22 - Bach on Air

Summary

“Actually I was born a journalist,” Karl opined to Hertha in 1938, half in jest. “That's surely a prospect for the future.” Quite why a “prospect for the future” might appear necessary in 1938 would become depressingly clear as the 1930s progressed. Not even the cantor's most convicted detractors would deny his facility for crafting artful prose, and over time he had exercised it in several essays on musical topics that mattered to him. In spring 1929 Straube had produced a pair of articles for the local press, the first a series of portraits of previous St. Thomas cantors, the second an ideological piece probing the question with which the first had concluded: “What is the significance of the Thomanerchor for the present German culture?” In answer he pointed first to the Motetten, the weekly liturgical concerts at which “all classes are present,” where “one is offered something free of charge” as “a gift from the city, but above all [as] a gift from the generations who earlier have worked in this capacity or have ensured the preservation and development of this choir.” He intoned his credo that “a great past imposes responsibilities,” ones which the city had engaged in its support of the choir and the humanist education that framed it.

Unsatisfied with a garden-variety argument, he moved into contemporary foreign relations. “The campaign of hate against Germany has not contented itself with crushing the country militarily and economically,” he contended. “It also intended to trample underfoot the international standing of German culture and to drag it through the dirt.” The response had been the strategic export of German music by leading institutions, exemplified not least in the Thomaner's first tour of 1920. “That the opposing side, too, had recognized the significance of this cultural propaganda was shown clearly by the fact that, before the choir's appearance, all sorts of fairy-tale lies were circulated. But a victory on all counts ensued.” Straube reviewed the past decade's tours, underscoring that “the choir gradually has become an international cultural factor,” recent interest having been awakened in England and America. Upon becoming cantor, he had introduced the Bach-Verein's cultural politics into St. Thomas's music department, the Thomaner now assuming the mandate to rehabilitate German culture abroad.