Brecht Collected Plays: 3: Lindbergh's Flight; The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent; He Said Yes/He Said No; The Decision; The Mother; The Exception & the ... St Joan of the Stockyards (World Classics)
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Here is an example of the effect of this application on the text: the figure of a public hero in The Lindberghs’ Flight might be used to induce the listener at a concert to identify himself with the hero and thus cut himself off from the masses. In a concert performance (consequently a false one) at least the Flier’s part must be sung by a chorus if the sense of the entire work is not to be ruined. Only concerted I – singing (I am so-and-so, I am starting forth, I am not tired, etc.) can save something of the paedagogical effect.
[From Versuche 1, 1930, as published in Brecht on Theatre, but omitting the second paragraph, a revised version of the text ‘To be projected’ (given above). Signed ‘Brecht. Suhrkamp’ – Peter Suhrkamp being a former progressive schoolmaster who was now an editor for Kiepenheuer, Brecht’s publishers. A draft cited by Steinweg in Brechts Modell der Lehrstücke (item 49) suggests that Elisabeth Hauptmann also contributed, writing for instance that ‘lindbergh’s flight was performed by the radio in the framework of the badenbaden music festival 1929 as a work about the glorification of the airman lindbergh whose sheer artistic merit justifies its performance. the following day brecht demonstrated what he considered to be the right way to use such a play and also the radio. here he did not cater for the listener’s wish for undisturbed musical appreciation, but would frequently interrupt the performance . . .’.]
TO THE SOUTH GERMAN RADIO, STUTTGART, 1950
Gentlemen,
If you wish to broadcast Lindbergh’s Flight as part of a historical survey, I must ask you to add a prologue and to make a few slight changes in the text. Lindbergh is known to have had close ties with the Nazis; his enthusiastic report on the unconquerable German air force had a paralysing effect in several countries. L also played a sinister role as a fascist in the USA. The title of my radio play must therefore be changed to The Ocean Flight, the prologue must be spoken and the name of Lindbergh expunged.
1) in 1 (Appeal to all) ‘Captain Lindbergh’s Ocean Flight’ is replaced by ‘The First Flight Across the Ocean’
2) in 3 (Introduction of the Flier, The Take-off) ‘My name is Charles Lindbergh’ is replaced by ‘My name doesn’t matter’
3) in 10 (All through the flight the people said . . .) ‘of Captain Lindbergh will succeed’ is replaced by ‘of Captain So-and-so will succeed’
4) in 16 (Arrival of the Flier . . .) ‘I am Lindbergh. Please carry me’ is replaced by ‘I am So-and-so. Please carry me.’
If this version is acceptable to you, I have no objection to your broadcasting the play. The changes may detract slightly from the poetry, but the removal of the name will be instructive.
N.B. If the titles are read, it must always be ‘The Flier’ [or ‘The Airman’].
[From Letters 1913–1956, no. 626, dated 2 January 1950. This radio station had asked on 19 December 1949 for permission to broadcast the work. The new Prologue follows below.]
PROLOGUE, TO BE SPOKEN BEFORE BROADCASTING ‘THE OCEAN FLIGHT’
You are about to hear
A report of the first ocean flight
In May 1927. Achieved by a
Young man. He conquered
Storm, ice and the voracious water. And yet
His name must be blotted out, for
He who found his way across the trackless waters
Was lost in the mire of our cities. Storm and ice
Could not defeat him, but his fellow-man
Defeated him. Ten years
Of fame and riches, and the wretch
Showed Hitler’s butchers how to fly
With deadly bombs. Therefore
Let his name be blotted out. You, though
Be warned: neither courage nor knowledge
Of engines and charts can promote society’s enemy
To the rank of a hero.
[From the Suhrkamp-Verlag republication of Versuche 1–12, 1959, in which the changes are made in accordance with Brecht’s letter. The current Berlin and Frankfurt edition (1988), however, follows the 1930 Versuche text and only cites the changes in its notes, along with this prologue. In the view of the Brecht Estate they remain mandatory for performance; in that of the Kurt Weill Foundation ‘Kurt Weill’s music may only be performed in the original version without any alteration or cuts’.]
Editorial Notes
Brecht’s text appears to have been written in stages, starting at the latest in January 1929, during the Berlin run of The Threepenny Opera. The playwright was in Cologne on the 10th and 11th of that month, for a broadcast discussion under the direction of Ernst Hardt; this was unrelated to the theme and form of the new work, though he and Hardt may well have talked about it then. The first six scenes (nos. 1–6) were ready in time to appear in the magazine Uhu in mid-April, under the title ‘Lindbergh. A radio play for the Baden-Baden Festival, with a score by Kurt Weill’. Weill however was under considerable work pressure, and this is presumably why Hindemith, the moving spirit of these festivals, composed nearly half the work as originally performed, notably (in our numbering) scenes 5 (fog), half 6 (snowstorm), 7 (sleep), 12 (the French press), 15 (le Bourget) and 17 (last scene). The rest of this first performed version was composed by Weill, viz. 1–4, the second half of 6, 10 (the American press), 13 (the engine), and 14 (nearing Scotland). Three scenes were without music: 9 (water), 11 (thoughts) and 16 (arrival), which were read aloud. The title was now Lindbergh’s Flight. Radio Play by Bertolt Brecht. Music by Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill. The word ‘Lehrstück’ was not used.
The orchestral forces used by the two composers were the same throughout. Weill, however, was not happy with Hindemith’s settings, and during the following October he wrote his own versions of the Hindemith numbers, adding music to the two silent or spoken numbers (11 and 16) and rescoring the whole work for a larger orchestra. This had its premiere at the Kroll Opera in Berlin on 5 December under Klemperer, and was published in 1930 as Lindbergh’s Flight. Words by Brecht. Music by KURT WEILL. An English translation was made by the American composer George Antheil.
Late in 1930 Brecht’s text was published under his name alone as the first of his new grey paperbound series of Versuche (or Experiments), along with three pages of his apothegmatic ‘Keuner Stories’ and fragments of his unfinished play Fatzer. By then he had decided to make various changes which, while they made little difference to the individual numbers as set by Weill, introduced two new numbers – 2 (the American press) and 8 (ideology) – and altered the thrust of the work so as to play down the heroism of the individual and emphasise the contribution of his helpers. Accordingly Lindbergh throughout became ‘the Lindberghs’, to be represented by more than one voice, still however speaking as ‘I’. The numbering was also altered after the first seven scenes, the new, spoken, ‘ideology’ coming in as number 8 and ‘water’ as number 9, so that the previous number 8 (the press on Lindbergh’s luck) becomes 10, and so on to the end of the work. Reflecting Brecht’s awareness of the whole new genre, the title was further changed to Lindbergh’s Flight (A radio ‘Lehrstück’ for boys and girls), which relates it to the other works in the present volume. At the end were the names of the three collaborators: Brecht Hauptmann Weill.
We have taken the present text, as given in the Berlin and Frankfurt (1988) edition of Brecht’s plays, and made a typographic distinction between that part of it which constitutes the work as set by Weill (and fits the music), and Brecht’s subsequent additions, which are not sung and are in some cases only one or two lines long. The Weill/Hindemith version (which cannot be publicly performed for copyright reasons) is textually very close to the 1930 Weill score.
Following Brecht’s letter to the South German Radio some twenty years later, some editions of the text appeared under the title The Ocean Flight, omitting all mention of Lindbergh’s name. Thus ‘The Fliers’ appear and announce ‘My name is irrelevant’ or (in 16) ‘I am So-and-so’. The consequent changes are most clearly conveyed in the 1959 Suhrkamp reissue of Versuche 1–12. Brecht’s reason for making the
m is given in the new prologue appended to his letter and printed on p. 356 of that volume. While understandable at that time, they do not improve the work.
THE BADEN-BADEN LESSON ON CONSENT
Texts by Brecht and Hindemith
ABOUT THE ‘LEHRSTÜCK’
The ‘Lehrstück’, product of various theories of a musical, dramatic and political nature aiming at the collective practice of the arts, is performed for the self-orientation of the authors and of those actively participating, and is not meant to be an experience for all and sundry. It is not even finished. The audience, therefore, inasmuch as it is not involved in the experiment, would fulfil the role not so much of a recipient as of a mere bystander.
[From the programme of the Deutsche Kammermusik, Baden-Baden, 1929, reprinted by Reiner Steinweg, 1976. At that point the Badener Lehrstück was called simply lehrstück, as in Hindemith’s 1929 piano score. As yet that term was not applied to Lindbergh’s Flight.]
MUSIC FOR AMATEURS
In our concern to draw the attention of the creative artist to the demands of our time and the musical requirements of the various strata of our population, we have decided to devote an evening to compositions for the amateur, ranging from chamber-scale works to community music involving singers and intended for large groups of performers. This is a kind of music intended not so much to be immediately effective in the concert hall as to take account of the demands of the players and singers themselves. The ‘Lehrstück’ is intended to be a community play on the same plane as such community music.
[From an article signed by the Artistic Directors – i.e. Heinrich Burkhard, Josef Haas and Hindemith himself – in the same programme, reproduced by Rudolf Stephan in Hindemith’s Sämtliche Werke, vol. 1,6 (Schott, Mainz, 1982), p. xiii.]
PROGRAMME OF THE PREMIÈRE
Sunday 28 July
20.00 hrs, City Hall, Leopoldstrasse 18
Lehrstück
with solo singers, small and large chorus, amateur orchestra, brass band, spoken and acted episodes and a film interlude
by Brecht-Hindemith
Male Voice 1 – Josef Witt
Male Voice 2 – Oskar Kálmán
Three clowns – Theo Lingen, Karl Paulsen, Benno Carlé
Small chorus – Hugo Holle’s madrigal singers
General chorus
Orchestra – amateurs
Brass band – the Lichtental Band
Film Dance of Death by Valeska Gert (cameraman: Karl Koch)
Conductors – Alfons Dressel, Ernst Wolff
Director – Bert Brecht
Costumes – Heinz Porep
[Source as for ‘Music for Amateurs’ above.]
INTRODUCTION TO HINDEMITH’S PIANO SCORE
For the performance of this work the requirements are:
Male Voice 1 (tenor) – taking the part of the crashed airman. Male Voice 2 (baritone or bass) – can be a member of the chorus. Speaker (male or female).
Chorus – numbers according to the size of the room in which the performance takes place.
Orchestra – size and composition at the director’s discretion. The purposely vague division of the score into high, middle and low voices enables the conductor to allocate them according to the wishes and capabilities of the performers and the limitations of the room. The high voices can be doubled at the octave above, the low voices at the octave below. In the use of brass instruments caution is advised; they should be used mainly in the loud passages and can double the voice parts in accompanied choruses. The layout of the score is not meant to be followed exactly; it has been presented in simplified form so that it can also be used as a piano score.
Offstage orchestra – designed for brass instruments: 2 trumpets, 2 Flügelhorns, 2 (tenor) horns, 2 trombones, 1 bass trombone. These can be extended or replaced by waldhorn, saxophone and euphonium; or single-woodwind instruments would be permissible. The parts have been written for the nine named instruments. For other instruments the parts may be transposed as necessary.
Dancer (male or female).
Three clowns.
Various singers (male and female) in the crowd.
The Crowd.
Positioning
[Hindemith here gives the disposition as at the beginning of Brecht’s text, but with ‘Male Voice 1’ – i.e. the Airman – in place of the later ‘The singers of the Airmen’s or Mechanics’ parts’.]
Performance
The work is not designed for theatre or concert performances of the kind where specific persons entertain or instruct an audience with their own productions. The audience is an active partner in the performance. It sings the passages scored for the Crowd. Voices in the Crowd have previously been rehearsed in their parts and sing these to the Crowd under the direction of the chorus master. The passages are then repeated by the Crowd (i.e. audience). For performances using a relatively small group the preliminary singing of the passages in this way should be adequate. For a larger gathering it would be advisable to use a projector, showing the words and notes on a screen. In the same way the titles and captions of the various sections of the work can be projected. It is very possible that the integration of soloists, chorus and crowd will not be immediately achieved to everyone’s satisfaction. In communal artistic achievements of this sort a flawless rendering of each piece can never be expected. For that reason, adequate preparation is to be preferred to a straight run-through.
Since the only purpose of the Lehrstück is to bring everyone present into the performance of a work and not directly to arouse artistic impressions in others, the form of the piece should be adapted as far as possible to the actual aim. The order in the score should consequently be regarded as a suggestion rather than a command. Cuts, additions and changes in the running order are permissible. Whole musical numbers can be omitted, as well as the dance, and the clowns’ scene can be shortened or left out entirely. Other musical pieces, scenes, dances or readings can be introduced, if these are felt to be necessary and not to clash in style with the rest. Simpler exercises could consist of performing the Examination alone, or the beginning and Examination together. Other parts could equally well be practised on their own. It is left to the person in charge of the exercise and to the group of performers themselves to find the most practical form for their own purposes.
The choral and orchestral parts are so simple to perform that almost any amateur group can master them, provided they go about it seriously. Two trained singers for the solo parts should be easy enough to find anywhere. Where no dancers or actors are available, the relevant scenes, as stated above, should be left out.
No costumes or stage settings should be used in a performance of the work. The only exceptions to this rule might be the clowns’ scene and the dance.
[From Hindemith: lehrstück piano score (Schott, Mainz, 1929), translated by Geoffrey Skelton. ‘The Examination’ is scene 8 (7) in our text, the ‘clown scene’ scene 3 (Third Inquiry) (6); the Dance (4) had no text and was replaced by 6. To judge from the following Note, it is extremely unlikely that the above Introduction was agreed with Brecht.]
NOTE
Without going any further into the particular rules of the Lehrstück genre (which will be done in a detailed ‘Theory of Paedagogics’) I must at least briefly correct the erroneous indications of the composer Hindemith (in the piano score of the Lehrstück, which is based on the first, wholly incomplete version of the text. Hindemith suggests:
[Brecht then cites the second paragraph under the heading ‘Performance’ in Hindemith’s Introduction above, and continues:]
This misunderstanding is attributable probably to my own readiness to provide an incomplete and easily misread fragment of text for purely experimental purposes, as was the case with the version performed at Baden-Baden, with the result that the only conceivable educational purpose was one of purely musical form. But of course the Baden-Baden production was intended just for self-orientation, as a one-off. It is clear that the educational value of s
uch a musical exercise on a ‘meditative text that corresponded to the imagination of the director’ was far too slight. Even if it was expected that the individual was going ‘to commit himself in some way’, or that certain intellectually formal correspondences would emerge, such insipid and artificial harmony could never for one moment provide a really broad and energetic basis from which to oppose those collectivities whose very different kind of force is now tearing the people of our time apart.
[From Versuche 2, 1930. Brecht’s revised text of the play, as printed in that publication, differs considerably from the 1929 version as set by Hindemith. See the Editorial Notes that follow.]
NOTE TO THE TEXT PRINTED IN ‘VERSUCHE 2’
Experiment number seven, The Baden-Baden ‘Lehrstück’, is a further essay in the Lehrstück genre following Lindbergh’s Flight. On its completion the piece turns out to be unfinished: too much importance is given to death in relation to its doubtless rather slight utility. The work is printed here because, when all is said and done, its production creates a collective apparatus. For some parts of it there is a musical score by Paul Hindemith.
[From Versuche 2, as above.]
Editorial Notes
It was on 10 March 1929, when Brecht’s writing of Lindbergh’s Flight was already under way, that Hindemith told his publishers he was planning a ‘People’s Oratorio’ for Baden-Baden with Brecht. By 25 June, said his wife, it was nearly finished. Brecht however still considered the result to be a fragment, as he said in his programme note at the time, and he seemed all along to have in mind the completion of the work independently of Hindemith’s share in it, possibly with some other composer or with no music at all. This was agreed between the two men and stipulated after the Festival in Brecht’s correspondence with Schott the music publishers, who were, however, anxious to bring Hindemith’s setting out as it stood while there was some interest in further performances. After giving Brecht a month in which to object, Hindemith accordingly sent off score and text, along with his own Introduction as above.