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The Scholar behind the Medal: Edward J. Dent (1876–1957) and the Politics of Music History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2014

Annegret Fauser
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Abstract

This article engages with issues of musical historiography and politics – mainly in the 1930s and 1940s – through the example of Edward J. Dent, a towering figure of international musical and musicological life during that period. Dent's career was tightly interwoven with musical and musicological practice both in Britain and in the wider Western world. It offers a fascinating access point to European musical modernism on the one hand, and to mid-century concerns with the uses of music history on the other. In this article, I focus on these aspects of Dent's career and their intersections by exploring first Dent's involvement with the International Society for Contemporary Music, before turning to two further and closely related issues: Dent's scholarly work of that period – especially his turn to Handel – and his involvement in international cultural politics during the 1930s and 1940s.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 139 , Issue 2 , 2014 , pp. 235 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 The Royal Musical Association

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Footnotes

This text is based on my lecture at the occasion of being awarded the fiftieth Edward J. Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association on 15 September 2012, which inspired me to reflect on the scholar behind the medal. I am grateful to Byron Adams, Tim Carter, Katharine Ellis, Alain Frogley, Daniel Grimley and Valerie Langfield for comments and suggestions both in the development of the original lecture and in the revisions for print. I am also grateful to the librarians, archivists and colleagues who facilitated access to archives in Europe and the US. Unfortunately, Dent's personal archives at King's College, Cambridge, were closed to scholars at the time of research.

References

1 Edward J. Dent, ‘The Relation of Music to Human Progress’, Musical Quarterly, 14 (1928), 307–19 (p. 308).

2 Edward J. Dent, ‘The Relation of Music to Human Progress’, Musical Quarterly, 14 (1928), 319.

3 In a letter to Walter Piston, Dent made the point unequivocally when he asked: ‘Why do some people class (say) Monteverdi and Couperin as “old” but Palestrina and Bach as “timeless”? Illogical point of view. All music except that of to-day is “old music” – even Debussy is “old music” now, like Couperin.’ Edward J. Dent, letter to Walter Piston, 18 January 1936 (Washington DC, Library of Congress, Performing Arts Reading Room, ML.94.P575).

4 Dent, ‘The Relation of Music to Human Progress’, 316.

5 For biographical data on Edward J. Dent, see Philip Radcliffe, E. J. Dent: A Centenary Memoir (Rickmansworth, 1976); Hugh Carey, Duet for Two Voices: An Informal Biography of Edward Dent Compiled from his Letters to Clive Carey (Cambridge, 1979); and Anthony Lewis and Nigel Fortune, ‘Dent, Edward J.’, Grove Music Online, <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/article/grove/music/07574> (accessed 28 February 2014).

6 Edward J. Dent, diary entry, given in Radcliffe, E. J. Dent, 5.

7 As Valerie Langfield pointed out to me, Dent lived at 75 Panton Street for a number of years, before moving to no. 77, his permanent residence.

8 Edwin Evans (1874–1945) was a British critic and son of the organist and writer with the same name, who died in 1923. See H. C. Colles et al., ‘Evans, Edwin’, Grove Music Online, <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/article/grove/music/09101> (accessed 28 February 2014).

9 For a list of Dent's translations, see Lawrence Haward, Edward J. Dent: A Bibliography (Cambridge, 1956), 3–6.

10 On Dent during the First World War, see Karen Arrandale, ‘Artists’ Rifles and Artistic Licence: Edward Dent's War’, First World War Studies, 2 (2011), 7–16. See also Radcliffe, E. J. Dent, 13.

11 Carey, Duet for Two Voices, 81–2.

12 Arrandale, ‘Artists’ Rifles and Artistic Licence’, 12.

13 Ibid., 11. Francis Kennard Bliss was a gifted clarinet player who met Dent when he studied at King's College, Cambridge. His brother, Arthur Bliss, dedicated his choral symphony Morning Heroes (1930) ‘to the Memory of my brother Francis Kennard Bliss and all other Comrades killed in battle’. I am grateful to Byron Adams for pointing to this context for Kennard Bliss's letter.

