Perspectives of New Music Perspectives of New Music

Romantic Subjectivity and West German Politics in Wolfgang Rihm's "Jakob Lenz"
Author(s): Jessica Balik

Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 47, No. 2 (SUMMER 2009), pp. 228-248
Published by: Perspectives of New Music
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Romantic Subjectivity and
West German Politics in
Wolfgang Rihm's Jakob Lenz
Jessica Balik
In his
thelatelate 1970s,
twenties, the
but he had German composer
already gained internationalWolfgang
recognition. Rihm was still in
He had established himself through a compositional style that incorpo
rated historical allusion while aiming toward intense expressivity. The
intended expressive immediacy of his music has often been understood
in stark contrast to the complex, highly intellectualized compositional
techniques of preceding years.1
Particularly illustrative of this style is Jakob Lenz, a chamber opera that
Rihm composed in 1977-78. The opera's libretto is based on a narrative
text written by Georg Biichner around 1835. Buchner's text is about an
episode in the life of a real historical figure: the eighteenth-century
Sturm und Drang writer, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751-92).2
True to Buchner's Lenz, the most obvious topic of Rihm's one-act opera
is the psychological condition of its protagonist.
Wolfgang Rihm's Jakob Lenz 229
Rihm's opera depicts the subjective state of the character Lenz. More
specifically, the opera's drama emphasizes tension between general,
socio-historically established conventions and Lenz's individual,
subjective state. Similarly, Rihm's music also exudes tension between the
historical conventions to which it alludes and the unique music that
Rihm nonetheless creates. Through both the depiction of its protagonist
and the construction of its music, therefore, Jakob Lenz engages with the
idea of preserving subjectivity against established theories and
conventions. This paper cites examples of the tension, and explains two
ways that such concern for the preservation of individual subjectivity can
be understood in relation to the sociopolitical climate from which this
opera emerged: West Germany during the 1970s.3
Subjectivity vis-A-vis Convention
Biichner's text and the opera's libretto portray Lenz as a psychologically

unstable character. In both texts, Lenz is sent by a friend named
Kaufmann on a journey through the mountains to find a pastor named
Oberlin. Kaufmann hopes that Oberlin can nurse Lenz to health.
Although Lenz does find Oberlin, Oberlin is unable to help him. The
opera ends with Kaufmann and Oberlin binding Lenz in a straitjacket,
and with Lenz suffering a mental and emotional breakdown.
While this ending makes Lenz's psychological agitation clear, it does
not explain what underlies Lenz's affliction. In a study of Biichner's
text, Gundula Sharman understands Lenz's instablity to concern
external frameworks that conventionally imbue human life with stability
and meaning. They fail for Lenz.4 Nature is one example. Sharman
notes that walking through the mountains is a trope of German
Romanticism that usually yields "rejuvenation" and "communion with
nature."5 Although Biichner's Lenz is indeed a piece of German
Romantic literature that references this trope, Lenz's journey through
the mountains does not produce any salubrious effects.
Another example of an external framework that fails to keep Lenz
psychologically sound is religion. In Rihm's opera, for instance,
Kaufmann reminds Lenz that his father would like for him to return
home. Even if it is not made explicit in the opera, Lenz's biography
makes it clear that his father is a pastor who is disappointed about
Lenz's refusal to become a pastor himself.6 Kaufmann and Oberlin both
suggest that Lenz should return home and obey his father, but near the
close of the opera's sixth scene, Lenz responds with incredulity that he
cannot.7
230 Perspectives of New Music
Just as Lenz's dramatic narrative does not adhere to these conven

tional frameworks for creating a psychologically stable life, so too does
Lenz's musical line tend to eschew convention. One example occurs in
the ninth scene. Rihm's performance indication at its beginning reads
"Quasi Sarabande."8 It opens with the cellos establishing a stately triple
meter. They also reference the second-beat accents and dotted rhythmic
patterns that characterize the Sarabandes of many eighteenth-century
dance suites, even though they also distort these characteristics by
playing pizzicato. In so doing, Rihm references this dance in part by
distancing his own music from its conventions; therefore, the adjective
"quasi" within his performance indication is indeed crucial (see Example
When Lenz's vocal line enters this scene, the winds and brass
reference these same characteristics of the dance, and Rihm's
performance indication for these parts again reads "Quasi Sarabande."
But Rihm also indicates a second musical layer at this point, which he
labels "Capriccioso." Lenz's vocal line, as well as a female vocal line that
represents a young woman about whom Lenz is thinking, are better
described by this second performance indication. In short, Lenz's line
contradicts the conventional features of a Sarabande (see Example 2).
A similar example occurs in the fourth scene. Here, a group of
vocalists performs a folk song that Rihm explicitly marks in the score as a
Liindler. Lenz's line constitutes a distinct, albeit not entirely
incongruous, musical layer. The folk song soon leads to a passage
marked "quasi-chorale" in the score. Twice within his own line that still
stands apart from the chorale, Lenz actually utters the words "(where)
freedom breathes" (wo/die Freiheit atmet\ see Example 3).
This example from the fourth scene leaves the definition of the
"freedom" that Lenz mentions ambiguous. Nonetheless, all these
Vcl.
EXAMPLE 11 RIHM, JAKOB LENZ, SCENE 9, MM. 1-8
EXAMPLE 2: RIHM, JAKOB LENZ, SCENE 9, MM. 59-67
EXAMPLE 2 (CONT.)
aforementioned examples of conventional frameworks within both the

