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A researcher has listened to 480 versions of Hitler's favourite music. This is what he found

Together, the interpretations of the same classical work mirror world history, the professor says.

“Although all conductors aim to be faithful to the original, they perform the piece in different ways,” says researcher. This photo shows Wilhelm Furtwängler, chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1922 to 1954.
Silje Pileberg Freelance JOURNALIST
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The day after Adolf Hitler took his own life in a bunker in Berlin, May 1, 1945, German radio broadcast Hitler’s favourite music. It was the slow movement Adagio from Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7.

The recording was by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, the orchestra’s chief conductor from 1922 to 1954. The performance was from January 1942.

“Furtwängler is one of the greatest Bruckner interpreters of all time, and this version is among the finest of them all,” says Erling E. Guldbrandsen, retired professor of musicology at the University of Oslo.

From dance music to religious rituals

He has studied 480 different recordings of the piece, from various countries in Europe and Asia, and the USA. 

The oldest is from 1924, the most recent from 2023.

“Although all conductors aim to be faithful to the original, they perform the piece in different ways,” says Guldbrandsen.

The fastest recording lasts 16 minutes, the longest 33.

Erling E. Guldbrandsen is surprised by the differences between the recordings, both historically and geographically.

“Some orchestras play the piece lightly and briskly, others calmly and legato. Some turn it into something akin to a religious ritual, rising towards a revelation,” he says.

Sensitive music on the German airwaves

The performance that was broadcast on German radio on May 1, 1945, is highly lyrical and sensitive. Both the upper and inner voices are shaped and articulated with flexibility and expressiveness.

At the same time, according to Guldbrandsen, the conductor succeeds in building the whole structure in a masterful way, up to the climax about two-thirds into the movement.

“This interpretation is mobile and flexible in a completely different way than, for instance, the Italian Arturo Toscanini, another great conductor of the time," he says. 

While Furtwängler was misused by the Germans as a flagship for a supposed German and Aryan superiority, Toscanini was anti-fascist. He plays the music in a taut, forceful, and strict manner, Guldbrandsen explains.

Cool and detached music in the post-war era

Toscanini’s interpretation was the most typical around the time of World War II. 

Several of the recordings Guldbrandsen has studied from the 1930s bore marks of conflict, with sharp and cutting contrasts. Others were intimate and romantic.

The 1950s and 60s were characterised by more detached, cool, and anti-romantic recordings.

“I link this to the experience of the world war. Faith in the German-romantic musical tradition took a knock after Nazism and the Holocaust,” the researcher says.

It's like in the theatre, he points out: A production of Hamlet will always be marked by the era in which it is performed.

“Music, too, is an utterance into its present,” he says.

Today, “anything goes”

In the 1980s, one can see a neo-romantic wave, with what Guldbrandsen describes as an “emotional and seductive style of playing.”

What about today?

“We are now in a time when everything is present at once. There are super-romantic versions, lush and pompous, and there are versions that are neutral, technical, restrained, and questioning. Different trends stand side by side,” he says.

Guldbrandsen has looked at both historical and cultural differences. The orchestras of different countries and cities have their own traditions, which shape the recordings, he says.

In addition, the moment in a conductor’s life matters: The same conductor can interpret the work quite differently at different times.

Not everything can be measured

The listener is also subjective, Guldbrandsen points out.

“In our time, quantitative research is held in the highest regard. But the experience of music is a fleeting phenomenon. We can try to capture it, for instance by studying different recordings, but the interpreter is always present when music is created, performed and listened to,” he says.

He underscores the importance of humanities research. This entails three things:

“Music must always be understood historically. Secondly, a musical experience always involves a subjective interpretation. Finally, science must find a language to capture the musical experience,” says Guldbrandsen.

Without these perspectives, the field is reduced to a few measurable, external features, he believes.

“Two recordings can be exactly the same length and yet vastly different. It’s about warmth of tone, phrasing and articulation, balance and expression," he says.

Trying to find a scholarly language for this is interesting. There will always be something that does not come through.

Bruckner was scorned in his own time

Guldbrandsen chose the Adagio from Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony because the piece has had great historical significance. 

But Bruckner himself, who wrote the piece in 1883, was widely disparaged and even mocked during his lifetime.

Bruckner came from rural Austria and was not accepted by the cultural elites in Vienna. 

He was also open about his admiration for the composer Richard Wagner, who was likewise unpopular in Vienna, which only made matters worse.

Hitler loved scorned composers

50 years later, when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, both composers’ reputations were well established.

“Hitler unfortunately loved both Bruckner and Wagner. He, too, came from rural Austria and had been rejected by the elites in Vienna. But the nuanced and multivalent expression in Bruckner’s and Wagner’s music is the very opposite of fascism,” Guldbrandsen believes.

He sees it as deeply regrettable that Hitler, through his regime, misused German and Austrian music for propaganda purposes, and that this continued right up until the regime’s collapse after his death. Hitler was especially fond of Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner, and Bruckner.

“But that does not detract from the recording’s musical qualities,” says Guldbrandsen.

Research on classical music

In the project Musical Time and Form, researchers examine the most important differences between performances of selected orchestral compositions in Western art music from the last two centuries.

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