As with the companion piece Lindbergh’s Flight, Brecht would soon be making radical changes both in the thrust of what he had written and in the nature of the two works, which would appear in his new Versuche series during the following year as linked examples of a new genre, the teaching play or ‘Lehrstück’. Unclear as it still is who actually originated that term, it came to dominate Brecht’s theoretical thinking in the last phase of the Weimar Republic. At the same time his revisions demythologised both his airmen-heroes by making them collective figures who could stand also for the workers and helpers in their exploit, which was no longer to conquer ‘the unattainable’ but to reach ‘the not-yet-attained’. Finally he introduced a new concept which, again, would recur in the works that followed. This was the idea of ‘Einverständnis’ – of Acquiescence, Agreement or Consent – a kind of understandingcum-acceptance of the extreme pains and penalties of living in our age such as we find in modern examples of stoic self-sacrifice.
During the months following the Baden-Baden performances these affected both works. The major difference however was that, whereas Weill felt that he had been unable to finish composing the ‘Radio Play’, and wanted to complete it as originally intended, Hindemith was content to leave the ‘Lehrstück’ as it was, concluding with the Crowd’s verdict in scene 8 (7) of ‘The Examination’, on the line ‘Now is his smallest dimension attained’.
It is not clear if Brecht ever sent Hindemith his four new numbers or his many other changes of order and wording, but clearly the composer had no wish to set them, or to limit the considerable – almost aleatory – freedom given to director and performers in his Introduction to the score. What Brecht particularly objected to there was the suggestion that the clown scene and the filmed ‘dance of death’ by Valeska Gert might be omitted, and he reacted by insisting that future performances must be agreed by himself as well as the composer. In the event Schott would inform him of the dozen or so subsequent applications to perform the work before the Nazis took power, giving him each time a month in which to make any objection. This he seems not to have done. And any further chance of collaboration between the two men was destroyed when Hindemith’s next ‘Neue Musik’ Festival in 1930 rejected Brecht’s new ‘Lehrstück’ with Hanns Eisler for political reasons.
* * *
Our aim in the present volume has been to start with a singable translation of the 1929 text, add the extra passages written by Brecht during the following months (but not composed) and put the ensuing whole in the scene order of volume 3 (1988) in today’s current Berlin and Frankfurt edition. The main changes undergone by our text can be seen from our typographic differentiation between the original work and the later additions, which follows the same principle as that for Lindbergh’s Flight, along with the numbering of the scenes: 1929 numbers in brackets, 1930 (Versuche and subsequent) numbers without brackets.
Broadly speaking, Brecht moved the clown scene forward from the penultimate position to the middle of scene 3, to form the third ‘Inquiry’ (as to whether men help one another), switching the previous scene 3 (‘The Chorus speaks to the Crashed Airman’) to take the clown scene’s place and become scene 10. The ‘Dance of Death’ film was dropped, to be replaced as second ‘Inquiry’ by the present display of photographs, while that Inquiry’s conclusion – from ‘I cannot die’ to ‘For the way of truth is easy’ – became redistributed between a repeat display of photographs (scene 6) and the opening of ‘Instruction’ (scene 7). Scenes 4 and 5 were new, introducing the concept of necessary force, as were the Airman’s twelve closing lines to 8, following the end of the Hindemith version. Scenes 9 and the final 11 (‘Agreement’ – or ‘Einverständnis’) were also new. No option was given to cut any scene.