music and the drama of Rihm's Jakob Lenz seem to represent social
norms of reason and order. Lenz's non-adherence to?or freedom from
?these conventions signifies his unreason or madness.
The opera does suggest one reason why Lenz defies these
conventions: they are unsuitable for conveying Lenz's particular,
subjective experiences.12 The idea that art should imitate nature is, for
example, one conventional framework to which much art adheres. But
the character of Lenz finds this framework unsuitable for the poetry he
wishes to create. Lenz bemoans in the sixth scene that he cannot fulfill
this ideal. He concedes that mimetic art is indeed "beautiful," but he
also finds it "lifeless," claiming that it fashions "little men from gold
paper" more than it portrays real men.13
Lenz insists that he experiences true creative inspiration not when he
adheres to conventions, but instead when he is "completely hysterical in
sensual pleasure."14 Although Lenz suggests that he does experience
Wolfgang Rihrn's Jakob Lenz 233
EXAMPLE 3: RIHM, JAKOB LENZ, SCENE 4, MM. 50-70
example 3 (cont.)
such pleasure within himself, he does not know how to express it. He
laments that he is, therefore, unable to write anything.15 In other words,
although Lenz finds the conventional framework of mimetic art
unsuitable for expressing his particular subjective experiences, he also
fails to create a unique framework that would be more suitable for
expressing them.
Subjectivity, Romanticism, and "1968"
Even though Lenz claims he is unable to express his own interiority

through poetry, the sheer idea that an artist should convey his inner
reality through art is a Romantic conception of artistic expressivity, and
Rihm's opera still engages with this expressive ideal in several ways. For
example, twentieth-century expressionism is perhaps the most extreme
musical manifestation of this ideal. Not only does Lenz sometimes sound
expressionistic, but also, simply by setting a text by Buchner about

Lenz, Rihm aligns his work with two earlier German operas that are
pillars of expressionism: Alban Berg's Wozzeck (1925) is based on a text
by Buchner, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten (1965) is
based on a related text by Lenz. Accordingly, Rihm's work engages with
this Romantic ideal simply because the opera itself aims to depict the
inner psychological state of its protagonist through the artistic medium
of opera.
Precisely because Rihm's opera does engage with this Romantic
notion that art should aim to express the inner, subjective state of the
artist, the work might seem a retreat into an apolitical, private
interiority, or a retrospective, nostalgic return to an aesthetic ideal that
had prevailed during the nineteenth century. In an essay dating from
1981, for example, Hanns-Werner Heister understands the work along
these very lines. Not only does he describe it in terms of "an escape into
Romanticism," but he also declares that amid an entire generation of
composers to which he understands Rihm to belong, "the element of
social opposition and protest is cultivated extremely weakly."16
Consequendy, Heister also writes that Rihm's opera has litde to do
with the developments "for which the year 1968 stands."17 By referring
to the year 1968, he alludes to the pinnacle of West Germany's student
protest movement (Studentenbewegunpf). In part because it was but one
manifestation of internationally resounding social unrest, this German
movement absorbed many issues, including dissatisfaction with the
structure of Germany's university system, the fact that former National
Socialists still held positions of authority in German society, the
American occupation of Vietnam, and opposition to the so-called
Notstandsgesetze (Emergency Acts), or laws that granted the German
government extraordinary powers in declared states of emergency.18
Protesting these various issues, though, commonly involved anti
authoritarianism and anti-establishmentarianism, or resistance to
established reality.
Regardless of what particular developments Heister himself might
understand "1968" to symbolize, he does not perceive such resistance in
Rihm's opera. One way that music can express social opposition is by
resisting cultural habits governing the consumption of music. Jakob
Lenz, which is performed in a familiar opera hall and that aspires toward
a traditional ideal of expressing an artist's inner emotions in readily
comprehensible ways, can seem to affirm rather than to resist such
norms.
Subjectivity in West Germany of the 1970s
Indeed, Rihm's opera does reflect, rather than oppose, certain cultural
trends of its day.19 For example, Rihm contributes to a broader
engagement with the idea of subjectivity in West German art of the
1970s. Not only does Lenz dramatize the subjectivity of its protagonist
in the ways described above, but Rihm also emulates what he calls the
"free prose" of composers including Robert Schumann. Rihm believes
that Schumann's music, unlike the art of Lenz, makes its way "from the
inner to the outer world without undue constriction."20 Similarly, the
term "New Subjectivity" emerged in the 1970s to label some West
German literature of that decade.21
The protests of 1968 failed at achieving the revolutions they sought.
In light of this failure, any flourishing of subjectivity in German art after
1968 might well seem like the despairing retreat that Heister describes
?a resignation from the collective or political sphere toward a Romantic
tradition of art that glorifies private interiority or individual subjectivity.
Moreover, far from opposing established norms surrounding music, this
tradition actually underlies them.
An alternative interpretation of this same turn toward subjectivity,
however, derives from the fact that participants in the protest movement
had very much espoused critical theory,22 a tendency that grew even
more pronounced in the years immediately following 1968, when some
leftist intellectuals reacted to the failures of that year by more rigidly
adopting Marxist-Leninist theory.23
Unsurprisingly, right-wing proponents opposed this Marxist-Leninist
theory on which?especially in the time between the passing of the
Notstandsgesezte in May of 1968 and the early 1970s?certain left-wing
factions heavily relied. Significantly, though, other left-wing subcultures
also reacted against it. They reacted, moreover, by privileging personal,
subjective experience over objective, hyper-rationalized theory.
For example, Peter Schneider, a prominent German author who is
associated with the literary "New Subjectivity," penned an essay in 1969
about the role of imagination in late capitalism (Die Phantasie im
Spdtkapitalismus und die Kulturrevolution).24 Far from abandoning the
fight against perceived ills of late capitalism, Schneider argues that a
creative, imaginative, "cultural revolution" might help to combat these
ills. Elsewhere, he has also noted that the pressure to write in accor
dance with political theory had, at times, contributed to "the feeling
that I could not write, at any rate, not what I wanted [to write]."25
Not only had the widespread embrace of theory during the protests
immobilized writers like Schneider while leading him toward advocating
the imagination of artistic individuals, but some people even believed an

