Im Digitalisierungsprojekt „Ernst Krenek lectures online: die musiktheoretischen Vorträge eines Exil-Österreichers“ wurden die im Archiv der Ernst-Krenek-Institut-Privatstiftung aufbewahrten Manuskripte und Typoskripte zu Kreneks Lehrveranstaltungen, Vorträgen und Radiosendungen in einer kuratierten Auswahl online verfügbar und durchsuchbar gemacht, sowie mit begleitenden historischen und biographischen Informationen kontextualisiert.
Digitalisiert wurden rund 90 Schriftgutobjekte mit einem Gesamtseitenumfang von rund 800 Seiten. 75% dieser Objekte sind Manuskripte, die restlichen 25% sind Typoskripte, wobei die Hälfte der Dokumente in deutscher, die andere Hälfte in englischer Sprache verfasst sind. Diese Dokumente stammen aus dem Nachlass Ernst Kreneks und stehen im Zusammenhang mit seiner Lehr- und Vortragstätigkeit sowohl in akademischen Institutionen als auch in Rundfunksendungen.
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Im Sommersemester 1944 hielt Krenek Ansprache an der UCLA. Er setzt sich darin mit dem unterschiedlichen Erfolgen von moderner Musik auseinander. Entlang von Strawinskys auf Ideen von Pierre Souvtchinsky aufbauender Typologisierung von Musik, die entweder „ontologischer“ und psychologischer“ Zeit folgen würde, diskutiert Krenek die Differenzen sowohl auf historisches Repertoire bezogen, als auch für die zeitgenössische Musik, in der die unterschiedlichen Ausrichtungen der Neuen Musik etwas verkürzt mit dem erfolgreichen Werken des Neoklassizismus und den weniger erfolgreichen Zwölftonkompositionen im Gefolge Schönbergs assoziiert werden.
Krenek deklariert sich als Vertreter von Musik der „psychologischen Zeit“ und spielt als Abschluss des Vortrags seine 3. Klaviersonate, op. 92 No. 4.
Contemporary
dictory and confusing a picture that
many people are wont to give up
listening to it, excusing their attitude by
saying that they are not well enough
trained to understand the complicated
processes of such music, and that
for the rest they are not prepared to
expend the required intellectual effort
to penetrate a phenomenon that, accor-
ding to normal viewpoints, is meant to
be enjoyed spontaneously rather than
studied laboriously. The musician who
wishes to remedy the situation and help
his potential listeners finds himself in
a difficult situation. Although he is con-
fident that a technical analysis of
various contemporary creations will re-
veal basic similarities and differences,
he also knows that by doing so he will
make the picture only more complex,
apart from the fact that this approach
entails precisely the kind of effort that
Interpretations of the dominant
trends in contemporary music getting
along without technical details and
simple enough to give a convincing over-
all picture are very rare. One of the
few which I have encountered recently
was put forward by
the second his
at
title "Poétique Musicale". The clue to
and time. Referring to the
philosopher auch friend of his,
Chacun sait que le temps s’écoule de
façon variable selon les dispositions
intimes du sujet et les évènements qui
viennent affecter sa conscience. L'attente,
l’ennui, l’angoisse, le plaisir et la douleur,
la contemplation appairaissent ainsi
comme des catégories différentes, au
milieu desquelles notre vie s'écoule et
qui commandent chacune un processus
psychologique spécial, un temps particulier.
Les variations du temps psychologique ne
sont perceptibles que par rapport
à la sensation primaire, consciente ou
non, du temps réel, du temps ontologique.
Ce qui marque la caractère spéci-
figue de la notion musicale de temps,
c'est que cette notion nait et se déve-
loppe soit en dehors des catégories du
temps psychologique, soit simultanément
avec elles.....
deux expaces de musique: l'une évolue
parallèlement au processus du temps
ontologique, l'épouse et le penètre,
faisant naître dans l'ésprit de
l’auditeur un sentiment d’euphorie
et pour ainsi dire de "calme dynamique".
L’autre devance ou contrarie ce processus.