14 Arrandale, ‘Artists’ Rifles and Artistic Licence’, 15; Caroline Cepin Benser, Egon Wellesz (1885–1974): Chronicle of a Twentieth-Century Musician, American University Studies Series, IX: History, 8 (New York, Berne and Frankfurt am Main, 1985), 63. Dent and Wellesz became friends in 1906 when Wellesz spent six weeks in Cambridge as a student. In 1938, Dent and Vaughan Williams helped save Wellesz's life by getting him to Oxford as a fellow of Lincoln College.

15 On the precursors of the ISCM after the First World War, see Anton Haefeli, Die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM): Ihre Geschichte von 1922 bis zur Gegenwart (Zurich, 1982), 23–37.

16 Benser, Egon Wellesz, 66.

17 Edward J. Dent, letter to Paul Bekker, 24 February 1923 (Washington DC, Library of Congress, Performing Arts Reading Room, ML.94.B4.184): ‘Daß man mich (ganz zu meinem Erstaunen) zum Vorsitz der Salzburger Versammlung eingeladen hat, war für mich natürlich eine sehr grosse Ehre.’ Dent's German was excellent, but sometimes his letters have spelling and grammatical mistakes that I have not corrected.

18 Rudolf Réti, ‘Salzburger Idee’, cited in Haefeli, Die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, 46: ‘Ich hatte den Vorzug, Edward Dent zum Präsidenten der Gesellschaft vorschlagen zu dürfen, was einstimmig angenommen wurde.’

19 Edward J. Dent, ‘Internationalisme et musique’, cited in Haefeli, Die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, 664: ‘Nous avons choisi de la musique qui représente la musique moderne [… et ceci] non pas pour représenter leur propre pays, mais pour représenter la musique moderne en général.’

20 Anne C. Shreffler discusses the shift from the ISCM's decidedly apolitical stance of the 1920s to one that positioned the society, in 1935, as a haven of free artistic expression in opposition both to Nazism and to cultural Bolshevism in her ‘Modern Music and the Popular Front: The International Society for Contemporary Music and its Political Context (1935)’, Music and International History, ed. Jessica Gienow-Hecht (Oxford and New York, forthcoming). A typescript of the essay is available at <https://www.academia.edu/3875452/Modern_Music_and_the_Popular_Front_The_International_Society_of_Contemporary_Music_and_Its_Political_Context_1935_> (accessed 22 December 2013).

21 Paul Bekker, ‘Musikfeste in Prag und Frankfurt’, cited in Haefeli, Die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, 100: ‘Gegensätze politischer Natur durch Bekundung gegenseitiger künstlerischer Teilnahme auszugleichen’.

22 Edward J. Dent, ‘Looking Backward’, Music Today: Journal of the International Society for Contemporary Music, 1 (1949), 6–25 (p. 9).

23 Alban Berg, Briefe an seine Frau, ed. Helene Berg (Munich, 1965), 579: ‘Dent, der überhaupt wie eine gute Kinderfrau zu mir ist, machte nachmittags herrlichen Tee.’

24 Both quotations from a letter to Peter Montgomery, [circa June 1930], in Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1895–1958, ed. Hugh Cobbe (Oxford and New York, 2008), 181.

25 For contemporary discussions in France, for example, see Barbara Kelly, Music and Ultra-Modernism in France: A Fragile Consensus, 1913–1939 (Woodbridge, 2013).

26 Moreover, in June 1938, the composer himself travelled to Hamburg for the festive presentation to him of the Shakespeare Prize by the University of Hamburg. Such musical diplomacy between Germany and Britain was complex and politically fraught. See Alain Frogley, ‘Vaughan Williams and Nazi Germany: The 1937 Hamburg Shakespeare Prize’, Music as a Bridge: Musikalische Beziehungen zwischen England und Deutschland 1920–1950, ed. Christa Brüstle and Guido Heldt (Hildesheim, Zurich and New York, 2005), 113–32. On German–British relations in music in the late 1920s and 1930s, see also Thomas Irvine, ‘Normality and Emplotment: Walter Leigh's Midsummer Night's Dream in the Third Reich and Britain’, Music and Letters, 94 (2013), 295–323.