"idolatry of the concept" had endangered revolutionary potential
itself.26 Herbert Marcuse, the so-called "Father of the New Left" whose
writings inspired the German protests of the 1960s more than those of
any other individual thinker, certainly numbers among them. In his
Essay on Liberation (Versuch uber Befreiung) that also dates from 1969,
for example, Marcuse exhorts that progress toward liberation must
proceed without reliance upon theories or pre-established systems. He
writes, "The immediate goals and occasions of action will be determined
by the shifting situation rather than by a theoretically well-founded and
elaborated strategy."27 Marcuse also points to the need for individuals
who can respond subjectively to these shifting situations: he advocates
"a shift of emphasis toward subjective factors."28
Marcuse's words are interesting in relation to Rihm because Rihm has
similarly advocated composing with subjectivity and without reliance
upon pre-compositional strategizing. Rihm contrasts his ideal of non
schematic composing with highly rational compositional approaches in a
lecture given at Darmstadt in 1978.29 Since the lecture was formulated
at the same time as he was composing Jakob Lenz, Rihm's disregard for
domineering rationality and systematic compositional technique might
explain why the composer has also written about his empathy with that
opera's eponymous protagonist, who similarly flouts both rationality and
convention.30
Nonetheless, I do not mean to claim that Rihm's ideal of subjectively
infused and asystematic composition must be directly indebted to
Marcuse's political theory. After all, Rihm's ideal could also be indebted
to Adorno's aesthetic theory, and specifically, to the latter's ideas about
the expressionistic works of Schoenberg as well as to his later concept of
a musique informelle.
Although Rihm's allusions to historical styles diverge from Adorno's
theory of socio-historically determined musical material, Rihm's interest
in preserving subjective freedom does resonate with Adorno's ideas. Just
as Adorno admired expressionism, so too does Rihm's Lenz reference
expressionist compositions from the past in the ways mentioned above.
Furthermore, Adorno held Schoenberg's expressionism in high esteem
partly because he understood it to be emancipated from musical
convention. Adorno equated this musical freedom, moreover, with the
composer's own subjective freedom.31 Adorno's essay on musique
informelle calls for the recreation of comparable subjective freedom in
music belonging to a later historical moment.32
Even if Rihm's ideas do not direcdy derive from Marcuse's, however,
the aforementioned similarities between them are nonetheless striking.
Furthermore, in tandem with Heister's interpretation of Rihm's opera,

Marcuse's words indicate that the concern for subjectivity in West
German culture of the 1970s can be interpreted in two ways. On the
one hand, just as Heister understands Rihm's Lenz as a retreat from the
political sphere, so too were "personal issues or matters of subjectivity"
often "denounced as counterrevolutionary" by the West German protest
movement.33 On the other, the statements by Schneider and Marcuse
cited above illustrate that, in the years following 1968, certain leftist
intellectuals attempted to perpetuate the countercultural social
resistance of the 1960s by arguing against rigid, unimaginative
adherence to objective, impersonal theory.
As Russell Berman observes, these leftist subcultures tended to oppose
such theory by promoting "spontaneous anarchism," "the primacy of
emotionality ('subjectivity')," and "the denigration of reason."34 Rihm's
1978 lecture similarly advocates spontaneity over pre-compositional
planning. Furthermore, since the character of Lenz is mentally unstable,
Rihm's Jakob Lenz arguably thematizes not only subjectivity, but also
irrationality, or the denigration of reason. In short, even though Rihm's
opera affirms certain cultural trends, these trends themselves can be
understood as attempts at implementing social resistance.
Reconciling the Personal and the Political
Furthermore, in 1973, Schneider published a reworked version of

