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The Composer’s Catalogue and the ‘Right to be Forgotten’: Hans Werner Henze’s Ein Werkverzeichnis, 1946–1996

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2022

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© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Musical Association

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References

39 Indispensable to the writing of this article was access (in 2015–16) to materials at the archive of Schott Musik International in Mainz (D-MZsch). In the citations that follow, internal correspondence references have been preserved as a means of identifying memoranda and other documents which, though ordered roughly by date, were uncatalogued. I thank Katja Riepl and Anne-Christine Karcher for their kind hospitality and assistance during my visits. For especially helpful information and discussions there I am grateful to Andreas Krause, Claus-Dieter Ludwig and Bernhard Pfau. Sally Groves (formerly of Schott London) offered valuable advice.

40 The Werkverzeichnis discussed in this article lists 25 such arrangements at the hands of others, mainly of extracts drawn from longer works or versions with reduced or modified scoring. These arrangements by others are, as indicated below, considered ‘Werkstatt Henze’ in terms of the revision activities of these years, since they were made at his instigation, often with his close supervision and, needless to say, subject to his approval of the result.

41 Hans Werner Henze, Ein Werkverzeichnis, 1946–1996 / A Catalogue of Works, 1946–1996 / Un catalogo delle opere, 1946–1996 (Mainz: Schott, 1996; hereafter Wvz).

42 ‘Einige Beobachtungen und Hinweise betreffend die Aufführungspraxis meiner Musik’, Wvz, 16–21; German repr. from Das Orchester, 35 (1987), 380–2. Like all text commentaries in the volume, this appears also in English and Italian translations within the same page span. Quotations use the English translation provided except where indicated; other translations, including those of primary documents, are my own.

43 The book received a gold award for its design and layout from the Stiftung Buchkunst, making it eligible to compete for a further award funded by the Ministry of the Interior, where it again received gold. It also won the Deutsche Musikeditionspreis of the Deutscher Musikverleger-Verband.

44 Henze, ‘Vorwort / Preface / Prefazione’, Wvz, 6–9 (pp. 6–7).

45 See Alan Tyson, ‘Beschreibung der Handschrift’, Mozart: Eigenhändiges Werkverzeichnis Faksimile, Neue Mozart Ausgabe, X/33/1 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1991), 11–25.

46 Letter, HWH to KS, 3 November 1990, D-MZsch (Henze).

47 The subtitle of Versuch über Schweine (Essay on Pigs) was changed from Nach einem Gedicht von Gastón Salvatore to Mit einem Gedicht … Some more substantive titular changes are discussed below.

48 Of 205 distinct ‘works’ listed in the Werkverzeichnis, 49 (24%) were revised during the period under scrutiny here, between the project’s conception in November 1990 and the book’s final collation in 1995, the year before publication. If one adds revisions undertaken and derivative works extracted before November 1990, the number more than doubles to 101. And were one additionally to treat as derivative those ‘works’ consisting of arrangements or reworkings of other composers’ music, then 109 titles – hence more than half of Henze’s acknowledged output by 1996 – would count as products of revision or derivation. These statistics are offered only tentatively, given that the full extent of Henze’s borrowings and reworkings is, on the evidence of scholarship to date, yet to be discovered.

49 Henze, ‘Vorwort / Preface / Prefazione’, 6–7.

50 ‘Auf dem schmalen Grad zwischen persönlicher Kommentierung und wissenschaftlicher Seriosität’. Memorandum, LP-TK/AK to Gl-H et al., 11 January 1994, D-MZsch (Henze).

51 Not all pieces with dedications necessarily fit into this category. Even so, it is not immediately obvious why the Serenade for solo violin (1986) composed for Yehudi Menuhin’s seventieth birthday has an entry, while the Epitaph for cello (1979) on the death of Paul Dessau does not.

52 Single-letter abbreviations, such as ‘Z’ for ‘zurückgezogen’ (‘withdrawn’) and ‘G’ for ‘Gelegenheitskompositionen’ (‘occasional compositions’), are appended in the chronological index to identify the different categories.

