Assimilation and Struggle, a conversation with Michael Griffel

Classical Domain: Of the three composers in the Prism Concert perhaps Castelnuovo-Tedesco's situation would be the most familiar, he apparently always said that he immigrated, he did not “escape”?

Michael Griffel: In my own mind Castelnuovo-Tedesco, struggled with leaving his home country, his continent and coming to New York first and then California and starting a whole new life. Not the life in Italy where he was prospering and succeeding tremendously as an art music composer, now he's probably better known for his film score music than for his trios, quartets and piano music. He probably would not want to be remembered for his film music. Still the man was not tormented in my opinion.

Certainly not the way Mahler was, for me Mahler is someone who struggled with his own demons all of his life. There the struggle was some kind of alienation born of his Jewish Bohemian birth. He was born not far from Vienna, and when Mahler came to Vienna he found — not to his surprise, that being Jewish shut the doors for him.

MG:    That “three times homeless” quote is something that he may have said, there is no documentation other than Alma Mahler, who claims he said that. This is repeated in all of the Mahler literature, again and again, it's a strong statement. Certainly if he didn't say it in those words she must have felt, from conversations with him, that he was depressed in his young life. Coming from Bohemia where he was born and where the family lived to Vienna. Then in Vienna, where the Austrians were not Germans. Bach and Beethoven, Mahler knew the great composers were German — even Mozart, since Salzburg was part of Germany when Mozart was born.

So he felt he was at the bottom of the heap, Jew yet, who isn't popular, isn't well liked. Through the years in my teaching I have often wondered if he converted more for artistic reasons or more for pragmatic reasons?  Somehow a man who studied and conducted the music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and knew of Palestrina, knew of the traditions of the great catholic music from day one in the history of music. Mahler was aware of its continuity into his own time: Bruckner etc... I wonder just how much he want to be part of that tradition, maybe desperately wanted to be part of that tradition; rather than being again an outsider, an outsider who has infiltrated that tradition.

But that's a hunch, rather than anything we can prove. What we can prove is that he would not have been the conductor in the opera houses and symphony halls of Vienna had he not converted. Certainly a Jew was not going to be hired.

CD:    Let's look at the case for a conversion based more on artistic grounds first.  The conductor Bruno Walter, a man trusted by Mahler to lead the premiere of several of composers symphonies and song cycles, to hear Walter speak about the transcendent importance of music to humanity is to get a window into the mind of Mahler and the philosophy of Art music in the late 19th Century. So the question is, was Mahler philosophically or spiritually perusing something greater than conventional religious attachment?

MG:   That's my theory also. He studied that music assiduously. On occasion he retouched the works of Schubert or Beethoven — it was not disrespectful it was done out of love.  He thought let me make this richer; let me make this the way they would have if they could hear it the way I hear it. There was a great reverence and love for that body of music that was to a great extent composed by people of the catholic faith, so for him, to convert meant that he was becoming part of that family.   The family of composers, the family of composers who had been able to produce music that was never equaled.

Earlier there were well known Jewish composers, Salomone Rossi a late 16th, early 17th century, but you could count the number of important Jewish composers on the fingers of your hand up until the time of Mahler. I just think, for Mahler, part of the whole idea of converting was to join a brotherhood of great composers and become part of a line of such composers.

CD:    When did Mahler convert, at what point was it in his musical output?

MG:   He converted in 1897, as he was gaining success as a composer, around the time of the Third Symphony.

CD:    I'm wondering is there a musicological trail following the first symphony where elements of “Jewish Music” are included in the second movement and are plain to hear and in fact specifically derided by the works original critics.

MG:    There's argument about that.  It's usually people who are hunting for it specifically who find the references. My own ears tell me, right or wrong, in the First Symphony, in the slow movement, the funeral march — those interludes with the b-flat clarinet, to me it sounds like a Klezmer band jumping around in there.   I hear it, but can I prove that it's any more “Jewish” than the slow movement of Brahms' Clarinet Quintet?   I am not sure that I would have an easy time on strictly musical grounds. But I always hear it as part of a fantasy movement.

CD:    But to the audience at the time they certainly would have noticed the allusion, even those not inclined to hate the “Jewish music” out of hand would have to recognize the use of something that's more than a “folk” element?

