Onwards, and not forgetting – The Canadian Opera Company's Johannes Debus on Hanns Eisler’s music for the film “Kuhle Wampe”
Eisler’s music doesn’t illustrate, doesn’t just accompany or go for the manipulative, superficial and overwhelming effect of evoking emotions. Eisler aims at adding to the intentionally unsentimental, unromantic and laconic quality of the film an independent, autonomous musical commentary.
Be it a baroque prelude, hectic mechanical rondos that remain unresolved, agit-prop songs, a parody of nursery rhymes, poor people’s street music with a singing saw or ironic march quotations: Eisler’s music is moving without being sentimental. It takes a stand, gets involved, shakes things up - and it requests of its viewers/listeners to be equally alert.
Sometimes Eisler composes his music contrary to a scene’s tempo and tone, other times his music parallels those.
Especially because his music fulfills no merely illustrative function but contains “symphonic” autonomy, Eisler succeeds in further emphasizing the impact and meaning of the film and in making the viewer even further complicit in the action.
Eisler makes us conscious of the film’s subject matter and complex of problems on a musical level. Herein lies the strength of his “solidarity” with Brecht, Busch, Dudow and the other co-creators of “Kuhle Wampe”.
Johannes Debus was born in 1974 in Germany. After graduating from the Hamburg Conservatory, he got engagements as répétiteur and, subsequently, Kapellmeister by Frankfurt Opera, where he acquired an extensive repertoire from Mozart to Thomas Adès, and worked closely with such conductors as Paolo Carignani, Markus Stenz and Sebastian Weigle. He has been the Music Director of the Canadian Opera Company since 2009 and conducts regulary at Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin and Frankfurt Opera, as well as worldwide with the orchestras of Boston, Cleveland, San Francisco and Lyon.
Watch the film
March 6, 6.30pm: “Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World?” (1932)A story about a working-class family in Berlin in 1931, between mass unemployment and new hope rising. Written and directed by Slatan Dudow and Bertolt Brecht, with music by Hanns Eisler. The provocative film has been banned twice, by the Weimar as well as the Nazi governments (see next blog article here).
“One of the best films of the century!” – Village Voice
Illuminating introduction by Michael Wheeler, director, writer, social designer, and artistic director of Praxis Theatre. He has among many other productions directed the world premiere of “Rifles” by Nicolas Billon, based on Brecht’s “Senora Carrar’s Rifles”.
GOETHE FILMS screen at the TIFF Bell Lightbox
35 mm, with English subtitles
Tickets $10, day-of sales only at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, open at 10am
Open to audiences 18+.