53 See below, for instance, regarding the retitling of Compases para preguntas ensimismadas. Among more routine examples, the six-movement concertante cello work listed as Liebeslieder was premièred and published in 1986 with an additional movement (later reworked into the Introduktion, Thema und Variationen for cello and piano) as Sieben Liebeslieder (Schott ED7418); the earlier title is nowhere given. An einer Äolsharfe (1985–6), published in 1988 (ED7460), had its title augmented in the Werkverzeichnis by one word to Ode an einer Äolsharfe (Wvz, 330–1), though it was not republished under the new title until 2000 (ED9110). An attractive feature of the volume was that the red type employed throughout as a design feature could be used to highlight the preferred language form of the title. This tended to be the sung language of the text (thus, for instance, Italian in the case of Cinque canzoni napoletane; Wvz, 150–1) or the language of the location of the première (English in the case of the Covent Garden ballet Ondine; Wvz, 124–5) – the only anomaly being that both these works, among Henze’s best-known pieces of the 1950s, had long been published under their German titles.

54 ‘Eine beständige, monolithische Summierung seines Lebenswerk’. Memorandum, LP-TK/AK to Gl-H et al., 11 January 1994, D-MZsch (Henze).

55 Henze, Reiselieder mit böhmischen Quinten: Autobiographische Mitteilungen 1926–1995 (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1996), trans. Stewart Spencer as Bohemian Fifths: An Autobiography (London: Faber, 1997). Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich suggests that the subtitle of the German edition (which translates as Autobiographical Messages) implies an act of selection – not wholly unlike that practised in the Werkverzeichnis – of ‘available autobiographical materials, in which the author reserves the right potentially to withhold other messages as he pleases’ (‘Die “Mitteilungen” deuten auf Auswahl des zuhandenen autobiographischen Materials, wobei sich der Schreiber vorbehält, andere Mitteilungen eventuell lieber zurückzuhalten’); see Jungheinrich, ‘Biographische Rhythmen bei Henze’, Im Laufe der Zeit: Kontinuität und Veränderung bei Hans Werner Henze, ed. Jungheinrich (Mainz: Schott, 2002), 35–43 (p. 36).

56 Henze, ‘Vorwort / Preface / Prefazione’, 6–7.

57 Memorandum of telephone call from HWH, 11 January 1994, D-MZsch (Henze). Henze had been complaining to Schott since the 1980s about the absence of study scores of a number of his major works, and by the mid-1990s he had, unusually, succeeded in having a guarantee of the timely production of study scores written into his contract.

58 Memorandum, LP-TK/AK to Gl-H et al., 17 November 1995, D-MZsch (Henze).

59 Records of a meeting between Henze and the president of Schott in October 1994 noted that, ‘A delay in the publication date is conceivable if – as is intended – the planned study scores are to be entered in the catalogue’ (‘Eine Verzögerung des Erscheinungstermins ist denkbar, wenn – wie vorgesehen – die geplante Studienpartituren mit in das Verzeichnis aufgenommen werden’). Memorandum, Gl-H to LP-TK/AK et al., 21 October 1994, D-MZsch (Henze).

60 Stephan, Ilja, ‘ Los Caprichos – Henzes Orchesterfantasie nach Goya’, Hans Werner Henze: Die Vorträge des internationalen Henze-Symposions am Musikwissenschaftlichen Institut der Universität Hamburg, 28. bis 30. Juni 2001, ed. Petersen, Peter (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang, 2003), 111–25Google Scholar (pp. 123–4).

61 Works revised under the same title (listed alphabetically and, for reasons of space, by main title only) were Ballett-Variationen, Die Bassariden, Das Ende einer Welt (radiophonic version), Euridice, Fandango, Labyrinth, Ein Landarzt (radiophonic version), Der Prinz von Homburg, the First Symphony, the Sixth Symphony and Sonata per violino solo.

62 According to the conductor Gerd Albrecht, Henze was convinced by a September 1986 concert performance of the opera at the Philharmonie, Berlin (issued on CD, Koch-Schwann 314 006), in which this Satyrspiel was omitted, initially much to his displeasure. See Albrecht, ‘Kommunikation durch den Geist der Musik’, Hans Werner Henze: Komponist der Gegenwart, ed. Michael Kerstan and Clemens Wolken (Leipzig: Henschel, 2006), 15–18 (pp. 15–16). Productions of The Bassarids since Henze’s death, however, including at the Salzburg Festival (2018) and the Komische Oper, Berlin (2019), have nonetheless included the Satyrspiel.

