Patrick Bade
The Birth of Switzerland

Patrick Bade - The Birth of Switzerland

- Well, my friend Mike in Munich tells me this lecture is misnamed. It should really be called the Invention of Switzerland rather than the Birth of Switzerland. It could also have been called the Discovery of Switzerland. Because Switzerland was not really a destination that people wanted to travel to very much, until the end of the 18th century. It’s a landlocked country, as you know, mostly made of mountains. And it filled travellers with terror. And by and large, it was a place you had to get through in order to arrive at somewhere nicer on the other side. France to the west, Germany to the north, Austria to the east, and above all, Italy to the south. I remember very well in the years when I lived in Munich, I travelled many times through Switzerland, down to Italy, and how wonderful it was to emerge from the mountains onto the sunlit plains of North Italy. This gives you, again, a sense of the geography and this great barrier of the Alps between Northern Europe and Italy. Here you get some of the terrors of travelling through Italy: avalanches, rocky precipices, the Devil’s Bridge at St. Gotthard, on the left-hand side, painting here by the Philip… The Swiss artist, Philip de Loutherbourg, of an avalanche in the Grisons, that was shown in the Royal Academy in London in 1803. And I’m sure it thrilled many people. So before the 19th century, of course, you would’ve gone through Switzerland, either on foot, or if you were lucky, I suppose, on horseback or drawn in a coach.

Two artists who made this journey were Albrecht Durer, whose work you see on the left, and Peter Bruegel the elder, who see on the right. But Durer went to Italy twice, once in 1494 to 5, and then again in 1505 to 1507. And Bruegel went to Italy in the 1550s. But he seems to have arrived by a different route, via France, but he came back through the Alps. Of course, Bruegel was from the Netherlands. So the mountainous landscape must have been quite astonishing to him when he came through the Alps. And for both artists, the mountainous landscape of Switzerland made a very, very profound impression. Durer made these exquisite watercolour landscapes. There’s some debate about whether these are really the first pure landscapes in Western art. Why he made them, if in fact they were more intended to be study material for the background of religious paintings. Though, I don’t think any of these, his watercolours relate, in fact, to particular paintings. And here is Peter Bruegel, the elder, imagining the Holy Land. Of course, he had no idea really what the Holy Land, what the Middle East looked like. The most exotic thing he’d seen were the alpine landscapes. So this is the conversion of St. Paul. So this is very much Switzerland rather than Syria. This is the famous, the notorious St. Gotthard Pass. And it gives you some idea of what an incredible slog it must have been getting across Switzerland, from North Switzerland to South Switzerland, through the St. Gotthard Pass, through these zigzagging, winding roads.

And dangers, as I said, of weather, sudden storms, snowstorms, avalanches, and so on. It was a very tricky business, even if you went by in the greatest comfort of the time, in carriages, as you can see here. Things changed radically in the 19th century with the arrival of railways and tremendous engineering feats. So driving tunnels through mountains, most famous of all the St. Gotthard tunnel, it took 10 years to construct from 1872 to 1882. And so the railways made Switzerland, of course, very much more accessible. Here are the workers on the St Gotthard Pass. As I said, it was a heroic enterprise with many casualties, many workers actually killed. And this is the monument to the workers who died during the construction of the St. Gotthard Tunnel. Switzerland was a relatively poor country until the 19th century. So it’s in the 20th century that it has become a kind of playground for the elite. In the late 19th, early 20th century, for wealthy victims of tuberculosis and other illnesses, these sanatoria were set up. This is the Wald Sanatorium in Davos, on the right hand side, and famously described in Thomas Mann’s book, “The Magic Mountain.” And it’s in the 20th century that Switzerland, of course, became a playground for the wealthy with luxury hotels and winter sports. Winter sports really taking off after the first World War in the 1920s, for fashionable people. The new shape for women in the 1920s. They got rid of their corsets and their padding and their voluminous skirts. And exercise was considered a desirable thing for fashionable women, the really rich and really fashionable. You can take your butler with you and you can have… This is a cocktail cabinet on the right-hand side, that’s made for a skiing holiday.

And your butler could drug it up the mountain and it could follow you down the ski slopes and you could have a high ball on the way down. This is Joseph William Mallard Turner. Now, just as the Alps were becoming more interesting and people wanting to see them, for Brit, they actually became quite inaccessible as a result of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. So much of continental Europe was off bounds for us Brits from 1789, right through until the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815. But there was a gap. The Treaty of Amiens in 1802. There was a year or so of peace between Britain and France, and many Brits, especially artists, took advantage of this to flood across the channel, to visit France, to visit Paris. This is a self-portrait by Turner on the left-hand side. And this is a watercolour drawing that he made of the Isle de la Cite in the middle of Paris, on his visit in 1802. Probably the primary purpose for many artists was to get to the Louvre. I was just there a couple of days ago, It is completely jaw-dropping. I mean, is the greatest museum in the world, with incredible collections of painting. But it was even more so in 1802, because the French had looted everything that could be moved from Florence, from Rome, from other Italian cities. And it’s an astonishing thought, actually, that most of the contents of the Uffizi and the Vatican museums would still be in Paris if Napoleon hadn’t come back from Elba in 1815, when the initial treaties at the Vienna conference, 1813 and ‘14, the French were going to be allowed to keep their ill-gotten gains. It was only after Waterloo that they were forced to disgorge them and return them to Italy.

So this is a petition from the Vatican that Turner saw in Paris in 1802, he made the copy you can see on the right-hand side. But it’s interesting that Turner didn’t tarry in Paris. What he really wanted to do was to go to Switzerland. Turner was always in search of dramatic landscapes, and he went from the top of British Isles and right down to the tip of Cornwall. He explored every corner of Britain, in search of dramatic landscape, lake district, of course, Scottish Highlands, Cornish coasts, and so on. But of course, there were no mountains in the British Isles quite as dramatic as those in Switzerland. So he took his sketchbooks with him and he made countless drawings, often with pencil notes about colour. And these served him for making paintings once he came back to Britain. Here is another drawing. These are all drawings made on his first trip to Switzerland in 1802. These are the Reichenbach Falls in the north of Switzerland, later very famous, of course, as the place where Sherlock Holmes and his opponent, Professor, the evil Dr. Moriarty, they struggle on the edge of the Reichenbach Falls, and they both fall to their death in the Conan Doyle story, “The Final Problem,” came out in 1893. So Turner, I don’t think he did, as far as I know, he never witnessed an avalanche, but inspired in part by Philip de Loutherbourg’s painting, he showed this painting of an avalanche in the Grisons at the Royal Academy of 1808. So all this goes with, of course, Romanticism, with a capital R. Romanticism is in its way a revolution. It’s not a style in the way that say Baroque, rococo, neoclassical are styles. It’s a revolution in sensibility, in feeling.

And one aspect of Romanticism is a new attitude and a new respect for nature. The Romantics were the first people to realise that man was really abusing nature, and to suspect that nature would get its or her own back on man. And it’s a great theme of Turner. It’s a great theme of Casper David Friedrich and other Romantics, is the insignificance of man in view of the violence and the power of nature. And there is also this concept of the sublime, sublime being a definition of beauty that involves awe and fear. Here is another evocation of Switzerland by Turner. This was in the Royal Academy of 1812, I think this was. And it was a very apt painting, 'cause it shows the hubris of a military commander and again, the insignificance of man’s efforts in the face of nature. It shows Hannibal crossing the Alps. And as this was painted in a period where, of course, Turner couldn’t cross again. So he was painting this partly from memory and partly from his sketches of the Alps that he’d made in 1802. But actually, the trigger for this painting was a snowstorm that he saw on the Yorkshire moors. So once Napoleon is safely packed off to St. Helena and it’s safe to go out again, Turner goes back to Europe, actually waits till 1819. So he waits, he didn’t go back immediately. And he travels extensively in Italy, but he also makes several trips to Switzerland in the latter part of his life. And this is the town of… Let’s see which one, if I can get this. I think this one is, yes, this is Lucerne. Of course, he always dramatises things. He always exaggerates, that’s in the nature. This is Zurich. And in particular, on a trip in 1842, he makes a whole series of watercolours of the Rigi Mountain next to Lake Lucerne, in different weather and light conditions. And this is really anticipating Monet by well over… Well, three quarters of a century, actually.

