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- Title
'DIE HAUPTSACHE IST, PLUMP DENKEN LERNEN': BRECHT'S HERRNBURGER BERICHT AS A GDR LEARNING PLAY.
- Authors
Brady, Martin
- Abstract
This essay looks at the Herrnburger Bericht (1951) by Bertolt Brecht and Paul Dessau in terms of its simplicity. Following a discussion of difficulty as modernism's 'default position', Brecht and Dessau's semi-staged cantata is examined as an example of what Walter Benjamin, reviewing Brecht's Dreigroschenroman, affirmatively termed 'plumpes Denken'. The blatancy of the Herrnburger Bericht is examined as a dialectical response to the 'Formalismusdebatte' around Brecht and Dessau's opera Die Verurteilung des Lukullus of the previous year, as a work for young performers and spectators, and as a distant relative of Brecht's 'Lehrstücke' of the late 1920s (in particular Der Flug der Lindberghs and Das Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis). Whilst acknowledging that the Herrnburger Bericht did not achieve the status its author and composer had hoped for, the afterlife of one of its numbers - 'Bitten der Kinder' - is noted.
- Subjects
HERRNBURGER Bericht (Music); BRECHT, Bertolt, 1898-1956; DESSAU, Paul; CANTATAS -- History &; criticism; MODERNIST music; DIE Verurteilung des Lukullus (Music)
- Publication
German Life & Letters, 2017, Vol 70, Issue 3, p356
- ISSN
0016-8777
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/glal.12159