20th Century FIVE

stalin denunciation

1936, dawn of the great purges threatened the lives of civilians. Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk: ‘muddle instead of music … it is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly.’ He was branded an ‘enemy of the people’

shostakovich 4th symphony

withdrawn for fear of the loss of family members, friends and colleagues

zhdanovshcina

1948 decree persecuting formalist artists led to forced apologies, expulsion from teaching, banned works and poverty

shostakovich seventh symphony

written during the siege of leningrad. it’s propaganda value was realised and America saw him as a ‘relatable foreigner’ - a symbol of perseverance against facism

carl sandburg shostakovich

We listen to you, Dmitri Shostakovich, we know that you are there creating music, which is telling us about this struggle

shostakovich western influence

schoenberg and mahler - seen sympathetically by americans, and because he had been denounced by soviet authorities - he later became a feared result of communism as an oppressed puppet

fay shostakovich

devoted his entire life to the development of soviet music

soviet shostakovich side

the People’s artist of the USSR and triple recipient of the Order of Lenin. committed to socialist realism and denounced the formalism of schoenberg and stravinsky

revisionist shostakovich side

music contained a secret code expressing resistance, a closet dissident - an iconic figure representing the threat to authenticity in the face of totalitarianism

shostakovich 5th symphony success

rehabilitation as quasi-chief Soviet composer. his popularity peaked with his 7th, turning the starving orchestra and himself into heroes

shostakovich second fall of grace

1948, dismissed from the leningrad and moscow conservatories, with the union denouncing his music as formalist. most of his works were banned and he was forced into self incrimination. he was isolated and poor.

shostakovich career recovery

only after stalin’s death in 1953. as the ussr’s leading composer, he was forced to become a party member in 1960, and never publicly sided with dissident positions

julian barnes fear of political persecution

they always came for you in the middle of the night … he barely slept, and lay there imagining the worst things a man could image

julian barnes new york scientific and cultural conference for world peace

1949 - anyone with an ounce of understanding would know he hadn’t written the speeches he gave … patronisingly explained to americans how the soviet music system was superior to any other

julian barnes pravda party member

an article he hadn’t written but which required his signature … he had betrayed himself, and he had betrayed the good opinion others still held of him

shostakovich fanfare outspoken corroborated

1938 - i wanted to convey optimism through a series of tragic conflicts in a great inner, mental struggle

stalinist isaac dunayevsky 5th symphony

it does not by any means display the healthy symptoms for the development of soviet symphonic music

volkov 5th symphony

the rejoicing is forced, created under threat … it’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, ‘your business is rejoicing’’

barnes 5th symphony

permitted those with asses’ ears to hear only what they wanted to hear. they missed the screeching irony of the final movement … they heard only triumph itself

15th symphony politics

exploision of open dissidence in a neo-stalinist era. he allowed his name to be used on the side of the state against individuals like andrei sakharov, whose name has become a symbol of the struggle for freedom

symphony 10

premiered after stalin’s death, but still in a system with cultural policy, censorship and memory of punishment. act of resistance - protest music shaped by caution

symphony 10 second movement

short, violent and relentless, driven forward with a brutality that feels mechanical - many heard it as a portrait of stalin himself. it presents power as crushing and joyless, defined by force. he never confirmed or denied. plausible deniability became survival - audience supply context

protest music towards directness vietnam

joan baez - saigon bride confronted the human cost of war without metaphor - leaves no interpretive space and can sound instructional

avatar

positioned as an anti-imperalist parable but direct use of ‘shock and awe’, the rhetoric of the bush administration’s invasion of iraq, collapsed metaphor. for some, this clarifies, but for others, it limits engagement by narrowing meaning

rock music limited engagement trap

avoided by holding targets at arm’s length. the foo fighters’ pretender emerged during later years of the bush administration, among public distrust of authority and institutions. the song is confrontational but doesn’t name an enemy. the music video presents anonymous ranks and abstract structures rather than specific figures

foo fighters pretender impact

broader relevant - if made today with uniform labelled ice, the meaning would be clear, but narrow. the protest would be loud and immediately satisfying, but not durable