27 Edward J. Dent, letter to Paul Bekker, 24 February 1923: ‘daß ich ein guter Freund Deutschlands und Deutscher Kunst bin’; Edward J. Dent, letter to Paul Bekker, 7 April 1923 (Washington DC, Library of Congress, Performing Arts Reading Room, ML.94.B4.184): ‘Die Idee, daß Deutschland in den anderen Ländern “nur geduldet” wird, ist weit von den wahren Tatsachen entfernt. Wir alle wollen Deutschlands freundliche und loyale Mitwirkung haben. Die Capricen der Herren Politiker haben überhaupt keinen Einfluss auf unsere Gesellschaft, deren einziger Zweck die Förderung der zeitgenössischen Kunst in allen Ländern ist.’

28 Dent, ‘Looking Backward’, 12.

29 Carey, Duet for Two Voices, 113.

30 Berg, Briefe an seine Frau, 522: ‘Nach einer kurzen, aber sehr fein pointierten Rede Mr. Dents, worin er gegen die Journalistenworte “Futuristen, Bolschewiken” polemisierte, begann unter allgemeinster Spannung mein Quartett.’

31 Anton von Webern, letter to Arnold Schoenberg, 2 October 1928, reproduced in translation in Hans Moldenhauer, Anton von Webern: A Chronicle of his Life and Work (New York, 1978), 324.

32 For more on the 1935 conflict between the ISCM and the Ständiger Rat, see Shreffler, ‘Modern Music and the Popular Front’.

33 1935 resolution, cited in Haefeli, Die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, 197: ‘Elle est et reste ouverte à tous les artistes vivants, sans distinction de nationalité, de race ni de confession, dans la mesure où leurs oeuvres sont conformes à son esprit.’ On Dent's interference, see the report by Krenek and Bartók, Die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik., 410, note 29.

34 Egon Wellesz, letter to Guido Adler, 14 August 1936 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, F13.Wellesz.1045/23): ‘In einer vorbereitenden Besprechung, an der nur Dent, Anglès, Carlton [recte Carleton] Smith (in Vertretung der Amerikaner), Jeppesen und ich teilgenommen hatten, waren wir übereingekommen, das An[ge]bot der Deutschen Regierung einer Subvention abzulehnen und die Acta von B & H wegzunehmen, da Dent einen Brief von Wolf erhalten hatte, dass es diesem von der Regierung untersagt worden war, nach Barcelona zu fahren, und gleichzeitig angeordnet, als Vicepresident zu demissionieren. Diese Tatsache, die im Interesse der persönlichen Sicherheit von Wolf nicht öffentlich bekannt werden darf, regte Dent so auf, dass er zwei Tage und Nächte unaufhörlich erbrach und ihn unfähig machte, den entscheidenden Sitzungen beizuwohnen. […] Dent hat, um vor allem die Acta sicherzustellen, aus eigener Tasche die Schuld von 150 Pfund zur Deckung übernommen.’

35 On the intentionally non-political stance of the ISCM, see Haefeli, Die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, 190–232, and Shreffler, ‘Modern Music and the Popular Front’.

36 Carey, Duet for Two Voices, 116.

37 Arnold Schoenberg, letter to the ISCM headquarters, 3 February 1926, carbon copy (Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg Center, T4.21): ‘Ich hatte anfangs zuversichtlich damit gerechnet, dass der Präsident oder das Präsidium Gelegenheit nehmen werde, den durch das brüske Vorgehen des Präsidenten Herr E. Dent mir angetanen Affront zu entschuldigen.’ Schoenberg also wrote a draft for this letter, and I am grateful to Sabine Feisst, who generously helped me decipher Schoenberg's handwriting.

