"To be strong and civilised at the same time is very difficult..." musicologists about the politics: Jacques Handschin and Higini Anglés, from the correspondence of the 1930s

“Быть одновременно и сильным и цивилизованным – очень трудно...” Музыковеды о политике: Жак Гандшин и Ижини Англес, из писем 1930-х годов

Abstract

This article deals with the correspondence between two prominent European musicologists of the second quarter of the 20th century: Jacques Handschin (b. 1896, Moscow, Russia – d. 1955, Basel, Switzerland) and Higini Anglès (b. 1888, Maspujols, Spain – d. 1969, Rome, Italy). A total of 182 letters from the period 1926 to 1954 are preserved today in two archives: the Handschin archive in the Institute of Musicology at the University of Würzburg, Germany, and in the National Library of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. The article focuses on political matters discussed in the letters from the 1930s. At this time both musicologists were first hand witnesses of fundamental changes in the world politics, such as the unfortunate demise of the Weimar Republic and the installation of the Nazi government, the growing tensions inside France (due to the strengthening of the leftists) as well as the fear of its military power by its neighbours. The outbreak of the Spanish civil war was at the same time the beginning of a long warlike period, which Winston Churchill called the ‘Twilight War’. Both Handschin and Anglès were musicologists, not political scientists, but their comments on political matters have enabled me to paint their intellectual and historical profiles. Also, during this period both scholars were protagonists of significant changes in scientific structures: in the International Musicological Society (IMS), where Anglès acted as Vice President and Handschin was a board member, and in the Institute of Musicology at the University of Basel, directed by Handschin. Therefore their political opinions led directly to developments in their discipline. Handschin and Anglès discussed at length the events of the Spanish Civil War. Although both of them were on the side of the Nationalists and General Franco, disagreements occurred. Their differences of opinion were rooted in the difference between their views of France and Germany: Anglès, who was trained in the German scientific tradition and who passed the years of the Civil War in Munich, was anti-France and accused France to be guilty of the conflict in Spain. The Francophile Handschin did not agree: for him France was one of two main cradles of European culture, while the other one was the so-called European East (including Russia). He followed attentively what was going on in the East and he wrote to Anglès already in 1942 that the outcome of the siege of Moscow would be important for the future. In his view the connection between France and Eastern Europe (i.e. Russia) constituted the base of European culture; in this respect he was opposed to Anglès, who favoured German culture. This view was Handschin’s very specific “intonation” in the scientific musicological circles of the 1930s