"Do not laugh, gentlemen ..."
On the first performance of the "Pastoral Prelude
for Orchestra" by Hans Rott
As his favourite student Hans Rott was at stake, Anton Bruckner put
his foot down. Carl Hruby relates an occurrence at the
Conservatoire of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society
of the Friends of Music) in July 1878: "At the end a
scornful laughter was heard from the "Merker" chair-
sorry, the examiners' table. Thereupon the otherwise
so timid Bruckner rose and cried the flaming words to
the "Merkers" down there: "Do not laugh, gentlemen,
of this man you will hear great things yet!" Which of
Rott's works caused the gentlemen's scorn is not mentioned
in the account; most probably it was first movement
of the young composer's Symphony in E major, a work
which, more than one hundred years after it had been
written, experienced an unexpected renaissance and confronted
the general public with the hitherto almost unknown
name of "Rott".
However, only part of Anton Bruckner's prophesy was
to come true. When on June 25, 1884 the just twenty-six
year old Hans Rott, patient of the Provincial Lunatic
Asylum of Lower Austria, died of tuberculosis, the great
hopes and expectations his friends had entertained of
him, had been a matter of the past for some time already.
Almost four years lasted the tragic epilogue of the
musician's life who had been suffering from "hallucinatory
insanity and persecution mania" and had been given up
by the physicians. As a student of the Conservatoire
he had gained Anton Bruckner's recognition and as a
composer the admiration of a small, however select,
circle of friends to which also Gustav Mahler belonged
during his early years in Vienna.
Mahler is the keyword essential for Rott's rediscovery
during the 80s of our century. Again, the initiative
had to come "from outside": In the course of his archival
studies of Gustav Mahler's youth and his Viennese circle
of friends, the English musicologist Paul Banks also
looked into Hans Rott's artistic estate which is kept
in the Music Collections of the Austrian National Library
since 1950. The manuscript of the Symphony in E major
aroused his interest, not least because of the extraordinary
praise which Gustav Mahler expressed to Natalie Bauer-Lechner:
"It is completely impossible to estimate what music
has lost in him. His genius soars to such heights even
in his first symphony, written at the age of twenty,
and which makes him - without exaggeration - the founder
of the new symphony as I understand it. He, however,
did not reach entirely what he wanted. It is as if someone
swings back to throw as far as he can and, still clumsy,
does not quite hit the goal. Yet I know what he is aiming
at. Yes, he is so related to my very own that he and
I seem to me like two fruits from the same tree, brought
forth by the same soil, nourished by the same air. He
could have been so infinitely much to me and perhaps
the two of us together would have fairly exhausted the
content of this new age which was dawning for music."
It seems as if Mahler at that time - the summer of
1900 - had taken into consideration a performance of
the Symphony which, for what reasons ever, did not come
off. The work continued to lie dormant in drawers and
archives until Paul Banks produced the material for
a performance and initiated the first performance (March
4, 1989) in Cincinnati with Gerhard Samuel conducting
It was met with great and international response; shortly
afterwards Rott's Symphony was to be heard also in Paris,
London and Vienna. Almost unanimously the reviews noted
a number of striking reminiscences of Mahler in this
work - or better anticipations, for the Symphony had
been written many years prior to Mahler's First Symphony.
"Mahler's Zero Symphony or Rott's First?" asked Wolfgang
Fuhrmann in the "Standard" on the occasion of the Viennese
first performance by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra with
Carlos Kalmar conducting on March 4, 1990 and in summing
up he wrote: "Inevitably this leads to the assumption
that the fellow students Rott and Mahler must have entertained
an intimate exchange of musical ideas."
It may be a similar case with the work which now -
120 years after it had been written - will be performed
for the first time: the "Pastoral Prelude for Orchestra",
finished in 1880, that is shortly after the completion
of the First Symphony. The Rott biography does reveal
almost nothing about the "Pastoral Prelude", the more
curious we may be whether the phenomenon of the "anticipated
Mahler" will be heard in this work, too, the score of
which promises well in this respect. Above all the nature
scene, determined by bird call and sustained tones,
with which Mahler's First Symphony begins, seems to
be a reminiscence of some parts of the "Pastoral Prelude"
which - in contrast to the Symphony - was not intended
to be presented to an examining jury. Thus the composer's
imagination experienced no limitations at all with regard
to sound and form. The question suggests itself: What
kind of relationship existed between Rott and Mahler?
Did the musical relationship really correspond with
a congeniality of their characters?