38 Arnold Schoenberg, letter to Alban Berg, 3 March 1928, in Briefwechsel Arnold Schönberg–Alban Berg, ed. Juliane Brand, Christopher Hailey and Andreas Meyer, Briefwechsel der Wiener Schule, 3, 2 vols. (Mainz, 2007), ii: 1918–1935, 313: ‘Unbedingt bin ich dagegen, ein Werk von mir bei der I.G.B.f.N.M. (Int. Gaunerbande) aufzuführen, da das Vorgehen des Herrn Dent noch nicht gesühnt wurde.’ In a letter to Berg of 19/20 January 1932 (dagegen., 468), Schoenberg declared categorically: ‘Es ist ein Irrtum, dass ich eine Entschuldigung des Herrn Dent annehmen würde. Er hat mir schon einmal eine (übrigens durchaus ungenügende!!) geschickt und ich hatte schon damals erklärt, dass ich die nicht annehme.’

39 Arnold Schoenberg, letter to Edward J. Dent, 31 August 1940 (Washington DC, Library of Congress, Performing Arts Reading Room, Schoenberg Collection).

40 Alma Mahler Werfel, And the Bridge is Love (New York, 1958), 180. A more detailed report along similar lines by the eyewitness Sten Broman is reproduced in Haefeli, Die Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, 133. Dent himself presented a lively description of the incident in ‘Looking Backward’, 20–1.

41 Carey, Duet for Two Voices, 116.

42 Carey, Duet for Two Voices, 117.

43 Egon and Emmy Wellesz, Egon Wellesz: Leben und Werk, ed. Franz Endler (Vienna and Hamburg, 1981), 152: ‘Unvergeßlich ist mir der Empfang, den uns die Stadt Venedig zum Abschluß der Konzerte im Hotel Excelsior gab. Durch Zufall betraten Schönberg, von seinen Schülern und Freunden gefolgt, und Strawinsky mit seinem Anhang gleichzeitig die Halle, jeder von einer Seite kommend. Sie standen einander, wie orientalische Potentaten, gegenüber, ohne daß der eine oder der andere den ersten Schritt zu einer Begrüßung getan hätte.’

44 In Los Angeles, Schoenberg and Stravinsky lived quite close to each other but – as Madeleine Milhaud remarked rather caustically – ‘had no contact at all. They were like African kings, each waiting for the other, but nobody came.’ Roger Nichols, Conversations with Madeleine Milhaud (London, 1996), 27.

45 Edward J. Dent, letter to Alban Berg, 14 September 1930 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, F21.Berg.655/3): ‘Die “Wozzek”-Aufführung in Aachen war wohl das wichtigste Ereignis des ganzen Musikfestes in Lüttich. Es kamen eine grosse Anzahl Gäste aus verschiedenen Ländern, und für die nicht Deutsche Gäste war “Wozzek” etwas ganz Neues und erstaunliches. Die Oper wurde glänzend gegeben und machte sofort einen unvergesslichen Eindruck. Engländer, Franzosen u.s.w., welche mit dem Deutschen Opernstil der Gegenwart ganz unbekannt waren, fanden das Werk sofort überzeugend und erschütternd – Alle haben es ohne Weiteres als ein Meisterwerk anerkannt. Nach “Wozzek” wirkte die altmodische Gretry-Aufführung in Brüssel ganz grotesk.’

46 Edward J. Dent, letter to Alban Berg, 14 July 1927 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, F21.Berg.655/1): ‘Ich habe mich sehr gefreut Ihr Konzert zum zweiten Male in Frankfurt zu hören. Die Aufführung unter Scherchen war sehr gut, und ich fange jetzt an, das Werk besser zu verstehen. Ich kann jedenfalls sagen, dass ich dem Werke definitiv sympathisch gegenüberstehe, wenn ich auch zugeben muss, dass vieles darin mir noch nicht klar ist.’

47 Edward J. Dent, Terpander: or Music and the Future (London, 1926); I use the American edition (New York, 1927) in my quotations.

48 Dent, Terpander, 15.

49 On nineteenth-century pairings of early music and new compositions, see, for example, Jann Pasler, Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France (Berkeley, CA, 2009), 217–29. Jeanice Brooks has explored how Nadia Boulanger constructed the reciprocal illuminations of early music and new compositions in both her concerts and her teachings; see The Musical Work of Nadia Boulanger: Performing Past and Future between the Wars (Cambridge, 2013), esp. pp. 217–50. That Dent considered Nadia Boulanger an aesthetic ally shines through not only in his letters to Wellesz but also in his correspondence with her.

50 Dent, Terpander, 76. Among numerous other musicians and writers, Bohuslav Martinů shared Dent's position. See Annegret Fauser, Sounds of War: Music in the United States during World War II (New York and Oxford, 2013), 198.

51 In ‘The Relation of Music to Human Progress’ (p. 319), Dent cast contemporary music and art as the antidote to insincerity.

52 Edward J. Dent, letter to J. A. Dent, dated 25 September 1924 (Chapel Hill, NC, Wilson Library, Southern Historical Collection, J. M. Dent & Sons Papers, Subseries 3.1, J. A. Dent Correspondence, Box 271, Folder 3871). Despite the scholar's negative assessment, Mildred Mary Bozman's translation saw several editions in Dent's International Library of Books on Music.

53 Edward J. Dent, letter to Egon Wellesz, 4 February 1933 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, F13.Wellesz.1198/3).

54 Dent, Terpander, 87. On commercialization, see also pp. 85–6. On Dent's political leanings, see Radcliffe, E. J. Dent, 5, and Philip Brett, ‘Musicology and Sexuality: The Example of Edward J. Dent’, Musicology and Sister Disciplines: Past, Present, Future, ed. David Greer (Oxford and New York, 2000), 418–27 (pp. 422–3 and 425 (‘Fabian tradition’)).

55 Dent, Terpander, 122.

56 Carey, Duet for Two Voices, 129.

57 Edward J. Dent, letter to Alban Berg, 21 November 1933 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, F21.Berg.655/5): ‘Und dann würden Eure Studenten Madrigalen und Motetten singen, wie bei uns, anstatt Nazi-Propaganda zu machen! Und die Arbeiter würden Bach und Händel singen, anstatt Proletarier Chöre, wie man mir dann und wann aus Deutschland schickt – eine Musik, die nur das gegenwärtige Elend spiegelt, anstatt diesen Leuten einen musikalischen Himmel zu erschliessen, in dem sie für eine Stunde an höhere Dinge denken dürften.’ The letter is reproduced in its entirety in Theodor W. Adorno and Alban Berg, Briefwechsel 1925–1935, ed. Henri Lonitz, Theodor W. Adorno Briefe und Briefwechsel, 2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), 354–60.

58 On Puccini, see Radcliffe, E. J. Dent, 22. The Elgar ‘affair’ is discussed repeatedly in the literature on Dent: see, for example, Radcliffe, E. J. Dent, 17–19, and Brett, ‘Musicology and Sexuality’, 422 and 425. On Mahler's ‘symphonic monstrosities’, see Dent, Terpander, 76.

59 Edward J. Dent, letter to Nadia Boulanger, 4 November 1943 (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département de Musique, n.l.a. 66 (342–3)). I am grateful to Katharine Ellis for her transcription of this letter. An extract of this letter has since been published in Brooks, The Musical Work of Nadia Boulanger, 142.

60 On Dent's position within British musicology, see Christian Kennett, ‘Criticism and Theory’, Music in Britain: The Twentieth Century, ed. Stephen Banfield (Oxford and Cambridge, 1996), 503–18 (pp. 504–5). See also Winton Dean, ‘Edward J. Dent: A Centenary Tribute’, Music and Letters, 57 (1976), 353–61. Dent himself approached the issue of British aesthetics and scholarship – especially in contrast to German Musikwissenschaft – in a number of essays, for example in his introduction to Adolf Weissmann's The Problems of Modern Music (1925), published in Edward J. Dent, Selected Essays, ed. Hugh Taylor (Cambridge, 1979), 92–103.

