Hans Keller (1919-1985): An Introduction to His Life and Works

Author(s): Christopher Wintle

Source: Music Analysis , Jul. - Oct., 1986, Vol. 5, No. 2/3 (Jul. - Oct., 1986), pp. 342-365
Published by: Wiley

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/854196

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CHRISTOPHER WINTLE

HANS KELLER (1919 - 1985)

An Introduction to his Life and Works

1: The First Forty Years

With the death of Hans Keller on 6 November 1985, a remarkable and colourful
era in British music drew one stage nearer its close. Hans could hardly have
been born into times that suited him better. His maturity corresponded exactly
with the forty years that followed the end of the Second World War, and it was
the diversity of what he encountered that excited his boundless curiosity. His
subjects, both living and dead, were legion: Britten, Schoenberg and their
contemporaries; Stravinsky; the post-war Europeans (Boulez, Ligeti, Berio);
Shostakovich; Tchaikovsky and Elgar; Gershwin; Haydn, Mozart and
Beethoven; the Romantics; chamber music and opera; the media . .. to all this
and more, Hans not merely played Boswell through his astonishingly prolific
writings, but contributed a major part in his various roles as analyst, critic,
teacher, broadcaster, coach, polemicist and off-duty psychologist. But it was
through his personality that he made the most immediate impact upon his
times. As an outspoken, combative public figure, he was in turn venerated for
his brilliance and versatility, cherished for his defence of the rights of
individuals, abused for the allegedly immoderate exercise of those rights, and
satirized for his idiosyncratic blend of enthusiasms (notably football and
psychoanalysis). As a private person, he gathered around him some of the most
gifted thinkers of his time, who were variously charmed by his exceptional
companionability, fired by his passionate concern for the highest standards in
every area, and impressed by the intensity and seriousness with which he
pursued his interests. To those who knew him well, indeed, he became the
unofficial guardian of their conscience.
The story as far as Britain is concerned begins with Hans's arrival at Croydon
Airport on 20 December 1938 as a young refugee from occupied Austria. Yet
even by then the foundations of his life's work had been laid. Born in Vienna on
11 March 1919, he benefited from a highly cultured background. Both parents
were keen amateur musicians - his father, in fact, was a successful architect -
and he attributed part of his extraordinary grasp of repertoire to the fact that

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 HANS KELLER

they played so much of the standard orchestral and

in two-piano arrangements. Indeed, when one learns
their early nineteenth-century house in outlyin
Hampstead), it is hard not to invoke precisely tha
Hans himself set out so assiduously to dispel. At var
Peter Altenberg, Alma Mahler, Theodor Csokor (the
Lina Loos (briefly the wife of the architect); Ha
included Erwin Ratz, whose cause as music analys
to the end of his life; and, most importantly
occasionally participate in Dr Oskar Adler's string qu
at his house. Adler, whom Hans later described
intimate musical friend' ('Mozart: The Chamber M
medical doctor. He not only treated the quartet's ail
but also, at Schoenberg's (indirect) instigation, r
consultations with Alfred Adler (no relation), the w
author of Individual Psychology. And it was Oskar A
quality of Hans's musical understanding:

He did not care two hoots about analysis, but his

motif-conscious way of playing taught me more a
chamber-musical forms and textures than any ana
possibly have done.(ibid)

At this time, Hans learnt the violin with Jenny Conr

Realgymnasium, from which he matriculated in 193
In fact, Hans's arrival in Britain in 1938 was no
country. Some time before, his sister Gertrud, who w
the family as Mowgli, had married an Englishman, R
Herne Hill (in South London). And it was for this
summer holidays of 1936 in London to improve h
there are occasional references to the concerts he w
particular he was impressed by the playing of B
legendary individualist among fiddle-players, to wh
was later published: 'In ihrem Spiel', he wrote touch
Seele, die Sie in die Geige hineinlegen, ihre Gegne
this summer, he may also have travelled up to Hamp
Rostal. Certainly, Hans came to know Rostal at a lat
pair of articles on problems of string-writing in Be
Similarly, Hans may well have known Rostal's t
memoirs he helped to edit and translate (1957).

' The full reference for each article cited in this introduction may be found in the

2 'In your playing, one senses the whole spirit you pour into the violin, something

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 A MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM

But the circumstances of his arrival in 1938 were v

1936. In Vienna he had been imprisoned, interr
Nazis, an episode described unforgettably in a ra
published as the first chapter of his book 1975. And
outbreak of war, in the summer of 1940, that h
captivity: this time, along with several other emigr
Hamburger, he was interned on the Isle of Man.
beginning of the following year, upon the angry in
Williams, who seems to have known, or known o
Hans's capacity for wry insight was already well
only had plenty of time to play music together -
performance of a string quartet by Peter Gellhorn
to agonize over the political situation. When it wa
might not understand the full nature of the menace
replied: 'Perhaps it is better not to understand Hitle
Once released, Hans lived with his mother at No. 30
door to his sister (his father had died before the w
on the site of another, once owned by the Ruskin f
and 30, the Kellers and Franeys Nos 30 and 32),
Mozart's singers, Nancy Stodart. Hans took an LR
freelance chamber and orchestral musician. He
reference by a German conductor from as early as
in terms of a career as either a soloist or rank-and-
Adler arrived in London, the new quartet he for
violin), as well as his mother (cello) and Sybil Matur
are amusingly described in this symposium by M
with Adler's wife Paula, an excellent pianist, they t
to give charity concerts. Through all these exper
first-hand knowledge of performance, but devel
later critical work, namely his string-player's sense
The early 1940s were also devoted to developing hi
and psychoanalysis, interests that formed the s
Although Hans claimed that his first publication in
British Journal of Medical Psychology in 1946 ('M
reveals that in the previous year a number of short
The Psychologist.3 Their subjects include 'Sexual h
and 'Maturity'. Other unpublished essays of this per
Pets', 'Religion', 'The Psychology of Leadership',
'Cinema Staff. And on the basis of interviews he wr
Women' and 'Prostitutes Wear Marriage-Rings'. A
to accuse him of 'lay-psychology', Hans in f
professionals. Professor J. C. Flugel, for example, h

3 The very first thing Hans ever published appeared in an Austrian children
Journey', Inge being the name of his little cousin.

