Resurrecting Forbidden Music
you might be wondering
what star wars and john williams have to
do with the nazi suppression
of artists and musicians i’m james
conlon
i’ve been conducting symphonic concerts
and operas for the last 50 years
and for 30 of those years i have been on
a mission
to revive and restore the music of
composers
who were suppressed during the nazi
regime many of us are interested in
roots
and we all have ancestry well music too
has a genealogy
sometimes it’s harder to track but it
too
has a family tree when george lucas
asked steven spielberg
to find a composer for star wars he said
he wanted a classical sound
a corn gold sound so john williams was
their man
and eric wolfgang cordgold was the model
kron gold was born in 1897. he can be
considered
one of the fathers of the hollywood film
scores and in that way
a parent of john williams
[Music]
corngold emigrated to hollywood before
the nazi regime
but then was forced to stay there until
after the war was over
his music in hollywood had become famous
but not
the music that he wrote before he came
to the united states
corngold was declared a genius by gustav
mahler
and about every other important composer
musician and music critic
of the time at 11 years old he played
for mahler
and muller said he wanted him to study
composition
with the best composition teacher in
vienna
a man named alexander ziminski
[Music]
ziemlinski introduced corngold to the
art of orchestration
so in a way that makes him a grandfather
of the hollywood film schools
many years ago after a performance at
the cologne opera
i went to my favorite italian restaurant
afterwards i drove home
and while in the car i turned on the
radio and little did i realize
my life was about to change i heard an
exquisite piece of music
i was stunned and i said to myself
who wrote this i must know who wrote
this and what is this piece of music
the piece was disagree the mermaid
based on hans christian anderson and the
composer was the same
alexander simlinsky
those questions led me on a journey
and later on a mission i asked myself
how can i a classical musician since the
time i’m a child
have never heard this music and the
answer actually is quite simple
the nazis did not want me to
nor did they want you nor did they want
anyone
to hear this music semlinsky was the
first to catch my attention
but later i became familiar with many
others considered
degenerate by the nazi regime
as the nazis rose to power they burned
books
and persecuted artists and when it came
to music
it was mostly the jewish composers and
musicians who were their targets
in my estimation there may be as many as
20 000
pieces of music that have been neglected
some of which would be considered in the
first rank of music
had it not been suppressed by the nazis
evan schulhoff is an example of one of
the composers i have championed a very
interesting man
multi-faceted avant-garde rebellious
part-time jazz musician part-time
marxist
he was particularly interested in jazz
and he believed it was the music of the
future
he wanted to integrate jazz music into
the classical tradition
he continued on through a varied life
but it all came to an end that great
energy and vitality
in a concentration camp in bavaria in
1942
zimmermannski’s pupil card gold wrote
his most famous opera
toto start the dead city he was only 23
and this was long before his hollywood
fame here we’ll hear an excerpt
sung by the renowned renee fleming
[Music]
salvaging music is no less important
than recovering the looted art treasures
that were found in a cave at the end of
world war
ii a group of british and american art
historians and curators
called the monuments men did just that
now i’m restoring unknown
pieces why unknown they were stolen from
us in a different sense
because the nazis refused them
a first hearing this music should be
revived and restored
for three reasons moral reasons
historical reasons and artistic reasons
the first moral reason it would go a
long way to correcting
the great injustice that these composers
experienced
their careers were cut short their
voices were stifled
some lost their lives we can’t give them
back
their lives we cannot change the past
what we could do the thing that would
mean more to them than anything else
and that is let the world hear their
music
the second is historical the chronicle
of 20th century classical music
has been written with great omissions
it’s the job of the historian when
finding
new information to reintegrate it into
our greater understanding of the subject
that way older versions that are
untrue half true or simply incomplete
can be revised so that we have a proper
understanding
this is what needs to be done through
the restoration
of this music the third reason is the
artistic reason
and the most important none of this
would matter
if it weren’t for the artistic quality
of this music
we can’t judge that artistic quality if
we’ve never heard it
literature must be read art must be seen
music must be heard
75 years after the end of the world war
and the nazi regime
the effects of their suppression
are still palpable they have in their
way
enjoyed a posthumous victory i am
opposing that victory and trying to
restore the music
that they banned all you
have to do is simply listen to it
and share it with other people
in the 30 years since i began this
mission
performances and recordings of these
works have multiplied
that night in cologne destiny made me
stumble
like the monument’s men into a
metaphoric cave
of suppressed music
[Music]
it didn’t take long to understand with
what devastating efficiency
authoritarianism can crush art and hide
truth
but it cannot destroy either and
together
we can work to restore all of that
the musical examples that i’ve played
for you are only an
infinitesimal a fraction of a fraction
of the so-called lost music that is out
there
i hope this presentation will make you
curious
for the beauty of the music that still
remains in our world
to be discovered thank you for joining
me