Klarinet Archive - Posting 000131.txt from 1998/01

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: David Naden's post on the VPO situation
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 08:05:51 -0500

I must have read and reread David's post a dozen times trying to
find out what within in was grating to me.

Yet I was in agreement with much of what he said which was this:
we Americans have a tendency to presume that the way we do things
is the way everyone is supposed to do things and thus we interfere
in areas that are not our business.

And he's right. It is not disakin to the British in the last half
of the 19th century who believed that their civilization was so
superior to that of any of the various civilizations found in
Africa that those people could be subjugated and made to accept
an English culture.

They got burned doing that and David is correct to point out that
we have little historical basis for similar acts.

And now, what does all of this have to do with music?

In 1938 Germany invaded Austria. It was a no-battle invasion,
and it was called a "joining" or an "Anschluss" but it was
an invasion. Within days, the Vienna Philharmonic's resident
president of the orchestra, a bassoonist named Hugo Burghauser,
was called in and directed to fire anyone in the orchestra
who opposed the Nazi philosophy. That included all Jews and
Christian anti-Nazis. It did not apply to Gypsies because
the VPO had a policy in place that would have prevented any
player of Gypsy background from being in the orchestra anyway. And
although it never came up, they would not have accepted any
player from Mexico either. They did not care for Hispanics
any more than Gypsies.

Burghauser was also told that conductors (invited by the orchestra,
not any board of directors) also had to conform to these policies.
Furthermore, soloists, composers, etc. were also to be considered
in light of racial and political considerations.

Now Burghauser was a Catholic, politically neutral man himself.
Probably the idea that he might have to consider the morality
of such a situation never occurred to him.

It is not a dissimilar situation to that suggested by David.
If that is what the culture required (i.e., racial distinction,
the supression of political dissent, etc.), what business
was it of Hugo Burghauser, 1st bassoon with the VPO to
disagree? After all racial distinction and supression of
political dissent were very well-accepted cultural views both
in Germany and in Austria for several centuries.

And what did all of this have to do with music? Which is what
David brings up.

Musicians feels that they can disassociate themeselves from
this kind of moral responsibility by claiming that it has
nothing to do with music. That is the essence of what
David has written that has put a bone in my throat. And
I don't have an argument with David. Much of what he said
deals with things that I agree with. We Americans are too
chauvenistic and we do try to stick our culture in the ears
of others. But the situation is more complicated than this.

Burghauser told the Nazis to shove it and he stormed
out. Later he was fired from the orchestra for that view
and he left Austria to become a colleague of Av Galper in
Toronto (though I don't think they were both in the TSO at
the same time), and later second bassoon/contrabassoon at
the Metropolitan Opera in New York, which is where I knew him.

Incidentally, Burghauser was the dedicatee of Strauss'
concerto for bassoon and clarinet and he was probably the
most important musician in Europe because he was the president
of the VPO.

The Vienna Phil fired all ethnic groups that they were told to
fire and then continued to make beautiful music during the
entire war. Today they are still a world-class orchestra,
and their policies on morality have yet to be changed.

Today, they don't take women (no matter what they say) and
they still believe that they are an orchestra of white men
playing music by white composers for white audiences.

Now when all of this happened in 1938, the clarinet section,
headed brilliantly by Leopold Wlach, did not stand up for
decency. Only Burghauser did and he got fired for it.

Somehow this story makes me try and find the kernel of
difficulty in David's very correct analysis that Americans
interfere too much with other civilizations and try and
interject their own views too frequently.

Somehow, today's VPO view on women doesn't differ that much
from the view in 1938. So is this the business of
clarinet players? Is this part of our music education?
Should our vision of morality impact other cultures?

Hard questions. But many of America's best clarinet players
would have been fired from the VPO in 1938 because they were
culturally, ethnically, socially, and racially unacceptable
to the power in force. The fact that none of the clarinet
section of the VPO objected to Burghauser's firing is
something that we should be ashamed of. The part of their
clarinet playing education that was supposed to teach them
morality was left out.

Is this subject a topic for this list? Here is a very
practical example, and using the same orchestra that has
been the subject of discussion, that suggests that it is.

=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
=======================================