And these are magical. To me, to my mind, these are are Turner’s greatest achievements. And I think he’s, for me, greater as a watercolorist than he is as an oil painter. And these are magically beautiful, the same mountain in different light and weather conditions. So now, Switzerland is what you could say a Romantic country with a capital R, in the way that Scotland is. Scotland also, of course, it was Sir Walter Scott, who you could say discovered Scotland, from this point of view, put Scotland on the map, the Waverly novels. But the Romantics flocked to Switzerland after 1815. 1816, Mary Shelly, Shelly and Byron and a couple of other friends turned up in Switzerland. And the weather was terrible, because the summer of 1816, it’s known as the year without a summer because the effects of a vast volcanic eruption in Indonesia affected the whole world. And course, it led to crop failures. There was no sunlight, the crops failed, there was starvation. And even in Switzerland, it was a very, very dark summer. And this is Mary Shelly on the left-hand side. And Mary Shelly, Shelly and Byron, they entertained one another by writing horror stories. The most famous of which, of course, was “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley, that was published in 1818. This is where they hung out. This is the Villa Diodati, that still exists. And Byron then, 1816, he writes his narrative poem, “Manfred,” which is set in Switzerland. It’s autobiographical. It’s about a kind of doomed, cursed hero who has committed some dreadful, unnamed crime.

And that is presumably a reference to the scandal in his life of his divorce and his incestuous affair with his half sister. Here is Byron on the right. And “Manfred,” published in 1817, which inspired many other artists and musicians, including Schumann. Tchaikovsky wrote pieces of music inspired by “Manfred.” This is John Martin, “Manfred on the Jungfrau,” a scene in the poem where he teeters on the brink of a precipice filled with terror and delight at the danger of his situation. Here is the same scene, painted some years later by Ford Maddox Brown. Now the great national hero of Switzerland is William Tell. The 19th century, everybody is in Europe. It’s the rise of nationalism and patriotism. Everybody wants their national heroes. And we had Richard the Lionheart. You can see outside the Palace of Westminster. Alfred the Great. We looked, nations looked for national heroes early in their histories. The French, suddenly Joan of Arc becomes a great national heroine for the French. And for the Swiss, it’s Wilhelm Tell, 14th century local hero who rebelled against the occupation of Switzerland by the Austrians. And according to legend, in 1307, he assassinated the Austrian official Albrecht Gessler. So this legend inspires one of the greatest masterpieces of German literature, and that is Schiller’s “Wilhelm Tell,” which was first published and performed in 1803. Here you see Schiller on the left-hand side. And in particular, of course the famous story of Gessler forcing Wilhelm Tell to fire an apple off his son’s head with a crossbow.

And this is a 19th-century monument to William Tell that you can see on the right-hand side. So Schiller’s play was transformed into an opera by Rossini in 1829. It was first performed at what was then the Paris Opera in the Rue la Peletier, you see here on the screen, there inserted is Rossini himself. And the cover of the score of “William Tell.” And it’s an enormous, epic opera. And it’s one of the first examples of so-called French Grand Opera. Of course, the original text is not in Italian, it’s in French. And it was a type of opera that was devised for Parisian audiences in the 19th century on a huge scale. Five acts lasting five hours altogether, always including a ballet in the second act, and always including… Needing very spectacular scenery and spectacular special effects. The opera is a great sprawling piece, very difficult to cast 'cause it makes extremely heavy demands on all the singers, particularly the tenor. And so, actually not that often performed as a whole in opera houses anymore. I think I’ve only ever seen it once in a production a couple of years ago, at Covent Garden. But of course, the Overture is an absolute staple of the concert repertoire. And I’m going to play you the most famous moment in that overture, I think one of the most thrilling moments of any concert piece I know. You have this sort of idyllic, rural music with suggestions of cows and yodelling, so you know that you’re in the Swiss countryside. And then suddenly, a change of key and blazing trumpets and you’re off. It’s a real heart-stopping moment.

Now, the most famous vocal moment is the aria that Tell has to sing to his son, his , “Be very still,” he says as he prepares to shoot the apple off his head. Now, the recent production at Covent Garden was very controversial. Some critics loved it, some critics hated it. The most controversial scene in that production was one of a gang rape of a young woman in the ballet scene. And in fact, that was modified. It was actually censored by the time I saw it. I didn’t particularly object to that because it’s actually… That seemed to me to fit in with… Didn’t go against the meaning of the opera. This is an opera about oppression. It’s an opera about an occupied… An occupation of a country, a very brutal occupation and a rebellion against that occupation. What I found actually rather more difficult was actually the scene I’m going to play you, which was wonderfully sung, the aria by a great Canadian baritone. I’m having a senior moment. I know some kind of person will put his name into the Q and A for me so that I can tell you at the end, top. I think one of the finest baritone in the world today. I dunno why I can’t remember his name, but there it is. And so he was singing this aria beautifully. And on the other side of the stage, we had Mrs. Tell clucking around in her kitchen, preparing dinner. So what that was about, I don’t really know. But here is the aria from William Tell. In the 19th century, Opera was extremely political. And I suppose the most famous case of that was the reaction to another grand opera, “La muette de Portici” by Auber. When that was premiered in Brussels, in August, 1830, the audience became so excited that the audience rioted and the riot spread to the streets of Brussels and then to other Belgian cities.

