Chapters

The First World War led to a campaign by conservative art and culture critics against the ‘modern’. In page after page of treatises music critics and musicologists concerned themselves with the ‘analysis’ of the music being produced at the time and with performance practice; and they prescribed what the function and development of music in wartime should look like.

On the occasion of the birthday of Emperor Franz Joseph in August 1914 the Deutsches Volkstheater, one of the few theatres in Vienna that did not shut on the outbreak of war, invited patrons to attend a special performance whose profits would be handed over to the Red Cross. The programme was in all respects that of a patriotic event in time of war, with Franz Grillparzer’s version of the Austrian national anthem being followed by scenes from Friedrich Schiller’s dramas Wilhelm Tell and Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein’s Camp). The musical part reached its first climax with the performance of the song Die Wacht am Rhein (The Watch on the Rhine):

The audience rose from their seats. There were loud cheers, and they were kept up while the ‘Radetzky March’ and the ‘Song of Prince Eugene’ were played; the audience then joined in the singing of the Austrian and Prussian national anthems, and finally there were more loud cheers to greet the song ‘O du mein Österreich’ (O Thou My Austria)!

Despite the demand for a return to serious art not even the First World War could really reduce the popular appeal of ‘light music’. Both at home as well as at the front pieces of music which by nature were meant for entertainment enjoyed great popularity. This genre too adopted patriotic content and thus followed the contemporary trend.

In the nineteenth century music was normally considered to be unpolitical. In the twentieth century and especially in the First World War it became increasingly political. In doing so it became functional, was in many cases forced into a pseudo-nationalist context, and was meant to contribute to moral mobilization.

Soldiers’ songs have as their content soldierly life and experiences and are – in contrast to the officially prescribed battle songs – utterances which are sung ‘voluntarily and out of habit’. In them soldiers express ‘what moves them and they otherwise cannot and do not want to say themselves’, as the folklorist John Meier put it in 1916. Solders’ songs have a variety of content, which ranges from patriotic appeals and calls to battle to laments and protests. During the First World War large collections of them were compiled out of not only patriotic but also folkloristic interest.

In an exchange of letters, the composer Richard Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal (or in some cases Gerty, his wife) expressed their views on the First World War in a form which was sometimes ironic and sarcastic, sometimes patriotic. However, for Strauss what was most important was not so much commenting on contemporary events as the effect these had on his own personal state of mind.

In an exchange of letters, the composer Richard Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal (or in some cases Gerty, his wife) expressed their views on the First World War in a form which was sometimes ironic and sarcastic, sometimes patriotic. However, for Strauss what was most important was not so much commenting on contemporary events as the effect these had on his own personal state of mind.

While Richard Strauss’s musical output continued apparently uninfluenced and unimpressed by the terror of the First World War, there are two major connecting lines to be drawn between the music of Alban Berg and the war.

“Il suffit d’ajouter ‚militaire’ à un mot pour lui faire perdre sa signification. Ainsi la justice militaire n’est pas la justice, la musique militaire n’est pas la musique.“ (Georges Clemenceau)
(It is enough to add ‘military’ to a word for it to lose its meaning. Hence military justice is not justice, military music is not music.)

Musical life in the other belligerent states was hardly different from that in Austria-Hungary or Germany. There too folk songs were turned into battle songs and the vast majority of musicians placed themselves at the service of the patriotic cause.

As far as the history of music is concerned, the First World War did not mark a significant turning-point. This had occurred several years earlier with the advent of atonal music, and for many contemporaries it was this that represented a major catastrophe of a different kind. What the war marked was rather a sharp drop in the production of music, with hardly any really great works being written. Musical life was also adapted to war service within a very short time, and especially at the beginning of the war, when composers and performers were meant to make their contribution to mobilization, their productivity was considerable. What innovations there were resulted primarily from technical developments and the consequences of the war.

Even if they were only a tiny minority: the fact that many artistic talents did not live to see the end of the war, because they died on the battlefield, is one that is mostly suppressed. This is particularly true of music. There were others who overcame their wartime experiences in their compositions.

Almost all those composers from the countries fighting in the war who had already become very well-known before the war adopted a nationalistic pro-war stance. For some, however, the war years meant a sharp drop in their creativity. The death of many friends and acquaintances and in some cases their own experiences at the front led to the rapid disappearance of their initial enthusiasm. The music composed during the war is thus almost always marked by the mood of the war.

At the end of the nineteenth century distinct fault-lines began to appear in the traditional system of great powers that had been established at the Congress of Vienna (1814/15) to promote the balance of power. Significant shifts were taking place in the European power structure.

In connection with the Ottoman Empire’s inexorable nineteenth-century decline, Tsar Nicholas II coined the expression of the ‘sick man on the Bosphorus’. Another empire in crisis was Austria-Hungary.

Around the turn of the century the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy enjoyed a glorious flowering in the arts, scholarship and science. At the same time, however, the country was shaken by apparently insoluble social and national conflicts. Under a dazzlingly brilliant surface the Habsburg imperium was struggling with a profound crisis.

Around 1900 there was a change of generation in the political leadership. Increasingly, the aged Emperor withdrew from day-to-day politics and became more of a symbolic figure.

The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne on 28 June 1914 is generally regarded as the cause of the First World War. However, the causal relationship between the two events is by no means as clear as it at first seems.

On 7 July 1914 the Common Council of Minsters of Austria-Hungary called for a ‘swift resolution of the conflict with Serbia, through war or through acts based on Serbia being an enemy country.’ This resolution meant that the sails had been set for war.

On 23 July 1914 the Austro-Hungarian government issued Serbia with an ultimatum containing concrete demands in order to prevent an escalation. When the ultimatum is examined closely, it becomes clear that Vienna was concerned to make the demands as unacceptable as possible.

On 27 July 1914 the Austrian foreign minister Berchtold requested Emperor Franz Joseph to sign the declaration of war, on the express grounds that the situation called for swift action, in order to achieve a fait accompli that would forestall any possible peace initiative on the part of the Triple Entente.

‘If the Monarchy is to go, then at least it should go with honour.’ This saying attributed to Franz Joseph is often quoted as being symptomatic of the general exhaustion of the traditional elites of the Habsburg monarchy.

Chauvinistic rhetoric and martial sabre-rattling dominated the critical days of July 1914. The belligerent vocabulary of the political elites struck a chord in hearts and minds all over Europe.

The oft-invoked ‘brotherhood in arms’ between Vienna and Berlin was in reality an alliance between two very unequally matched ‘brothers’ who had differing aims and were sometimes even rivals.

When the grim reality of the war became clear, Kaiser Wilhelm’s hearty promise that the war would end in a German victory by the autumn of 1914 – ‘when the leaves fall’ – was still fresh in all minds. In the first two years of the war, the Central Powers experienced both successes and also failures.