shostakovich 10 reminder

protest does not need to announce itself to be effective. in some cases, clarity is dangerous, or becomes disposable. protest music asks use to decide for ourselves what it is saying, recognising what is being risked

harold schonberg 5th symphony

rehabilitated himself … but to all intents and purposes, he was ruined as a composer … he was to write nothing but safe music, repeating old formulas, imitating some of prokofiev’s mannerisms

shostakovich secret works

music for the draw. an anti-formalist rayok, a parody of zhdanov and his minions that wasn’t performed until 1989

shostakovich jew

anti-semitism was a part of the soviet system, but he stood by Mieczyslaw Weinberg when he was arrested, writing letters to stalin of his innocence

shostakovich jewish music

he quoted the song cycle from jewish folk poetry in his music and his 13th symphony reflects on the 1941 nazi massacre of jews near kiev, condemning anti-semitism and the soviets. the text points out that galileo, shakespeare and newton were reviled by authority figures

shostakovich jewish famous men text quote

those who cursed them are forgotten, but the accursed are remembered well

leningrad symphony 80th anniversary

6 months after russia invaded ukraine, putin watched a performance: conitnues to evoke the strongest feelings in new generations … it makes them share in the love for the motherland and readiness to defend it - power of silent resistance

5th symphony second theme

a soviet folk song fulfilling the wish of the government to celebrate the country. the minor change suggests emotional distress

5th symphony final movement

a slow march when expected brisk, with musical reference to boris godunov, an opera in which crowds are forced to praise the tsar

wagner critical jewish views

das judenthum in der musik, or what is german?

wagner parsifal

hitler denounced as being ideologically unacceptable and the opera was not performed at bayreuth during the war. he only took what aligned with political views and held original scores in his berlin bunker

nuremberg rally

1933 hitler ordered that each open with a performance of the overture from rienzi. his music was performed during the third reich even when his popularity declined

dachau concentration camp

wagner’s music used to reeducate political prisoners by exposure to national music

israel wagner 1938

operas have never been staged, and instrumental performances were controversial. banned from the palestine orchestra after Kristallnacht, a nazi attack against jews

barenboim israel wagner

nobody had a word to say about it until the use, misuse and abuse - by hitler

zubin mehta 1981

played extracts from tristan and isolde at an encore of a concert, allowing the audience to leave but most stayed. it led to widespread condemnation: the idea this was a scandal was started the next day by people with a political agenda, not those in the concert hall

daniel barenboim 1992

programmed works by wagner at a concert of the israel philharmonic, but this was cancelled after protests

first documented public israel wagner concerts

2000, when holocaust survivor mendi rodan conducted siegfried idyll

nordic richard wagner society

promoted his music as symbolising a solution to the threat of bolshevism and jewry, as well as being the purest representation of the glory of the germanic race - despite him have close jewish friends. hitler claims his vision of a future germany was manifest in his music

jonathan carr hitler

hitler was obsessed with the master, but the party faithful were note, and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to performances at hitler’s insistence - we are all told that the germans poured into opera houses to listen to wagner as soon as hitler came to power. the opposite is true

traudl junge hitler’s secretary

most nazis were bored silly at the prospect of watching 5 hour long epics

die meistersinger 1933 gala

so few nazis turned up that hitler sent patrols to drag party members out of beer gardens and brothels

the day of potsdam

propaganda show stages by goebbels to inaugurate the new reichstag - ended with a performance of die meistersinger. the ride of the valkyries was broadcast to accompany reports on german air attacks

siegrieds tod

from gotterdammerung - heard on german wirelesses to announce important deaths, and the overture from rienzi was often heard in ceremonies

hitler in a letter

i recognise in wagner my only predecessor … i regard him as a supreme prophetic figure - he told one of his architects that his music was the cause that inspired him to unite the german nation

steve reich view on us politics

we all wish art could counter the direction of us politics. but i can’t

steve reich picasso politics

created guernica after the bombing of the town by franco. afterwards we had the bombing of nagasaki, hiroshima, and 9/11. - so if that scale of greatness can have no effect whatsoever, we need to realise the limitations of art and music

