ABSTRACT
From 1905 to 1926 a debate appeared in the German and Austro-Hungarian press that focused on music and registered profound social crisis. At the center of the debate was the German nationalist Hans Pfitzner, a composer and theorist whose patriotism informed his notion of the superiority of German art and his definition of legitimate music. Ferruccio Busoni’s treatise makes clear that for him a time of crisis had been reached which threatened the unfolding of music’s possibilities and the realization of its potential “freedom”. Even Alban Berg would have studied composition under Pfitzner, and not under Arnold Schoenberg, had he not missed a train for Strassburg in a moment of confusion for which modern music may be grateful. Through Pfitzner’s polemics we can learn much about the social parameters influencing aesthetic pursuits in Germany in the early twentieth century, and especially about the images and motifs employed in the expression of conservative ideas at the time.
