DIALECTICAL PARALLELS IN ALFRED SCHNITTKE'S SEID NUCHTERN UND WACHET AND THOMAS MANN'S DOCTOR FAUSTUS A Thesis by Beau Thomas Jarvis Bachelor of Music, Friends University, 2002 Submitted to the department of Music and the faculty of the Graduate School of Wichita State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music December 2012 © Copyright 2012 by Beau Thomas Jarvis All Rights Reserved. DIALECTICAL PARALLELS IN ALFRED SCHNITTKE'S SEID NUCHTERN UND WACHET AND THOMAS MANN'S DOCTOR FAUSTUS The following faculty members have examined the final copy of this thesis for form and content, and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Music with a major in Music History-Literature. _______________________________________________________ Dean Roush, Committee Chair _______________________________________________________ Walter Mays, Committee Member _______________________________________________________ Judith Babnich, Committee Member iii DEDICATION For Miki, Kaiji and Hiroki iv Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. I Peter 5:8. King James Bible v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Dean Roush for his invaluable help in bringing this project to completion and for serving as the committee chairperson. Thanks to Dr. Silvia Carruthers for her many excellent lectures in music history and in helping to guide me towards this project. Thanks are also due to Dr. Walter Mays and Dr. Judith Babnich for graciously reading the document and serving on the thesis committee. vi ABSTRACT Alfred Schnittke and Thomas Mann were both fascinated by the legend of Doctor Faustus, a Germanic myth based upon the life of a real man who lived in the early sixteenth century. Doctor Faustus was a transgressive figure from the perspective of the Lutheranism that swept Germany during the sixteenth century. His exploits were exaggerated to the point of fantasy and eventually became the basis for a 1587 chapbook by Johann Spies. The Spies chapbook functioned as a morality play censuring the acts of witchcraft and divination and exhorting would be-readers to consign themselves to the grace of God. The chapbook quickly spread throughout Europe and was translated into several languages within a few years. In the twentieth century Thomas Mann wrote the novel Doctor Faustus in which he employed biographical elements from such luminaries as Freidrich Nietzsche and Arnold Schoenberg and combined them with the musical knowledge of Theodore Adorno to create the fictional musician and composer Adrian Leverkühn. Leverkühn is the Doctor Faust for a new century and after reading the novel in 1947 Alfred Schnittke, a Russian composer of German descent, decided to compose a musical work based on the fictional descriptions of music. The resulting work Seid Nuchtern und Wachet became one of Schnittke's most well-known compositions. There is a complex web of interrelated material in these two works of art and this thesis document reveals the dialectical position of Thomas Mann's novel and Alfred Schnittke's work to previous versions of the legend specifically that of Wolfgang Von Goethe. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 1 II. ALFRED SCHNITTKE ............................................................................................................ 5 Ancestry..................................................................................................................................... 5 Nagasaki Oratorio .................................................................................................................... 9 The Shestidesyatniki .............................................................................................................. 10 Unofficial composers ............................................................................................................. 14 Polystylism .............................................................................................................................. 18 Montage ................................................................................................................................... 27 III. THOMAS MANN ................................................................................................................ 31 Nietzsche ................................................................................................................................. 33 Schoenberg Serialism and Syphilis ...................................................................................... 35 Theodore W. Adorno and Alban Berg ................................................................................ 36 The Alienation of the Soul .................................................................................................... 38 Politics and Nationalism ....................................................................................................... 43 World War I and Doctor Faustus......................................................................................... 46 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS (Cont.) Chapter Page IV. MYTHS AND LEGENDS ................................................................................................... 49 Soul as Commodity................................................................................................................ 49 The Historia ............................................................................................................................ 52 Goethe ...................................................................................................................................... 54 Conscience and Action .......................................................................................................... 58 V. COMPARISONS .................................................................................................................... 61 Word Painting ........................................................................................................................ 61 Low Art and High Art ........................................................................................................... 65 Apocalypsis cum figuras....................................................................................................... 68 Seid Nuchtern und Wachet .................................................................................................. 69 Number 1: "Folget Nun" ....................................................................................................... 70 Number 2: "Die vierundzwangig Jahre" ............................................................................. 72 Number 3: "Gehen also miteinander" ................................................................................. 73 Number 4: "Meine Liebe" ...................................................................................................... 75 Number 5 "Ach Mein Herr Fauste" ..................................................................................... 77 Number 6 "Faustus Klagt" or The Mocking Devil ............................................................ 77 Number 7: "Es Geschah" or The Tango ............................................................................... 81 ix TABLE OF CONTENTS (Cont.) Chapter Page Number 8: Diese Gemeldete Magistri ................................................................................. 84 Number 9: "Also Endet Sich"................................................................................................ 86 Number 10: "Seid Nuchtern Und Wachet" or The Epilogue ........................................... 87 VI. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 88 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................... 91 x