The Circumstances of Colour: The Jim Crow Translation of Jonny spielt auf

This article examines the American premiere of the German opera Jonny spielt auf as a form of what I call Jim Crow translation. As originally written and composed by Ernst Krenek, the opera centres on Jonny, a Black jazz musician, who disorders the logic of European cultural superiority. Although thoroughly modern in its original German staging, using stereophonic radios and film projectors, Krenek’s appropriation of Blackness relied on blackface baritones to play Jonny. When the opera came to New York’s Metropolitan Opera, the history of minstrelsy and the legal system of Jim Crow haunted the production. While Jonny was depicted as thoroughly cosmopolitan and modern in Krenek’s conception of the opera, the American production, under the management of Giulio Gatti-Casazza, attempted to turn Jonny into a white vaudevillian in blackface, a publicity stunt that brought the opera further attention under the guise of protecting American morals against a narrative of interracial sexual desire. Though Krenek created an opera based on the value of Black modernity, Gatti-Casazza displayed American racial anxieties through the opera’s promotion. The proposed revisions to the text, through which racialist regimes demonstrated their power over cultural production, reflect the role that translation can play in reinforcing the colour line.

ERNST KRENEK (1900–1991)The Flea (1960)

This chapter explores Ernst Krenek’s setting of John Donne’s poem, ‘The Flea’. Krenek’s work is an exuberant piece of twelve-tone writing, referring back, not without irony, to his Viennese heritage, and friendships with all the leading artists and intellectuals of the day. Here, there are some enjoyable glissandos covering broad spans. Rhythms may appear complex, but the plethora of quintuplets and other varied divisions of beats should, in fact, create a spontaneous, flexible impression to the listener. The vocal line proceeds in uninhibited, expressionistic fragments throughout, with the piano providing some startling dramatic interpolations. Extremes of dynamic abound. One suspects an element of affectionate parody, yet veering dangerously close to losing control.

Lulu and/or Geschwitz Idealized, in the symphonic pieces from “Lulu” and Elsewhere

This chapter treats an immediate context for censorship, here of Berg’s libretto for Lulu by authorities in Nazi Germany, and direct consequences of that action. The chapter discusses a current in Berg’s Lulu and reactions to it traceable to a particular interpretation of “fin-de-siècle decadence”: a tendency in the opera and its initial reception by a group of critics close to Berg—Willi Reich, Theodor Adorno, Willi Schuh, and Ernst Krenek—to turn Lulu into an idealized abstraction, a symbol of musical beauty in decay at the turn of the century, and to represent the music itself as absolute. This trend found necessary expression in the Symphonic Pieces from “Lulu” in 1934, which Berg arranged in response to the rejection of his libretto, but it is also discernible in a sketch that can be dated to the period of his earliest ideas about the opera.

Inclusive Publics and Modern Technologies: An Introduction to Three Essays on Early Twentieth-Century American Opera

The three essays brought together in this cluster are immersed in themes that characterize “Americanness” in the twentieth century. They provide a microcosm of critical issues that define opera in the United States during these first decades when the nation helped shape the creation of opera rather than principally being a site for importing European works. Although most of the composers discussed in these articles were born in Europe (Giacomo Puccini, Paul Hindemith, and Ernst Krenek) and only a few in the United States (Marc Blitzstein and George Antheil), all of them spent significant time in the United States, and all of the works discussed are either set in the United States, utilize American characters, or tied to important American themes.

Perle, George (1915–2009)

George Perle (1915–2009) was an American composer and scholar, awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Pulitzer Prize (1986) for his Wind Quintet no. 4, and the Otto Kinkeldey Award (AMS) for his books on the operas of Alban Berg. Born in Bayonne, NJ, Perle discovered Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite when studying with Ernst Krenek in 1937 and went on to develop a compositional system called twelve-tone tonality from the implications of Berg’s score. Collaborative work with Paul Lansky expanded on the compositional possibilities of the system (1969) and led eventually to Perle’s mature style, exemplified by the two Piano Concerti (1990, 1992) and Transcendental Modulations for Orchestra (1993). Perle’s dual role as composer and scholar is reflected in his seventy-five compositions, ranging from solo to orchestral pieces, and seven books and numerous articles on analysis and theory issues related mostly to twentieth-century music.