BOOKS OF THE TIMES
BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Victors for Whom Music Was Part of the Spoils
By JAMES R. OESTREICH
Published: August 20, 1998
MOST GERMAN OF THE ARTS
Musicology and Society From the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler's Reich
By Pamela M. Potter
364 pages. Yale University Press. $40.
For a music critic who tilts at German crossword puzzles in odd moments to dredge up forgotten vocabulary, it was frustrating, at first, to find ''Liszt'' as the answer to ''German composer.'' Those little instruments of torture are difficult enough without some boneheaded quizmeister's venturing into an area he obviously knows nothing about.
But no, Liszt kept coming up, occasionally as a Hungarian, more often as a German. Franz Liszt (Liszt Ferenc, originally) lived and worked in Weimar from 1848 to 1861, it is true, and he was a central figure in the Wagnerian fray and the development of the New German school of composition. Still, would anyone think to call Chopin a French composer?
With repetition, this stray bit of colonialism came to seem a little creepy. Now comes Pamela M. Potter, in an illuminating book, ''Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society From the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler's Reich,'' to report that it was not entirely stray.
''During World War II,'' Ms. Potter writes, ''Germany's territorial gains inspired musicologists, in a sense, to annex the musical achievements of subjugated countries and broaden the definition of German music and to increasingly portray developments in European music history as German accomplishments.''
Old habits die hard, as Ms. Potter, an assistant professor in the School of Music and the department of German at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, makes clear in other respects as well. Her most valuable contribution, in fact, is to establish that ''Nazi musicology'' was not an isolated infection, a phenomenon hermetically confined to a single time and place. It had roots in the way Germans have thought about music over the centuries and effects that carry into the present, not least in the United States.
Oddly, another German puzzle much to the point cropped up recently, one of those that, when solved, yields a saying. In this case the quotation was from Weber (the sociologist Max, presumably, not the composer Carl Maria von): ''Art has no fatherland.'' That noble sentiment is evidently a hard sell in Germany where music is concerned.
''Music is German, isn't it?'' a young German professor of technology is reported to have said in 1992 to Albrecht Riethmuller, a musicologist who evidently inspired Ms. Potter's title with another quotation: ''Music, the most 'German' of the arts'' (''Musik, die 'deutscheste' Kunst'').
What music may well be is the most intractable of arts, the hardest to bend to political uses. ''Music was far more elusive in character than the visual arts,'' Ms. Potter writes, ''one reason why Goebbels remained aloof from musical matters and focused his energies on dictating policy in other arts and media.''
That elusiveness is nowhere more apparent than in attempts to pin down the very concept of ''Germanness'' in music. Ms. Potter devotes a chapter to the subject and admirably withholds guffaws even when matters descend to the ludicrous.
While German commentators as ancient as Johann Adolph Scheibe, an 18th-century composer, found it easy to point to distinguishing features in the styles of Italy, France and Poland, they were hard put to do the same with their own music. The land of polyphony, if such could even be claimed, is not exactly a concept to melt the heart alongside, say, the land of melody.
So Germany was to be, simply, the land of music. All the music that was fit to annex. Germany's essential musical genius, some conveniently concluded, lay in its ability to adapt, synthesize and thus ennoble the music of other nations. And what emerged from that German meat grinder was to be deemed ''universal.'' Liszt should perhaps have been grateful to be included.
Not every chapter offers as much black humor or will hold as much interest for the average music lover. The discussions of musicological organization and methodology in Germany from the end of World War I to the end of World War II are crammed with detail (and footnotes, with occasional chunks of untranslated German) that will be of value -- great value, to be sure -- mainly to specialists.
Still, they are not unduly technical, and they tell a fascinating tale of a discipline still young, undefined and insecure trying to prove its usefulness, to survive in shifting and ultimately dangerous waters. It is the story of the adolescence not only of German musicology but also of American musicology. As in other areas of music, some leading lights were driven out only to shine abroad, including Willi Apel, Alfred Einstein, Otto Erich Deutsch, Hans David and Karl Geiringer.
The musicology of the Nazi era, in its concerns with questions of community, nationality and race, drew heavily on that of the Weimar Republic and before, Ms. Potter shows. ''It is important to recognize the seamless transitions in musical life from one system to the other,'' she writes. And again as in the Weimar Republic, musicologists in the Third Reich failed to exert much influence on practical policy, for all the efforts of individuals and organizations to make themselves useful to the regime.
Such efforts to ingratiate are nevertheless painful to encounter from the likes of Arnold Schering, an acquaintance if not an old friend of Bach adepts for his useful introductions to Eulenburg scores. In 1933, Ms. Potter reports, Schering wrote to Goebbels on behalf of the German Music Society, proclaiming the organization's ''joyful will to work together to build a new German culture with all of its strength.'' At such infuriating moments, as at the ''comic'' ones, Ms. Potter retains an admirable sobriety.
Until recently, general readers had access to remarkably few sources of solid information on the musical history of the Third Reich. All of that has changed drastically, thanks first to Michael Kater, with his ''Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany'' and ''The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich,'' and now to Ms. Potter.
Photo: Pamela M. Potter (Geri Gerold/Yale University Press)