The conductor is the entire spectacle of that which the audience obeys. The audience gathers to see a man standing alone, elevated, who at will makes an obedient herd speak and be silent.
The conductor makes rain and clear skies with his baton. He has a golden branch at the tip of his fingers.
An obedient herd means a pack of domesticated animals. A pack of domesticated animals defines human society, that is, an army founded on the death of the other.
They march to the baton.
A human pack gathers to see a domesticated pack. Among the Bororos, the best singer becomes the leader of the group. Orders and effective song are indistinguishable. The master of the social body is nature’s Kappellmeister. Every conductor is a tamer, a Führer. Everyone who applauds brings his hands in front of his face, then heels, then shouts.
In Theresienstadt, H. G. Adler could not bear to hear opera arias sung in the camp.
In Theresienstadt, Hedda Grab-Kernmayr said: “I can’t understand how, in the camp, Gideon Klein could compose a Wiegenlied (a lullaby).”
Shortly after arriving at the Theresienstadt camp, on March 21, 1942, Hedda Grab-Kernmayr began to sing Dvořák’s Biblical Songs. On April 4 it was the Pürglitzer farewell program. On May 3 she sang Carlo Taube’s Ghetto Lullaby, then again on June 5, and again on June 11 in the courtyard of the Hamburg barracks. She participated in the premiere of The Lost Fiancée on November 28. Then it was The Kiss in 1943, Carmen in 1944. On April 24, 1945, a typhus epidemic broke out. On May 5 the SS retreated. On the 10th, the Red Army entered the camp and the quarantine began. During the months of June and July 1945 the prisoners were allowed to leave Theresienstadt.
Once she had left the camp, she never sang again. She emigrated to the western United States. She no longer wanted to speak about music. With Marianne Zadikow-May, with Eva Glaser, with Doctor Kurt Wehle in New York, with Doctor Adler in London, with the violinist Joža Karas, she refused to speak about music.
One of the most difficult, the most profound, the most disorienting things to have been expressed about the music that was composed and played in the death camps, was said by the violinist Karel Fröhlich, who survived Auschwitz, in an interview recorded in New York by Joža Karas on December 2, 1973. Karel Fröhlich suddenly says that the ghetto-camp of Theresienstadt brought together “ideal conditions” for composing and interpreting music.
Insecurity was absolute, tomorrow was given to death, art was the same as survival, the test of time was the test of the passage of the most interminable and empty time. To all these conditions, Karel Fröhlich added another “essential factor,” impossible in normal societies:
“We didn’t really play for a public, because it was continually disappearing.”
The musicians played for audiences that were dying and that they themselves would imminently join by boarding the train. Karel Fröhlich said:
“This at the same time ideal and abnormal aspect was insane.”
Viktor Ullmann agreed with Karel Fröhlich, adding for his part the mental concision in which the modern composer is placed by the impossibility to write down on paper the sounds that haunt the mind. Viktor Ullmann died in Auschwitz, upon his arrival at the camp on October 17, 1944.
The last work composed by Viktor Ullmann in the camp is entitled Seventh Sonata. He dedicated it to his children Max, Jean, and Felice. He dated it August 22, 1944. Then, continuing the reflections of Karel Fröhlich, Viktor Ullmann scribbled a sarcastic copyright at the bottom of the first page. There is an ultimate humor. Ultimate humor is language at the moment it passes its own limit.
“Execution rights are reserved by the composer until his death.”
Eighth Treatise. RES, EOCHAID, ECKHART
Res was a cowherd on the Bahlisalp. In the summers he would go up to the pasture and spend the nights on the mountain. Every night, he made sure to bolt the wooden lock on the door to his cabin. One day, after putting out the flames, scattering the embers, covering them with the ashes, and falling asleep, suddenly he saw around the hearth, in a bright light, a giant with thick hands and red cheeks, a servant with a pale face carrying buckets of milk, a green hunter holding a branch in his hand.
The servant with the pale face handed three buckets full of milk one by one to the giant. Then, while the giant and the green hunter made cheese, the pale young man went over to the door of the cabin, which was open, leaned against the left doorpost, and played the alphorn to the great delight of Res and his herd.
As the giant with the colorful cheeks finished pouring the whey into the buckets, it so happened that the whey took on a color as red as blood in the first container.
It became green as the forests in the second.
It became white as the snow in the third.
The giant then shouted to Res. He commanded him to choose between the buckets. Speaking very loudly, he said:
“Take the red one, I’m giving it to you. Drink it. You’ll become strong like me. No one will stand up to you and defeat you. You’ll be the most powerful man of the mountain and you’ll be surrounded by a hundred bulls and their cows.”
The hunter spoke in his turn and said, calmly addressing Res:
“What is strength? What’s a herd to care for, to milk, to lead, to pair, to calve, and to feed in the winter? Drink from the green bucket and your right hand will be made of gold while all that the other touches will turn to silver. Gold and silver take up less space in your pocket than a herd on the pasture. You’ll be free to go wherever you like in the world. You’ll be rich.”
And, having spoken, the hunter threw a pile of gold and silver at Res’s feet.
Res hesitated to answer the giant and the green hunter. Bewildered, he turned to the servant, who was leaning against the left doorpost and who had not yet spoken. He held his alphorn in his hands. He turned his white face toward Res. He lifted his blue eyes toward him. He left the doorstep. He approached Res. He said:
“What I have to offer you is rather paltry and can in no way be compared to the strength or wealth you’ve been offered. I can teach you to yodel songs. I can also teach you to play the alphorn. Animals, men, their wives, their children will obey you. Even benches and tables will dance in their cabins. Bulls will stand up on their hind legs and jump over hedges when you play the horn. All this is contained in the bucket filled with white whey, like the one you drink every day.”
Res, the cowherd on the Bahlisalp, chose the white bucket and its corresponding gift. This is how music came to mankind, pallor and obedience.
The first king to rule Ireland was Eochaid, who was nicknamed Feidleach. His people thought that he had been nicknamed Feidleach because he was feidil, which means just. But the sobriquet had a completely different meaning.
Eochaid once had four sons. When he was old, his four sons joined forces against him. They fought him at a place known as Druim Criach. Initially, Eochaid tried to reach a truce with his sons. But only the youngest accepted and left Druim Criach, unwilling to fight against his brothers. The three others rejected the agreement. Eochaid promptly cursed his three sons, saying: