Hugo Kauder Symphony No.1 (1920-1)

[eschiss1]

I think so?... but to adapt a line from a movie I didn't actually care for, you had me at Hurwitz. (Sorry.)

[der79sebas]

According to my experience, what Hurwitz says is in no way correlated to what I hear. In my opinion he just talks ANYTHING and I often wonder if he has even listened to the CDs he reviews...

[Alan Howe]

So let's return to Kauder's Symphony. What do friends think of it?

[Ilja]

I've played this several times now over the past weeks. For me, I'd define it as a well-executed failure at finding a musical voice. There are clear influences to be found (Mahler, Wagner and Reger being the most obvious ones), but after forty minutes I'm still not much further in discovering what is that Kauder wants to express. There are glimpses here and there (such as at the beginning of the finale) but they don't really lead anywhere. It's all very well constructed, but eventually a somewhat frustrating experience for me.

[eschiss1]

Which makes sense, since that's not ultimately the "voice" he ended up most comfortable with at all (as one sees from samples, and complete perusal versions*, of his later scores at hugokauder.org.)

*Several of his string quartets in manuscript and typeset PDF, for perusal only, for example.

[Alan Howe]

Could you describe that 'voice', please Eric?

[eschiss1]

Harder without having heard more of those works, but based on those I've seen, spare, experimental, sometimes very white-notes-of-piano (or transposed, of course- the first movement of his 13th quartet (1950) is in 5 flats rather than zero, but I don't see a modifying flat or sharp anywhere- or in fact until the middle of the F minor Presto second movement (page 5 of the typeset). I also don't see a real -barline- anywhere...)

[Alan Howe]

It's almost as if Kauder is torn between fidelity to the tradition and yet also experimenting with the tradition. Here's some interesting commentary on his music:
https://www.hugokauder.org/about/reflections-on-hugo-kauder/
Also, this video introduction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZK1zwhDOa4

[Alan Howe]

I think I'm slowly coming to terms with Kauder's Symphony. It has been the last movement that has puzzled me the most as not really belonging to the first three. It seems to me that it is in the finale that his quest for new contrapuntal methods is most apparent - and I'm not sure whether it's all of a piece with what comes before, especially that gorgeous slow movement. In other words, it's as if Kauder has one foot in a sort of compressed neo-Mahlerian idiom and the other in a future which he has yet fully to embrace.

What I admire, however, is Kauder's determination not to go down the atonal route of his contemporaries (and colleagues), but rather to forge a new enrichment of tonality through certain contrapuntal techniques. The passacaglia in the finale of the Symphony is a case in point.

But, oh that slow movement - it's just fabulous. It's as if the finale of Das Lied von der Erde has faded away and given birth to Kauder's movement.

[Mark Thomas]

I have been agnostic at best about Kauder's First, and remain so, but the slow movement is a thing of beauty. No question.

[Alan Howe]

About the slow movement we are 100% agreed.

[semloh]

A thing of rare beauty, indeed.

[Droosbury]

You can hear that same hesitant motif appearing in the first two movements as well, before the slow movement, so I think the symphony has a coherence and integrity - until the fourth movement, that is, because I agree that the final movement just doesn't manage to pull it all together.

[Alan Howe]

Thanks for that insight.

[John Boyer]

I have listened to the Kauder Symphony a few times now and agree that it has a sublime slow movement but suffers a bit from "the finale problem".  It makes one wish that the surrounding movements would somehow live up to its promise, the way the beautiful slow movement of the Mahler Fifth is surrounded by equally engaging music.

By the way, I just finished listening to the Euclid Quartet/Centaur recording of his first four string quartets. The first two also have a bit of that finale problem, but this disappears with the third and fourth. The first is the most German sounding, in the sense of early Schoenberg or Berg, while the third and fourth could almost be by an American composer from the generation of Aaron Copland.  They showed a path of compositional development, each one a bit more interesting than the one that proceeded it.