Biichner's Lenz. Not only are Schneider's work and Rihm's opera based
on the same text, but the two works also both concern the idea of
subjectivity.35 The protagonist in Schneider's version is a modern-day
German intellectual who had once participated in the protests. But
Schneider's Lenz now hears nothing but hollow cliches in the theory
laden utterances emanating from his circle of friends. Just as it was
mentioned above that Lenz fails to express himself through the
conventional ideal of mimetic art, so too does Schneider's Lenz struggle
to define himself through what he perceives as the stereotypical and
exhausted sociopolitical theory that surrounds him.
Despite this similarity, Schneider's version differs substantially from
Biichner's original not only in terms of its setting, but also in terms of
its plot. Whereas the ill health of Biichner's Lenz irreversibly
deteriorates, Schneider's Lenz eventually regains his health. As Sharman
also notes, Schneider's Lenz manages to regain a sense of peace about
his identity by coming to terms with the past. Repressed memories
surface during a trip he takes to Italy, where Lenz meets an old friend
who happens to be an advocate of psychotherapy. Schneider writes that
in Italy, Lenz comes to realize that 'fearlessly living together with the
past' helps to prepare him for the present.36 As Sharman puts it, "The
Italians teach Lenz to make use of the past instead of obliterating it."37
Of course, Rihm's Lenz is based on Biichner's version: the version in
which Lenz never recovers. Furthermore, to my knowledge, Rihm never
mentions Schneider's reworking of Biichner's text, and much less does
Rihm indicate that Schneider's version somehow influenced his own
setting. Nonetheless, Rihm's compositional approach to his opera
exemplifies what he calls "inclusive composition." This approach allows
the composer's subjective impulse to draw upon elements amid the
totality of music history to create new compositions?compositions that
are not loyal to any single pre-established system.38 The traditional
genre of opera, the traditional Sarabande and chorale within the musical
examples cited above, and the setting of a text by Buchner are but a few
of the many aspects from music history that Rihm brings together
within his opera. Through his "inclusive composition," therefore,
Rihm's Lenz seemingly also attempts "to make use of the past instead of
obliterating it."
The reason that coming to terms with the past allows Schneider's
Lenz to recover from his psychological ills is that it refashions a balance
between objective theory and history on the one hand and the present
state of Lenz's personal subjectivity on the other. Lenz recovers a
definite sense of his individuated selfhood that is both distinct from and
yet also a part of these broader things. In Rihm's opera, by contrast, no
small part of Lenz's unsound psychological state results from a lack of
such equipoise between general conventions and individual subjectivity:
Rihm's protagonist is unable to reconcile his subjectivity with the
conventional external frameworks mentioned above, just as he is unable
to give external, objective artistic form to his internal, subjective
experiences.
Despite such lack of reconciliation surrounding the character of Lenz
in his opera, however, Rihm does expressly state that his opera as a
whole necessarily melds the "human," presumably meaning that which
is common to actual, external reality, with the "fantastic," meaning that
which is common to Lenz's subjective, interior reality.39 For example,
the opera calls for six [must they be offstage? I don't see this explicidy
indicated anywhere] voices. They represent characters?including
inanimate objects such as trees and mountains?with whom Lenz
communicates inside his own mind. Since these voices convey Lenz's
subjective reality, their presence during Lenz's interactions with the
other two characters is one obvious way that Rihm's opera achieves this
merging of subjective and objective realities.40
Granted, Rihm does not situate his description of these blended levels
of reality within an expressly stated cultural context. Nonetheless, Sabine
von Dirke writes that the West German protesters "had failed to resolve
one of the most burning questions of their antiauthoritarian beginnings,
namely, the split between the personal/subjective and the
political/objective dimensions."41 Therefore, re-creating such fusion
between subjective and objective realms seems to have been especially
significant in post-1968 West Germany: it seems to have been especially
significant in the aftermath of a protest movement that had extolled
general, critical theory at the cost of asphyxiating individual, subjective
experience.
The relevance of these post-1968 sociopolitical circumstances for
other compositions and other composers remains, at present, a subject
for further investigation.42 Surely for the piece at hand, though, two
interpretations have been presented. Whereas Heister understands
Rihm's Lenz as a flight into an apolitical and solipsistic Romanticism,
the leftist perspective outlined above suggests another interpretation?
one through which this same work hardly seems a retreat from the
sociopolitical sphere, but instead a telling reflection of a contempor
aneous sociopolitical concern.
Notes
1. Events that helped to secure Rihm's international recognit