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 HANS KELLER

'incidentally, if you are not a member of the Britis

should be happy to propose you'; and in 1947 Han
'Inferiority Feelings of Music in England'. With Mar
two papers on 'Some Sociological Concepts of th
paved the way for Phillips's Small Social Groups
Methuen). In the preface to this, she acknowledged
Hans Keller', with whom she had 'fully discusse
psychoanalytic side, the exorbitance of analysts'
undertake his own examination, which he did by
every day for five years in order to attain a deeper
aggression, and hence of how to put that aggression
so, he took advice from his friend and fellow em
psychoanalyst Willi Hoffer. Hoffer in turn ent
suffering from dementia praecox, about whom H
notes, 'Bleuler's schizophrenia: an attempt at musica
(Sadly, though, the patient cracked.) And these
throughout his life: through the keen, and sometim
interest he took in any community he entered; at t
speaker his friend Thomas Szasz, with whom he sha
a preoccupation to defend the one against the ma
agreed to review, which included those by Erik E
Fuller, Anthony Kenny and Anthony Storr; and
apart from 'Music and Psychopathology' (1971), yiel
if caustic account of the 29th Congress of the Int
Association, which forms the third chapter of 1975.
It was from psychology and psychoanalysis, moreo
about music gained its distinctive quality. This
borrowed Freud's terminology so that, in the interp
than dreams, he spoke of the latent unity behind th
dynamic aspect of his psychology of listening, he
contradiction of well-defined expectations. In
represented a foreground which played off dialectic
the listener's accumulated experience. He turned ma
into case-studies, the analysis serving as a vehicle fo
understanding of the composer concerned: such
Boccherini'(1947) and 'Elgar the Progressive' (1957
artistic personality in terms of its 'expressiv
introductions to Stravinsky at Rehearsal (1962) and
(1982). (Although Hans's view of Stravinsky was pre
as it was also of 'Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky' (19
eventually - a sympathetic one meant that fresh air
Adorno had sat too long.) Through psychology to
issues of critical reception, in his writings about
much as in his impressive and wide-ranging 'Na
(1954); he defined his contemporary Zeitgeist

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 A MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM

increasing reliance on sado-masochistic energies at th

sexual energies' ('Noisy Music and Musical Noise
finding sado-masochistic elements in Stravins
Dallapiccola (II Prigioniero), diagnosed 'aggress
schizophrenia in Schumann, and a 'violent repressi
sadism' in Britten ('The Musical Character' (1952)).
he was Freudian: in more than one piece he enjoyed s
of orthography, whether musical, as in 'A Slip o
Significance' (1956/57), or verbal, as in 'Schoenbe
(1957), before going on to draw the largest concl
question.
To many critics, of course, the very premises of the diagnoses are deeply
controversial. Yet these writings are always stimulating, and sometimes very
amusing: in 'The Harry Lime Theme' (1951), for example, an understanding of
'the art of love' - and specifically of coitus interruptus - is shown to enhance 'the
love of art'. More deeply, though, Hans aligned himself through these interests
with a tradition of Austro-German letters of which Freud was just one part.
Most frequently he invoked Kant and Schopenhauer, less frequently Schiller
and Nietzsche. In 'Mozart: The Chamber Music' (1956), for example, he wrote:

One gradually begins to realize what Mozart meant when he recalled those
beautiful moments of inner creation where the whole work sounded 'like a
picture', simultaneously; what Schoenberg meant when he talked of 'the
unity of musical space'. The oneness, the simultaneity is the inner reality,
the Kantian thing-in-itself, the Schopenhauerian will, the Freudian
unconscious (which is essentially timeless), while temporal succession is its
necessary appearance, the Schopenhauerian idea, the Freudian conscious.
Thus experienced, variety is the necessary means of expressing a unity that
would otherwise remain unexpressed, as indeed it remains silent in
monotony, which cheats time of its purpose.

Like Nietzsche, he was a consummate and punctilious stylist, who delighted in

the possibilities of language, and who appeared to prefer writing essays and
shorter aphoristic pieces to the larger sustained text. (He also had the enviable
gift of being able to write his last draft at the first sitting.) His love of categories
and dualities even manifested itself in his definition of Art, which was raised
upon a characteristically paradoxical synthesis of dialectically opposed entities.
As he wrote in 'The Question of Quotation'(1949), 'Art arises where the
arbitrary and the predictable are superseded by unpredictable inevitability'.
Yet fascinating though these issues were, Hans obviously could not make a
living from psychological writings. And although he gained a certain income
from playing, he was also obliged, especially in the years immediately following
the war, to contribute music criticism to whatever journals he could. There were