Elle n'adhère pas à l'instant souvre
Elle déplace les centre sd'attraction et
de gravité et s'établit dans l'instable,
ce qui la rend propre à traduire les
impulsions émotives de son auteur.
Toute musique où domine la volonté
d'expression appartient à ce second
type.
La musique licé au temps onto-
logique est généralement dominée
par le principe de similitude. Elle qui
épouse le temps psychologique procède
volontiers par contraste.
Everybody says that time elapses in
various fashions, according to the intimate
disposition of the observer and to the events
that are effecting his consciousness.
and pain, contemplation appear as so many
different categories in the midst of which
our life passes by, each of them commanding
a special psychological process, a time
quality of its own. The varieties of psychological
time
referring
to the basic experience of real time, that
is, ontological time.
The specific character of the musical con-
ception of time consists in 'sbeing
outside of the category of psychological
time, or simultaneously with it.
of music: one of them evolves parallel
to the process of ontological time, it
embraces and penetrates the latter, thus
creating in the listener a feeling of eu-
phory and so-to-speak of "dynamic calm"
The other progresses in contrast to that
process. It does not abide by the
instantanous fact of sound. It dis-
locates the centres of attraction
gravity establishes itself
realm of instability, which makes it a
proper instrument for conveying the
emotional impulses of its author. All
music in which
belongs to this second type.
Music related to ontological time
is generally governed by the principle
of similarity. Music that associates
with prochological time progresses
preferably by way of contrast.
In slightly more technical terms the last
paragraph expressed by modified
by repetition, while the other one progresses
by development.
for the ontological type of music and
implicitly wants us to understand that his
own music largely follows the ontological
pattern. Very important is his statement
that the
emotional impulses and is dominated by
the will to express such impulses, for this
in turn implies that the opposite type is
free from such intentions.
Assuming that these two types actually
exist and by and large cover the field of
contemporary creation, we have to note a
very interesting paradox. It is undoubtedly
true that
into line with the stylistic characteristics
of
successful than the opposite type,
represented vaguely by
other composers who have written in the
so called atonal style, even if they have
not adopted some of
special techniques. It is likewise obvious
that an infinitely greater number of
composers belong to the first group than
to the second. The objection which we
may hear brought forward most frequently
against the
it is perhaps admirably thought out and
constructed, but for this very reason,
one-sidedly intellectual and devoid of
emotional expressiveness.
On the other hand, we have
own word to the effect that his music,
associated as it is to ontological time,
is free from those psychological and
emotional factors that would disturb
that association. The "dynamic calm"
which this music is supposed to create
in the listener results from the fact that
the music acts much in the way of a very
incisiveness and insistence marking divisions
of the continuum of time, and nothing else.
It would seem logical that music lovers
craving
would be rather disappointed by such
a type of music. However, it seems that
the blissful sensation of "euphory" that
that music prevails over the lack of
emotional intensity. At any rate it is
clear that this music is intellectually
much easier to grasp than the other
type, for it is as a rule of a very
simple construction. A certain rhythmic
pattern, usually pounded out in bold
relief, is repeated several times almost
without change, in order to be re-
placed by another such pattern that
is treated in the same manner. Not
only is rhythm, that is characteristic
distribution of time values, the most im-
mediately
but also repetition is the
device to
bly
mind. Thus
of music may be explained by as-
summing that its intellectual modesty
suggests to the listener a total absence
of intellectual factors, and that
makes
forget to look further for those emo-
tional factors in which he had pro-
fessed so strong an interest.