include the premiere of his orchestral Morphonie at the 1
Donaueschingen Festival, and his receipt of the Kranichstei
Musikpreis in 1978 for his string trio, Musik fur drei Stretcher
contrast to the "complexity" idealized in preceding years, Rihm
music from the 1970s is often associated with the term "Neue E
fachheit" (New Simplicity). Rihm himself dislikes the label.
Christopher Fox, "Neue Einfachheit," Oxford Music Onl
(accessed 21 October 2009), and Rihm, "Die Klassifizierung d
'Neuen Einfachheit' aus der Sicht des Komponisten," in Zur ccNeu
Einfachheit" in der Musik, ed. Otto Kolleritsch, Studien zur Wer
tungsforschung 14 (Vienna: Universal, 1981): 81.
2. Buchner's text was largely written in 1835, but two years later,
was still incomplete upon his death. Editors posthumously titled
Lenz. See Gerhard P. Knapp, "Lenz," The Literary Encycloped
http://www.litencyc.com (accessed 27 November 2008).
3. Earlier versions of this paper were read at the 2009 "Illuminatio
and Reflections" conference at San Francisco State University and
a 2009 graduate-student symposium at Stanford University. I gra
fully acknowledge the helpful feedback I received from tho
audiences, and particularly from Karol Berger, Suzanne Cusi
Stephen Hinton, Charles Kronengold, Beate Kutschke, Robert M
ris, Richard Taruskin, and Erik Ulman.
4. Gundula Sharman, Twentieth-Century Reworkings of German lit

ture: an analysis of six fictional reinterpretations from Goethe
Thomas Mann (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2002): 96. Sharm
outlines the "three systems of reference" that I cite here: natur
religion, and art.
5. Sharman, Reworkings, 96.
6. In his English translation of Buchner's Lenz, Richard Sieburth no

that Lenz had studied theology twice, "in Koningsberg in 1768-
and again briefly in Strasbourg in 1774," and moreover, that
enrolled at Strasbourg "to placate his father" (New Yor
Archipelago Books, 2004): 153, 171.
7. Rihm, Jakob Lenz: Kammeroper (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1978
58-59.
8. Rihm, Jakob Lenz, 88,92.

9. Rihm, Jakob Lenz, 88.
10. Wim, Jakob Lenz, 92-93.

11. Rihm, Jakob Lenz, 31-33.
12. A similar unsuitability might be leveled against the opera as a whole.
Although Lenz's vocal line stands apart from musical conventions in
the examples cited above, the opera as a whole does reference musi
cal traditions and conventions. The idea of conveying individual
subjectivity?be it that of Lenz or of Rihm himself?via general
conventions is problematic. Conventions are neither individual nor
unique; they are common and historically mediated. Brian Ferney
hough's criticism of music that resorts to "false forms of directness"
and a "historically referential, but apparendy extrahistorically
Utopian subjectivism" seems fitting in this context. See "Form-Fig
ure-Style: An Intermediate Assessment," Perspectives of New Music
31/1 (1993): 33. Rihm himself writes that attempting to depict
Lenz musically must fail, because Lenz himself embodies failure. See
Rihm, "Chiffren von Verstorung. Anmerkungen zu Jakob Lenz," in
Ausgesprochen: Schriften und Gesprdcb 2, ed. Ulrich Mosch (Win
terthur: Amadeus Press, 1997): 314. Ferneyhough's criticism
depends on socio-historically defined notions of subjectivity and
authenticity. Russell Berman writes that in West Germany during
the 1970s, by contrast, there was "a fascination for personal identity
understood as an original substance, prior to any social or historical
mediations," in Modern Culture and Critical Theory: art, politics,
and the legacy of the Frankfurt School (Madison: University of Wis
consin Press, 1989), 227.
13. Rihm, Jakob Lenz, 53-54.
14. Rihm, Jakob Lenz, 52: im sinnlichen Genufiganz aufgelost.

15. Rihm, Jakob Lenz, 51.
16. Heister, "Sackgasse oder Ausweg aus dem Elfenbeinturm? Zur

musikalischen Sprache in Wolfgang Rihms Jacob Lenz," in Zur
"Neuen Einfachheit" in der Musik, 118, 116: ". . . das wir hier vor
uns haben, ist eine cjunge Avantgarde,' in der das Element von
sozialem Protest und Opposition dufierst schwach ausgebildet ist."
Heister's reference to a "young avant-garde" seemingly refers to the
tide of a Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik issue (140, no. 1 [1979]: 5-24),
which includes personal statements by Rihm, Hans-Jiirgen von
Bose, Hans-Christian von Dadelsen, Dedev Muller-Siemens, Man

fred Trojahn, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, and Peter Michael Hamel.
17. Heister, "Sackgasse," 119.

