From Brian Behlendorf Sent Fri, May 8th 1998, 20:09
From Brian Behlendorf Sent Fri, May 8th 1998, 20:09
Fascinating. >> Composer Webern was Double Agent for Nazis >> >> By Heinrich Kincaid >> >> .c The Associated Press >> >> BERLIN, GERMANY (AP) - Recent admissions by an ex-Nazi official living in >> Argentina have confirmed what some musicologists have suspected for years: >> that early twentieth century German composer Anton Webern and his colleagues >> devised the so-called "serial" technique of music to encrypt messages to Nazi >> spies living in the United States and Britain. >> >> In what can surely be considered the most brazen instance of Art Imitating >> Espionage to date, avant garde composers of the Hitler years working in >> conjunction with designers of the Nazi Enigma code were bamboozling >> unsuspecting audiences with their atonal thunderings while at the same time >> passing critical scientific data back and forth between nations. >> >> "This calls into question the entire Second Viennese School of music," >> announced minimalist composer John Adams from his home in the Adirondack >> Mountains. "Ever since I first encountered compositions by Arnold Schonberg I >> wondered what the hell anyone ever heard in it. Now I know." >> >> Gunned down by an American soldier in occupied Berlin, 62 year old Anton >> Webern's death was until now considered a tragic loss to the musical world. >> At the time the U.S. Army reported that the killing was "a mistake", and that >> in stepping onto the street at night to smoke a cigarette Webern was violating >> a strict curfew rule. >> >> It is now known that Webern was using music to shuttle Werner Heisenberg's >> discoveries in atomic energy to German spy Klaus Fuchs working on the >> Manhattan atom bomb project in New Mexico. Due to the secret nature of the >> project, which was still underway after the invasion of Berlin, Army officials >> at the time were unable to describe the true reason for Webern's murder. >> >> Hans Scherbius, a Nazi party official who worked with Minister of Propaganda >> Joseph Goebbels, admitted at age eighty-seven that the Nazis secretly were >> behind the twelve-tone technique of composition, which was officially reviled >> to give it the outlaw status it needed to remain outside of the larger public >> purview. >> >> "These pieces were nothing more than cipher for encoding messages," he >> chuckled during an interview on his balcony in Buenos Aires. "It was only >> because it was 'naughty' and difficult that elite audiences accepted it, even >> championed it." >> >> Physicist Edward Teller, who kept a 9-foot Steinway piano in his apartment at >> the Los Alamos laboratory, was the unwitting deliverer of Heisenburg's data to >> Fuchs, who eagerly attended parties thrown by Teller, an enthusiastic booster >> of Webern's music. >> >> Arnold Schonberg, the older musician who first devised the serial technique at >> the request of the Weimar government of Germany, composed in America to >> deliver bomb data stolen by Fuchs back to the Nazis, who worked feverishly to >> design their own atomic weapons. >> >> As an example, Scherbius showed Associated Press reporters the score of >> Webern's Opus 30 "Variations for Orchestra" overlayed with a cardboard >> template. The notes formed a mathematical grid that deciphered into German a >> comparison between the neutron release cross-sections of uranium isotopes 235 >> and 238. >> >> Schonberg responded with a collection of songs for soprano and woodwinds that >> encrypted the chemical makeup of the polonium-beryllium initiator at the core >> of the Trinity explosion. >> >> And in Japan, Toru Takemitsu took time out from his own neo-romanticism to >> transmit data via music of his nation's progress with the atom. >> >> "The most curious thing about it," says composer Philip Glass in New York >> City, "is that musicians continued to write twelve-tone music after the war, >> even though they had no idea why it was really invented. Indeed, there are >> guys who are churning out serialism to this day." >> >> Unlike the diatonic music, which is based on scales that have been agreed upon >> by listeners throughout the world for all of history, twelve-tone music treats >> each note of the chromatic scale with equal importance, and contains a built- >> in mathematical refusal to form chords that are pleasing by traditional >> standards. Known also as serialism, the style has never been accepted outside >> of an elite cadre of musicians, who believe it is the only fresh and valid >> direction for post-Wagnerian classical music to go. >> >> "Even if this is really true," states conductor Pierre Boulez, a composer who >> continues to utilyze serial techniques, "the music has been vindicated by >> music critics for decades now. I see no reason to suddenly invalidate an art >> form just because of some funny business at its inception." >> >> AP-NY-05-06-98 1716EDT --=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-- specialization is for insects xxxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx