Kurt Weill and Bertholt Brecht's Berlin

Sloth / Short Operas

“The twentieth-century way of life displays a tendency toward pressure in all areas, a tendency to economize space, time, and nerves. Conciseness is the spice not only of wit; we have, as every child knows, no time to waste. Telegraph, telephone, automobile, subways all see to it that not a minute is squandered. But do they in fact? Or is the economy they suggest only a hint, a momentary thrill of superiority over temporary obstacles? No matter; savings are made everywhere. Our existence is split more and more into tiny and still tinier units of time, punctiliously filled up and made to serve their assigned purpose. We no longer manage the kind of concentration our parents devoted to endless intellectual pleasures; we count not in years but in quarter hours. Tempo, tempo! (Ah, the mind is still more nimble than a radio wave!) We work to get ahead of the succession of hours.

[...]

Has the effect of the traditional long opera been exhausted? There is some truth to this assumption, in particular the somewhat questionable success Strauss achieved with Ägyptische Helena. Musical arrangements have also been transformed. The young composers of our time appear unable to bear endlessly symphonic treatments. Perhaps it is no accident that gramophone records, with their limited playing time of a maximum of six minutes, established themselves so surprisingly. Musical accompaniments to film, with an average length of two minutes, also conform to the modern principle of compression.”

In the aptly short article “Short Operas,” H. H. Stuckenschmidt explores  how artforms were adapting in the wake of new technologies and people’s perception of time. Increasingly in the Weimar Republic, people’s attention spans seemed to be shortening and a demand for more concise art was increasing. Stuckenschmidt wrote about the concept of one act operas and their newfound place in the theatre. As people were less willing to sit through and understand a three hour opera, shorter one act operas were being produced to appeal to the public, which in turn made opera more accessible to a wider audience. While Keyserling bemoaned shorter attention spans, Stuckenschmidt argued that it was both possible and desirable to shorten intelligent and sophisticated ideas, rather than eliminating them entirely. (Kaes et al. 1994, 574-576).

    In the article, Stuckenschmidt states “We no longer manage the kind of concentration our parents devoted to endless intellectual pleasures” (Kaes et al. 1994, 574-576). What he means by this is that the generation living and thriving during the Weimar Era was unwilling to put in the effort to understand the dense art and literature that preceded them. Therefore, composers, authors, painters, and artists of all genres were forced to produce works that required less effort and time on the part of the consumers. A big symptom of sloth is the shorter attention span that pairs with boredom. When composers like Hindemith, Weill, and Krenek, among others, began to write shorter operas, these may have been intended as a quick solution to the boredom of modern Germans, who did not want to exert too much mental power.
Bibliography:Stuckenschmidt, H.H. “Short Operas.” In The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, edited by Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, 574-576. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

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