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 HANS KELLER

about twenty of these, with titles as diverse as Dige

York), Weltwoche (Zurich), Zeitspiegel, Soundwave an
ments Weekly. He even won the first prize of a guine
Lamp (1947). There was already a touchingly pers
these contributions, in that they included illustratio
German artist who was later to become his wife
September 1947 at the Edinburgh Festival, which
Stage, New Life and Contemporary Cinema.) Their co
the rest of Hans's life: in the early days, Milein dre
cinemas reviewing the film music (and doubtless c
in 1950, they jointly produced a piece on the city
Illustrated, of which Hans was especially proud; and l
books together - the Musical Sketchbook of 1957, the
1962 and 1982, and 1975, which includes Milein's Pra
That Hans had been reviewing the Contemporary C
in itself significant: a large and overlooked body of
to film music. From the early days of the sound-trac
writing on the subject (in the books, for example, o
London (1936)) but now, in a touchingly polemica
'The Need for Competent Film Music Criticism' (1
four contributions to Sight and Sound (1946-8).
preoccupations which he subsequently elaborated, pr
The Music Review, 'Film Music' and 'Film Music an
contributions to The Grove Dictionary (5th Editio
(1959) drew heavily). He fought 'to the death' Aud
film music if we become aware of its existence' ('From Auden to
Hollywood'(1951)): there should either be a music-less sound-track ('N
Music'(1956)) or good music composed - necessarily - by good composers; but
there could be 'no legitimate inartistic music'. He anathematized Hollywood
('the English word for Kitsch', whose composers, with the honourabl
exceptions of Bernstein and Copland, could only 'produce bigger and better
music, each score being bigger than the previous one, and better than the next
('World Review' (1952)). And although he championed the English film
composers - preeminently Alwyn, Arnell, Bax, Britten, Frankel, Rawsthorne,
Vaughan Williams and Walton - he did not do so uncritically ('Malcolm Arnold
Oscarred' (1958)), and on occasions drew blood (on hearing that his review
were displayed at Denham Film Studios, he commented 'I would like to have
word in deciding which [articles] to stick up' ('Nine Swiss Shorts' (1949)). Ye
if he often moved towards a 'psychological analysis of the film composer
('Georges Auric at Film Music's Best' (1954)), the substance of this criticism was
purely, and seriously film-musical: his perfect pitch allowed him to write with
unparalleled authority on large-scale tonal design; he ascribed the omnipresence
of Leitmotif to the fact that 'a film score has to be more thematic than
symphony'; and he related instances of 'musical noise' to Schoenberg'
discussion of colour and pitch in the closing part of the Harmonielehre.

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 A MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM

How quickly Hans had made his mark as a critic ma

that he was chosen as the British delegate to the firs
Conference held in Florence in May 1950 - a conferen
for many months after it had officially ended. And
went to many of the other European Festivals, in
which he stopped attending only with the death of F
where he sat in the same box as Britten and Pears fo
Grimes. But the pressures of writing also impelled H
and the moment when he 'switched over, as far as my
playing to writing' came when he joined Donald Mitc
Survey (1949-52). Later he said of this vital, outsp
'what one was aiming at was a musical music journ
exception of The Music Review - did not exist', and t
... is positive: that is to say, it sprang from the spirit
This spirit elicited from Hans two very striking con
and brilliant 'Resistances to Britten's Music: Thei
'Schoenberg and the Men of the Press' (1951).
aggression was well known to Schoenberg himself.
in countering 'a very unpleasant review', the compos
'Now sharpen your pen!' Hans's reply explains why h
by composers and hated by critics': he wired bac
excitement PEN SHARPENED. Nor was the outspo
Survey. Contemporaries who had been astonished
panegyric 'Britten and Mozart' from Music and L
readiness to offer sacrificial victims in the name
Greenbaum and the Psychology of the Modern Artis
- were now confronted with a style of reviewing
consider the psychology of the Modern Critic, which
comparing, with deadly effect, the views critics exp
comings and goings during concerts.
A lot of this makes for undeniably funny reading;
were written that require understanding even
overwhelming impression of Hans's reviewing is a st
a criticism in which high expectations are matche
enthusiasm, experience, knowledge and musician
manifested themselves in other ways too. Hans had m
Willow Road, Hampstead, where Milein kept her st
Frognal Gardens in 1967). And over the coming ye
of remarkably talented friends and pupils: in the
Maityais Seiber, H. C. Robbins Landon, Deryck C
Humphrey Searle, Alan Walker, Jonathan Harvey and
Winham, who later joined Milton Babbitt in Prin
friends he gave of his time selflessly, not least t
correspondence, and supported them loyally, though
the printed word: a pair of obituary articles on

