“Nicht diese Töne!”

There is a curious paradox here: Wilhelm Furtwängler, the brilliant conductor, by Hitler’s grace a German State Councillor since 1933, a voluntary—or perhaps involuntary—representative of what the chairman of the Uppsala Student Union last Saturday called ‘the forces of unfreedom and intolerance’, stood yesterday before the Concert Society and urged choir and orchestra to the highest intensity in the exultant sounds of universal brotherhood and international solidarity, in the Ode to Joy.

What Schiller put into verse and Beethoven set to music speaks of a world in which peace, freedom and love of mankind have entered into a covenant for the blessing of all and everyone. No—not for everyone! He who, through lack of love, cannot call a single fellow human being his friend, must ‘stehe weinend sich aus diesem Bund’ [‘stand weeping apart from this bond’].

Seldom has the gulf between dream and reality, between poetic vision and lived existence, grown so violently wide as it has here and now. It is certainly not with the ‘gentle wing of joy’ that fate now wafts over oppressed humanity. What Schiller and Beethoven dreamed of may have been a utopia, condemned to remain such forever. Yet it was the confession of faith of the humane German spirit, a shimmering stream from the source of the deepest wisdom and the noblest feeling—goodness. That goodness which linked minds, hearts and hands across social and national barriers in mutual understanding, human sympathy, and a higher sense of communion.

The man who tore up the title page of the Eroica on the grounds that an autocrat who has allowed himself to be possessed by his lust for glory can become nothing other than an oppressor, and is therefore unworthy of a dedication—that man would never have wished to serve as a cultural emissary of a regime whose doctrines of struggle are founded on terror and spiritual obscurantism. “Nicht diese Töne!” he would have cried out to them. And had it been within his power to defy them, he would have mounted the imperishable German platform laid in stone by Lessing, Schiller and Goethe, and from there sung out to the world: ‘Alle Menschen werden Brüder’ [‘All men shall become brothers’] and ‘Seid umschlungen, Millionen!’ [‘Be embraced, ye millions!’]

★

When Furtwängler comes to us in this dark hour with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—the cosmopolitan confession of German musical art, which spreads a little light and warmth into our souls and offers crutches to our maimed faith in a universal will towards the good—I cannot rid myself of a thought that keeps returning: the man is, knowingly or unknowingly, intentionally or unintentionally, serving the cause of Beethoven and Schiller! An appeal calling for his boycott was on the verge of being published in the newspapers. What folly! I now see that his appearance with the Ninth could scarcely have been more timely. For it constitutes the most forceful protest against violence and tyranny, hatred and the incitement of men against men, ever expressed in the shared language of thought and feeling.

If Furtwängler’s interpretation yesterday did not, for me at least, awaken the same rapture as it did twenty years ago, that was partly my own doing, and partly his. In the intervening years we have heard so many grand expositions of the work that it is no longer easy, even for a Furtwängler, to offer an interpretation unrivalled in every respect. (In this connection it should not be forgotten how much most German conductors owe to Furtwängler precisely where the Ninth is concerned.) One thing, however, is certain: his approach to the symphony has undergone substantial change.

It may have been due to the orchestra’s uncertainty in the face of his nowadays particularly unclear conducting gestures that the first movement—despite unmistakable intentions—failed to attain the rare monumental stature I recalled so vividly from his earlier interpretations. The Adagio movement, rendered with a clarity of sonority and of formal disposition that was astonishing, nevertheless failed to take flight. It was as though the führer at the podium were holding back the inner, uplifting current of warmth. In compensation, he whipped choir, soloists and orchestra in the finale to a tempo that nearly robbed them of breath. The singing admittedly suffered as a result, but Beethoven’s vision of a dithyrambic frenzy, of an intoxicating joy of brotherhood, whose cascades of sound brought every mountain of malice and aversion crashing down, became vividly alive to the senses. Here the saying proved true, that the master, in the intoxication of creation, forgot the limitations of the instruments available to him.

★

In Hjördis Schymberg, Lisa Tunell, Gösta Bäckelin and Sigurd Björling, Furtwängler had at his disposal a quartet of soloists tested and proven in their respective roles. The bass recitative acquired a pleasantly surprising firmness of tone and an incisive emphasis in the phrasing; Mr Björling was evidently in splendid form, and moreover well coached. The Musical Society performed admirably despite the agitation, as did the orchestra. The latter—that is to say, the strings alone—wavered briefly in rhythm (in the Allegro ma non tanto of the finale), but soon recovered their balance.

An ovation without end followed the frenzy of the finale. Furtwängler was generous in sharing both the honour and the triumph.

It seems there is something to the philosophers’ claim that things in themselves are something quite different from our perception of them. Where one man sees red, another sees brown, and in truth it may be white.

Here enraptured anti-Nazis ring me up to thank me for the review: ‘you’ve robbed the Nazis of the Ninth!’

Then the signatory E. V. above comes along and almost accuses me of Nazi sympathies. So differently can the same text be construed.

Dear E. V.! Be assured that when it comes to Nazism and Nazis I see red, even though it is demonstrably brown. I have not defended Furtwängler; I have only, with the weapons of irony, struck the weapons out of the hands of all friends of Nazism. For—that was the idea in my review—by presenting the Ninth Symphony, the High Canticle of freedom and brotherhood, Furtwängler—whether he intended it or not—laid down a protest against Hitler’s onslaught, for example in Norway. If the Germans were honest and consistent, then they ought to boycott Furtwängler precisely for that reason. The Nazis have no claim to the Ninth Symphony. It expresses a wholly contrary worldview. And the Nazi who professes to embrace the ‘Ninth’ and has that message delivered in a free country, he denies Nazism’s ideology and castigates its adherents.

I have not scrutinised Furtwängler’s heart and kidneys.

It is unlikely that he expected such an interpretation of his performance of the Ninth. What I did know, however, was that the first concert was sold out and that no tickets had been returned. The evening became a triumph for Furtwängler, and our home-grown Nazis rejoiced. What could have been more natural then than to wrest both Furtwängler and the symphony from them? If the celebrated baton-wielder was perhaps unaware of the role he was playing in the presented symphony of freedom and brotherhood, then he was made aware of it by me. Were he really a convinced Nazi, which I refuse to believe — he may only be a weak vessel —, were he a Nazi in soul and heart, then in the present case he only confirmed Mephistopheles’ words about

As for the Nazi-oriented clergyman E. V. speaks of, no true Christian soul would wish to silence him the moment he preaches Christianity’s gospel of love. At that moment he is doing God’s work and not that of the Nazis. Punish him for any evil deeds he may commit in thought and word, but not for his pious sermon.

M. P.