And that led to the Belgian Revolution and the creation of Belgium as an independent country. After that example, of course, censors in any part of Europe, which was occupied by a foreign power, and there were plenty of parts in Europe in the 19th century, there were all the Habsburg, there was the Czechs and the Hungarians and the Poles, and the Italians, and so the authorities in all those places are always very, very nervous about operas. And I’m sure you know that Verdi’s early operas were always very heavily censored in case they could trigger an uprising. And when the Nazis took over the Vichi part of France in November, 1942, as a reaction to the American torch landings, the Germans just walked into Vichi and took it over. And they arrived at the end of 1942, in Marseilles. This is the Marseilles Opera, with the German troops in front of it. And they looked very carefully at the repertoire of the operas that were coming up in that season of the winter of '42 to '43. And they took out three operas that they thought would be problematic. One was “Boris Godonov,” well, that was for obvious reasons, because it was Russian and Russia was the great enemy of the period. They also took out “Madame Butterfly.” And I think the only reason for taking that one out was that they were afraid of popular demonstrations in the audience for the scene in which Pinkerton and Butterfly drink a toast to America and sing in English, even in the Italian version, “America Forever, America Forever.” And they didn’t want a French audience reacting to that.

But the third opera that they took out was “William Tell,” 'cause I think the parallels between occupied Switzerland in the 14th century and occupied France during Second World War were too close for comfort. So Schiller’s play already had a very political dimension to it. And it’s one of those plays that can be interpreted in many different ways. And in the 20th century, in Germany, in the Weimar period, there were left-wing communist versions of William Tell. And then under the Nazis, there were national socialist versions, including this film of William Tell that starred Emmy Sonnemann, the wife of Goering, as the wife of William Tell. Now, this is a rather unexpected visitor to Switzerland. This is the French artist Vigee Le Brun. And she… I doubt whether she would’ve ever gone to Switzerland if it were not for the French Revolution. She was the most successful woman artist in France. She was a protege of Marie Antoinette. And she painted many portraits of Marie Antoinette, trying really to improve her image. Marie Antoinette, rather like Meghan Markle, had a big image problem in the years leading up to the French Revolution. Everybody loved to hate her. And there were lots of very hateful stories spread around her. The trouble was that when the revolution came, Vigee Le Brun was of course immediately in the firing line and very, very much in danger. So she fled, and she went to Russia for a while. She went to England for a while.

And in 1807 she went to Switzerland. And she did something I think that nobody would’ve thought of doing a generational or so earlier, she climbed to the top of a mountain for the view, no other purpose. She wasn’t going somewhere else. She was simply going to the top of the mountain for the view. And it was a huge effort. The coach had to be abandoned halfway up. And it was another five and a half hours of trecking on foot to get to the top of the mountain. And she also spent a very uncomfortable night in a barn with cows, in order to be able to get up at dawn and see the sun rising over the Alps. And she wrote a wonderful autobiography. I know I’ve talked about it before, and I do recommend it. I think it’s quite difficult to find in English, I seem to remember. But it’s a very entertaining book. And this is what she says about her trip to the top of the mountain. “To tell the truth, the view completely eliminated my fatigue. Five or six vast forests piled up, one upon the other fell away beneath my eyes. The towns and villages, tiny specks. Fine line of glaciers, which fringed the horizon became redder and redder as the sun sank. The other mountains between them formed a complete colour spectrum, golden rays stretched across the mountain to my left, each carrying a rainbow in its arc. The red violet mountains grew imperceptibly fainter in the distance.

