Reisebuch

It may be significant that Ernst Krenek (1900-91) was born at the turning point between two very different musical centuries. He began writing in a freely atonal style, pursued Neo-Classical and Neo-Romantic trends, then moved on to write according to strict twelve-tone and serial procedures. The Travel Book from the Austrian Alps was written very quickly in July 1929 while Krenek was living in his native Vienna. It follows his most successful work, the jazz-opera Jonny spielt auf, by three years. Jonny was popular enough to secure Krenek’s financial security for years to come, but its eclectic modernism ran him afoul of the rising Nazi movement.
The Travel Book’s immediate motivation seems to have been a personal quest on Krenek’s part to discover the “soul” of his native Austria, which had been overrun in the aftermath of the Hapsburg Empire by Germans. Here is no mere idyll, however. Making obvious (and explicit) reference to Schubert, whom Krenek regarded as the inventor of the unified song-cycle genre, these pieces celebrate the beauty and power of Alpine nature while also engaging in psychological introspection. The world outside becomes a mirror reflecting the unsettled inner landscapes of the poet-composer’s mind. Reinforcing their vulnerability as fully-fledged works, Krenek himself referred to the “Travel Book” songs as “sentimental, ironic, and philosophical sketches.” Song No. 3, “Kloster in den Alpen” (Cloister in the Alps), presents the familiar textures and rhythms of a Schubertian lied against unexpected harmonic shifts. The jarring changes bring home the prescient spirit of disquiet, of fundamental imbalance, that Krenek saw in European life in 1929. Song No. 8, “Unser Wein” (Our Wine), is much more traditional in all respects, and it is in the epigraph to this song that Krenek makes his homage to Schubert explicit. Its critical message is that Austrian wine is valuable only to those who know how to find it. Given its title “Auf und ab” (Up and Down), one might anticipate the kind of musical word-painting that Krenek revels in with Song No. 10.

(c) Jason Stell