Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T03:43:41.443Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Music: Performance and Politics in Twentieth-Century Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Michael H. Kater
Michael H. Kater
Affiliation:
York University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Review Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 93 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Feldman, Gerald D., The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics and Society in the German Inflation, 1914–1924 (New York and Oxford, 1993).Google Scholar See the reviews by Balderston, Theo, “Gerald D. Feldman Analyzes the German Inflation,” Central European History 27 (1994): 205–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Jacobson, Jon, in Journal of Modern History 68 (1996): 245–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Michael H. Kater, “The Revenge of the Fathers: The Demise of Modern Music at the End of the Weimar Republic,” German Studies Review 15 (1992): 303; idem, Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (New York and Oxford, 1992), 26–27; idem, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (forthcoming in 11 1996 from Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford).

3. See Auerbach, Helmuth, “Hitlers politische Lehrjahre und die Münchener Gesellschaft, 1919–1923,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25 (1977): 1–45;Google ScholarTurner, Henry A. Jr., German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (New York and Oxford, 1985).Google Scholar

4. Kater, Different Drummers, 41; idem, The Twisted Muse.

5. Schrader, Bärbel/Schebera, Jürgen, The “Golden” Twenties: Art and Literature in the Weimar Republic (New Haven and London, 1988), 123;Google ScholarEvans, Joan, Hans Rosbaud: A Bio-Bibliography (New York, 1992), 21;Google ScholarDrechsler, Nanny, Die Funktion der Musik im deutschen Rundfunk, 1933–1945 (Pfaffenweiler, 1988);Google ScholarDiller, Ansgar, Rundfunkpolitik im Dritten Reich (Munich, 1980);Google Scholar Kater, Different Drummers, 111–201.

6. Currently republished in Taruskin, Richard, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (New York and Oxford, 1995).Google Scholar

7. With the recent, albeit tendentions, exception of John, Eckhard, Musikbolschewismus: Die Politisierung der Musik in Deutschland, 1918–1938 (Stuttgart and Weimar, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Bryan Gilliam, “Stage and Screen: Kurt Weill and Operatic Reform in the 1920s,” in Music and Performance, ed. idem, 1–12, quotation 1. On Hindemith, see Andres Briner et al., Paul Hindemith: Leben und Werk in Bild und Text (Zurich and Mainz, 1988), 60–136.

9. Robinson, J. Bradford, “Jazz Reception in Weimar Germany: In Search of a Shimmy Figure,” in Music and Performance, ed. Gilliam, , 107–34.Google Scholar

10. Quotation Riethmüller's liner notes for “ Erwin Schulhoff,” piano music played by SherriJones, compact disk WER 6281–2 (Mainz, 1995). Also see John, Musikbolschewismus, 146–52. Confrey, the composer of the then fashionable Tin Pan Alley-style “Kitten on the Keys,” is not even mentioned in Leonard Feather's authoritative The Encyclopedia of Jazz (New York, 1960);Google Scholar Whiteman is, but critically, 460. Also see Blesh, Rudi, Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz, 2nd ed. (New York, 1976), 336.Google Scholar

11. Kater, Different Drummers, 3–28; see also idem, “The Jazz Experience in Weimar Germany,” German History 6 (1988): 145–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. Kowalke, Kim H., “Singing Brecht Versus Brecht Singing: Performance in Theory and Practice,” in Music and Performance, ed. Gilliam, , 74–93Google Scholar, Weill quoted 80.

13. Taylor, Ronald, Kurt Weill: Composer in a Divided World (London, 1991), 270–73, 279–80;Google Scholar quotation Weill to Maurice [Speiser], 22 January 1944, Weill-Lenya Research Center, New York, 47/14.

14. Hinton, Stephen, “Lehrstück: An Aesthetics of Performance,” in Music and Performance, ed. Gilliam, , 59–73;Google Scholaridem, Kurt Weill: The Threepenny Opera (Cambridge, 1990). See my review of the last-mentioned in Modern Drama 25 (1992): 483–84.Google Scholar

15. Quotations Hinton, “Lehrstück,” 70.

16. Hailey, Christopher, “Rethinking Sound: Music and Radio in Weimar Germany,” in Music and Performance, ed. Gilliam, , 13–36Google Scholar, quotation 14.

17. Personal file of Otto Urack, Berlin Document Center (now Bundesarchiv Aussenstelle Berlin-Zehlendorf—BAAZ for short); facsimile in Schrader/Schebera, The “Golden” Twenties, 121.

18. In Music and Performance, ed. Gilliam, , 37–58.Google Scholar

19. Sadie, Stanley, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), vol. 13, 104–5.Google Scholar

20. Kater, The Twisted Muse.

21. Hill, “‘Overcoming Romanticism,’” 40.

22. Potter, Pamela M., “German Musicology and Early Music Performance: 1918–1933,” in Music and Performance, ed. Gilliam, , 94–106Google Scholar, quotations 95.

