"Taken by the Devil": The Censorship of Frank Wedekind and Alban Berg's Lulu

by Margaret Notley

Overview

Censorship had an extraordinary impact on Alban Berg's opera Lulu, composed by the Austrian during the politically tumultuous years spanning 1929 to 1935. Based on plays by Frank Wedekind that were repeatedly banned from being published and performed from 1894 until the end of World War I, the libretto was in turn censored by Berg himself when he characterized it as a morality play after submitting it to authorities in Nazi Germany in 1934. After Berg died the next year, the third act was censored by his widow, Helene, and his former teacher, Arnold Schoenberg. In "Taken by the Devil", author Margaret Notley uncovers the unusual and uniquely generative role of censorship throughout the lifecycle of Berg's great opera. Placing the opera and its source material in wider cultural contexts, Notley provides close readings of the opera's libretto and score to reveal techniques employed by the composer and by Wedekind before him in negotiating censorship. She also explores ways in which Berg chose to augment discrepancies between the plays rather than flatten them as in certain performances of the plays during the 1920s, adding further dimensions of interpretation to the work. Elegantly readable, "Taken by the Devil" is one of the most meticulously researched and nuanced studies of Lulu to date, and illuminates the process of politically-driven censorship of theater, music, and the arts during the tumultuous early twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190069889
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/02/2019
Series:	AMS Studies in Music
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Margaret Notley is the author of Lateness and Brahms: Music and Culture in the Twilight of Viennese Liberalism, AMS Studies in Music (Oxford University Press, 2007) and the editor of Opera after 1900: An Anthology of Critical Essays (2010). Her scholarship has been supported by grants from the Fulbright Scholar Program, National Endowment for the Humanities, and American Philosophical Society, and her work has appeared in Journal of the American Musicological Society, 19th-Century Music, Journal of Musicology, and a number of multi-author volumes. For an article on late nineteenth-century adagios she received the American Musicological Society's Alfred Einstein Award in 2000. From 2001 to 2016, she was a member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Musicology, and she has been an Associate Editor of 19th-Century Music since 2006.

Table of Contents

Preface Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. "Burlesque Tragedy" and "Tristan Rapture": Fin-de-Si?cle Decadence and the Lulu Works of Wedekind and Berg Chapter 3. Lulu and/or Geschwitz Idealized, in the Symphonic Pieces and Elsewhere Chapter 4. Berg's Literal-Mindedness and Second Order Consequences of Censoring Wedekind Chapter 5. Act 1 of Lulu, Tragic Material Reconceived as a Comedy of Manners Chapter 6. Act 2: Indirect and Second Order Consequences of Censorship on a Large Scale Chapter 7. Quarantined Material: Husbands as Customers and Other Problems in Act 3 Conclusion Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"With this new book Margaret Notley examines the consequences of censorship in the creative process and reception of Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora and Alban Berg's opera Lulu. In an engaging account, Notley opens new avenues for interpretation of elements that had hitherto been deemed incongruous in both the plays and the opera. Beyond Berg scholarship, this book is a must read for anyone interested in intersections between music and politics." — Silvio J. dos Santos , author of Narratives of Identity in Alban Berg's Lulu

"Although there can be few operas that so openly bear the scars of censorship as Lulu, this aspect has all too often been neglected by musicologists. Margaret Notley's extensive and detailed investigation of the subject fills a gaping hole in Lulu studies and will be invaluable for Wedekind and Berg scholars alike." — Nick Chadwick, author of articles on Berg, and translator of Hermann Watznauer's biography of Berg in Alban Berg and His World (2010)

"Margaret Notley's new study is a deep and detailed exploration of the political, editorial, and critical environment surrounding Wedekind's controversial dramas that Alban Berg so skillfully forged into the libretto for his powerful but enigmatic opera Lulu. Notley's results revealed here profoundly fortify our musical understanding of one of the finest operas of the past century." — Mark DeVoto , Professor Emeritus of Music, Tufts University

From the Publisher