GERMANY’S WAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 August 1938, Page 7

GERMANY’S WAR

ON ATONAL MUSIC. War is being waged against atonal music as a phase of “Jewish cultural Bolshevism” with great vigour at the exhibition of “degenerate music” at Dusseldorf, says the Berlin correspondent. of the “Manchester Guardian.” The object of the exhibition is to teach the German public to appreciate the beauty of what is accepted by National Socialism as orthodox music. The public are given an opportunity of hearing both “orthodox” and “unorthodox” music, much as they were given the opportunity at Munich last year of seeing “orthodox” art and the “degeneracy” of expressionism, Cubism, and Dadaism. The works of the “degenerates” that were .being shown at Munich were not the best in their mqjje of expression, and in the same way, so,;, -far as general conditions for audiyon-, are concerned, the Dusseldorf jtgxhifcition weights the scales against tne'-atopal-ists. During “Music Week”- in nection with the exhibition, the Reich Symphony Orchestra performed selections from classical composers, including Wagner (who is Herr Hitler’s favourite), in a normal auditorium. The works of the atonalists, however, are to be heard in cubicles like those in the gramophone-record departments of some stores, but the cubicles have no doors and are sound-proof. Visitors to the exhibition enter the doorless cubicles and press white buttons in each of them, whereupon a gramophone plays atonal selections from Stravinsky, Arnold Schonberg. Hindemith, Ernst Krenek, and other composers whose works are either frowned upon or fully prohibited here. The result is a tremendous clash of muddled atonal sound when several cubicles are in use at once. The Reich Symphony Orchestra, which was playing at the exhibition during “Music Week,” was originally the Nazi Party’s own symphony orchestra. Its conductor is Herr Franz Adam. It played in brown dinner packet suits, brown ties, and brown shoes, and the conductor wore a brown fulldress suit. Incidentally it is announced that another attempt is being made to replace Mendelssohn’s music to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which is prohibited in Germany by the Nazis. The task has been entrusted to several composers since 1933, but a satisfactory work has apparently never been produced. The commission has now been given to the Munich composer, Herr Karl Orff, whose “Carmina Burana” was recently given its first performance at the Frankfort Opera House.