63 These were (old titles in parentheses): Le disperazioni del Signor Pulcinella (Jack Pudding), Liebeslieder (Sieben Liebeslieder) and La piccola Cubana (La Cubana). Appassionatamente, classified below as a derivative work from Das verratene Meer, might also be included in this category thanks to the existence of a single-movement orchestral prototype, Allegro brillante, whose absence from the Werkverzeichnis is noted later.

64 Wvz, 138–9.

65 I list here only those arrangements that created a new title in the catalogue, not those that add a further, simultaneously available version to an existing title (derivations in the following list, with parent work in parentheses, are acknowledged in the Werkverzeichnis unless indicated otherwise): Adagio adagio (second movement of the Eighth Symphony, unacknowledged); Appassionatamente (Das verratene Meer, acknowledged, by way of Allegro brillante, unacknowledged); Drei geistliche Konzerte (Requiem); Erlkönig (Le fils de l’air); Hirtenlieder (Venus und Adonis); Introduktion, Thema und Variationen (from discarded movement of Sieben Liebeslieder and withdrawn Konzertstück); Knastgesänge (‘Variations about [sic] four songs by Hans Werner Henze (1984) composed by Jörg Widmann (1995)’, Wvz, 100–1, now listed by Schott only in Widmann’s catalogue); Leçons de danse (Le fils de l’air); Lieder und Tänze (La Cubana); Minette (The English Cat, arranged by Andreas Pfeifer); Minotauros Blues (from Labyrinth); Nocturnal Serenade (The English Cat, arranged by Moritz Eggert); Notturno (The English Cat); Pulcinella disperato (Le disperazioni del Signor Pulcinella, arranged by Martin Zehn); Pulcinellas Erzählungen (Le disperazioni); Quintetto (Requiem, movements II, III and IV, unacknowledged); Requiem (Introitus based on Concerto per il Marigny, withdrawn, and Tuba mirum using material from Das Floß der Medusa); La selva incantata (König Hirsch); Serenata notturna (The English Cat, arranged by Martin Zehn); Sieben Boleros (Venus und Adonis); Three Arias from the Opera ‘Elegy for Young Lovers’; Das Urteil der Kalliope (Die Bassariden); Voie lacté ô sœur lumineuse (Toccata mistica, unacknowledged); Zigeunerweisen und Sarabanden (Le fils de l’air); Zwei Konzertarien (König Hirsch). Neue Volkslieder und Hirtengesänge (1996) is based on previously unpublished material that Henze produced when directing the Mürztaler Musikwerkstätten in Styria in 1983.

66 Allegro brillante was first performed at the opening of McDermott Hall, Dallas, Texas, by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under Eduardo Mata. It finds no mention anywhere in the Werkverzeichnis, not even among the ‘occasional’ works in the chronological index.

67 On these relationships, see Petersen, Peter, Hans Werner Henze: Werke der Jahre 1984–93 (Mainz: Schott, 1995), 3943 Google Scholar and 68–97. Petersen has since also pointed out the status, again unacknowledged in the Werkverzeichnis, of Voie lactée ô sœur lumineuse (1996) as a ‘freie Umgestaltung’ of Toccata mistica (1994). See Petersen, ‘Hans Werner Henze’, Komponisten der Gegenwart (44. Nachlieferung), p. Z7. Such unacknowledged links are not confined to works of the 1990s, Ilja Stephan (‘Los Caprichos – Henzes Orchesterfantasie nach Goya’) having demonstrated the heavy dependence of Los caprichos, notionally inspired by the eponymous Goya etchings, on the Lucy Escott Variations for harpsichord of the same year, 1963.

68 Excepting those instances alluded to above in which Henze merely changed his language preference, the following unrevised works underwent changes of title (or subtitle where indicated): Don Chisciotte (reworking of Paisiello, new subtitle); Das Floß der Medusa (change of subtitle; see following discussion); Lieder von einer Insel (previously Chorfantasie); Mänadentanz (previously Mänadenjagd); Musik für Viola und 22 Spieler (subtitle and main title exchanged; see following discussion); Ode an einer Äolsharfe (previously An einer Äolsharfe); Ragtimes and Habaneras (change of subtitle); Versuch über Schweine (change of subtitle, see above, n. 47); Wesendonck-Lieder (orchestration of Wagner, change of subtitle).

69 This change, like others of a similar nature, raises an immediate complication, given that Compases was recorded and issued on LP back in 1974 (Decca HEAD 5) and on CD in 1991 (Decca 430 347-2). While the production department at Schott created a database to ensure that it keeps pace with Henze’s changes, record companies generally persist with the title under which a work was recorded. In the case of Compases, while the CD is now long deleted, the recording remains available for download under the original, superseded title (<http://www.deccaclassics.com/gb/cat/4303472>). A similar issue arises in the case of what is perhaps Henze’s most regularly performed orchestral movement, drawn from Die Bassariden: the Mänadenjagd, which Henze belatedly decided should be retitled Mänadentanz (Henze, letter to KS, BF et al., 20 December 1993, D-MZsch). The recording by the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester under Claudio Abbado, though issued in 1997, still came out under the title Mänadenjagd (Deutsche Grammophon 447 115-2). Yet in the Werkverzeichnis the change was clearly considered too slight to be acknowledged at all, with only the later title (Mänadentanz) given (see Wvz, 246–7).

70 See Bohemian Fifths, 276. This English translation of the title also appears in ‘Art and the Revolution’, in Henze, Hans Werner, Music and Politics: Collected Writings 1953–81, trans. Labanyi, Peter (London: Faber, 1982), 178–83Google Scholar (p. 181).

71 Henze, ‘Art and the Revolution’, 181.

72 A memorandum from an October 1991 meeting notes the ‘geänderter Untertitel, “Oratorio in zwei Teilen für usw. usw.”’ TK-PF/hs to Gl-H et al., 12 November 1991, D-MZsch (Henze). The Werkverzeichnis itself has simply Oratorium für Sopran, Bariton, Sprechstimme, gemischten Chor (dazu neun Knaben, Sopran/Alt) und Orchester (Wvz, 172–3). Since the original subtitle (Oratorio volgare e militare) had been retained in the programme book for the London Barbican Henze Festival in January 1991, for which the work had been revised, and on a performance score used for a 1993 performance by Bavarian Radio forces (copy held in the library of the Royal Academy of Music, London), it would appear that this was a recent afterthought.

73 The performance in Hamburg on 9 December 1968 had been abandoned at the last minute, with performers already on stage. Demonstrators had attached a red flag to the podium and a representative of the chorus had announced that the performance could not proceed without its removal, which Henze refused to request. A dispute ensued, and police entered the hall, arresting, among others, the work’s librettist (and the current Intendant of North-German Radio), Ernst Schnabel. Schnabel’s own account of the incident appears in Ernst Schnabel, Das Floß der Medusa, Text zum Oratorium von Hans Werner Henze: Zum Untergang einer Uraufführung – Postscriptum (Munich: Piper, 1969); see also Peter Petersen, ‘Das Floß der “Medusa” von Henze und Schnabel: Ein Kunstwerk im Schatten seiner Rezeption’, Hans Werner Henze: Musik und Sprache, ed. Ulrich Tadday, Musik-Konzepte, 132 (Munich: Edition Text + Kritik, 2006), 51–79.

74 Wvz, 174–5. Henze suggests that the victims of the Medusa shipwreck are instead ‘the people of the Third World, the victims of the heartless and selfish world of the rich and powerful […] Schnabel and I envisaged the work as an allegory, as a description of struggle: of a struggle for clear [sic] life, out of which the spirit to fight and the determination to end an unbearable state of affairs will one day emerge.’ Ibid.

75 ‘There’s no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.’ Bennett, Alan, The History Boys (London: Faber & Faber, 2004), 25 Google Scholar. In similar terms the anthropologist Paul Connerton writes of how ‘memorials permit only some things to be remembered and, by exclusion, cause others to be forgotten. Memorials conceal the past as much as they cause us to remember it.’ Connerton, How Modernity Forgets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 29.