23. Personal files of Gerigk and Stege in BAAZ; Kater, Different Drummers; Kater, The Twisted Muse.

24. See Chap. 4 in Kater, The Twisted Muse; Potter, “German Musicology,” 98, 103–4.

25. Williams, Peter, “The Idea of Bewegung in the German Organ Reform Movement of the 1920s,” in Music and Performance, ed. Gilliam, , 135–53.Google Scholar

26. Chap. 4 in Kater, The Twisted Muse.

27. Die Musik 29 (1936): 34Google Scholar, photograph of Ramin near 16; Dallmann, Wolfgang, “Kirchenmusikalische Erneuerung in schwerer Zeit,” Musik und Kirche 59 (1989): 109–10;Google ScholarRiethmüller, Albrecht, “Die Bestimmung der Orgel im Dritten Reich,” in Orgel und Ideologie: Bericht über das fünfte Colloquium der Walcker-Stiftung für orgelwissenschaftliche Forschung 5.–7. Mai 1983 in Göttweig, ed. Eggebrecht, Hans Heinrich (Murrhardt, 1984), 40–41.Google Scholar

28. Levi, Erik, “Music and National Socialism: The Politicisation of Criticism, Composition and Performance,” in The Nazification of Art: Art, Design, Music, Architecture and Film in the Third Reich, ed. Taylor, Brandon/van der Will, Wilfried (Winchester and Hampshire, 1990), 158–82.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., 163, 168. On Hindemith, see Zenck, Claudia Maurer, “Zwischen Boykott und Anpassung an den Charakter der Zeit: Über die Schwierigkeiten eines deutschen Komponisten mit dem Dritten Reich,” Hindemith-Jahrbuch 9 (1980): 65–129.Google Scholar In referring to the “Mayor,” Levi gives the mistaken impression that Lord Mayor Karl Goerdeler had the statue removed. In reality, during a temporary absence in 1936, Goerdeler's deputy Rudolf Haake had the statue taken away and, as an act of protest, Goerdeler resigned his lord-mayoral position in April 1937. See the authoritative version in Hoffmann, Peter, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), 76, 685Google Scholar, n. 27.

30. Wulf, Joseph, ed., Musik im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation (Reinbek, 1966).Google Scholar

31. Prieberg, Fred K., Musik im NS-Staat (Frankfurt am Main, 1982).Google Scholar See my short critique in the context of a rather specific music-historical constellation in my “Carl Orff im Dritten Reich,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 43 (1995): 1–2.Google Scholar

32. Meyer, Michael, The Politics of Music in the Third Reich (New York, 1991).Google Scholar See the review by musicologist Evans, Joan in Central European History 26 (1993): 242–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and my own review in Canadian Journal of History 27 (1992): 152–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar But also see Meyer's, much more original earlier work in exploratory articles, such as “Music on the Eve of the Third Reich,” in Towards the Holocaust: The Social and Economic Collapse of the Weimar Republic, ed. Dobkowski, Michael N. and Wallimann, Isidor (Westport, 1983), 315–42.Google Scholar

33. Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 36–37, 122.

34. Ibid., 42–43.

35. Ibid., 43. See my forthcoming book, The Twisted Muse, for details on Stravinsky and Hindemith. My insights into the Stravinsky complex have been decisively informed by the pioneering work in this area of Joan Evans, who has several important publications pending.

36. Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 43–44. See Heyworth, Peter, Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1985), 391–417.Google Scholar

37. Levi, Music in the Third Reich, xiv.

38. Ibid., 47. See Kater, The Twisted Muse.

39. Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 49, 116, 192.

40. Ibid., 158; Kater, The Twisted Muse, chaps. 4 and 5.

41. Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 49; Kater, Different Drummers, 44.

42. Levi, Musik in the Third Reich, 51, 57.

43. Ibid., 84. CfPrieberg, Fred K., Kraftprobe: Wilhelm Furtwängler im Dritten Reich (Wiesbaden, 1986);Google Scholar more trenchantly and critically Evans, Richard J., “Playing for the Devil: How Much Did Furtwängler Really Resist the Nazis?” Times Literary Supplement, London, 13 11 1992, 3–4;Google ScholarDie Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels: Sämtliche Fragmente, ed. Elke, Föhlich, 5 vols. (Munich, 1987);Google ScholarDie Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, pt. II: Diktate, 1941–1945, ed. Elke, Fröhlich, 15 vols. (Munich, 1993–1996).Google Scholar

44. Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 91, 137, 236.

45. Ibid., 114.

46. Ibid., 197; chap. 3 in Kater, The Twisted Muse.

47. Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 142.

48. The exceptions are very occasional materials microfilmed for the archives of the Wiener Library in London.

49. On jazz, see Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 119–23. Also Kater, Michael H., “Forbidden Fruit? Jazz in the Third Reich,” American Historical Review 94 (1989): 11–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and my book Different Drummers, Further, see e.g., Dahlhaus, Carl, “Politische Implikationen der Operndramaturgie: Zu einigen deutschen Opern der Dreissiger Jahre,” in Bericht über den Internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Bayreuth 1981, ed. Christoph-Hellmut, Mahling/Sigrid Wiesmann (Kassel, 1984), 148–53;Google ScholarDanuser, Hermann, Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, 1984);Google ScholarZenck, Claudia Maurer, “Erich Itor Kahn: Ein unbekannter Mittler der Neuen Musik,” Musica 6 (1986): 525–31;Google ScholarZenck, Maurer, Ernst Krenek—ein Komponist im Exil (Vienna, 1980)Google Scholar (see also n. 29); Steinweis, Alan E., Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts (Chapel Hill and London, 1993).Google Scholar Even if this book had come too late for Levi, he could have looked at Steinweis's, earlier pertinent works, such as “Weimar Culture and the Rise of National Socialism: The Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur,” Central European History 24 (1991): 402–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50. Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 172, 259, n. 10.

51. Ibid., 177–82, quotation 178.

52. Grunberger, Richard, The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 (New York, 1971).Google Scholar