18. One Anglophone account of the German protest movements is Nick
Thomas, Protest Movements in 1960s West Germany: a social history
of dissent and democracy (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2003).
19. Heister understands the opera to reinforce, rather than to resist,

what he calls "bourgeois musical culture" ("Sackgasse," 123). He
notes that Rihm's music reflects, at least superficially, cultural trends
including "New Sensibility" or "Innerlichkeit" as well as concerns
for "expressivity, subjectivity, emotionality" (117). In fact, it is pre
cisely because he understands Rihm to be im Einklang mit der Zeit
("in harmony with the time," 116) that Heister perceives a lack of
social opposition in his music.
20. Quoted and translated in Alastair Williams, "Swaying with Schu

mann: Subjectivity and tradition in Wolfgang Rihm's Premde Szenen
I-III and related scores," Music & Letters 87, no. 3 (2006): 387.
Rihm began composing Premde Szenen in 1982.
21. Peter Handke is credited with coining the label "New Subjectivity"
in 1973 in his acceptance speech for the Buchner Prize; he subse
quently tried to distance himself from the term. It denotes concern
with existential issues, private relationships, and with describing the
everyday experiences of individuals. One text that considers the con
cept is Michael Zeller, ed., Aufbriiche, Abschiede: Studien zur dt.
Literatur seit 1968 (Stuttgart: Klett, 1979).
22. The term "critical theory" is meant here in a broad sense: "a theory
is 'critical' to the extent that it seeks human emancipation, 'to liber
ate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.'" This
definition appears in James Bohman, "Critical Theory," in Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy ed. Edward Zalta, http://plato.stan
ford.edu (accessed 2 January 2009). There are several such "critical
theories" that are relevant for the student protests. For one account
of different theoretical strands within the protest movement, see
Gerhard Baufi, Die Studentenbewegung der sechziger Jahre in der
Bundesrepublik und Westberlin (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1977),
especially pp. 299-308.
23. Historiography of the West German protest movement generally
acknowledges three phases; this "orthodox" or "dogmatic" Marxist
Leninist phase dating from late 1968 to the early 1970s is the sec
ond. See, for example, Richard McCormick, Politics of the Self: femi
nism and the postmodern in West German literature and film
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 31-33.
24. Peter Schneider, "Die Phantasie im Spatkapitalismus und die Kul

turrevolution," Kursbuch 16 (1969): 1-37.
25. Quoted in Zeller, Aufbriiche, 8-9.
26. The phrase "idolatry of the concept" is Leslie Adelson's, in Crisis of

Subjectivity: Botho Strauss^s Challenge to West German Prose of the
1970s (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984), 12.
27. Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press,

1969), 53.
28. Ibid.
29. Rihm, "Der geschockte Komponist." The essay is published in
Ferienkurse V8, Darmstadter Beitrage zur Neuen Musik 17 (Mainz:
Schott, 1978): 40-51, and Rihm, Ausgesprochen I, 43-55. Subse
quent page numbers refer to the Darmstadter Beitrdge.
30. Rihm, "Chiffren von Verstorung," 314-15.
31. Whereas "traditional music was obliged to make do with a stricdy

limited number of tonal combinations," in atonal music "nothing
preestablished compels him [the composer] to submit to the tradi
tionally universal." With freely atonal expressionism, therefore, "the
composer emancipated himself along with the sounds." Theodor
Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 44.
32. Adorno, "Vers une musique informelle," in Quasi una fantasia:

Essays on Modern Music, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London: Verso,
1998), 269-322. Rihm makes a thinly veiled reference to another
work by Adorno during his aforementioned 1978 lecture, in which
he declares, "The new is aging" ("Der geschockte Komponist," 42).
This evokes Adorno's "The Aging of the New Music" from the
mid-1950s. Here?and in contrast to the expressionism that he ide
alizes?Adorno criticizes integral serialism, in part because he
believes that in such music, "Pre-established rules are blindly fol
lowed . . . excluding any tension with subjectivity. ..." The
"Aging" essay appears in Adorno: Essays on Music, ed. Richard Lep

pert (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); here, 194.
Adorno also describes "loneliness as style" in Philosophy of New

Music. Through the concept he suggests that the style of Schoen
berg's freely atonal works conveys the social isolation and alienation
of the individual artist, but he also claims that such isolation is uni
versally experienced. This idea of "loneliness as style" is interesting
in relation to Rihm's Lenz because Buchner's Lenz conveys Lenz's
internal state through the style of the prose itself, using techniques
including paratactic syntax, abrupt shifts in the narrative voice, and
irregular, ambiguous indications about the passing of time. Since
Biichner conveys Lenz's individuality and social isolation through
his prose itself, his text seems an apt literary analogue to the "loneli
ness as style" that Adorno identifies in freely atonal music.
Biichner himself was a political dissident, and his postwar reception

emphasizes this fact. But his fashioning of an individual prose style
through determinate negation of general linguistic norms can be
read as the forging of subjective freedom and resistance to conven
tion within the aesthetic sphere. Since such resistance is also
necessary for political change, this style itself resonates with the idea
of political opposition. Both these points help to explain the appeal
of Romantic writers like Biichner to post-WWII composers.
33. Sabine von Dirke, All Power to the Imagination*. The West German
Counterculture from the Student Movement to the Greens (Lincoln
and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 67.
34. Russell Berman, "Opposition to Rearmament and West German