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 HANS KELLER

moving, partly because and not despite the fact t

friend the dignity of mastery (with the inevitab
rather than the unpredictability of genius. Hans's u
also took place, as Hugh Wood relates, at the Da
where from the late 1950s onwards he spoke annual
school not only included some memorable vignett
late at night with a conductor from whose concert
before), but showed how well it catered for his inte
of coaching which led to 'The Interpretation of Hay
in turn laid the foundation for the posthumous The
Interpretation (1986), a unique testament to the lifet
an 'insider'. Conversations with composers simila
'Principles of Composition' (1960), in which Han
'basic principle' of 'musical honesty, of physical
concreteness, of concrete musical thought in
composers 'may go wrong but they cannot go phone
These years, from 1945 to 1959, were also extraord
Hans's literary output - indeed, most of his i
developed during this period. In the background
criticism: as well as concerts and films, he turned hi
to 'Television Music' (1959), rallying his readership w
'Unite, lowbrows, and follow me into the no man
reason and spontaneous emotion'. The journey, h
promised, as Hans had to content himself for the m
advice to producers ('Don't be fanciful. Be factual. T
music for us all'); nevertheless, he was still able t
morality of criticism, a subject that was to preoccu
as the years went by. But perhaps the most strikin
New in Review' (1956-60), in which, inter alia, h
preoccupation with the lesser and neglected figures
century that Derrick Puffett describes later in this
from The Music Review remained unmatched even b
'The Contemporary Problem' (1967-70) from Temp
The substantial writings of this time are no les
'Rhythm: Gershwin and Stravinsky' (1957) related H
foregrounds and backgrounds to upbeats and downb
conclusion that 'if Stravinsky's "Eros" serves hi
"Thanatos", his aggression, serves his "Eros"'. Sim
examination in 'Conversations with Igor Stravin
composer's convoluted answer to the question 'W
composition?' prefaced a response of his own which
of Functional Analysis (see below). With the virtuos
Problem of Popularity' (1950), he surveyed the life
like Gershwin, mediated successfully between th
musical categories. Two or three pieces established a

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 A MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM

of Berg (see especially 'The Eclecticism of Woz

ironically entitled 'Modern Music and its Critics'
reactions to the music of Beethoven. But apart f
addition to several others mentioned earlier in th
contribution lay in the writings on Britten, Schoenb
the Britten articles still reveal the fledgling Keller -
the film music criticism and the study of the resistan
Musical Character' (1952) added to a reprint of 'Br
flattering comparison with Schoenberg, by way of a
of 'The Crisis of Beauty and Melody': full of insights
flown rhetoric quickly became a thing of the past. T
Grimes - 'Britten: Thematic Relations and the 'Mad' Interlude's 5th Motif'
(1951) and 'The Story, the Music not Excluded' (1952) - extended interests
established earlier with an unpublished essay 'Three Psychoanalytic Notes on
Peter Grimes', and the booklet on The Rape ofLucretia and Albert Herring (1947).
'Britten's Beggar's Opera' (1948-9) is adroit description, but has little of the
psychological insight of later studies such as 'Two Interpretations of Gloriana as
Music Drama' (1966-7); similarly 'Benjamin Britten's Second Quartet' (1947)
is concentrated and purposeful, but is also important for having laid the
foundation for the later Functional Analysis (1962). But fledgling or not, none
of this work passed unnoticed; and in 1975, after Hans had also translated
several of Britten's texts into or out of German, the composer rewarded him
with the dedication of his Third String Quartet. The pride Hans took in this
dedication remained with him for the rest of his life.
The picture with the Schoenberg writings is slightly different, for these
include two valuable mature studies, on Moses and Aron (1957) and Von Heute
auf Morgen ('Schoenberg's Comic Opera' (1958)). Yet, although these are
supported by a number of shorter pieces on other works, in Music Survey, The
Listener, Opera and Monthly Musical Record, an even greater contribution came
with the articles on Mozart. These must assume a central place in the Keller
oeuvre. Some have already been mentioned ('Mozart and Boccherini', 'A Slip of
Mozart's: Its Analytical Significance') and some will be discussed in the next
part of this survey (the FAs, 'Knowing Things Backwards' and a pair of articles
on K.503). But here five works especially deserve mention. 'The Idomeneo
Gavotte's Vicissitude' (1953) challenged the findings of Girdlestone with
Schoenberg's dictum 'something may be thematic which doesn't look so in the
least'. In 'Key Characteristics' (1956), a fascinating response to Professor G.
Revesz's Introduction to the Psychology of Music, he proceeded by way of a
defence of the use of scordatura in the Sinfonia Concertante to a positing of three
main categories of key relationship, the acoustic, the associative and the
psychological (a fourth, the relative, is also suggested). Hans himself liked to
stress the importance of 'Strict Serial Techniques in Classical Music' (1955), an
article which had the merit of pointing up as an issue the functional organisation
of twelve notes within a tonal structure, even if its examples (Mozart's G minor
and Beethoven's Ninth symphonies) nowadays seem factitious. Similarly, not

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 HANS KELLER

all readers will share Hans's 'feeling of uneasiness

melody of 'The Entfiihrung's Vaudeville' (1956); yet
ingenuity of the broad-ranging, psychologically-mo
Vaudeville's 'progressive tonality'. But far the mo
essays, and possibly Hans's greatest tour de force, is
The Mozart Companion (1956). Not only was this rep
advice for performers, but it offered the fullest
theoretical credo. Many of his terms and issues,
classicus in these pages: the Freudian borrowings, th
antecedents and consequents', the foregrounds a
rhythmic and pitch domains, the consideration of t
range of motivic, (mono-)thematic and cyclic preo
moreover, were shot through with thought-pro
composition is compression', 'a development tends
and so forth. And from the point of view of Hans's
represented the most important staging-post en
celebrated phase of his thought, a phase whic
completion, and which also took Mozart's music as it

2: Functional Analysis

It was in 1957 that Functional Analysis, the ideologi

burst upon the world. Although it has been descr
again in this volume by Alan Walker - it was Ha
comprehensive documentation of its early years. In
to analysis, which were alleged to resolve music into
suitable for anatomical description, it attempted
functions of the living organism that is the musical
physiological' way ('Functional Analysis: Its Pure
parallel with the aims of (for example) Tovey and Sc
not one that Hans readily acknowledged; as with T
the physiological did not preclude the use of ana
written commentaries.) However, it was less the
manner of FA that excited the greatest critical
opposed the traditionally verbal basis of analyti
dispensing with any form of commentary and allowi
self-explanatory. That this was not simply anti-rati
be gathered from the accompanying justificatio
psychological aspect: 'Words about music, mor
unproductive mind's revenge upon the creator, the c
doer'('Wordless Functional Analysis: The First
moreover, is an 'age of fear-inspired intellect-worshi
FA 'back into conceptual thought' would mark
Functional Analysis: The Second Year' (1959)). Mos