61 Brett, ‘Musicology and Sexuality’, 424.

62 Edward J. Dent, letter to Egon Wellesz, 22 June 1943 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, F13.Wellesz.1198/11).

63 Brett, ‘Musicology and Sexuality’, 424–5.

64 Dent's musicological and intellectual endeavours need to be contextualized, on the one hand, within British music scholarship and criticism, with such key figures as Ernest Newman, Jack Westrup, Jeremy Noble and Oliver Neighbour, and, on the other, within broader intellectual and scholarly developments of interwar Britain. For music criticism, see Kennett, ‘Criticism and Theory’; on British universities and intellectual life, see, for example, Stefan Collini, Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain (Oxford, 2006).

65 Carey, Duet for Two Voices, 10.

66 Edward J. Dent, letter to Walter Piston, 18 January 1936.

67 Edward J. Dent, ‘The Historical Approach to Music’, Musical Quarterly, 23 (1937), 1–17 (p. 2).

68 Edward J. Dent, ‘The Historical Approach to Music’, Musical Quarterly, 2.

69 Dent, ‘The Historical Approach to Music’, 1.

70 Dent, ‘The Historical Approach to Music’, 7.

71 Dent, ‘The Historical Approach to Music’, 14, 17.

72 Egon Wellesz comments on Dent's ‘Aversion gegen das weibliche Geschlecht’. See Wellesz, Egon Wellesz: Leben und Werk, 153. Byron Adams (personal communication to the author) recalls a comment by Radcliffe, who reported that Dent's misogyny was selective; Dent admired Boulanger for having ‘the mind of a man’, whereas his greatest aversion was reserved for ‘wives’ of all kinds, a tendency perhaps strengthened by the mostly homosocial environment in Cambridge.

73 Edward J. Dent, letter to Walter Piston, 18 January 1936.

74 Brett, ‘Musicology and Sexuality’, 419, 426. Brett cites Kerman's Contemplating Music (1985) in this context. My own discussion references Kerman's AMS paper delivered 20 years earlier, in 1964, which – as I have learnt in conversation with James Haar – elicited stormy replies, especially on the part of émigré musicologists. See Joseph Kerman, ‘A Profile for American Musicology’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 18 (1965), 61–9. Edward E. Lowinsky responded with the essay ‘Character and Purposes of American Musicology: A Reply to Joseph Kerman’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 18 (1965), 222–34. Therein (on p. 231) he countered Kerman's claim that such German-sourced musicology had displaced the home-grown American scholarly traditions: ‘I do know that Professor Kerman is playing a dangerous game with dangerous words, words that the older generation has heard before and fervently hoped never to hear again. Nor is Professor Kerman so young or so innocent that he can claim to be unaware of the twentieth-century use and origin of the “alien” and “native” in matters of art and scholarship. One generation ago, the Germans talked a lot about “alien” elements in German culture. They also did something about it.’

75 Kerman, ‘A Profile for American Musicology’, 67.

76 Edward J. Dent, letter to Nadia Boulanger, 4 November 1943.

77 Edward J. Dent, letter to Walter Piston, 18 January 1936.

78 Edward J. Dent, letter to Nadia Boulanger, 18 January 1940 (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département de Musique, n.l.a. 66 (340–1)): ‘Il a la mauvaise habitude allemande de conduire ses affaires par téléphone – ce que moi, anglais, je déteste. Avez-vous remarqué que les allemands ne veulent jamais écrire un mot? Surtout les réfugiés: ils ont toujours peur de la Gestapo.’ I am grateful to Katharine Ellis for her transcription of this letter.

79 Dent, ‘The Relation of Music to Human Progress’, 318.

80 Although Dent used the epithet frequently, ‘Gerry's Nightmare’ is thought to have been coined by Donald Tovey (Radcliffe, E. J. Dent, 18) or Charles Stanford; Kathleen Ferrier is also mentioned as a candidate for that role. See Maurice Leonard, Hope and Glory: A Life of Dame Clara Butt (Brighton, 2012), 107. After the First World War, the homophone ‘Jerry’ (slang for Germans) may have added a further negative referential layer to the dismissive epithet.

81 Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England (Oxford, 2010), 363–6.

82 Edward J. Dent, letter to Alban Berg, 21 November 1933: ‘Das Schlimme bei den Juden ist, dass sie fast alle Egoisten und Arrivisten sind. Das habe ich seit langem bemerkt, besonders bei den “Deutschen” Juden, dass sie nur an ihre eigene Karriere denken, und nicht an das musikalische Gemeinwohl. […] Sie (die Juden) sind in der Tat Hitlerianer, denn Sie betrachten Deutschland, Oesterreich, Schweiz, Holland, Skandinavien, Tschechien und vielleicht auch England als zu “Deutschland” gehörig!!’ Published in Adorno and Berg, Briefwechsel, 356–7. Max Paddison characterizes this letter as ‘uncompromisingly blunt’ and describes Dent's comments on the lack of professional opportunities for Jewish refugees, but does not address the rest of the letter with its anti-Semitic overtones. See Max Paddison, ‘Adorno and Exile: Some Thoughts on Displacement and What it Means to be German’, Music and Displacement: Diasporas, Mobilities, and Dislocations in Europe and Beyond, ed. Erik Levi and Florian Scheding, Europea: Ethnomusicologies and Modernities, 10 (Lanham, MD, 2010), 135–53 (p. 139).

83 Edward J. Dent, letter to Alban Berg, 21 November 1933: ‘Was sollen denn solche Leute in England machen, wo wir alle zusammenarbeiten müssen, um die Musik am Leben zu erhalten? Mit herzlichsten Grüßen, Ihr Edward Dent.’ Published in Adorno and Berg, Briefwechsel, 359–60.

84 Berg, Briefe an seine Frau, 640.

85 Alban Berg, letter to Theodor W. Adorno, 3 December 1933, in Adorno and Berg, Briefwechsel, 290: ‘Ich muß Ihnen auf das hin doch Dents’ Antwort an mich zur Kenntnis bringen, die in Manchem wohl nicht für Sie bestimmt ist, weswegen Sie, bitte, auch ihm gegenüber dies bezüglich nicht reagieren mögen. Aber ich wollte Sie doch genau informieren über die englischen Möglichkeiten u. doch nicht 4 Maschinenschreibseiten abschreiben. Bitte nach Kenntnisnahme zurück an mich.’ On Adorno's experience in the United Kingdom, see Andreas Kramer and Evelyn Wilcock, ‘“A Preserve for Professional Philosophers”: Adornos Husserldissertation 1934–37 und ihr Oxforder Kontext’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte (Sonderheft), 73 (1999), 115–61. I am grateful to Christoph Gödde of the Adorno Archive Frankfurt for this reference.

86 Alban Berg, letter to Theodor W. Adorno, 15 February 1934, in Adorno and Berg, Briefwechsel, 292: ‘Unsere Korrespondenz wurde so plötzlich abgebrochen (Sie sandten mir damals nur wortlos Dents Brief zurück), daß ich jetzt gar nicht mehr im Bilde bin über Sie und Ihre Pläne.’

87 Edward J. Dent, letter to Egon Wellesz, 22 June 1943. See also Edward J. Dent, ‘Introduction’, Alfred Loewenberg, Annals of Opera: 1597–1940 (Cambridge, 1943), xiii–xix. As he reported to Wellesz, the introduction was written just before he underwent surgery in 1941, ‘with great difficulty and instalments with rests in between – rather like a composition of A. von Webern, you might say!’