Culture," Telos 51 (1982): 143. The "dogmatic" Marxist-Leninist
leftists labeled their spontaneous, theory-averse counterparts "Spon
tis." Although Spontis also existed earlier in the movement, the so
called "third phase" of the protest movement is usually associated
with them. See McCormick, Politics of the Self 33.
35. An English translation appears in Leslie Willson, ed., Three contem

porary German novellas (New York: Continuum, 2001). Heister
("Sackgasse," 117) also notes that both Schneider's Lenz and
Rihm's opera engage "the dialectic of essence and appearance, of
sensuous experience and rational comprehension, of empiricism and
theory."
36. Quoted in Sharman, Reworkings, 112: "er konne sich zum ersten Mai
vorstellen, das diese angstlose Zusammenleben mit der Vergangenheit
es einem erleichtere, sich in der Gegenwart einzurichten"
37. Sharman, Reworkings, 112.
38. Rihm describes this technique in "Der geschockte Komponist."
39. Rihm, "Chif&en von Verstorung," 315.
40. In the introduction to the score, Rihm explains these voices are nei
ther supporting roles nor a chorus, but rather characters that are
central to Lenz (Jakob Lenz, 2, also "Chiffren von Verstorung,"
314). Additionally, in "Der geschockte Komponist," Rihm consid
ers whether "inclusive composition" might help to reconcile
individual, subjective freedom with the collective, social sphere (51).
41. Von Dirke, All Power to the Imagination, 67.
42. This current study forms part of my doctoral dissertation, currendy

in progress, about how art music in West Germany during the
1960s and 70s can be understood as a retreat from?but also as an
extension of?the aesthetics and counterculture of the 1960s.
References
Adelson, Leslie. 1984. Crisis of Subjectivity: Botho Strauss's Challenge to

West German Prose of the 1970s. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Adorno, Theodor W. 1998. "Vers une musique informelle." In Quasi

una fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, translated by Rodney Living
stone. London: Verso: 269-322.
-. 2002. "The Aging of the New Music." In Richard Leppert, edi

tor, Adorno: Essays on Music, translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor and
Frederic Will. Berkeley: University of California Press: 181-202.
-. 2006. Philosophy of New Music, translated by Robert Hullot

Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Baufl, Gerhard. 1977. Die Studentenbewegung der sechziger Jahre in der

Bundesrepublik und Westberlin. Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein.
Berman, Russell. 1989. Modern Culture and Critical Theory: art, poli
tics, and the legacy of the Frankfurt School. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press.
-. 1982. "Opposition to Rearmament and West German Culture."

TelosSl: 143-45.
Von Dirke, Sabine. 1997. All Power to the Imagination! The West Ger
man Counterculture from the Student Movement to the Greens. Lincoln
and London: University of Nebraska Press.
Ferneyhough, Brian. 1993. "Form-Figure-Style: An Intermediate

Assessment." Perspectives of New Music 31, No. 1 (Winter): 32-40.
(Originally Published in Darmstadter Beitrage zur Neuen Musik 19
[1984]).
Heister, Hanns-Werner. 1981. "Sackgasse oder Ausweg aus dem Elfen
beinturm? Zur musikalischen Sprache in Wolfgang Rihms Jacob
Lenz." In Otto Kolleritsch, editor, Zur "Neuen Einfachheit" in der
Musik. Studien zur Wertungsforschung 14. Vienna and Graz: Universal
Edition: 106-125.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1969. An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press.
McCormick, Richard W. 1991. Politics of the Self: Feminism and the

Postmodern in West German Literature and Film. Princeton and
Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Rihm, Wolfgang. 1978. uDer geschockte Komponist." In Ernst

Thomas, editor, Darmstadter Beitrdge zur Neuen Musik 17. Mainz:
Schott: 40-51.
-. 1978. Jakob Lenz: Kammeroper. Vienna: Universal Edition.

-. 1997. "Chiffren von Verstorung. Anmerkungen zu Jakob
Lenz." In Ausgesprochen: Schriften und Gesprach, Ulrich Mosch, edi
tor. Winterthur: Amadeus Press: 314-315.
Schneider, Peter. 1969. "Die Phantasie im Spatkapitahsmus und die

Kulturrevolution." In Kursbuch 16: 1-37.
Sharman, Gundula. 2002. Twentieth-Century Reworkings of German lit

erature: an analysis of six fictional reinterpretations from Goethe to
Thomas Mann. Rochester, NY: Camden House.
Thomas, Nick. 2003. Protest Movements in 1960s West Germany: A

Social History of Dissent and Democracy. Oxford and New York: Berg.
Williams, Alastair. 2006. "Swaying with Schumann: Subjectivity and tra

dition in Wolfgang Rihm's Fremde Szenen Till arid related scores."
Music & Letters 87, no. 3 (August): 379-397.
Willson, Leslie, ed. 2001. Three contemporary German novellas. New
York: Continuum.
Winter, Hans-Gerd. 1997. "Georg Buchners Lenz?produktive Aneig

nung eines Dichters und Darstellung eines Verstorten." In Peter
Petersen and Hans-Gerd Winter, editors, Hamburger Jahrbuch fur
Musikwissenschaft 14. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang: 203-223.
Zeller, Michael, ed. 1979. Aufbriiche, Abschiede: Studien zur dt. Liter
atur seit 1968. Stuttgart: Klett.