An answer, however an extremely subjective one, has
a the friend of Rott's youth, Heinrich Krzyzanowski,
who in his written reminiscences recalls the relationship
with Mahler: "By the way, there was no real friendship
between Rott and Mahler - although they saw a lot of
each other...". Indeed, no statement by Rott has been
handed down to us which points to a closer friendship
with Mahler. Besides Mahler must have withdrawn himself
after 1878 from the circle of musical friends who regularly
met in Rott's room at the Piaristen monastery during
1877 and 1878. But Rott's tragic fate and the greatly
individual character of his music seem to have left
a deep impression in the colleague, his junior by just
two years, which - thinking of his remarks to Natalie
Bauer-Lechner - remained vivid for decades and, in a
way, made Mahler remember Rott as a symbol of failure.
Attempts, abandoned hopes - this is the motto of Rott's
short life. Born on August 1, 1858 as son of the actor
Carl Mathias Rott, the boy first attended the Academic
Secondary School and afterwards a commercial school
for two years. Only then he must have realized his talent
for music, as from 1874 on he studied at the Conservatoire
of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (organ with Bruckner,
harmony with Grädener, composition with Krenn). Wagner,
the idol of the circle around Bruckner, enthralled him,
too: 1875 Rott became a member of the Viennese Academic
Wagner Society, 1876 he attended the first Bayreuth
Festival. During the next two years he was employed
as organist at the Josefstadt Church Music Society and
lived in the Piaristen monastery - in very poor circumstances.
He resigned as organist in 1878; in the same year he
finished his studies at the Conservatoire, and then
a two years' search for a permanent position began which
was determined by repeated failures.
His negotiations with St. Florian and Klosterneuburg
were in vain and so were his applications at the St.
Michael Church and the Votiv Church in Vienna. Bruckner
helped with letters of recommendation; one of them survived
in the Rott estate: ""The signer of this letter deems
it a great pleasure to confirm that he got to know Hans
Rott during his studies at the Conservatoire as a disciple
of art who, due to his excellent talents, his diligence
and pure character and last but not least his performance
as a musician, especially at the organ, gives rise to
the greatest hopes."
An emotional attachment to his hometown and a romance
kept Rott tied to Vienna, however, it was becoming more
and more clear that his future did not lie there. Yet,
despite all the pecuniary worries and the struggle for
existence, the years until 1880 had also been a creative
period; not only the Symphony in E major was written
during that time but also - simultaneously - the "Pastoral
Prelude" and the String Quartet in c minor (a highly
advanced composition). Rott competed for the Beethoven
Prize and the state scholarship for musicians and in
1880 he presented the Symphony and the "Pastoral Prelude"
to the Ministry of Education. Furthermore he considered
visits to the jury members, one of them was Johannes
Brahms, appropriate. His visit to Brahms must have been
a traumatic experience for the young composer whose
extreme nervousness already pointed towards a psychical
crisis. As Rott told his friends afterwards, Brahms
flatly refused the Symphony and added: "it could not
possibly have been composed by himself".
Furthermore, the imminent farewell to Vienna also meant
a grave strain for Rott, for a half-hearted application
for a position as director of the Alsatian choir association
"Concordia" had met with success; Rott had to take up
the employment and at the end of October 1880 he departed
from Vienna. On the train disaster struck. With his
revolver Rott threatened a fellow traveller who wanted
to light a cigar and said that Brahms had had the train
filled with dynamite. He was brought back to Vienna
and committed to the Psychiatric Clinic of the General
Hospital. For the rest of his short, tragic life he
remained behind the walls of psychiatric asylums.
It may sound cynical to call such a fate "more interesting"
in retrospect than a well-ordered "normal" biography.
Certainly, this alone does not justify the interest
in his posthumous compositions, of course; these have
to legitimate themselves in concerts by their own immanent
qualities. The Symphony in E major has already stood
the public test which is still in store for the "Pastoral
Prelude". Certainly, there is one thing or two to be
said about the score: it had been conceived as a broadly
constructed crescendo and divides into a prelude and
a fugue, it shows a clever chamber musical instrumentation
and proves the composer's imagination as to counterpoint.
Yet only the real sound event will prove whether the
essential will be a success. Which would be the discovery
of a work which we experience as a direct musical event,
not only in the sense of a late "rehabilitation" of
Hans Rott.
Further information on the "Internationale Hans Rott
Gesellschaft" can be found under: http://www.hans-rott.de/
; www.hans-rott.org
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