Brecht, Music and Culture: Hanns Eisler in Conversation with Hans Bunge by Hans Bunge & Hanns Eisler

Author:Hans Bunge & Hanns Eisler
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING
Published: 2014-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

Conversation 7

22 August 1961

‘Hotel Room 1942’ – Hölderlin

What have you chosen to sing or play?

Your advice was very good. I will try to play a song called ‘Hotel Room 1942’, although it will be inadequate and feeble and, as I said once before, it’ll sound like a sick dachshund. The poem, by Brecht, is written in very simple language with great craftsmanship – it’s high art really. Using the same simple style, I tried to transpose the poem into the language of music, in the same way you preserve a fly in a piece of amber. I’ll try to sing it and if it doesn’t work, I’ll try again. As you know, the text is:

Against the whitewashed wall

Stands the black suitcase with the manuscripts.

Over there stands the smoker’s kit with the copper Ashtray,

The Chinese canvas, showing the sceptic,

Hangs above it. Also the masks are there, and beside The bedstead

Stands the small illuminated loudspeaker.

At dawn

I turn the switch and hear

Reports of the triumphs of my enemies.164

This poem was written in the days when all the radio stations in the world bombarded us with news of the incredible victories of the fascists. I hope I can sing it in that cheerful spirit with which I set it to music then – and, by the way, also in a hotel room. [After listening to the playback:]

It doesn’t sound very optimistic. Let’s do it again and describe what’s happened.

We’ve moved the microphone a bit further back now.

That should improve the range of the sound. But it’s quite possible that the real problem, musically speaking of course, is not the distance of the microphone but the range of the performer’s voice. Let’s try it once more. [After the second playback:]

I have now published Volume V of my Songs and Cantatas. I always try to begin each volume with a special motto. For example, in Volume VI, which is already at the printer, I composed a motto to Brecht’s poem ‘On a Chinese Tea Root Lion’.165

[Eisler’s poodle barks.] I’ll stop this recording now. Puschko, get out! Now my snarling dog has been thrown out, I can continue.

When I was in Leipzig, I bought another edition of Hölderlin poems and from this I composed a motto for Volume V. I put it immediately before the poem ‘Red Wedding’,166 probably one of my favourite workers’ songs, which I composed in 1928 and which are known for a certain coarseness and roughness. Hölderlin’s poem, it’s really only a fragment, goes as follows (I quote only a few lines):

Indifferent to my wisdom

The waters hurry by, but even so

I like to hear them, and they often move me

And make my heart strong – the mighty waters;

And, while not along my channels but their own,

They find their true course down to the sea.

Musically it sounds like this … I can hardly sing it and I can hardly play it, but I’ll try. [Eisler sings the song.] Unfortunately, in my performance of this song, and I hope I can improve it sometime, we once again hear the sound of the sick dachshund.

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