1927 Frankfurt

Jun 29, 1927 – Jul 4, 1927
Frankfurt, Germany

Festival info

Start: Jun 29, 1927

End: Jul 4, 1927

Locations: Frankfurt, Germany

Hosting member(s)

Description
Description

(presented in tandem with a world music exhibition and a summer music festival in Frankfurt)

From contemporaneous reviews

“The six eventful days of the Frankfort Festival have become a memory, but two impressions remain. One is of the hospitality of the city, which aroused wonder, not unmixed with envy. … The other outstanding impression is of the almost unbroken series of first-class performances.

…

“As for the works themselves, many of them were of great interest as reflecting a number of under-currents affecting current musical progress. It is in that sense, rather than as outstanding achievements, that they demand notice, and since this view of them accords with the avowed aims of the International Society, it suffices to establish the success of the Festival which, in the domain of music, emulates an annual exhibition of paintings and does not, as some of its critics appear to think, invite comparison with the National Gallery. … [E]ven the ugliest work of the extremists, the ‘ultramoderns,’ the ‘wild men,’ call them what you will, was generally more vital, more interesting than that of the representatives of the ‘party of the right.’ But I cheerfully admit that much of it was anything but delectable.”

— Edwin Evans, “The Frankfort Festival,”
The Musical Times, Vol. 68, No. 1014 (Aug. 1, 1927), p. 733.

“Als die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik gegründet wurde, hatte sie den Charak[t]er der Sezession […] Aber Europa hat Ruhe, und die Sezession ging den Weg aller Sezessionen im Raum der bestehenden Ordnung, sie verfestigte sich, rezipierte die Bedürfnisse der bestehenden Gesellschaft und wurde zum Lohn von ihr rezipiert.”

(“When the International Society for Contemporary Music was founded, it had the character of a secession […] But Europe is at peace [now], and the secession went the way of all secessions within the existing order: it became established, adopted the requirements of the existing society and was, in turn, adopted by it.”)

Theodor W. Adorno, “Die stabilisierte Musik: Zum fünften Fest der I.G.N.M. in Frankfurt am Main,” (1927),
in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19: Musikalische Schriften VI, ed. Rolf Tiedermann and Klaus Schultz
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984), pp. 100–01 [in German].

(translated by Giles Masters in New-music internationalism: the ISCM festival, 1922–1939
(King’s College London: Ph.D. Dissertation, 2021), p. 68.
(Available online: kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/156634738/2021_Masters_Giles_1101346_ethesis.pdf.)

Programme information
Locations