In lieu of Male Voice 1 there were now to be four performers sharing what had been the Airman’s part, while Male Voice 2 continued to act as ‘The Leader of the [Trained] Chorus’. The Chorus of the Hindemith score, namely, was now described throughout as ‘Der gelernte Chor’: the trained or rehearsed chorus, as opposed to the Crowd (i.e. the participating audience). We have not followed this added description. As for the four performers, they speak sometimes as one man, using ‘we’, the first person plural, where the original Airman spoke of ‘I’. From scene 5 on, however, they divide into two parts: the Crashed Airman and the Three Crashed Mechanics, of whom only the Airman, it seems, is killed. This entails substituting plural for singular in those parts set by Hindemith, as follows:
Scene 2:
we, our, us for I, my, me
they, them for he, him
four men for a man
They’re for he’s
Scene 3(1):
They are for he is
Scene 7:
We for I
Scene 8(1):
Airmen for Airman
we for I
raised ourselves for raised myself
(2):
We, our, they for I, my, he
were for was
(3):
we are, ones for I am, one
they who have for he who has
(4):
us for me
our fathers and mothers for my father and mother
(5):
we for he
ourselves for himself
you have, you die for he has, he dies
your for his
HE SAID YES/HE SAID NO
Texts by Brecht, Waley, Weill, Hauptmann
NOTE TO THE TEXT
The school operas He Said Yes and He Said No, with music by Weill, are intended for schools. If possible the two little plays should always be performed together.
[From Brecht: Versuche 4, 1931, introducing the two texts – the former in his revised version. Weill wrote no music for the latter. A footnote to the title of He Said Yes says ‘After the Japanese play Taniko in Arthur Waley’s English version.]
NOTE ON ‘TANIKO’ AND ‘IKENIYE’
Both of these plays deal with the ruthless exactions of religion; in each the first part lends itself better to translation than the second. Taniko is still played; but Ikeniye [. . .] has probably not been staged for many centuries.
The pilgrims of Taniko are Yamabushi, ‘mountaineers’ [. . .]. They called themselves Shugenja, ‘portent-workers’, and claimed to be the knight-errants of Buddhism. But their conduct seems to have differed little from that of the Sohei (armed monks) who poured down in hordes from Mount Hiyei to terrorise the inhabitants of the surrounding country. Someone in the Genji Monogatari is said to have ‘collected a crowd of evil-looking Yamabushi, desperate, stick-at-nothing fellows’.
Ikeniye, the title of the second play, means ‘Pool Sacrifice’, but also ‘Living Sacrifice’, i.e. human sacrifice.
[From Arthur Waley: The Nō Plays of Japan (Allen and Unwin, London, 1921), p. 229. The first of these was by Zenchiku, the second by his father-in-law Seami.]
FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH ELISABETH HAUPTMANN
Q: So how did Waley lead on to He Said Yes?
EH: I translated a number of No plays into German on the basis of Waley’s adaptations. These translations were not meant for publication. I am against translating via an intermediate language. But not long afterwards I learned from some Japanese students who translated some Nō plays for me along with parts of Seami’s Kvadensho that Waley’s translations, while very beautiful, took considerable liberties. I did this work purely for fun, primarily so as to be able to discuss these fascinating matters with one or two friends. The editor of a theatre magazine persuaded me to let him publish Taniko or The Valley-Hurling. I subsequently wrote a radio feature on the life and work of Seami, which was broadcast by Berlin Radio in 1931.
[From an interview of 1966, reproduced in Hauptmann’s Julia ohne Romeo (Berlin, 1977). The magazine was the Essen theatre publication Der Scheinwerfer, edited by Hannes Küpper.]
FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH KURT WEILL
Q: ... Mr Weill, may I ask how you arrived at that kind of simple, popular musi
c.
KW: I think I share my aim of writing such music with a good number of present-day composers. We no longer want music to be a private, backroom affair but are seeking new and wider outlets. In the Three-penny Opera I already tried to do something of the sort, with a fair measure of success. [. . .] In Lindbergh’s Flight Bert Brecht and I had the schools in mind for the first time. I am hoping to develop this direction further in my latest play, the ‘Lehrstück’ He Said Yes.
Q: What is the formal structure of your latest work? Does it include self-contained forms?
