Musical Imagery and the Canon in Sighard Gille's Gewandhaus Mural Gesang vom Leben

Some thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of the two Germanys, several exhibitions and publications have shed light on what is left of baubezogene Kunst (buildings-related art) in the area of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany). Martin Maleschka's 2019 monograph Baubezogene Kunst DDR is only one example.² It demonstrates that many of these artworks are still accessible and warrant (more) scholarly attention. Maleschka's publications and exhibitions reference the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the home of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, with its statecommissioned mural Gesang vom Leben (Song of Life, or Singing of Life, 1979–81) by local artist Sighard Gille (b. 1941). Visitors to the Gewandhaus and Augustus Square can still admire this artwork in person today. Contemporary scholarship about the mural, however, has been limited regarding the painting's iconography and socio-political commentary, but examining this artwork in the context of its architectural embedding and musical content can be of help in remembering and reinterpreting the GDR. By offering a close reading of the painting's musical imagery—i.e., the depiction of musicians, musical instruments, and musical themes—in connection with the examination of archival documents, this article shows that Gille commented on actually existing socialism by means of a dual approach that included criticism and support of the political system.³ While positioning the Gewandhaus as closely tied to its locality and musical history, he also offered criticism of the musical canon as disseminated by East German musicologists and performers. In this way, the artist becomes an agent in the development of socialism and its art. Gille's approach resembles the so-called Dritter Weg, which describes a position in the GDR that rejected certain characteristics of actually existing socialism while upholding socialist goals for a future, viable, socialist alternative.⁴ Gille articulated his utopian vision for the country by linking sociopolitical concerns with artistic expression and by alluding to controversial topics in the GDR's (artistic) history.

As April A. Eisman rightly asserts, GDR paintings could express more than just loyalty to, or dissident attacks on, the GDR regime, which meant that "art in East Germany was much more complex than is often assumed in the West" (Eisman, "Whose" 81). While Eisman focuses on the fine arts, her assessment applies to music as well. In their introduction to the fall 2018 special edition of The German Quarterly, "Music and German Culture," Caroline Kita, Francien Markx, and Carl Niekerk point out that music since the late eighteenth century "has often functioned as a myth of cultural selfunderstanding, and thus as a proxy sphere for other debates about community and belonging" (Kita, Markx, Niekerk 364). Similarly, Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter refer to music's importance "to the spread of German national feeling" (Applegate 25) and to its "fundamental contribution […] to German imaginings of nationhood and collective identity" (Applegate, Potter 2). In the GDR, music worked similarly: East German officials used music as a "means by which culture validates social power"—a means to express contemporary values (Kelly, "Composing" 198). At the same time, music also expressed values of other agents in socialism, rendering musicological discussions similarly complex.

Building on the research of the aforementioned scholars as well as on Elaine Kelly, Laura Silverberg, Nina Noeske, and Matthias Tischer, this article contributes to discussions about East German music and cultural selfunderstanding in the context of baubezogene Kunst. It examines the musical imagery in Gille's painting Gesang vom Leben with the goal of adding to our understanding of socio-political commentary in the arts in the GDR. Gille mapped out his utopian vision of socialism by portraying the classical music canon of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in his mural. Through his artistic choices, he addressed the complexities of the GDR artistic canon and its musical idols, the formalism debate of the 1950s and 1960s, and the ability of music to invoke democratic and egalitarian ideas, thus connecting artistic considerations with socio-political debates.

Gesang vom Leben in the Leipzig Gewandhaus

Gille painted his 7...