in part self-referentially. In any event, he is surely to be admired for his political stances, from which he never wavered even when they cost him dearly, both during the Nazi period and thereafter.

P Manilov

P.S. The Tahra website offers this from Myriam Scherchen: 'En 1992 les Productions Tahra ont publié en langue française sous le titre ' Hermann Scherchen, mes deux vies ' ses mémoires inédits malheureusement arrêtés au début des années 1950. Ce livre comportait également un essai de discographie et un texte que j'avais écrit et baptisé ' Hermann Scherchen, ma deuxième vie '. Ce livre eut un tirage modeste et est depuis longtemps épuisé mais je prépare une édition en langue anglaise avec l'aide précieux de notre ami Julian Crandall Hollick.'

SOme noteworthy biographical details can be found in the thick booklet accompanying the Tahra box called something like, 'A Tribute to Hermann Scherchen: The Best-Known ‘Unknown''; and a number of Scherchen's essays, a few quite interesting can be found in Hermann Scherchen: Werke und Briefe, Hrsg. Joachim Lucchesi, Peter Lang Verlag 1991. (This was supposed to be volume 1 of a complete edition, but nothing has appeared since, alas.)