88 Edward J. Dent, letter to Egon Wellesz, 22 June 1943.

89 Dent, ‘The Relation of Music to Human Progress’, 318.

90 Carey, Duet for Two Voices, 126.

91 Edward J. Dent, Handel (London, 1934), 132–3.

92 Edward J. Dent, Handel (London, 1934), 43.

93 Cited after Radcliffe, E. J. Dent, 10.

94 Radcliffe, E. J. Dent, 24.

95 Potter points to the difference between Alfred Rosenberg's speech at that event, casting Handel as a Germanic populist, and Dent's emphasis on the composer's ‘aristocratic leanings’; see Pamela Potter, ‘The Politicization of Handel and his Oratorios in the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the Early Years of the German Democratic Republic’, Musical Quarterly, 85 (2001), 311–41 (p. 333).

96 Edward J. Dent, Händel in England: Gedächtnis-Rede anläßlich der 250. Geburtstagsfeier in Halle am 4. Februar 1935, Hallische Universitätsreden, 68 (Halle, 1936), 11.

97 Ibid., 13: ‘Händels Oratorien entstehen nicht aus der Kirche, sondern aus dem Opernhaus.’

98 Ibid., ‘So stehen die Juden in diesen Oratorien als Typen der Protestanten, und besonders der gefolterten Protestanten. Einmal sah ich in der kleinen Stadt Aigues Mortes das Gefängnis, worin die Camisards eingesperrt waren, auf dem Steinboden las ich, in großen Buchstaben eingeritzt, das Wort RESISTER. Und plötzlich erschallte in meinem Gedächtnis die Musik eines Chores aus Judas Maccabäus — We never never will bow down To the rude stock or sculptur'd stone We worship God, and God alone. England war damals das Land der religiösen und politischen Freiheit; das erklärt uns, warum Händel gern dort lebte, warum er nie wieder (außer zu kurzen Besuchen) nach Deutschland zurückkehrte.’

99 Dent, ‘The Historical Approach to Music’, 3.

100 Dent, ‘The Historical Approach to Music’, 3.

101 This aspect of musicology has been discussed extensively in recent years, following the foundational work of Albrecht Dümling and Pamela Potter. Potter's 1996 article – ‘Musicology under Hitler: New Sources in Context’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 49 (1996), 70–113 – raised awareness of this issue in English-language scholarship.

102 Copy of the memorandum (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, F13.Wellesz.1240/34). Wellesz added his own comment: ‘In the meantime Prof. Jeppesen sent copies of the whole correspondence to several members of the Council of the International Musicological Society, of which he is a leading member, and as a result the enclosed protest was drawn up and signed, in the first instance, by Prof. E. J. Dent, Hon. Mus. Doc. Oxon., Hon. Mus. Doc. Cambridge, Professor Jeppesen, Prof. Vandenborren, Brussels, myself, etc.’.

103 The case that Rudolf von Ficker put together against Schenk is detailed in Ficker's correspondence with Wellesz, drawing on numerous documents and recollections (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, F13.Wellesz.1240).

104 Edward J. Dent, letter to Egon Wellesz, 22 July 1946 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, F13.Wellesz.1198/15).

105 Edward J. Dent, letter to Egon Wellesz, 4 November 1954 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, F13.Wellesz.1198/27).

106 Edward J. Dent, letter to Egon Wellesz, 20 March 1951 (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, F13.Wellesz.1198/20). Bukofzer's 1947 Music in the Baroque Era was, of course, part of the line-up of Norton's series.

107 For a thoughtful engagement with the pitfalls of cause-and-effect narratives in biographical research, see Jolanta T. Pekacz, ‘Memory, History and Meaning: Musical Biography and its Discontents’, Journal of Musicological Research, 23 (2004), 39–80; the contributions (esp. the chapter by Beatrix Borchard) to Gender Studies in der Musikwissenschaft – Quo Vadis?: Festschrift für Eva Rieger zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Annette Kreutziger-Herr, Nina Noeske, Susanne Rode-Breymann and Melanie Unseld, Jahrbuch Musik und Gender, 3 (Hildesheim, Zurich and New York, 2010); and Christopher Wiley, ‘Biography and the New Musicology’, (Auto)biography as a Musicological Discourse: The Ninth International Conference of the Departments of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade, 19–22 April 2008, ed. Tatjana Marković and Vesna Mikić (Belgrade, 2010), 3–27.