MG:    The audience may have heard it in Mahler's First Symphony that way, but with Brahms they might be inclined to say it's gypsy music, but with Mahler they are sure that they recognize the Jewishness.  But people look for Jewish musical elements throughout Mahler — even in his next symphony the Resurrection symphony.   They will find perfect fourths or perfect fifths in the brass in the last movement and they will say it's like the call of the shofar. The will find the text that says something about a “still small voice” and they will say those very words occur in the Yom Kipper service as the central prayer.

CD:    Are they presented as intentional messages from Mahler?

MG:    People find these things, but it's very difficult to prove. I can hear augmented seconds and the minor mode, the usage of the clarinet. I can hear it in Beethoven, I can hear it in many composers music. To me the slow movement of the First Symphony with the outbursts of the Klezmer sounding music within the funeral procession, that seems almost a case of the Jewish and the Christian elements in Mahler coming together.   Of course he hadn't converted then, but he was appealing to a Christian audience.

CD:    So maybe we are approaching Mahler too transparently when we look for a religious struggle in the music?

MG:   That is my opinion. Look at the Symphonies Six through Nine, I don't hear any more overt “Jewish” music.

CD:    Certainly there is enough other conflict to animate the music? Nature is a safer and a maybe even richer world for a composer to invest themselves in?

MG:    Nature, Das Lied von der Erde, Chinese poetry. You have Goethe in the Eight Symphony, you have a catholic hymn in the first movement.  I think you'd have to be fishing, certainly there is nothing overt in the way you might infer from the slow movement of the First Symphony.

You don't find it in the songs either. You go to Irving Berlin, he wrote some Yiddish songs at the beginning of his career, and then pretended he wasn't Jewish later on.  But Mahler didn't write anything with a Jewish orientation even early on when he was in the midst of his family.

CD:    How about Mahler's appointment in New York.

MG:   I recently heard a lecture here at Juilliard School given by Henri-Louis de la Grange about Mahler in New York, I went up to him after the lecture and asked him if any hostile criticism on the part of the of the New York press had an anti-Semitic component.  He said no, there is no documentable evidence that anti-Semitism played a part of Mahler's critical reception in New York.

CD:    We've spent a lot of time on the musical reasons, but what were some of the practical reasons for converting?

MG:   There wasn't a particular reason he had to, but there was an opening in 1897 to conduct the Philharmonic. He wanted that, he wanted it very much, but he did something he didn't mind doing. To Mahler being Jewish was thwarting his career.   I've looked through a lot of the literature looking for another quote, other than that “I am three times homeless” attribution, there isn't another reference, abut Jews or Judaism or anything else pertaining to the conversion.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Moses Mendelssohn

CD:    Let's switch gears to Mendelssohn Bartholdy, his father first converted the children and then he and Felix Mendelssohn's mother converted and they changed there name to Bartholdy. So Mendelssohn was raised Lutheran since he was eight years old as Felix Bartholdy. There is a letter from Felix Mendelssohn's father and in it he implores his some to understand why he changed the family name from Mendelssohn to Bartholdy and why Felix should not carry the name Mendelssohn. It's a heartfelt letter.

MG:   It's part of a much letter, it was heartfelt on the part of the father. Here's what the father is saying, my son you revere your grandfather, my father, he was one of the great philosophers [the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn] of his time, but he was an assimilated Jew. He himself changed his name from Ben Mendel Dessau to Mendelssohn. The son of Mendel. So as a loving father I ask you to to get rid of the Mendelssohn as my father got rid of Ben Mendel Dessau. Because you are a Lutheran, you've been baptized. You have a good career, and many opportunities ahead. Your grandfather would have approved — but Felix Mendelssohn couldn't do it.

CD:    Interesting that Felix Mendelssohn would have felt confident enough to see any negative consequences?  There must be something more to this, Mendelssohn is the great musical preservationist as well...

MG:    His father foresaw negative consequences in keeping the name, but Mendelssohn felt a certain “glow” in his Jewish ancestry. He could not have imagined that someone like Wagner would come along and denounce him, out of Wagner's great jealousy. Wagner by the way used a pseudonym in that essay.  He certainly couldn't imagine the horrors of the 20th century. He felt he had the safety of his Christianity, he felt doubly enriched. We hyphenate the name, editions of his music hyphenate it, but Mendelssohn never did, it was always three words: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

There was a lot to be proud of to be the grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, Moses traveled in the highest echelon of culture. His writings were still in wide circulation at the time.