1964 harlem six

6 black men arrested for the murder of a shopkeeper, despite little evidence. two had been brutally beaten by police officers a week earlier. they were sentenced to life. the mothers appealed and activists raised funds

steve reich come out 1966 begins

i had to, like, open the bruise up and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them - daniel hamm explained that the police beat him so badly he could barely walk, but the hospital wouldn’t admit him because he wasn’t actively bleeding

come out quote repeated

no instruments. then it is cut short, placed at a slight lag, and repeated again. over 13 minutes there is a process of cutting, clipping, lagging and repeating, developing a rhythm. the sentence becomes noise. in the end it echoes, and yet you cannot hear the words - forgetting the violence

come out confrontation

confronting white listeners by creating a background haze - your calm is built on a violence done to someone else. either it becomes a monotone drone or you were never really listening at all

the harlem six case legacy

few remainders in english print media, expect in commentaries on come out. the come out wiki page has a passage noting the six, but the case’s page itself does not

lloyd whitesell come out

racial issues were heightened by the piece because it erased the presence of the black man, revealing - an aural condensation of backgroundness without colour

come out exploitation

uses hamm’s pain for aesthetic gain and fails to pay him royalties

fredric jameson

political unconscious - political positions are revealed through the psychoanalytic and ideological analysis of narrative

reich come out interpretative

does intensify the meaning of hamm’s words, but also creates aural Rorschach tests in which the listener has freedom to interpret what is heard - no one single defined politics

tia denora politics

artworks in and of themselves don’t have a politics, and instead come to be used politically in various ways, through acts of interpretation

come out to show them anticipates legacy

#icantbreathe, created during the black lives matter movement around george floyd

reich jew childhood

during the war he made train journeys between new york and la to visit his separated parents. he later pondered that had he been in europe instead, he might have been in holocaust traints

different trains recorded sounds

trains, sirens and warning bells with speech taken from interviews

second movement different trains

3 holocuast survivors talking about train trips to concentration camps

taruskin different trains view

he has composed the only adequate musical response to the holocaust - escapes the traditional pitfalls of representations, neither transmitting agendas or authored texts, but recordings that preserve the emotions and voices of the original subjects and avoid textual manipulation

taruskin different trains what is there

there is just the perception that while this happened here, that happened there, and a stony invitation to reflect

scholars different trains consequences

transforming subjective survivor testimonies into historical discourse in which their witness is lifted out of its emotional context and made to serve as fact rather than memory

different trains altered text

consultation of tapes - misheard certain phrases, producing transcription errors that reframe key moments by substituting his account for that of the witness

problems of asking survivors memories

some struggle with the ruptures of memory caused by trauma, and the impossibility of translating memories into language and narrative

christopher lasch minimalism

trauma as an artistic object, neutralisation of emotion through detachment - by turning horrible events into images … deadens the emotional impact of events, neutralises criticism … it annihilates the subject and object alike

the minimal artist holocaust

akin to holocaust survivors - able to narrate plausible representations, but disconnected from inner experience of trauma

different trains flash backs

alternates between repetitive stasis, preserving tension between episodic flashbacks and progressive narratives, reflecting how they are held captive by a recurring memory

oren stier different trains

he steered their memories into chronological templates - actively producing meaning or disrupting the transmission of the witness’ experience

dori laub untainted listening

comes to be a participant and a co-owner … through his very listening he comes to partially experience trauma in himself

listeners of holocaust music

not untainted, bringing preconceptions. audiences are expected too stitch together memories, constructing the drama ourselves

oren stier audience untainted

memory can never make a first impression here, since the receiver’s mind is never a blank slate

survivor voice subjectivity

traumatic memory resists the full grasp of the intellect and external control - resists objectification

adorno comparison reich

if adorno has shown us that ‘to write poetry after auschwitz is barbaric’, then reich demonstrates that to remember the holocaust in any medium is an exercise in imagination and artistry

aharon appelfeld different trains separation

the materials are indeed from a life, but, ultimately, the creation is an independent creature

joseph boughey different trains lost

the music evokes lost world, from that of the us sleeper train to the, thankfully, lost cattle trains that represented the destruction of communities that, in many cases, remain irreversibly destroyed

final line of different trains

they loved to listen to the singing suggests music provided beauty in the worst environments - was misheard: they laughed to listen to the singing - brutal soldiers