KW: I am glad you have raised this point. In the ‘Lehrstück’ He Said Yes I no longer want to offer ‘songs’ so much as self-contained musical forms. In the process I want to take over whatever I hitherto found right, like what I once termed the gestic approach to music. The melody must give clear expression to the gest. It is clarity, not lack of clarity that has to prevail in all that the composer wishes to express. And [. . .] this ‘Lehrstück’ has to be a fully authentic work of art, not a secondary piece.
Q: [. . .] I greatly like the text, from the pedagogical point of view too. It is good that the obedience demanded of the schoolboy should be repeatedly emphasised. The text brings this out very well. Another pedagogically valuable point is the picture given of the teacher-schoolboy relationship. And a third attractive element in the text is its portrayal of the son’s love for his mother.
KW: Incidentally, the motive of the medicine which the boy wants to bring back to save his sick mother’s life was first introduced by Brecht. I am particularly glad that you should have stressed the importance of obedience. This message of ‘agreement’ gives the Lehrstück its political impact – in an elevated sense, not of course in that of party politics.
[From ‘Aktuelles Zwiegespräch über die Schuloper’, prefacing the play’s first publication in Die Musikpflege, April 1930, and reproduced by David Drew in Kurt Weill Ausgewahlte Schriften, Suhrkamp, 1975. The interviewer was Dr Hans Fischer, editor of the Zeitschrift für Schulmusik. The Prussian Zentralinstitut für Erziehung und Unterricht would present the work in Berlin on June 24, after a broadcast performance the day before. For this premiere Kurt Drabek was the conductor, while Otto Hopf directed and also played the Teacher. The boy performers were drawn from various schools.]
WEILL ON HIS SCHOOL OPERA
I have arranged He Said Yes in such a way that each part (chorus, orchestra, solo voices) can be performed by schoolchilden, and I likewise imagine sets and costumes being designed by them too. The work is scored so as to take account of a school orchestra’s possibilities: a basic orchestra of strings (without violas) and two pianos, then ad lib. three wind instruments (flute, clarinet, saxophone), percussion and plucked instruments. Not that I think the music for a school opera should be over-simplified, or that it needs to be particularly ‘childish’ and easy to sing along with. The music for a school opera definitely has to involve a long and careful period of study. For it is precisely in such study that the practical value of a school opera consists, and its performance is a good deal less important than the education which it gives the performers. In the first place, the character of such education is purely musical. But it has to be at least equally philosophical. Music’s pedagogical effects may also consist in its leading the student by means of the study of music to some specific idea which makes a more vivid impression in its musical form and becomes more firmly rooted in him than if he had to read it in books. For this reason the aim for any school play, over and above the pleasure of making music, has to be that of giving boys the chance to learn something. The old Japanese play which we (that is, Brecht and I) chose as the text for our first school opera seemed to us well fitted for school use so far as its basic attitude went, but to lack any motivation for its events that might make it pedagogically applicable. We accordingly introduced the concept of ‘agreement’, and altered the story to correspond with this: instead of the boy being hurled willy-nilly into the valley, as in the old play, they first of all ask him, so that when he declares his consent he shows that he has learned to take full responsibility for a community or an idea with which he has chosen to associate himself.
[Extract from Weill’s article ‘Über meine Schuloper’ in Die Szene (Berlin), August 1930, reproduced by David Drew in Kurt Weill Ausgewahlte Schriften, Suhrkamp, 1975.]
FROM A REPORT OF DISCUSSIONS ABOUT ‘HE SAID YES’ AT THE KARL MARX SCHOOL, NEUKÖLLN
Subject of the discussion was a version of the play close to the Japanese original, where the expedition was a scientific one (which the Boy joins in order to get medicine and consultation for his Mother) and the killing of the Boy takes place in response to a traditional Great Custom. (The Boy gives his agreement to this.) The two versions printed in the Versuche were made in accordance with this report. Criticisms and suggestions in italics were taken into account.
