Karl Amadeus Hartmann: Funèbre

"Funèbre" marks the beginning of a long-term collaboration between ECM Records and the Münchener Kammerorchester, an orchestra whose already impressive international reputation has soared in recent years, thanks to the inspired direction of conductor Christoph Poppen.

For the first recording in this new association, the release of which coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Münchener Kammerorchester, the orchestra and producer Manfred Eicher focus upon the work of one of the most important and independently minded German composers of the 20th century, Karl Amadeus Hartmann. (Parenthetically, it might be noted that this marks the first time in its 30 year history that the Munich-based ECM label has explored the works of a composer from Munich with a Munich-based ensemble). "Funèbre" embraces two of Hartmann's most well-known works which bridge the epochs of the Late Romantic and the Modern, as well as a premiere recording of his Cham-ber Concerto for clarinet, string quartet and orchestra.

Hartmann (1905-63), a rebellious and anarchistic spirit from the beginning, fought with his professors at the Munich academy, including Reger disciple Josef Haas, who tried to discourage the fledgling composer's enthusiasm for Stravinsky, Bartók, jazz, and Expressionism. By 1928 Hartmann (later to found the history-making Musica Viva concert series in Munich) was going his own way, strongly supported by conductor Hermann Scherchen, organizing a series of chamber concerts linked to the art exhibitions held by the Juryfreien, a Munich-based group of radical anti-Establishment artists. By the early 1930s, Hartmann was composing prolifically and moving beyond the influence of Hindemith, one of many composers he had actively promoted, and was beginning to write pure orchestral music in the grand manner and in a tone all his own.

When Hitler came to power, however, Hartmann made the unusual move of banning his own music from public performance in Germany, an act of solidarity with persecuted fellow composers. As music historian Guy Rickarts has written: "The accession of Nazi tyranny had coincided with an expansion in scale and maturity in Hartmann's music. He could easily have taken advantage of the vacuum left by the departure of so many composers and secured his own reputation. Instead, he opted for 'internal emigration', withdrawing altogether from German musical life and banning his music from perform-ance inside the German Reich. "His works were played only abroad. "At home, he provoked the Authorities as far as he dared....In due course Hartmann's music was branded 'atonal' and 'degener-ate'."

The Chamber Concerto for Clarinet, String Quartet and String Orchestra was begun in 1930 and com-pleted in 1935 but had to wait until 1969, six years after Hartmann's death for its first performance. The Concerto funèbre, written in protest against the political treachery that had pitched Europe to-wards an inevitable war, was originally titled Musik der Trauer (Music of Mourning): "To make his point explicit Hartmann wove into the fabric of this work allusions to the hymn tunes of the medieval Czech Hussites - a reference to the betrayal of Czechoslovakia in 1938 - and a Russian revolutionary song later used by Shostakovich in his Eleventh Symphony. "The work under its original title was first performed in St Gallen, Switzerland, in 1940. It was revised as Concerto funèbre in 1959.

Anton von Webern's biographer Hans Moldenhauer records that "at a time when the tidal wave of political nationalism swept his native country, Karl Amadeus Hartmann was one of the first to profess a pacifist creed and to engage in underground resistance against the Hitler regime."

From 1942, Hartmann studied with Webern - and fought with him as well, until he learned how to steer conversation away from politics (Webern still held, almost unaccountably, to right-wing convic-tions) and to benefit from Webern's compositional brilliance and fierce self-discipline. "In the end you could say that not only did I learn a great deal about composing from Webern but that due to him I became a more orderly person" (Hartmann in a letter to his wife).

In the liner notes for "Funèbre", Wolfgang Sandner writes, "Hartman spoke at once with reverence and self-confidence when he mentioned the lessons he had received from Webern: lessons in broken silence. He knew how important painstaking serial analysis was to him as a means of curbing his strong anarchistic tendency. He pored over Webern's Piano Variations op. 27, studying them down to the tiniest structural element, exploring the density of the structural coherence."

Whatever he took from Webern, however, he transformed. There are no stylistic borrowings. Hartmann's 4th Symphony is one of very few of his works in which Webern's influence is evident, and it employs themes with twelve-note properties. They are, however, freely and expressively integrated into the work as a whole; Hartmann had very little in common with the slide-rule serialists who would later define the new orthodoxy of Darmstadt and its "Vatican-like attitude of avant-garde infallibility" (to quote Guy Rickards). Indeed, the post-war experimental faction, while happy to enjoy Hartmann's patronage as Musica Viva administrator, had scant regard for his writing.

Finnish composer Paavo Heininen, who studied in Cologne in 1961 has recalled, "Practically nobody ever mentioned Hartmann at that time. I was an eager collector of recordings of radio broadcasts of the many German networks, but my harvest of Hartmann was very meagre. That was the time of the most ardent serialism, and I remember the name of Hartmann mentioned just once, on the occasion of the performance of a symphony, which was described as 'not so bad'. I preferred not to mention my great enthusiasm."

Too tonal and "romantic" for the unbending serialists, too challenging for what was left of the main-stream German concert audience, Hartmann's music remained underexposed and undervalued for too long in his homeland.

In recent years, however, Karl Amadeus Hartmann's work has been re-evaluated and his position as a composer outside all of the "schools" has been rightly viewed as a sign of his artistic strength and integrity.