A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Zukunftsmusik

ZUKUNFTSMUSIK, la musique de l'avenir, the Music of the Future. A journal for 'music to come' is still wanting, writes Schumann^[1] as early as 1833, 'Eine, Zeitschrift für zukünftige Musik fehlt noch'—and 'of course,' he continues in his humorous way, 'only men like the old blind Cantor at the Thomas-schule (Bach) or the deaf Capellmeister who rests at Vienna (Beethoven) would be fit editors.' Schumann himself became such an editor in 1834, and during the next ten years his paper, the 'Neue Zeitschrift für Musik,' was mainly instrumental in bringing about a new state of things. Indeed the rapid success of Chopin, Gade, Sterndale-Bennett, Henselt, Heller, etc., with the better part of the contemporary public in Germany, was to a considerable extent due to Schumann's sympathetic and discriminating advocacy. In the hands of his successor, Brendel, the 'Zeitschrift' became the organ of Wagner and Liszt, and particularly of a group of younger men, such as von Bülow, von Bronsart, Draeseke, Cornelius, Tausig, who, from 1850 to 60, gathered round Liszt, at Weimar—the headquarters of the so-called 'musicians of the future.'

In good faith, or with derisive intent, the ambiguous term 'Zukunftsmusik' and the nickname 'Zukunftsmusiker' have been in use since about 1850, when Wagner published 'Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft' (the Art-work of the Future).^[2] According to Wagner it was Dr. L. F. C. Bischoff,^[3] editor of the Rheinische and the Nieder-rheinische Musik-zeitungen (the now defunct rivals of the Neue Zeitschrift) who first perverted Wagner's idea of the 'art-work of the future' into that of the 'music of the future,' i.e. inartistic music, cacophonous to contemporary ears, but intended by its perpetrators to please a coming generation. Liszt, together with his disciples at Weimar, accepted the nickname Zukunftsmusiker, and delighted in it, 'much as ere while les gueux of Holland adopted the appellative contemptuously applied to them.'^[4] Wagner also appears to have accepted the term—at least 'Zukunftsmusik' is the German publisher's title of his interesting 'Brief an einen französischen Freund' (M. Fréderic Villot, 'Curator des musées imperiaux'), which first appeared in French by way of preface to 'Quatre poèmes d'operas traduits en prose française, précédes d'une lettre sur la musique'^[5] (sic), and forms a résumé of Wagner's opinions. Berlioz, in his famous attack on Wagner, 'Les concerts de Richard Wagner: la musique de 1'avenir,' in the 'Journal des Débats,' Feb. 1860 (reprinted in Berlioz 'A travers chants') uses it ironically, 'si l'école de la musique de l'avenir,' etc.; whilst Baudelaire in his pamphlet 'Richard Wagner a Paris' (1861), adopts it without reserve.

Some of Wagner's adherents in Germany and in England endeavoured subsequently to limit the use of the term and to define its meaning: with them, 'Zukunftsmusik,' as distinguished from music written in the traditional classical form, is taken to signify music in which the outlines of form are modified by some general poetical idea or some particular programme, as in Liszt's Poèmes symphoniques, or by the progress of the dramatic action, as in Wagner's dramas. Whether such a definition was prompted or sanctioned by Liszt or by Wagner need not be considered here. In any case the term 'Zukunftsmusik' is absurd, and its use has led to much confusion.

[ E. D. ]

1. Schumann, Ges. Schriften, i. 49, 1st. ed. 1854.
2. See the article Wagner, vol. iv p. 367 et seq.
3. See Bischoff, vol. i. p. 244.
4. Wagner, Ges. Schriften, viii. 303–306.
5. Paris, 1861. English translation, London, 1873.