The
Rediscovery of Kaminski, Schwarz-Schilling and Heinz Schubert
with
the Orchestre des Régions Européennes
under the
direction of Konrad von Abel
With the upcoming one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of composer Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling on May 9, 2004, the conductor Konrad von Abel has decided to take his renowned string orchestra, which is based in Besançon/France, on a large-scale concert tour throughout Germany. During this tour, the orchestra presented pieces by Heinrich Kaminski, Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling, and Heinz Schubert to German audiences in numerous cities. Konrad von Abel has been promoting the music of Kaminski’s circle as no one else before him.
Who today has ever heard of Heinrich
Kaminski, Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling, or even Heinz Schubert? 
Music History has almost forgotten
them and among general audiences the names of these composers
are unknown. However, this has not always been the case, and
one can find historic reasons for this that are not based on
the actual quality of the music. Heinrich Kaminski, his pupil
Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling, and Heinz Schubert, who was spiritually
and artistically closely related to Kaminski, did not represent
a school, but rather a specific ethos of creativity. Their
mental and spiritual attitudes were not characterized by a
one-sided desire to simply further develop music, or an affinity
to any type of artistic fashion or trend. Their thinking and
conscious modes of musical experience were instead geared towards
a timeless dimension in composition and a natural advancement
of the polyphonic achievements of Johann Sebastian Bach and
Anton Bruckner.
The historic and aesthetic contexts
During the 1920s and 30s, Heinrich Kaminski (1886-1946) was
generally viewed as one of the truly great composers of the
day. By using the great German tradition of contrapuntal thinking
as his fundamental point of reference, he was able to develop
his orchestral, choral, and chamber compositions to new and
previously unrealized levels. Many saw him as the legitimate
successor of the tradition built on the art of J. S. Bach and
the late works of Beethoven and Bruckner. His musical language
was based on a conceptualization of sound that was almost hymn-like
and religiously motivated, which he developed into a form of
universal strength and power. Because of this inner force,
honesty, and uncompromising passion, Kaminski’s music
was able to successfully resist the general cultural dictatorship
of the Nazis.
Kaminski’s most well known student was Carl Orff. However,
Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling (1904-85), who came from Walter
Braunfels to Kaminski in the late 1920s, was much closer to
him. It was also Schwarz-Schilling who continued against the
predominant ‘Zeitgeist’, by further using the techniques
he had learned and absorbed from Kaminski, after his master’s
death.
Heinz Schubert (1908-45) was a religiously motivated composer
and conductor who resisted without compromise the political
impositions of his time. In a way, he paid with his life for
his artistic convictions. The only historic recording that
experts are aware of is one made during the war of his large-scale
'Hymnisches Konzert' with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
under the direction of Wilhelm Furtwängler.
After Hitler’s gain of power, Kaminski developed an attitude
of “inner immigration”, comparable in some degree
to that of Shostakovich. Kaminski remained in his country,
yet cultivated an inner and mental opposition to the newly
developing powers. On July 4, 1933, his 47th birthday, Kaminski
and his friends together founded the “order of those
that love”. The rules of this order demanded that its
members “hate no one and nothing, and must not be seduced
into hate by evil willfulness or abusive actions. Hate is to
be overcome by No-Hate”. As well, the order requested “one
should send loving thoughts into the world daily, even if it
is for a few seconds or minutes only”. It was not possible
to earn an infinite membership into the order. One had to renew
one’s membership by continuous and daily renewal of devotion
to service. The “rules” of this order were only
to be passed on to those who were ready and mature enough to
respect them. “Complete silence about these matters was
seen as a self-understood law”.
After many years of challenges and struggles, Kaminski was
declared as a “half Jew” in 1938, which therefore
banned his compositions from any public performance. The composer
and conductor Heinz Schubert, who deeply respected and adored
Kaminski, violated this policy of the Nazi regime by premiering
Kaminski’s “In memoriam Gabrieliae”. Due
to this incident, Schubert himself had to face suppression.
On May 31, 1941, Kaminski was informed by the “Reichskammer” that
the governmental prohibition banning his pieces from public
performance had been withdrawn and changed. It was declared
that Kaminski’s reputation was restored “based
on the analysis that as a half-caste he was related to only
one fully Jewish grandparent. Therefore, the leadership of
the NSDAP [Nazi party] does not have any more concerns about
public performances of his works, except performances for the
NSDAP itself and all related sub branches of the party”.
The free-spirited and humanistic Kaminski remained a blacklisted
victim of the circumstances of his time, especially due to
the fact that all the conductors who had promoted and supported
him (Bruno Walter, Fritz Busch, and Hermann Scherchen) had
either emigrated or faced suppression themselves. With the
end of the Second World War, Kaminski’s work could have
experienced a renaissance, but he died the following year.
