(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.
“It is impossible for any one vitally interested in the International Society for Contemporary Music to discuss the fifth festival at Frankfort last summer without commenting freely on its results, which were frankly disappointing to the hopes of those who attended. Indeed the discouragement felt after this festival of an opera performance and six concerts was so great that one is justified in doubting the future benefits of such arrangements. The ideal plan of Edward I. Dent, the chairman, is splendid, and in himself he, more than anyone else, embodies the society’s traditions. But with the entrance of a jury into the scheme, there are injected all kinds of extra-musical considerations, and diplomacy begins to play a role”
–Adolph Weissmann, “A festival that failed,”
Modern Music, Volume 5 #1 (Nov-Dec 1927), p. 34.
“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.)