Kaleidoskop

One of the best violinists of his generation, Heinrich Gottlieb Noren was at first belittled as a composer. Then the première of his orchestral variations Kaleidoscope, given at the Dresden Tonkünstler Convention on 1 July 1907 by the Saxon Hofkapelle (the forerunner of the Dresden Staatskapelle) under their principal conductor Ernst von Schuch (1846-1914), thrust him instantaneously into the forefront of modern composers at the age of forty-six. Besides the incontestable musical quality of this brilliantly and inventively orchestrated work, as delightful in its seriousness and sublimity as in its whimsy and gossamer workmanship, it was especially the unusual freewheeling final variation before the double fugue (“Fantasy,” No. 11) that attracted widespread attention, both for the uninhibited boldness of its design and for the audacity with which it dared to brook comparison with “a famous contemporary.” This was, of course, Richard Strauss, whose Ein Heldenleben Noren unabashedly quoted not once but twice.

Hardly did news of the stunning success begin to make the rounds than Noren found himself embroiled in legal repercussions which would develop into a priceless and gleefully commentated original precedent: Richard Strauss’s Leipzig publisher Leuckart submitted a lawsuit to the Royal District Court in Dresden for infringement of copyright. This proved to be grist for the mill of the stylistic controversy then raging between the progressives (primarily the bold innovator Strauss, never at a loss for a turn of phrase or tirade) and the conservatives (such as Reinecke in Leipzig or the Berlin Academics). Two years earlier, after the première of Salome, that stern master of counterpoint Felix Draeseke (1835-1913), estranged by the latest developments, had already poured oil on the flames of an acrimonious dispute between the adherents and opponents of progressive music by publishing his polemical pamphlet Die Konfusion in der Musik. Besides such deadly serious broadsides, there were also acidly humorous articles, especially once Noren, who cleverly and brazenly posed as the thief of two main themes from Ein Heldenleben, had been cleared of all charges in 1908, the reasoning of the court being that the themes in question were not melodies at all (GRUR 1909, p. 332, Oberlandesgericht Dresden). This was followed by a gloss from the pen of Strauss’s biographer Max Steinitzer (1864-1936), a generous patron of Strauss’s fictitious rival Otto Jägermeier who eventually emigrated to Madagascar. This gloss, published in the carnival issue of Die Musik in 1909, added the following lines of doggerel to Strauss’s heroic theme: “Strauss is a great genius, but completely lacking in melody. O, listen to Franz Lehár! Now there’s a man to reckon with!” The same issue ran a “Reformist Harlequinade” from the opposing party, a report of the “144th Cacophonists Convention in Bierheim” that mercilessly pilloried the work of the General German Music Association (ADMV), of which Strauss was chairman. The article brought about years of litigation for its author, the Munich educationalist and composer Edgar Istel (1880-1948). At the end of the convention the Devil himself appears and has his regimental band play “a new cacophonic concoction from our Richard: Ein Höllenleben” (“A Life in Hell”). But the Devil puts an end to the proceedings: “That’s too much even for me! I can’t impose that on my poor souls: they’re damned only to infernal torments. Do all of you compose like this?” To which Richard responds, in broad Bavarian dialect, “With all due respect, Mr. Devil, I think the other chaps compose even more hideously.” At which point they are all expelled from Hell: “The earth opens up and spews out the cacophonists .…”

Quite apart from the legal and satirical collateral damage Kaleidoscope may have occasioned on Earth and in Hell, the piece itself was a virtuosic and multifaceted orchestral work at the zenith of its era, and the scandal fueled its success to great effect. Issued in print by the Leipzig publishers Lauterbach & Kuhn in 1908, the year of the court’s verdict, it was performed from one end of Germany to the other and entered the repertoires of the great orchestras throughout Europe. On 12 December 1908 the Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered the work in the U.S., two days later the Berlin Philharmonic played it for the first time under their principal conductor Arthur Nikisch (1855-1922), and the English première was given in Queen’s Hall during a concert of the London Proms on 19 August 1909. The successes proceeded apace: on 11 January 1912 Nikisch conducted the première of Noren’s B-minor symphony Vita (op. 36) with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and on 28 Mai 1912 the extremely ingratiating Violin Concerto of 1911 (op. 38) was premièred, under Noren’s baton, at the Danzig Tonkünstler Festival by Alexander Petschnikoff (1873-1949). In short order Hugo Kortschak (1884-1957) played the Berlin première with the Berlin Philharmonic on 9 October 1912 (again with Noren conducting), the Viennese première with the Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra on 24 November 1912, the Munich première, and the first American performance, given in Chicago by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on 5 December 1913 under its principal conductor, Frederick Stock (1872-1942). Only the First World War was able to put an abrupt end to the triumphal progress of Noren’s music. After the war his name, in the absence of exciting new works, quickly vanished from the collective consciousness, as did so many others. Yet two works of his had appeared on the programs of the Berlin Philharmonic in the 1916-17 season: Kaleidoscope, conducted by Hermann Henze (1886-?) on 12 October, and the new Symphonic Serenade, op. 48, premièred under Felix Weingartner (1863-1942) on 12 February 1917.

After beginning as a Brahmsian, Noren shifted at the height of his success to the camp of his revered Richard Strauss, and he stands side by side with Strauss and Reznicek in the natural virtuosity of his style and his musicianly whimsicality. Today, a full century after the gradual sinking of his star, he is well and truly ripe for rediscovery, and no work is better suited to this purpose than that cult composition at the threshold to modernism: Kaleidoscope.
Christoph Schlüren, May 2016