CD:    Certainly Mendelssohn had a lot of security based on his father's wealth.

MG:    True, but Mendelssohn was secure in many was with a good family, gifted musician, at the time the most successful composer alive, and conductor and pianist. He married a minister's daughter, had a good married life. The only trouble with the Mendelssohn family was the in the genes. The died young of strokes. His sister Fanny, his ancestors, but the life he had he was beloved in Germany, in Prussia and in England as well. After Handel, England's most popular composer at the time. He wanted to be identified as a Jewish Christian, he wanted to be identified with the philosophy and the literature of his grandfather.

Also I don't think that in Mendelssohn's time there was the level of systemic anti-Semitism, and absolute detestation that there was later in the century. As long as the Jews kept to certain professions and certain neighborhoods they were tolerated. Beethoven, for instance, has a remark about Jews, but it's “Oh he's the Jew fellow who lives down the block”, that's identification that's not hatred. Of course we have rabidly anti-Semitic comments by Chopin, by Liszt; even the Schumanns will refer to Mendelssohn as #8220;one of those#8221;. But that's nothing like wanting to kill them, and that's rising at the time. Now days we don't identify Liszt or Chopin as anti-Semites was accept that they carry the prejudices of their time. Schubert, Brahms pro-Semitic, if you will, but by Mahler's time it's: ”Get the hell out of here if your Jewish”

CD:    What's fascinating is that it seems in Mendelssohn's case the struggle is inverted, it seems he was trying to pull the Judaism back into his persona. In Mahler's case, either artistically or professionally, the religious identification may not have been important enough to maintain. Which brings me back to something I mentioned before — there is a bigger picture of German Romanticism and the more secular sort of spirituality that infused the century, I have to think that some of these decisions were based on a reoriented spiritual philosophy?

MG:   In the Arts by Mendelssohn's time a composer would have far more secular music that sacred, though Mendelssohn has a lot of scared music. Mendelssohn composed as a man of his time, he did not bring in any elements from his heritage. Even his Old Testament based works there is no Jewish format.

CD:    In contrast to Mahler?

MG:    Mahler grappled, Mahler went through his life always conscious of the fact that there was something in him that was still Jewish. If it had not mattered to get a job to get a head, to befriend the press that he would have had more explicit reference to Judaism in his music. He did turn his back on it officially.

CD:    I wonder how he raised his children?

MG:    Again, I have looked for something and I didn't find anything.

CD:    We have not talked about Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

MG:   Castelnuovo-Tedesco was Jewish and he was Italian, he took a stand. He saw Mussolini coming into power; Mussolini at the time told him to write this, write that — you could be the musical spokesman for Italy, fascist Italy. He could not live with this as an Italian or as a Jew.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco's family was conventional assimilated. An important moment for Castelnuovo-Tedesco was in 1925 when he discovered a small book of manuscripts, melodies, written by his grandfather. There were some Hebrew prayers set to music.

CD:    It's the story here of two grandfathers, with Mendelssohn and Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

MG:   In each case it's terribly important for the grandson. In Castelnuovo-Tedesco his grandfather, remember Castelnuovo-Tedesco had no idea that he wrote music the grandfather died when Castelnuovo-Tedesco was a boy. But he remembered that his grand father wanted to go to temple when he had a heart attack, thought he was about to die. This was important for Castelnuovo-Tedesco, it was his heritage. He sprinkled Jewish text and Jewish modes in his compositions unashamedly, both in Italy and in the States.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco's family in Italy was conventionally assimilated. Castelnuovo-Tedesco in America did not go to temple, there were nothing Jewish about the household or the children's upbringing. Perhaps they did observe the holidays, but still he's conventionally assimilated.

As an artist nothing he felt noting but pride in his Jewishness. He was successful, in Hollywood he was a model for screen composers, even for someone like Henry Mancini, Andre Previn. He was along with Goldmark and others created the linage of film composers.

So Mendelssohn struggled with his father. Mahler struggled with himself. Castelnuovo-Tedesco struggled with the times, with the 1930's and beyond.

CD:    And of the three, felt the strongest need to preserve his heritage in music. Thank you very much.