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Romantic Subjectivity and West German Politics in Wolfgang Rihm's "Jakob Lenz"

Author(s): Jessica Balik

Subjectivity vis-A-vis Convention

Biichner's text and the opera's libretto portray Lenz as a psychologically

Just as Lenz's dramatic narrative does not adhere to these conven

EXAMPLE 11 RIHM, JAKOB LENZ, SCENE 9, MM. 1-8

EXAMPLE 2: RIHM, JAKOB LENZ, SCENE 9, MM. 59-67

aforementioned examples of conventional frameworks within both the

EXAMPLE 3: RIHM, JAKOB LENZ, SCENE 4, MM. 50-70

Subjectivity, Romanticism, and "1968"

Even though Lenz claims he is unable to express his own interiority

expressionistic, but also, simply by setting a text by Buchner about

Subjectivity in West Germany of the 1970s

the imagination of artistic individuals, but some people even believed an

Furthermore, in tandem with Heister's interpretation of Rihm's opera,

Reconciling the Personal and the Political

Furthermore, in 1973, Schneider published a reworked version of

1. Events that helped to secure Rihm's international recognit

4. Gundula Sharman, Twentieth-Century Reworkings of German lit

5. Sharman, Reworkings, 96.

6. In his English translation of Buchner's Lenz, Richard Sieburth no

8. Rihm, Jakob Lenz, 88,92.

10. Wim, Jakob Lenz, 92-93.

14. Rihm, Jakob Lenz, 52: im sinnlichen Genufiganz aufgelost.

16. Heister, "Sackgasse oder Ausweg aus dem Elfenbeinturm? Zur

Bose, Hans-Christian von Dadelsen, Dedev Muller-Siemens, Man

17. Heister, "Sackgasse," 119.

19. Heister understands the opera to reinforce, rather than to resist,

20. Quoted and translated in Alastair Williams, "Swaying with Schu

24. Peter Schneider, "Die Phantasie im Spatkapitalismus und die Kul

25. Quoted in Zeller, Aufbriiche, 8-9.

26. The phrase "idolatry of the concept" is Leslie Adelson's, in Crisis of

27. Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press,

30. Rihm, "Chiffren von Verstorung," 314-15.

31. Whereas "traditional music was obliged to make do with a stricdy

32. Adorno, "Vers une musique informelle," in Quasi una fantasia:

"Aging" essay appears in Adorno: Essays on Music, ed. Richard Lep

Adorno also describes "loneliness as style" in Philosophy of New

Biichner himself was a political dissident, and his postwar reception

34. Russell Berman, "Opposition to Rearmament and West German

35. An English translation appears in Leslie Willson, ed., Three contem

37. Sharman, Reworkings, 112.

38. Rihm describes this technique in "Der geschockte Komponist."

39. Rihm, "Chif&en von Verstorung," 315.

41. Von Dirke, All Power to the Imagination, 67.

42. This current study forms part of my doctoral dissertation, currendy

Adelson, Leslie. 1984. Crisis of Subjectivity: Botho Strauss's Challenge to

Adorno, Theodor W. 1998. "Vers une musique informelle." In Quasi

-. 2002. "The Aging of the New Music." In Richard Leppert, edi

-. 2006. Philosophy of New Music, translated by Robert Hullot

Baufl, Gerhard. 1977. Die Studentenbewegung der sechziger Jahre in der

-. 1982. "Opposition to Rearmament and West German Culture."

Ferneyhough, Brian. 1993. "Form-Figure-Style: An Intermediate

Marcuse, Herbert. 1969. An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press.

McCormick, Richard W. 1991. Politics of the Self: Feminism and the

Rihm, Wolfgang. 1978. uDer geschockte Komponist." In Ernst

-. 1978. Jakob Lenz: Kammeroper. Vienna: Universal Edition.

Schneider, Peter. 1969. "Die Phantasie im Spatkapitahsmus und die

Sharman, Gundula. 2002. Twentieth-Century Reworkings of German lit

Thomas, Nick. 2003. Protest Movements in 1960s West Germany: A

Williams, Alastair. 2006. "Swaying with Schumann: Subjectivity and tra

Winter, Hans-Gerd. 1997. "Georg Buchners Lenz?produktive Aneig