¹ ‘New Objectivity’ has become the standard translation of the German expression. Other suggestions like ‘new sobriety’ have been introduced by Willett, John to emphasize the sober detachment of artists. Art and Politics in the Weimar Period: The New Sobriety, 1917–1933 (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

² Brand, Max, ‘;Über die Situation der Oper,’ Blätter des Breslauer Stadttheaters, 1 (1929/1930), 6.Google Scholar

³ Brand coined that term in an interview with the Berliner Illustrierte Nachtausgabe (21 03 1930).Google Scholar

⁴ See Cook, Susan C., Opera for a New Republic; The Zeitopern of Krenek, Weill, and Hindemith (Ann Arbor, 1988), 27–33.Google Scholar

⁵ Brezinka, Thomas, ‘Max Brand – Der Komponist des Maschinist Hopkins,’ Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, 12 (1996), 829.Google Scholar

⁶ In his book Fordism (1926), Friedrich von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld presents an idealized perspective on the merits of automobile mass production in America from a European point of view. ‘He [Henry Ford] is dynamism personified. It is truly as if this most American of all industrial organizations were the intellectual embodiment of activism, of, strictly speaking, the meliorism of William James.’ von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, Friedrich, ‘Fordism,’ in Fordismus. Über Industrie und technische Vemunft (Jena, 1926).Google Scholar Partly reprinted in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, ed. Kaes, Anton, Jay, Martin and Dimendberg, Edward (Berkeley, 1994), 401.Google Scholar

⁷ Berg, Alban, Wosgeck. Oper in 3 Akten (15 Szenen) (Vienna and Leipzig, 1926), Act II scene 2.Google Scholar

⁸ Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.

⁹ Bechert, Paul, ‘59th German Tonkünstlerfest: A Tryout for New Operas,’ Musical Courier, 99 (3 08 1929), 6–7.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Weber, Waldemar, Musikblätter des Anbruch, 11 (1929), 223–25.Google ScholarPartly reprinted in Brezinka, Max Brand, 1896–1980: Leben und Werk, Musikwissenschaftliche Schriften (Munich, 1995), 78.Google Scholar ‘It is good that finally somebody had a close look at film, discovered its inherent forces and adapted it for theater. His libretto is an extract from a film script in the best sense of the word; the entire opera is bound to be adapted for the screen.’

¹¹ See Graf, Herbert, ‘Händel als Wegbereiter fur die Opernregie der Zukunft,’ Blätter des Theaters der Stadt Müinster (1925/1926), 168.Google Scholar

¹² See Stefan's, Paul opening article, ‘Jazz,’ in the special jazz music edition of Musikblätter des Anbruch, 7 (1925).Google Scholar See also Heinsheimer, Hans ‘Die Zeitoper oder Das republikanische Publikum,’ in Entartet. Verdrängt. Vergessen, ed. Brunds, Heiner (Bielefeld, 1993), 30.Google Scholar

¹³ ‘So spielt uns Jonny auf zum Tanz./Es kommt die neue Welt übers Meer gefahren mit Glanz/ Und erbt das alte Europa mit dem Tanz.’ Krenek, Ernst, Jonny spielt auf (Vienna, 1927), Part 2, scene 11, 328–41.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Brand, Max, Maschinist Hopkins, Oper in einem Vorspiel und drei Akten (12 Bildern) (Vienna, 1928), Prelude, scene 2, 25.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Krenek, Ernst, ‘Neue Humanität und alte Sachlichkeit,’ Neue Schweizer Rundschau, 24 (April 1931).Google Scholar Reprinted in Krenek, , Zur Sprache gebracht. Essays über Musik (Munich, 1958), 116.Google Scholar ‘Nobody prays to the engine or lauds the virtues of the telephone.’ In English as ‘New Humanity and Old Objectivity’, in Exploring Music: Essays by Ernst Krenek, trans. Shenfield, Margaret and Shelton, Geoffrey (London, 1966), 55.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Maschinist Hopkins, Act III scene 12, 230. It is revealing to compare these stage directions with the film manuscript of Metropolis based on Thea von Harbou's novel Metropolis. The description for picture 263 (introducing the ‘heart machine’) resembles the aesthetic conceptions of the setting for opera, Brand's. ‘For a description of this machine see the reprint edition (Berlin, Frankfurt and Vienna, 1984), 14.Google Scholar See also ‘Tod den Maschinen! Wie Thea von Harbou den Aufstand der Arbeiter in ihrem Roman und in ihrem Filmmanuskript schildert, [no author mentioned].’ Reprinted in Schweigert, Rudolf, ‘Der Film in der Weimarer Republik’, in Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 1977), 472.Google Scholar ‘Filling almost the entire picture, the gigantic steel construction of the heart machine. The giant machine stands against a huge steel wheel whose spokes look like a steel plate. A maze of switchboards, lever systems, scales, security valves. The machine runs regularly, moving all of its gigantic limbs.’

¹⁷ It is interesting to note that Lucic's, Karen description of Scheeler's photograph Ladle Hooks, Open Hearth Building — Ford Plant (1927)Google Scholar conveys the same powerful religious spirit as Brand's vision of his machine hall interiors: ‘Interior shots, such as Ladle Hooks, Open Hearth Building, present the massive enclosed spaces as soaring and cathedral-like, lit by a mysterious, glowing light…’ Charles Sheeler and the Cult of the Machine (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 92.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Maschinist Hopkins, Act III scene 12, 231.Google Scholar

¹⁹ On a symbolic level, the ‘source’ represents the main switch.

²⁰ Maschinist Hopkins, Act III scene 12, 234Google Scholar

²¹ One year after ‘“Mechanische” Musik und das Problem der Oper,’ in Musikblätter des Anbruch, 8 (1926),Google ScholarBrand elaborated on the idea of the moving stage in ‘Die bewegte Opembühne’, Musikblätter des Anbruch, 9 (1927).Google Scholar

²² Brand, Max, ‘“Mechanische” Musik und das Problemder Oper,’ Musikblätter des Anbruch, 8 (1926), 359.Google Scholar

²³ In the same year, at the 6th Chamber Music Festival in Donaueschingen, Oskar Schlemmer designed mechanical puppets (‘Marionetten’) for the Triadisches Ballet composed by Hindemith, Paul. In the program notes, Schlemmer envisions a futuristic chess-like stage featuring animated puppets as dancers, who act without human control. Optimistically he concludes: ‘Yes! — it is only a matter of time and money before the experiment can be completed that way.’Google ScholarThe program is reprinted in Prieberg, Fred K., Musica Ex Machina (Berlin, 1960), 18.Google Scholar

²⁴ ‘If human beings were attached organically to this moving stage (because that is what I mean), indeed as much guided by fate as it has been the case on traditional stages, the difference would be that he would need to act organically due to the new circumstances.’ Brand (see n. 22), 357.

²⁵ Brand, , ‘“Mechanische” Musik’, 357–8.Google Scholar

²⁶ Brand, , ‘“Mechanische” Musik’, 358.Google Scholar

²⁷ Brand, , ‘“Mechanische” Musik’, 358.Google Scholar

²⁸ ‘Plötzlich springt er mit wahnsinnsverzerrtem Gesicht auf’ (‘Suddenly, he jumps to his feet, his face tormented with frenzy’). Maschinist Hopkins, Act III scene 12, 237.

²⁹ Maschinist Hopkins, Act III scene 12, 249.Google Scholar

³⁰ Maschinist Hopkins, Act III scene 12, 50.Google Scholar

³¹ Maschinist Hopkins, Act III scene 12, 251. The symbolism of light, enlightenment and the initiation of a group of people to a ‘new life’ is reminiscent of Mozart's Zauberflöte (1791). At the end of this opera, the sunbeams penetrate a rocky country with a temple in the foreground. After the final transfiguration the demons are exorcised and the two main characters are elevated to the status of chosen people: ‘Heil sei euchGeweihten’ (‘Hail chosen ones!’). This final scene features sublime and religious aspects that might have served as a model for Brand's depiction of a factory as a modern temple of technology.

³² Maschinist Hopkins, Act III scene 12, 251: ‘The background is suddenly pushed away towards both sides of the stage so that a gate is revealed. It opens up to the entire breadth of the stage.’

³³ Mayer, Ludwig K., ‘Maschinist Hopkins,’ Blätter der Staatsoper und der Städtischen Oper Berlin, 11 (1931).Google Scholar

³⁴ Schrenk, Walter, ‘Maschinist Hopkins,’ Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (April 1929). For further reviews see the excerpts Brezinka gives in the appendix of Maschinist Hopkins (see n. 10), 73–91.Google Scholar

³⁵ ‘(Dawn at the backdrop of New York; one can see the skyscrapers in their majesty gleam, reflecting the sun rays) Helena: Sunrise! Hektor. It is a new day! Let's go to work! Choir and solo voices: A new morning! Let's go to work! Work shows us the way to happily, happily solve all riddles of the world. Because work creates the world for us! Work creates a new day for us! (End. Curtain).’ Antheil, George, ‘Zurück zur romantischen Oper’, Blätter der Städtischen Bübnen Frankfurt (May 1930), 227.Google Scholar

³⁶ Mayer, (see n. 33), 11.Google Scholar

³⁷ In 1962, 31 years after Lindbergh's crossing of the Adantic Ocean, which had been celebrated musically in Brecht's and Weill's Der Lindberghflug, Brand set out to compose an electronic hymn on John Glenn's flight into space called Die Astronauten. See Brezinka (see n. 5), 832.

³⁸ Ford, Henry, ‘Machinery — The New Messiah,’ The Forum, 79 (03 1928), 363–4.Google Scholar

³⁹ Huyssen, Andreas tries to follow a similar thesis in his analysis of Fritz Lang's Metropolis which he locates within the parameters of both Neue Sachlichkeit and Expressionism.Google Scholar See Huyssen, , ‘The Vamp and the Machine: Fritz Lang's Metropolis,’ in Huyssen, , After the Great Divide. Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1986), 65–81.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Maschinist Hopkins, Prelude, scene 1, 5.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Maschinist Hopkins, Prelude, scene 2, 25.Google Scholar

⁴² The term ‘naiver Realismus’ is coined in Krenek's essay ‘Jonny spielt auf’ (1927/1928) where he states that symbolic meaning should not be read into Jonny.Google Scholar See Ernst, Krenek, Im Zweifelsfalle. Aufsätze über Musik (Vienna, 1984), 27–8Google Scholar. In 1930 Krenek explained that the rise of technology needed to find its counterpart in a heightened display of humanity in opera: ‘Der schaffende Musiker und die Technik der Gegenwart’ (1930), in Im Zweifelsfalle. Aufsätze über Musik, 238. See also ‘Von ‘Jonny’ zu ‘Orest’ ’ (1930) reprinted in the same volume, 33–5.

⁴³ Jonny spielt auf, scene 7, 232.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Jonny spielt auf, scene 9, 297.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ The appearance of Samiel in the Wolf's Glen is accompanied with all sorts of orchestral noises. The score asks for rustling, whips cracking, and the trampling of horses' hooves. Additionally, there is the sound of barking and neighing in the air. Weber, Carl Maria von,Der Freischütz (1821) Act III scene 5, 171–73.Google Scholar In Jonny this effect is achieved musically with dynamic indications of triple forte, as well as special-effects instruments like ‘thunder plate with iron balls,’ electric buzzers, a thunder-machine, tam-tams, large drums, cymbals, and timpani. All these instruments create a great deal of noise while the winds, horns, and strings play a repetitive rhythm which is melodically simplistic.

⁴⁶ Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Faust, Goethe Werke III (Frankfurt am Main, 1966), 20.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ In his article on the difference between ‘New Humanity and Old Objectivity’ (see n. 15), 117, Krenek describes this potentially dangerous development of technological domination: ‘[Machines] get in our way and themselves become the monuments they have destroyed, for which we have such an ineradicable taste. The divine in man has been replaced by the fact that he can travel faster than a bird flies; and in the advertisements, the inventor of a new kind of engine rivals the creator of the world.’ In English in Shenfield and Shelton, ed., Exploring Music (see n. 15), 57.

⁴⁸ Maschinist Hopkins, Act III scene 9, 197–8.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Maschinist Hopkins, Act III scene 9, 198.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Strand, Paul, ‘Photography and the New God,’ Broom, 3 (11 1922), 257.Google Scholar

⁵¹ See Brand's introductory remarks on the various singing techniques on the first page of Maschinist Hopkins.Google Scholar

⁵² Maschinist Hopkins, Act III scene 12, 252.Google Scholar

⁵³ Maschinist Hopkins Act II scene 6, 128.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Jonny spielt auf, Part 2, scene 11, 316.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Jonny spielt auf, Part 2, scene 11, 321.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Zweig, Stefan, ‘The Monotonization of the World,’ in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (see n. 6), 398.Google ScholarFirst published as ‘Die Monotonisiserung der Welt,’ in Berliner Börsen-Courier (1 February, 1925).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Kracauer, Siegfried, Das Ornament der Masse (Frankfurt am Main, 1977), 54.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Weissmann, Adolf, ‘Zwischen Chaos und Maschine,’ in his Die Entgötterung der Musik (Berlin, 1928), 90.Google Scholar Weissmann's essay collection presents the idea that technology transforms the living conditions of human beings in an extremely negative way. In ‘Mensch und Maschine’ (9–15)he argues that the machine controls the mind; in ‘Sport bekämpft die Welt’ (16–23); he claims that man has to compete with machines with respect to accuracy and reliability; and in ‘Der Sieg des Alltäglichen: Radio und Film’ (34–43) he blames technology for the secularization of music.

⁵⁹ As machine music, jazz threatened the Romantic image of the revered German art-music composer and rendered the homage to love in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde an archeological artifact. See Weissmann, Adolf, ‘Der Verfall der Tristanerotik,’ Die Entgötterung der Musik, 29–33Google Scholar. The opposition to Romanticism is expressed as‘Americanism’ — the European catchword of the 1920s describing the awareness ofchange. While ‘Americanism’ was promulgated by the majority of opera and theater lovers, many intellectuals left and right like Kayser, Kracauer, or Weissmann perceived it as a threat. Besides technology, the most significant manifestation of the imported spirit from overseas was jazz music.

⁶⁰ When Walter Panofsky states that the mere word ‘jazz’ caused an emotional uproar in the opera audience due to the negative connotations of what then was called ‘Neger-Musik’ [‘negro music’], it is important to add that only an intellectual minority of extremely conservative music lovers condemned this kind of music. The rejection was artificially imposed on the artistic atmosphere in Germany during the tyranny of Adolf Hitler who proclaimed that jazz music ‘poisons High German culture.’ Zwerin, Michael, La tristesse de Saint Louis: Swing under the Nazis (London and New York, 1985), 24ff.Google Scholar Panofsky's conclusion after evaluating Jonny spielt auf that the glorification ofAmerica increased the protest against and strong disapproval of jazz does not necessarily relate to the atmosphere in the twenties but rather to the artistically regressive years of the Third Reich. See Panofsky, Walter, Protest in der Open Das provokative Musiktheater derzwanziger Jabre (Munich, 1966), 116–18.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Eichenauer, Richard, ‘Der Untermensch auf der Opernbühne,’ Die Sonne, 7 (1930), 503–11.Google Scholar

⁶² Stege, Fritz, ‘Tonkünstlerfest Duisburg’s Zeitschrift für Musik, 96/8 (1929), 463.Google Scholar

⁶³ Brand, Max, Ma-Bram-Hob-Han: Foxtrot aus der Oper Maschinist Hopkins (Vienna, 1929).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ ‘Unemployment as an opera topic! And machinist Hopkins himself: communist, agitator who despises workers and becomes a dictator of work by turning the anarchic crowd of workers into a machines — really a prophetic work …’ Dew, John, ‘Theater für unsere Zeit’, in Entartet. Verdrängt. Vergessen (see n. 12), 11.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ See Ermen's, Rainhard review reprinted in Brezinka, Maschinist Hopkins (see n. 10), 82.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ The performance of Maschinist Hopkins in Amsterdam (27 June 1994) was criticized for its naïvété regarding the cult of the machine (Peter Vissier) which was said to grant the work only the status of an interesting document of its time (Reinbert de Leeuw).Google ScholarFor reviews see again Brezinka, , Maschinist Hopkins, 89–91.Google Scholar