. . . The play is inappropriate for our school, because the Teacher is very cold-blooded and this might be thought to refer to it. . . Science is less important than a human life. . . The play stops: the Boy can’t go on, he stays there waiting. Hunger overcomes him and he plunges voluntarily into the depths. . . There should be a legal footnote. . . Play stops; Boy taken along with great effort. On the way two of them slip and fall. . . Put the Boy on a rope and take him along.
Form Upper 3a
. . . We find the discrepancy between music and text in this play quite new. At the end, after the death of the Boy, another composer might well have a number of prolonged, ceremonious chords accompanying the Chorus. The result being to make this scene seem so shattering that one retains only it in one’s head and remains vague about the others. Bertolt Brecht’s cheerful approach avoids this. The music in his opera is consistently cheerful. When the Boy dies and the Chorus sing ‘And he was dead’ the music was strongly reminiscent of a contemporary dance. Brecht’s light and cheerful approach gives us a very useful view of the opera, since it is never so gripping as to squeeze actual tears out of us, nor so reserved that one can say there are passages where one gets no view, but can only treat the opera as a whole . . . Unfortunately there is one place where the text is not all that convincing. The Boy is presented almost as a martyr, because he goes to his death voluntarily and without resistance. One might almost think the Boy is obeying the wishes of his comrades, because they are also his own wishes, though he does not express them. How about having the Boy hesitate a bit? In our view the opera would also be highly effective if the Boy started by hesitating a bit. . . Generally we feel that this is one of the rare plays that schoolchildren can perform without straining . . .
. . . Either the student should fall ill too and the expedition turn back, despite the Boy’s wish to be hurled down the cliff. Or else they should try to get past the track, and either the Boy or the whole lot should fall, so that nobody bears the guilt for the Boy’s death . . .
W. Berg, form 4a, age 12
I am simply setting down what the pupils say. ‘This opera is very sad.’ ‘It doesn’t sound good.’ ‘In opera people are supposed to sing.’ ‘The arrangement of the sentences is odd, and the verse doesn’t fit it.’ ‘I like the play a lot, but the business with the Custom strikes me as wrong.’ ‘It’s just as well the sick boy is hurled down, or he’d suffer worse.’ ‘But that’s murder.’ ‘I’ve been in the Alps where there were huts, and we always found something to eat there, every evening someone came who had pots and pans.’ ‘I don’t understand that about the one who says Yes.’ ‘The point is, he says Yes without knowing about it, and it’s the same with the Mother.’ ‘But apparently they picked him up and carried him, and I don’t believe anyone can be carried.’ ‘Only as far as the precipice.’ ‘It’s more a play for grown-ups.’ ‘We aren’t Weeping Willies.’ ‘I think he should write more clearly.’ ‘That stuff with the chorus is for kids, I’d say.’ ‘I think he said Yes because he wanted his mother to get well, and if he’d said No the rest of them wouldn’t even have got to the doctors.’ ‘What a
re they on about? It’s not clear.’ ‘Once his mother hears of his death I’d say she’d get even more ill.’ ‘How are they going to hurl him down?’ ‘That’s just cruel.’ ‘Suppose he’s tough enough to survive it.’ ‘I’d say a young life was worth more than an old one.’ ’It’d be better if he said I’ll think it over, then you hear the Boy talking to himself, and you’ll understand his motives.’
B. Korsch, form 6b, age 10
. . . We had two suggestions that would rather alter the sense of the play. 1. Give the Boy malt extract (but where does one get it?); 2. Give the Boy a check-up beforehand.
Form 5a, age 11
. . . There was considerable support for the view that the fate of him that said Yes is not portrayed in such a way that one sees its necessity. Why didn’t the whole group turn back to save the stricken member instead of killing him?. . . This led to the suggestion that the scene of the climb and the fall should be more strongly depicted in the hope of creating the essential understanding. The mysticism that permeates the opera is a cause of discomfort. . . The story’s motivation is not sufficiently clear (i.e. real).
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) Page 33