As I pointed out before, the essen-
tial technical device other
of music is known as development,
meaning the evolution of one musical
idea out of the other, in a subtle process
of variation, in which certain elements of
an idea are retained, certain others gra-
dually so modified that a new idea
with a characteristic
though still strongly related to the original
one. This procedure has been characteri-
stic of nearly all outstanding works created
in Western music ever since the time of the
Gregorian chant, and it has culminated.
in the musical structures erected by
The dominating factor in the technique of
development is not repetition, but variation,
and in order to appreciate variation,
one has to apply sustained attention to
the unfolding musical process, making
constantly mental reference to what
went before. Development can be fol-
lowed only by accumulating
through progressing musical experience
as one goes along. For it is quite true,
as
does not abide by the instantaneous
fact of sound. It does not in the first
place rely on the momentary sensation
caused by the sound at any given instant,
any of its sounding elements to all
other such elements, in other words, it
derives its aesthetic sense from the con-
text. I don't think that people who now-
adays through radio and movie are
conditioned to considering music a
more or less pleasant background noise
from which isolated and irrelevant patches
occasionally and casually emerge
for a brief moment, I don't think that
such people are to be blamed for not
liking, a music that requires concen-
tration and application. But I also
think that they ought to be fair enough
so as not to blame the music for being
intellectual and unemotional, for it
is precisely the
intensity of that music that requires
the dense and accurate construction
which so unnecessarily frightens the
half-educated amateur rather than
the totally unprepared layman.
It is incidentally interesting to notice
that one of the most preachers
of the streamlined and emotionless type of
music, that brilliant
literature,
of the nature of development, when back
in 1918 he wrote in his shocking
Le coq et l'arlequin, the following :
"
veloppe,
fait du développement de forme, et
du développement d'idée. La pluspart des
gens croient le contraire.
une plume neuve - il y a une plume
neuve à ce porte-plume-neuve est la
plume de cette porte-plume»...
plume neuve pour que je la trempe
dans l’encre et que j’écrive etc.» ...
Voilà toute la difference."
"when
development,
form, while
Most people think the opposite is true.
has a new pen - there is a new pen
on this penholder - new is the pen
of this penholder - ... »
new pen so that I may dip it into
the ink and write, etc... »
There you have the whole difference."
This is quite
for a non-musician, but nevertheless
it is not true. In the first place, it is very
unfair to
technique of development is far more
subtle than the repetitious babble
about the new pen indicates. In fact
it is much more similar to
procedure than
of form" applies to anything musical
at all, it may have a certain superficial
similarity with the erude and rudimentary
efforts of some of the early
composers. In fact it does not really
symbolize any development at all,
and in this respect
around the words in the penholder phrase
without getting is rather
of some of the processes
taking place in the music associated with
ontological time, and this is
paradox, for
greatly the promotion of
he obviously seems to prefer the other one.
As to my own music, it will not be
hard for you to guess that I would
classify it associated with psychological
time. According to my intention, it very
definitely carries emotional expression and
is
in terms of classical development technique.
During the past ten years, commencing with
the opera Charles V"
my works
twelve-tone technique
of you probably are acquainted. More
recently I have devoted much time to
a study of mediaeval music and of the
principles governing the so-called modal
idiom. A large choral work LamentatioJeremiae Prophetae"is
the first attempts toward integrating the basic
ideas of the twelve-tone technique with those
mediaeval principles of musical organization.
I approached this integration in various
ways in other compositions, such as the
orchestral Variations on the American folk-tune
"I Wonder as I Wander", in my Cantata for Wartime on words by
my Seventh Quartet, to be played next season
by the
think that this interest in mediaeval
music is a vain intellectual pastime,
for I believe that great music of all
periods
artistic ideas,
idiom in which they are expressed.
The
now was written during the winter of
in
The first movement follows a type of sonata
form appears
The thematic material,
three characters - first, second and con-
cluding theme - and brought to completion
by a characteristic diatonic codetta -
to the cassical scheme of exposition, de-
velopment, recapitulation and coda.
However, those four sections are not so much
different from each other in regard to their
structural functions, they are rather like four
aspects of the same things, like four stanzas
of a ballad. Students of
that he applied a similar procedure in his
The second movement is called, Theme,
Variations and Canons. and Each of the four varationsThe thema is followed
is introduced by a brief canon, all canons be-
ginning with a very characteristic trill motif.
The last variation, leading back into the theme,
incorporates the trill element previously re-
served for the canons.
The third movement
with slightly lyrical middle section.
The last movement is a broad Adagio,
which in regard to form does not offer any
particular problems. It is meant to be the
emotional climax of the whole composition.