{"id":1430,"date":"2013-03-08T17:47:25","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T21:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/?p=1430"},"modified":"2013-03-08T17:47:25","modified_gmt":"2013-03-08T21:47:25","slug":"gender-roles-and-krenek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/?p=1430","title":{"rendered":"Gender Roles and Krenek"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let me start off this post by noting that Krenek was a very smart man, but lived in a period where in much of Western Democracy, the right for women to vote was limited for much of his youth (In Switzerland for more than half his life!<\/a>), and that feminist ideas had not wholly penetrated the West. \u00a0That being said, some of the dynamics between male and female leads in his opera highlight a male dominated world and a view that is seated inside it. In Stewart’s biography on Krenek he notes Karl Kraus’ influence on Krenek’s view on women,<\/p>\n

“The emotional essence of woman is not wanton or nihilistic, but rather is a tender\u00a0fantasy<\/em> which serves as the unconcious orgin of all that has any worth in human experience. \u00a0herein lies the source of all inspriation and creativity…Reason must be supplied with proper goals from the outside; it must be given direction of a moral or aesthetic type. \u00a0The feminine fantasy fecundates the moral reason and gives it that direction…The feminine is the source of all that is civilizing in society.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stewart, J. L. (1991).\u00a0Ernst Krenek: The man and his music<\/i>. Berkeley: University of California Press. (335)<\/p>\n

This is not as wholly offensive as the idea of The Eternal Feminine, or Ewig-weibliche as espoused by Otto Weinenger in\u00a0Sex and Character,\u00a0<\/em>which Kraus was responding to in formulating his ideas on the female’s essence,<\/p>\n

“Woman is neither high-minded not low-minded, strong minded or weak-minded. \u00a0She is the opposite of all these. \u00a0Mind cannot be predicated of her at all; she is mindless. \u00a0That however does not imply weakmindedness in the ordinary sense of the word, the absence of capacity to “get her bearings” in ordinary, everyday life…Woman is engrossed exclusively by sexuality, not intermittently, but throughout her life…The idea of pairing is the only conception which has positive worth for women.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Weininger, O. (1906).\u00a0Sex & character<\/i>. London: W. Heinemann.<\/p>\n

That being said, according to Sterwart, Krenek did indeed agree with Kraus’ idea of Ewig-weibliche in that it is,<\/p>\n

“The mysterious centre of man’s nature – but it is also the purest expression of the orignal divine principle, undisguised essence, the primal order before the fall, the real likeness of God. \u00a0This automatically puts the male world of wanting and doing into a dialectical relationship with this Ur-nature [that of the eternal feminine]; it becomes the central principle of the Fall, of ambiguous thought and intellectualism, which must be paid for with punishment and repentance. \u00a0The repentance produces the creative principle of male\u00a0organization\u00a0 demonstrated most clearly in the act of artistic construction.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Krenek, E. (1966).\u00a0Exploring music; essays<\/i>. New York: October House. (116)<\/p>\n

You can see the Krenek’s contrasting ideas of female and male essence clearly in Jonny Spielt Auf’s representation of the character Max, who is prone to brooding and being overly intellectual and his romantic interest, Anita who becomes a sort of muse to Max. Further on in Krenek’s essay on Berg’s Lulu he states the dialectical relationship more clearly,<\/p>\n

“When the\u00a0nightingale, speaking for the bird-world in Kraus’ poem,\u00b9 says ‘you have the law, we have the world’, it voices an opposition of the most profound kind between the pre-logical sphere which is the real domain of the female nature, and the sphere of law which is thoroughly dominated, with\u00a0inexorable\u00a0logic, by language and the norms of art.”<\/p>\n

[1.\u00a0Text of Kraus poem below the fold.]<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Krenek, E. (1966).\u00a0Exploring music; essays<\/i>. New York: October House. (117)<\/p>\n

Although it’s wonderful to think of the idea of the female nature as inspiring, the “real likeness of God,” and “all that is civilizing in society”, the ideas engage in an incredible amount of “gender Orientalism”. \u00a0<\/em> What I mean by this is that it\u00a0otherizes<\/em>\u00a0an entire gender. \u00a0Indeed, coursing through the language of Krenek and Kraus, we have them calling female nature \u00a0“pre-logical”, and outside reason, while representing the male nature as one of “wanting and doing”, and “Reason”. \u00a0Orientalism as described by Edward Said uses the exact same kind of implicit\u00a0dichotomy, even along the same lines of “rationality”, but instead of between the male and female genders, it is West vs. East.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> Kraus, K., & Fischer, H. (1959).\u00a0Worte in Versen<\/i>. M\u00fcnchen: K\u00f6sel-Verlag.<\/p>\n

You children of men, are you not leaves
\nblown about in a forest,
\nYou are of dust,
\nAnd vanish so soon!
\nBut we exist always.<\/p>\n

We announce to you the change of year,
\nYou ask our councel
\nAnd we tell you the truth
\nAnd we conduct the deed
\nWe weave and we know.<\/p>\n

You have the law, we have the world,
\nAnd to us is permitted
\nWhat pleases us!
\nO come and believe!
\nWe love lovers.<\/p>\n

First Eros dwelled in golden Light
\nAnd we came to the grove
\nAs his master poem
\nOn a glorious day
\nWe were created by him.<\/p>\n

We birds, awakened before the gods
\nBorn from the depth,
\nWe offspring of the night
\nBathed with fire of of the day,
\nWe are love!<\/p>\n

Original text (German):<\/p>\n

Ihr Menschenkinder
\nIhr Menschenkinder, seid ihr nicht Laub,
\nverweht im Wald
\nihr Gebilde aus Staub
\nund vergeht so bald!
\nUnd wir sind immer.<\/p>\n

Wir verkuenden euch den Wechsel im Jahr,
\nihr fragt uns un Rat
\nund wir sagen euch wahr
\nund wir fuehren die Tat.
\nWir weben und wissen<\/p>\n

Ihr habt das Gesetz, wir haben die Welt
\nund uns ist erlaubt,
\nwas uns gefallt.
\nO kommt und glaubt!
\nWir lieben Verliebte.<\/p>\n

Zuerst war Eros im goldenen Licht
\nund wir warden im Hag
\nals sein Hochgedicht
\nam stralenden Tag
\nvon ihm erschafen.<\/p>\n

Wir Voegel, vor den Goetttern erwacht,
\nder Tiefe enstammt
\nwir Enkel der Nacht
\nvom Tag ueberflammt,
\nwir sind die Liebe!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let me start off this post by noting that Krenek was a very smart man, but lived in a period where in much of Western Democracy, the right for women to vote was limited for much of his youth (In Switzerland for more than half his life!), and that feminist ideas had not wholly penetrated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20001,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,3,61],"tags":[142,140],"class_list":["post-1430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-philosophy","category-politics","category-thoughts-on-music","tag-gender","tag-krenek","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20001"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1430"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1434,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions\/1434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}