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 A MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM

proposition that FA, like the music it scrutinized, w

it was rationalised, a proposition that lent a quite ne
of analysis itself: 'it is analysis by experience, not
though the requirements of the controlling intellect
(ibid.). At the audacity of all this, even a Walter Pate
his arguments Hans put forward very convincingly
cadence: without the experience of this cadence, he i
have nothing to analyse.
The scope of FA was strictly delimited to revealing
themes within and between movements of a single w
D minor String Quartet, K.421, one of only two t
The Score (1958)), Hans wrote that there was no post
monothematic (variation form), which means that it does not contain
contrasting themes whose unity has to be demonstrated after the first movement
has been played' ('Functional Analysis'(1958)). The principle may fairly be
traced to Schoenberg, who had demonstrated just such a unity between the
contrasting themes of his First Chamber Symphony, Op.9, in his article
'Composition with Twelve Tones' from Style and Idea. Indeed, the discreet
functional instrumentation that characterizes the earlier FAs in particular may
also be redolent of Schoenberg. In Ex. 1, for instance, which is drawn from the
impressively elegant but unpublished FA No. 4 (Haydn's 'Lark' Quartet,
Op.64, No. 5), Hans set out to reveal the hidden unity between the first theme
of the first movement (Ex. la) and the theme of the second movement (Ex. ib,
bs 189ff.) through a process of transformation (bs 170-86) that involves not only
transposition (b.170), reworking of texture (b.171, preparing for b.189) and
change of metre and tempo (b.179), but also a range of other differentiations: of
the A and D violin strings, of senza and con sordino, of four levels of dynamics,
and even of functional expression marks (notice how distinto ma piano (b.177)
'inverts' to piano ma distinto in order to articulate the contour inversion of
b.179):

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 HANS KELLER

Ex.1

a)

FA:

Eventually
to

b)

un poco
meno mosso

con sord. 2nd violin leads - G -

lead

.memf
mtx 4L 11
F
. -ITII
, - -" r
F " - ,

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 A MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM

distinto ma piano Adagio

A.4 I--------Sul A

piano ma distinto

Sul D viola (cue)

senza sord.v

viola

mf dotted slur
small note (cue)

MUTE
con sord. F OFF

III: play Adagio cantabile IV:

(attacca) (attacca) 2

dolce f

2
2

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 HANS KELLER

Of course, many analysts today would see the two t

underlying ascent, Schenker's Anstieg (F#-G-A in
and C#-D-E in the first violin ofbs 189-92 of Ex. lb);
in Hans's reductive thought that could not also be
Reti (for whom he had a strictly qualified admiratio
principle of interversion from him), he was nev
associations. In his article on Mozart for The Symph
located the shared basis of the figure C-D-F-E in
pattern Eb -F-Ab -G that opens the slow movement o
a (rising) Schenkerian line; and the 'Lark' FA ends by
of parallelisms, based on the F# -G-A ascent.
conventional motivic associations of the kind shown
elements from the first two movements of the Hay

Ex. 2

Tempo di primo movimento

FA:

ifRM_ - M : I - i -W

f -f
if. A .|l~j
O L1 4 , 1-I , 'F

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 A MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM

Adagio

p
AL J14r tW

. ,, - .,

Although with all this Hans sought to esch

reasoning - the laws of identity, of contradicti
those texts that deal with the same pieces as hi
analyses by introducing a whole range of oth
these, the ones that relate to form are especi
Things Backwards' (1958), for example, he write
K. 421 (cf. FA No. 1) that 'the recapitulation o
more closely related to the basic first theme than is
also, in many respects, more closely related to t
the second itself'. Indeed, it was through this k
his ideas to Schoenberg's notion of 'developing v
comments in 'Mozart: The Revolutionary Cha
the FA of Mozart's G minor String Quintet, wr
until 1985 (in Music Analysis):

In the opening exposition ... G minor is retain

or rather, its thematic aspect: by the time the h
reached, the thematic material reverts to the
telescoping of the first- and second-subject stages
future of sonata form, as does the implied in
functions: the second-subject tune penetrates
and the first-subject tune dominates the texture

MUSIC ANALYSIS 5:2-3, 1986 357

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 HANS KELLER

Then again, comparison of (the unpublished) FA

Concerto K. 503 (1958), with the two critically embattl
is drawn, 'The Unity of Contrasting Themes' (1956),
these two central articles could come to prove the m
ductions to Functional Analysis. More generally
backgrounds', those 'well-implied expectations' that it
foregrounds to subvert, and whose prototype may be
discussion of Schoenberg's String Quartet Op.7 ('Why i
Hard to Understand?' (1924)), are more amply considere
as, for instance, with the discussion of Haydn's String
D minor from the first of the EBU booklets (1975).
This is not the context to evaluate FA, or to consid
Certainly, its principles have been far more widely dis
individual analyses. Hans himself valued highly his stu
Concerto No. 4 (FA No. 8 (1959)), and wrote in a priv
'my FA of the Britten [Second String] quartet is imme
analysis of classical music I have undertaken'. (
introduces an amusing new direction inspired by i
Curzon.) And even if, in the future, all the materials be
a serious investigation of this part of Hans's work, it se
will be every bit as various as the ones expressed in th
the symbolic significance of an analysis that eschews w
any of its specific findings; that others will be concer
within their contexts, of Hans's insights per se; and th
hard not to reach the heretical conclusion that FA, the
intellect-worship of its day, presupposes as its own sup
very words and concepts it sets out to deny.