76 The European Court judgment, dated 13 May 2014, in the case of Google Spain vs the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, acting on behalf of Mario Costeja González, can be found at <https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf?doclang=EN&docid=152065>. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of 2016 (Regulation 2016/679) enshrined a ‘right to erasure’ with specific conditions rather than a ‘right to be forgotten’ as such.

77 Pagallo, Ugo and Durante, Massimo, ‘Legal Memories and the Right to be Forgotten’, Protection of Information and the Right to Privacy: A New Equilibrium? (Cham: Springer, 2014), 1730 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 19).

78 According to Henze’s partner, Fausto Moroni, their house in Marino nearly had to be sold in the aftermath of the Medusa incident, as performances of Henze’s music became scarce in Germany and his recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon was terminated. See Clemens Wolken, ‘Im Gespräch mit Fausto Moroni Henze’, trans. Karl-Alfred Wolken, Hans Werner Henze: Komponist der Gegenwart, ed. Kerstan and Wolken, 217–29 (p. 225).

79 As Peter Petersen writes, ‘In 1990 Henze revised this ending, overlaying this rhythmic ostinato with an orchestral texture. As a result the last 16 bars of the Finale have an altogether different sound. They are spanned by a single broad cantilena, headed at the start with the word “Hymnus”.’ Petersen, Henze: Werke der Jahre 1984–93, 120.

80 The recording of the 1956 première of the Concerto per il Marigny at the Concerts du Domaine Musical was issued on LP in 1961 in the series Présence de la Musique Contemporaine (Véga C 30 A 65) and reissued on CD as part of the 2006 set Pierre Boulez: Le Domaine Musical 1956–1967 (Accord 476 9209), though the conductor of the performance was not Boulez but Rudolf Albert. Despite Boulez’s insistent criticism of Henze’s eclecticism, and the notorious 1957 incident at Donaueschingen, in which Boulez, Nono and Stockhausen had walked out of a performance of Nachtstücke und Arien, Henze was programmed three times at the Domaine, hence with only one performance fewer than either Nono or Maderna. See Jésus Aguila, Le Domaine Musical: Pierre Boulez et vingt ans de création contemporaine (Paris: Fayard, 1992), 324. The Concerto per il Marigny had elicited the usual mixed press reaction, but had been received well enough to be encored the next day (ibid., 261). It is therefore not entirely clear why Henze wrote that its incorporation into the Requiem had ‘solved my Marigny complex and brought to an end a chapter in the history of my oeuvre’ (Bohemian Fifths, 471).

81 By the time Liebeslieder, mentioned above, was finally published in 2007, it had been renamed once more to Englische Liebeslieder (ED9119). Mänadentanz (formerly Mänadenjagd) was not put out separately as a study score but integrated into a large orchestral suite drawn from the third act of Die Bassariden, entitled Adagio, Fuge und Mänadentanz (2004–5).

82 Most of the dedication pieces that had appeared in the chronological index – plus a few, such as Piece for Peter [Serkin] (1988), which had not – were eventually issued in Henze’s lifetime, either singly or as part of albums. Among them is the duetto concertante for violin and viola Allegra e Boris, written for the 1987 wedding of Boris Johnson to Allegra Mostyn-Owen, whose mother, Gaia Servadio, was a friend of the composer. Allegra e Boris was published in 2011 (ED20906).

83 Memorandum, LP-ak to LP-Mo et al., 16 March 1999, D-MZsch (Henze).

84 Memorandum, MA-Hs to LP-ak, 17 March 1999, D-MZsch (Henze).

85 Letter, Henze to COM-kr, 4 December 1996, D-MZsch (Henze).

86 Hans Werner Henze: Ein Werkverzeichnis, 1946–1996 – Addenda 1996–1999 (Mainz: Schott, 1999).

87 Memorandum, MA-Hs to LP-ak, 17 March 1999, D-MZsch (Henze).

88 Genette, Gérard, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Lewin, Jane E. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Boris Groys, In the Flow (London and New York: Verso, 2016).

90 Groys, In the Flow, 182.