Alexander Zemlinsky: A Lyric Symphony (review)

Nineteenth-century music enthusiasts should be excited when a new volume appears on a composer whose works lie just outside of the canon, but ought to be included in it. Enter Marc Moskovitz’s biography of Alexander Zemlinsky, a composer who has long been treated by the musicloving world at large as thrillingly close to, but never equaling, prominent Viennese personalities like Mahler, Strauss, and Schoen berg. Although Zemlinsky’s works, fallen from concert programs when World War II swept through Vienna, have since experienced a renewal of interest, they have never achieved the kind of recognition or widespread following that they deserve. Thence derives Moskovitz’s inspiration for undertaking this critical study: “How has a composer this gifted remained so obscure?” (p. xiii). The answer lies, perhaps, in the composer’s overt refusal to align with the modernist movement when it became clear that the future of art music lay in that direction; or perhaps the composer failed to achieve monumental status because his music shows clear influences of other composers’ styles, both points that the author makes well. More likely, Zemlinsky’s unassuming personality made him more suited to a private life, failing to take full advantage of his connections, avoiding the limelight—in other words, doomed always to be mentioned only “in the context of more famous contemporary figures,” an injustice that Moskovitz seeks to correct (p. xiii).

From the outset, even on the dust jacket, Moskovitz makes it clear that his biography was not written with academics in mind. Fearing that musicologists would compare this work to Antony Beaumont’s biography of the composer (Zemlinsky [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000]), the author calls this volume, in contrast, “the work that welcome[s] the non-academic into Zemlinsky’s world” (p. xiv). However, one should not fall under the impression that A Lyric Symphony has nothing to offer serious scholars: there is room for more than one biography of the composer on the market, and there is much that one would find interesting in Moskovitz’s narrative, presented in clear and accessible language. With no weighty endnotes or lengthy digressions to bog down the text, this book would make as enjoyable (and quick) a read for academics wishing to augment their knowledge of Zemlinsky’s contribution to the Viennese tradition as it would for its intended audience.

Throughout his career Zemlinsky was plagued by critical reviews comparing his work to that of his contemporaries, finding that it was too similar, and moreover, of inferior quality. It is true that his early works share stylistic similarities with Brahms and occasionally Wagner, and that certain later compositions (the Second String Quartet, the Lyric Symphony) can be compared to similar works by Schoenberg and Mahler respectively. But while Zemlinsky often struggled to find a unique personal voice among his more famous contemporaries, this in itself does not make these works derivative or of lesser value. Throughout A Lyric Symphony, Moskovitz seems to imply, but not directly state, that many of Zemlinsky’s compositions are stylistically similar to those of whoever of his circle was in vogue at the moment. At the same time, however, he points out what makes them distinct—and does a good job of being honest, rather than idealizing his subject. In the process, we are provided with a retrospective view of a composer whose artistic ideals were in conflict with the emerging avant-garde trends in music that would soon envelop him, and whose works were often undervalued for conforming to the conservatory rules and traditions that the composer so greatly respected.

Through Moskovitz’s account emerges the portrait of a composer who was always humble, always modest, never extravagant; who toiled selflessly to promote and perform others’ works while his own were subjected to harsh reviews. At times the reader will feel great sympathy for the composer’s failure to find acceptance in a difficult cultural climate, but at other...