His student Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling, and Schilling’s
wife Dusza von Hakrid, a Polish pianist also banned from performance,
both had to fear suppression by the secret police known as
the “Gestapo”. For these artists, the end of the
war represented their liberation. Heinz Schubert, on the other
hand, disappeared during the last days of the war. It is assumed
that he was either killed on the streets, or murdered in one
of the concentration camps at some point during this time.
It is time
The post-war climate continued to develop and grow against
those composers who stood strong and refused to abandon the
natural powers of tonality and harmony. In central Europe the
so-called “avant-garde” began to dominate the musical
landscape and claimed the overall leadership in new musical
developments. First, there appeared a fixation on atonal techniques
emphasizing structural methods. Then, composers focused more
and more on the short-lived and purely stimulating effects
of sound. Everything that resisted this totalitarian attitude
was more or less categorized as “anachronistic” or “late-romantic”,
and was generally ignored in a rather undifferentiated manner.
Even the leading composers of Russia and Northern Europe, such
as Shostakovich, Sibelius, and Britten, were already considered
antiquated.
Today, these rigid aesthetic attitudes have been revealed to
be absurd. They eventually contributed to the “postmodern” lack
of orientation and arbitrary choice of direction. People have
started to rediscover that which was ignored not only during
the Nazi era, but also under the inflexible and rigid ‘Zeitgeist” of
modernism. The accused and prosecuted composers in exile, as
well as those who had to suffer under the Nazi regime, are
now being internationally rehabilitated. Even though most of
them have already died, light is now being shed upon their
well-deserved artistic contribution and value. With the exception
of the discussion around the symbolic figure of Wilhlem Furtwängler
and the Soviet Union, the public has yet to acknowledge what
took place during the so-called “˜inner-emigration”.
The revival and publication of works by Heinrich Kaminski,
Heinz Schubert, and Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling is not only
a hugely important contribution to understanding and perception
of the true diversity of 20th century German music.
Previous attempts to rescue this exquisite music have been
defeated. However, this transcending art that emerged out of
the musical tradition naturally shall now finally be publicly
presented to a wider audience, and find its first forum to
enable reflection and discussion. The mental resistance against
a totalitarian regime that developed into what is called “inner
emigration” was forced to remain as such after the war.
It is more than time to overcome this status of emigration
if we truly desire to know what the 20th century has produced
and what the 20th century has to say for the future. The year
of the hundredth birthday of Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling is
a welcomed occasion for this overdue discovery and utilization
of its inspirational impulses. This forum serves as a force
against the materialistically through-organized world and focuses
directly on the transcendence of the sounding material. Kaminski
and his circle did not view music as an elite art form, but
as nutrition that is essential for the survival of the human
soul.
The works
Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling’s 'Introduktion und Fuge für
Streichorchester' is based on his string quartet in F minor
(1932), in which he used his own unique hymn-like compositional
tone, yet still remained close to his teacher Kaminski. The
orchestration for string orchestra was completed in 1948 and
was premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under the
direction of Sergiu Celibidache on April 10, 1949. It is a
unique expression of fate that now, after more than half a
century, Konrad von Abel, an expert on Kaminski and the closest
collaborator of Sergiu Celibidache, dedicates himself to these
composers and their works.
Heinz Schubert composed “Vom Unendlichen”, a Prelude
and Fugue for Soprano and three solo string quintets, at the
beginning of the 1940s. The work is based on a pantheistic
Zoroastrian hymnus to the creator. The movement is rich in
figurations, and Schubert further develops the essence of solemn
praise in an unlimited manner using the highest forms of German
contrapuntal tradition.
Heinrich Kaminski composed his string quintet in Fsharp minor
in 1916. The piece expresses his
shock resulting from the war-related death of his artistic
friend Franz Marc. Kaminski achieved his own break-through
as a composer with its premiere on March 12, 1917 in Munich.
The critical reviews stated, “The vision of a new land
emerges with the revelation of this young genius”. The
finale movement of the work, which in its entirety lasts over
one hour, consists of a monumental fugue that can be excerpted
and performed on its own. In 1927, Kaminski revised the quintet,
which at the time was performed by leading musicians all over
Europe. After the revisions, Kaminski asked his student Reinhard
Schwarz-Schilling to transcribe the work for string orchestra,
almost as a final exam before “graduating”. Kaminski
supervised and authorized his student’s work the entire
time. Franz von Hoesslin premiered the new transcription for
string orchestra on February 22, 1929 in Wuppertal. Overall,
the work is comparable to Beethoven’s “Grosse Fuge”,
Bruckner’s String Quintet, or even Schoenberg’s “Transfigured
Night”. The string orchestra transcription of the original
chamber music piece demands the highest degree of differentiation
and underlines the symphonic dimensions of the composition
with its expansion of dynamic and color contrasts. It is now
finally possible for Kaminski’s work to be rediscovered
and understood as one of the most monumental and greatest pieces
for string orchestra of its time.
Foto - Top Page 1: Heinrich Kaminski
Foto – Center Page 1: Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling, 1946
Photo – Bottom page 1: Heinz Schubert
Translation: Tom Zelle
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