The modern definition of “compassion,” according to Merriam-Webster, is “the sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” In nineteenth-century German philosophy, this emerges through the idea of Mitleid. While Mitleid literally means “with suffering,” it normally translates as “compassion” or “pity.” The idea of identifying with another's suffering, and, in doing so, transforming human society, became a philosophical point of focus for the likes of Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Art, and particularly music, came to be viewed as an ideal vehicle for this philosophical idea of compassion. Yet this vision of a society united by people's compassion for each other had its limits and excluded a vital part of central European society: the Jews. Jews were deemed incapable of compassion and therefore incapable of creating art that could use compassion to bring humanity together. In the cultural hotbed of the city of Vienna, where a large Jewish population, philosophy, and antisemitism converged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, how did composers of Jewish heritage grapple with the idea that they were inherently incapable of showing compassion in music? And how did the philosophies prevalent at the time affect their approach to musical composition?
These are some of the questions Caroline Kita addresses in Jewish Difference and the Arts in Vienna. Ultimately, Kita aims to show that German Jewish composers used the idea of compassion as a way to bring together the concepts of “German” and “Jew” and create an inclusive human society in which the Jews had active participation. She also uses research of scholars such as Lisa Silverman, whose framework of Jewish difference (in other words, the relationship between the socially constructed categories of what is a “Jew” or a “non-Jew”) is an instrumental part of Kita's musical analysis.
Kita constructs her book as a series of case studies, with each chapter focusing on one of the major German Jewish artists whose works had a profound effect on Viennese culture: Siegfried Lipiner, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Beer-Hoffmann, and Stephan Zweig. Timing plays a role with each of these artists as well; Lipiner and Mahler both died in 1911, but the other artists lived through World War I and into World War II (in Schoenberg's case, through World War II until 1951). Looming large over all of these men are their relationships with the nationalist ideals emerging in central Europe (their loyalty to their German heritage), and their often-fraught relationships with their Jewish heritage while establishing a career in predominately Catholic Austria. Kita focuses on one or two pieces for each artist, while discussing how they navigated their religious and cultural identity through music. While each of these composers was not necessarily fervent in his observance of Judaism, Kita highlights how all these men used (in several cases) stories from the Bible as a framework for their views of compassion and its relationship to Jews and Judaism.
In structuring this monograph as a series of case studies, Kita demonstrates how these artists were influenced by each other in addition to the writings of the German philosophers and (in Wagner's case) artists who loomed large at the time. Kita begins this volume discussing the poet and writer Sigfried Lipiner. His philosophy of compassion influenced composers such as Gustav Mahler, and so Kita's choice to begin with Lipiner and lay out his philosophical ideals on compassion makes a strong starting point. Kita explains how Lipiner believed that “art that evoked a compassionate response in the audience would renew religion by uniting society in acknowledgement of the universal nature of suffering” (xxix). One of the most interesting points in this monograph is when Kita discusses how “Wagnerian Trauma” (a term coined by Michael Steinberg) affected Jewish artists. The term refers to how Wagner's anti-Jewish rhetoric and ideas caused a struggle among Jewish artists who looked to Wagner as inspiration for his philosophy on music and drama. Some Jewish artists followed Wagner's lead in his rhetoric, and even Lipiner for a time chose this road. Eventually Lipiner reformulated his ideas on art and compassion, breaking away from this Wagnerian influence.
Kita shows how the works of each of the artists she surveys represent views of compassion amid the turmoil of sociocultural and economic change, a time when German nationalism was becoming more blatant and Jewish society grappled with what it meant to be German and Jewish in these changing times. Kita's in-depth analyses of the musical works bring forth aspects unrealized previously. Kita gives insight into how each of these men musically faced their views on Judaism and their Jewish heritage and how each individual compares with their fellow Jewish composers and colleagues.
The book relies heavily on philosophical works of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wagner. The philosophies of these men, their relationship to Jewish culture, and (especially in the case of Schopenhauer and Wagner) their antisemitic language make for a fascinating lens through which to view the musical pieces in this book. However, those unfamiliar with their writings may find themselves with a difficult read, as the origins and intricacies of these philosophies are not discussed in depth.
Despite the heavy philosophical bent, this book is worth consulting for anyone working on fin-de-siècle Vienna, and especially those interested in the intersections of music, philosophy, and German Jewish nationalism. This book is a true testament to the idea that the musical notes on a page are the result of a human story. In this case, the human story behind the works of these composers is both complicated and compassionate in a variety of ways.