They stood so far apart, you could only distinguish between them by two gold lines, heavy with translucent mist. As the sun set, I watched the shadow change. All I can tell you is that my soul gloried in such a solemn and melancholy vision.” Well, she’s a capable artist, but she was incapable of painting all that. The word picture is very much more. This is a Swiss landscape, nice enough, but rather tame. I mean, you really need to be Turner, don’t you? Or maybe Monet or Hodler in order to capture that grandeur and that splendour of colour that she describes in words. This is Ferdinand Hodler, a very wonderful Swiss artist at the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. I’m sure you all know the famous quip from “The Third Man” of Harry Lime. And he says, “In Rome, of the Borgias,” the most notorious popes, “They had Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci. But in Switzerland, in 400 years of brotherly love, all they’ve managed to produce is the cuckoo clock.” Well, that is complete… I mean, it’s a wonderful quip and it’s nice to quote, but it’s rubbish, actually. Because the Swiss… Well actually, I don’t think they’ve ever been particularly known for their brotherly love. And I know that you’ve been listening to lectures from Phil and Trudy that shows you a darker side of Switzerland. But it’s also unfair to the Swiss in that Swiss have produced an enormous number of wonderful artists. Paul Klee, and who else? Boklin, Giacometti, Segantini.

There’ve been lots and lots of very good Swiss artists. It’s a bit like the Belgians, I suppose, where if they have a Dutch-sounding name, people think they’re Dutch and if they have a French-sounding name. They think they’re French. People would assume that Giacometti is Italian and that Klee is German, but it’s not the case. So here, I’m going to finish a little bit prematurely tonight with some images by Ferdinand Hodler that really correspond with the verbal description of Vigee Le Brun of the incredible colours of sunrise and sunset over the Swiss mountains. This is a set for the final scene of the opera as it was in Paris in the 19th century. And I’m going to finish with another heart-stopping moment, really, from “William Tell.” After a storm and the sun comes out over the mountains and they’ve defeated the Austrian occupiers, as well as hailing the dawn and the sunshine coming out over the mountains, they’re hailing the dawn of a new age of liberty.

Q&A and Comments:

Thank you, thank you, Susan. Lucerne Mountain isn’t Pilates, I’m not sure I can answer that one. I’m not sure what you know. Thank you very much, Sharon.

Regarding “William Tell” Opera, two points, the revival of the oboe in B, that’s known as the English horn, and the fact the opera was through composed rather than rest of the team aria structure. Yes. Miriam, thank you.

Hillel, “Every child of my generation states knew the 'William Tell Overture’ because it’s the background to every episode of ‘The Lone Ranger.’” Yeah, me too, of course. As a child, my sister and I loved that, we were huge devotees of “The Lone Ranger.” And it is a very good piece to introduce classical musical. Gerald Finley, Kathleen, I knew you’d save me. Thank you so much. I don’t know why I couldn’t remember his name. He’s such a fine singer. Gerald Finley, yes indeed, thank you.

And Michael, you must have anticipated what I was going to say, that the Nazis banned it because of its political. No, Ben Hatner, he’s a tenor, actually. He probably, I’m sure he did sing it. He was a heroic tenor. He would’ve sung… He wouldn’t have sung the role of Tell. And again, yes, “The Lone Ranger.” Not Brit Turnfall, no, but could have been, actually. Famous Canadian baritones. Ooh, some of these I don’t know.

Bruce Boyce I remember of course, he was associated with Beach. And Victor Braun, was he? I heard him often in Munich, I didn’t know he was Canadian. Lots of great Canadian singers, of course. Thank you, Rita.

The cuckoo clock mentioned by Green is also incorrect ‘cause it was invented in Germany in the Black Forest. Somebody else told me that recently. Yes, it is a pity that Rossini decided to stop writing operas. On the other hand, my favourite operas and of Rossini are “The Starboard Martyr” and . Both pieces I listened to constantly in Paris.

“William Tell Overture” is always played in the morning in Ontario’s schools. A very good way to get the kids going. What effect did the publication of Edward Whymper’s book “Scrambles in the Alps” have on mountain tourism? I don’t know it. I need to look it up. Mountain Pilates is next to Lucerne, lovely view from the top. The name John Relaya, yes, I know that.

This is Elly Strauss, who lived in Switzerland for 30 years. Yes, of course, Switzerland does have not just the Kuntz house in Zurich. Zurich has, of course, many museums, and all over Switzerland, there are fantastic art collections, , and so on, Basel. You could do a very good museum tour of Switzerland.

And that is it for tonight. Wishing you all a very happy New Year, And all the best for 2024. Bye-Bye.