Doris Lanz: Hanns Eisler als Vorbild für Wladimir
Vogels erste
Zwölftonkomposition? Überlegungen zu Vogels
Violinkonzert von 1936/1937
When one refers to
twelve-tone music that explicitly intersects communist ideology, one composer
invariably comes to mind: Hanns Eisler.
In accordance with the official “Volksfront” direction the
Communist Party took in 1935, Eisler sought to unify the entire
Arbeitermusikbewegung and representatives of the musical avant-garde into one
antifascist front. Prompted by the notion that the antifascist movement needed
a musical language capable of “expressing” its concerns, Eisler
developed a twelve-tone style purposefully avoiding the complexities of
Schoenbergian dodecaphony so as to be understood by the masses. The
Russian-German composer Wladimir Vogel, after settling in Berlin following
World War I, became Eisler’s colleague in the communist
Arbeitermusikbewegung around 1930. Ever since Vogel’s first twelve-tone
work in 1936-37, a violin concerto, his dodecaphonic style has primarily been
associated with Alban Berg. Although certain aspects of this style indeed share
traits with Berg’s twelve-tone style, the author would like to suggest
that this initial work was influenced by Eisler—from his
“simplified” dodecaphonic conception on the one hand, to the
germane antifascist methodological connotations on the other.