3: The BBC

As all the early FAs were commissioned by either the BBC or the NDR (North
German Radio), it was only fitting that Hans's one fully-salaried permanent po
should have been offered to him by the BBC. In fact, it was (Sir) William Glo
who had made the suggestion that he should apply (Hans had loudly applauded
his own earlier appointment as Controller of Music), and after some hesitatio
he agreed. The BBC in turn were not without some misgivings in offering hi
the post: Maurice Johnstone, then Head of Music, was still mindful of t
effects of Music Survey, and had sworn that the appointment would be made
'over my dead body' - though typically the two men later became friends. Ha
then remained with the Corporation for almost twenty years. He later said of t
period in 1975 that

I have, musically speaking, been in charge of more or less everything, with

the sole exception of opera - not because from the BBC's point of view, I'm

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 A MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM

all that marvellous in all other areas, or unmarvellous

but because it just so happened: plenty of things just s
life, whereas individual life is unflinchingly purpo
to be...

Hans's charges included, in succession, Music Talks, Chambe

Recitals, Orchestral and Choral Music, Regional Orchestras and
he also served with the European Broadcasting Union, and became c
the Working Party that planned its international concert seasons.
Hans's colourful presence at the BBC has often been recalled, and
in this issue by William Glock, Alexander Goehr and Robert Sim
memoirs may also be supplemented by two further documents:
Radio's Responsibility' (1976), in which Hans made public a differ
between himself and the then Controller, Robert Ponsonby: 'until t
sacked', he declared, 'I will do as much as possible for contemporary
his reply, Ponsonby referred to Hans as 'endearingly contuma
'Music on Radio' (1976), an EBU conference report in which Hans cas
fellow broadcasters for pursuing 'phoney professions'. On the other
full scale of his numerous personal broadcasts, both for the BBC an
stations in Germany, Australia and Canada, will become clear on
talks have finally been catalogued. Something of their quality, how
assessed from an outstanding essay on Schoenberg's string
'Schoenberg: The Future of Symphonic Thought' (1974), which
from four of them. Exemplary, too, are three booklets of extended
notes written for a series of EBU chamber music concerts (19
which, more than anything else perhaps, reveal the quintessential K
time. That these writings have been relatively neglected may be due
notoriety Hans earned himself in other ways. Not only did he 'initi
rebellion' against Broadcasting in the Seventies, arguing for an evolu
'what the Third Programme should have been but wasn't: a Third
without snobbery, without specialist esotericism, without the impl
on secret societies' (1975), but he also attempted to perpetrate a
expense of Modern Music and its critics. In 1961 he interpolat
broadcast of a Bruno Maderna concert a work for percussion and ta
by a putative Central European composer, Piotr Zak. In fact, h
Bradshaw had jointly improvised the 'piece' in the recording s
happened, the results were not received with much enthusiasm; yet
scandal that followed, Zak did not die from exposure, but lived
review Stockhausen's Zyklus ('Zak on Stockhausen' (1962)): 'never
our knowledge', he proclaimed, 'has a work itself influenced a
influenced by...'.
Far from inhibiting Hans's literary interests or productivity
appointment led to an extraordinary diversification of his activitie
among the journalism he wrote for twenty-five or so different pub
a number of important writings, which in turn fed into the centr

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 HANS KELLER

wide-ranging of his texts from these years, the chapt

(this offers a more readily accessible source for Hans's
the two articles in The Listener of 1970 and 1971, 'Tow
and 'Closer Towards a Theory of Music'). He review
sleeve notes, travelled, adjudicated, and took part in de
1970, for instance, he argued against the unmusic
musician: '"blend"' is the 'sole necessary justification
large symphony orchestra', he observed, welcoming the
modern composers orchestras were reverting to the ch
which they sprang. His experience in Vienna as a 'left-
lent an insider's authority to his celebrated soccer
Statesman and Sunday Times, columns that led Karl Mi
Review of Books, to place him among the foremost spo
day. (It was also these writings that caught the attenti
Private Eye.) On the creative side, he not only ada
libretti, Hamlet for Humphrey Searle (1967) and M
Whiting) for Benjamin Frankel (1971-2), but also w
himself for a pair of radio plays by Erich Fried (1959)
of these scores, the second is the more impressive. Oth
time were, with one or two tiny exceptions, left in
sometimes quite extended fragments are sufficiently e
formed as to leave no doubt that, had they been com
made attractive additions to the canon of modern chamber music.
In the more sustained writings of these twenty years, there is a discernible
tendency to move away from concentrated musical exegesis towards a broader
treatment of critical and compositional (or 'compositorial') issues. The column
for Music and Musicians, for example, significantly entitled 'Truth and Music'
(1967-70), began aphoristically, but by January and March 1970 had blossomed
into the fullest statement of Hans's aesthetic beliefs. Similarly, although several
of the contributions to Musical Times deal with technical matters - 'On
Variations' (1964) - or topical questions - 'No Bridge to Nowhere' (1961) o
Stravinsky's Movements and Schoenberg's Violin Concerto, 'Arrangement F
or Against' (1969) on authenticity (via Huberman and Schoenberg's dictum that
great music 'sounds great even if you arrange it for zither'), and 'Frankel and t
Symphony' (1970) on Frankel and Boulez ('in Pli selon Pli, as I understand i
nothing depends on what comes when') - one of the most thoughtful essay
confronts 'Problems in Writing About Music' (1969) based on his ow
experience:

Bad critics and bad teachers talk about themselves. The good teacher's
personality - Schoenberg is perhaps the outstanding example in the area of
composition teaching - is so strong that he is not scared of dropping it: he
can empathize without becoming hysterical. The potentially good critic,
however, is likely to remain bad, because he cannot adopt the same method:

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 A MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM

identification with a stranger by way of public dem

impossibility, if one has to include that stranger's e
intellectual and psychological sources, in the self-de
identification. If, on the other hand, one - critic or teac
truth at the composer without the slightest understandin
at its opposite, one either achieves nothing, or, if the co
be over-sensitive, as many good creators are, one reta
development.

Schoenberg is also the point of focus of the elegant 'Whose Fault is the Speaking
Voice?' (1965-66), which reviews the history of melodrama in general before
turning to Pierrot lunaire in particular: 'one should not forget that music
history's ambiguous attitude to melodrama is reflected in Schoenberg's own
mind: his are the same conflicts, the same repressions, the same resistances to
primitiveness as ours; only he faces them more squarely'.
Yet once again, the best pieces of these years were those that addressed the
chamber music repertoire. 'Schoenberg: the Future of Symphonic Thought'
(1974), the ironically entitled study of the four quartets, has already been
mentioned; 'Shostakovich's Twelfth Quartet' (1970), on the other hand, used as
a means of comparison Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony and its formal
attributes. This second essay finds Hans in his characteristic stance of defending
what others, partly on the basis of the work's 'programme', and partly on the
basis of its characteristically Russian repetitiveness, had considered 'outdated':
'the music seemed too backward . . . to be comprehensible'. What Hans did
hear, on the contrary, was 'a well-defined edifice of contrasting (diatonic and
dodecaphonic) styles'. Defensive, too, was the tour-de-force 'The Classical
Romantics: Schumann and Mendelssohn' (1976), which 'concentrated on the
underestimated sides of our two geniuses - who, as literary-minded 'romantics',
have always had to suffer misinterpretations, where their strength as absolute
musicians made them tower above 19th-century fashion, whether they needed
literary help or not'. One of the interesting issues that arose from this
remarkably broad-ranging study concerned the first movement of Beethoven's
String Quartet, Op.59, No. 1, in F major. Here, although the exposition is not
repeated, it nevertheless leads back to the main theme in the tonic at the
beginning of the development section. Hans importantly discerned the same
leading back at the comparable point in the first movement of Schumann's
Third String Quartet in A major; but since the exposition was also repeated, he
diagnosed a pre-schizophrenic over-determination. It is a pity that Hans did not
consider the possibility that Schumann was modelling both theme and form
upon that of Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op.31, No. 3 in Eb major before reaching
his diagnosis. Nevertheless, the return to the tonic at the beginning of the
development is a broad and fascinating topic, and one that has an interesting
history in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as he himself insisted.
It is significant that this article also deals with the symphonic works of

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 HANS KELLER

Schumann and Beethoven (including a look back t

Choral Fantasy' (1961)) as well as with Mendelssoh
was to the last of these works that he turned his attention in the next and final
phase of his life.

4: The Last Years

Hans bade, not 'farewell', but 'fare better' to the BBC in March 1979. The
remaining six years of his life, however, were passed in no ordinary retirement,
but showed just the same diversity and abundance as had always been the case.
In April of that year, he spent two or three happy and productive months at the
Dwellings of Serenity in Jerusalem, where he wrote his (as yet unpublished)
60,030-word (sic) monograph on Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto - a monograph
that could well turn out to be his crowning achievement. Later in 1979, he went
to Canada as a Visiting Professor of Music at McMaster University and
subsequently travelled south to Haverford and Princeton (he undertook a more
extensive Canadian tour in 1980). And in the following years he was much in
demand as lecturer and teacher at Universities - Cambridge, Surrey and
Manchester (where he delivered his final FA fragment, four sheets comprising
two interludes and a postlude to Mozart's Piano Quartet in G minor) - and at
Colleges - Morley, Goldsmiths' and Westfield in London, Bath College of
Higher Education, as well as at the Guildhall School of Music. The only
institution, however, that enjoyed his unqualified imprimatur was the Yehudi
Menuhin School, where from July 1981 he coached string quartets. Hans's
teaching (a form of anti-teaching) has been valuably and movingly recorded in
the Yehudi Menuhin School Newsletter of March 1986: in particular, Peter Norris
talks of 'Hans's whole approach to accents of all kinds and their purpose' - 'no
musical phrase has more than one accent' - as well as recording how 'he also took
the trouble to write wonderful notes and letters to many individual children and
groups at the school'. In the public domain, he took part in festivals and
symposia in London, Windsor and Bremen, and in 1983 spoke in Bayreuth. As
he remarked wryly shortly before he died, he had suddenly become an
'established authority'. Yet established or not, he still provoked controversy, and
it was quite usual for his visits to an institution to be followed by a flurry of
correspondence that would continue for weeks after the event. Indeed, these
visits fed an increasing concern about Music Education, which he considered to
be promoting mere thoughts about music rather than specifically musical
thoughts per se. Nor in these years did he abandon his ties with radio, but
contributed to the BBC World Service, and each year made one or two very
long programmes for the Hamburg or Bremen radio stations. Appropriately,
NDR commemorated Hans with a (re-)broadcast of his talk on Mendelssohn's
Eb major String Quartet on 20 February 1986.
And, inevitably, his literary output remained remarkably prolific. Apart from
the previously mentioned books on the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and the
Haydn Quartets, and in addition to about a hundred pieces of journalism
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 A MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM

(the titles of the book reviews alone testify to the extr

interests), he completed his long-promised study of Crit
1987). Some of the material for this had already ap
Analysis and Criticism' (1977), and 'Epi/Prologue: A
appended to it a coda. Although these writings bear
style, in a certain repetitiveness and a tendency tow
justification, they are as alert to the issues of the day
warns both analysts and composers against pursuing
extent of forgetting 'that contrast which the unity
analysable music that has become our time's most depre
fervour'. Indeed in 'The State of the Symphony' (1978)
Urkontrast' (1984), Hans argued that the essence of sym
the integration of contrasts, the most fundamental of
see juxtaposed (tonal) stability and instability.
Similarly, in 'Schoenberg's Return to Tonality' (1981),
to his own duality between background (in this cas
foreground (serial innovation). Not all critics had been
(in 1975) that 'step by step, progression by progre
accident by seeming vertical accident, Schoenberg's har
be meaningful contradictions of expressively suppre
nor were anxieties allayed by the unsubstantiated repor
demonstrations - of playing the Third Quartet 'at a gra
of unpacking the compressions in the first movemen
('the first subject alone took an eternity'); and accordin
achievements of comparable earlier experiments may
On less controversial ground, though, Hans too
Schoenberg's bowing instructions as a starting point
World, De-Bow!' (1981), a piece that again reflected his
coach. (This experience also informs 'Whose Au
considered review of the problems inherent in resto
performing style.) Revived too were the Mozart/B
'Operatic Music and Britten' (1979), though this
differentiation between Schiller's naive and sentimental
to get the best of both worlds). For some, the impact o
may be diminished by finding the same argument deplo
English composer, Robert Simpson, just two years
Music' (1981)). But with 'Goethe and the Lied' (1984),
on German letters (Goethe 'was genuinely, profoun
relation to various settings of Meerestille and Wandere
conception of musical prosody where the (foregroun
projected 'with crystal clarity against what I call the
metre of the poem and indeed the conceptual meaning
Hans's activity was all the more remarkable and p
progressively incapacitating nature of the fatal muscle-
sustained for many years (motor-neurone). Despite t

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 HANS KELLER

wilfully ignored, he continued to teach at the Menu

before his death, and before that fulfilled as many o
(that he did not in fact get to Dartington in the sum
a late change in some of the arrangements). In th
became physically too painful for him, he was en
Hogg of the BBC, who typed his correspondence and
of 1985, he had been helping Anton Weinberg of
television programme devoted to his life and work.
died, and shown on Channel 4 on 23 February 1
assembled from the contributions of his friends
official recognition of his life's work came from the
30 September 1985 awarded him a cross of honou
Wissenschaft und Kunst, 1. Klasse'. The most
commemoration, however, has yet to come: as th
Tal's opera Der Turmin, for which Hans wrote a chara
is scheduled for performance in Berlin, and later Kas
In a letter to Kandinsky of 24 January 1911, Schoen
procedure which aspires to traditional effects is
conscious motivation. But art belongs to the unc
original contribution lay in the bringing to music of
psychology, and in the building upon his Viennese i
no different from Schoenberg's. Such crusades
directed against whatever inhibited a musician f
recognizing his own instincts, and also engrossing h
problem'. His 'mad' music method, outlined in t
Northcott, represents just one manifestation of this.
that Schoenberg's views bespeak their time and plac
Hans's convictions did not always make him a
metaphor Hans once directed against an Oxford
persist in believing that the soul, like the earth
profoundly and gratefully to his insistence upon the
individuals to their own deepest instincts. And, ind
that forms the unofficial principal theme of the sym

5: The Symposium

Of many people who have helped with this symposiu

foremost to Milein Cosman, who provided much
ation included in this introduction. Of her two draw
portrait (p.342) dates from 15 February 1985, and th
the mid 'fifties. The aphorisms (pp.368-70) are d

4 ArnoldSchoenberg- WassilyKandinsky: Letters, Pictures andDocuments, ed. J

5 ibid.

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 A MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM

collection collated by Hans's literary executor, Mr Julia

the two compositions published on p.371 and pp.402-5, t
entitled 'Pocket Passacaglia for referee, spectators an
Variations' and 'Football Passacaglia', and was writte
BBC in 1966 as part of the World Cup festivities; the se
from the incidental music for Nelly Sach's Eli, broad
the first two set the texts 'We are building the new to
now, the bricks of the new town' and 'We are on fire t
of the rest, 'Sorry, boys, written in a lousy train from
addition for string quartet. The letter to Richard Arne
after the first performance of the composer's Fifth Str
Room in London on 27 May 1983. Celia Duffy undertook the not
inconsiderable task of extending the already ample bibliography submitted by
Renee Atcherson of the University of Iowa. In a number of small areas, this still
represents work in progress. Derrick Puffett has also participated in the later
stages of its assembly. Bayan Northcott lent valuable assistance in collecting
some of the memoirs; and Fiona Williams has helped with typing. A photograph
of Hans by Misha Donat was published in the previous issue of this journal (Vol.
5, No.1, March 1986).

The musical illustrations, drawings and aphorisms of Hans Keller and Milein Cosman reproduced here are ? Milein Cosman
Keller.

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