Tunes for Tyrants with Suzy Klein...

[Serial_Apologist]

Philip Glass and Steve Reich's music was not on the other hand used to fire up the Hitler Youth.

The point she made is the association of the music as being composed during and taken up by that regime . I am struggling after a long day to think of any other piece composed during the Nazi regime in Germany or Austria that retains any such popularity .

PS I doubt Capriccio or Daphne come near !

Am I right in thinking Hindemith's Mathis der Maler was composed when still in Germany?

[ardcarp]

Philip Glass and Steve Reich's music was not on the other hand used to fire up the Hitler Youth.

Was Carmina Burana?

[Barbirollians]

Am I right in thinking Hindemith's Mathis der Maler was composed when still in Germany?

Yes 1934 and Furtwangler faced criticism from the Nazis for performing it - hardly a work taken up by the Nazi regime .

[ardcarp]

Not everything from 1930s Germany was de facto bad. For instance the Medau Movement brought a new flowing and non-jerky system of exercises to music for women. Very graceful with much use of hoops, ribbons and other paraphernalia. Much of this was copied by The Women's League of Health and Beauty in the UK. And I'm perfectly sure the many women involved (doing exhibitions in The Albert Hall, for instance) made no connection with 1930s Germany, let alone the 3rd Reich!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6do64OoXG5U

[Barbirollians]

[QUOTE=ardcarp;643266]Not everything from 1930s Germany was de facto bad. For instance the Medau Movement brought a new flowing and non-jerky system of exercises to music for women. Very graceful with much use of hoops, ribbons and other paraphernalia. Much of this was copied by The Women's League of Health and Beauty in the UK. And I'm perfectly sure the many women involved (doing exhibitions in The Albert Hall, for instance) made no connection with 1930s Germany, let alone the 3rd Reich!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6do64OoXG5U[/QUOTE

No doubt delighted to have an escape from kinder, kirche, kuche

[Lat-Literal]

Yes 1934 and Furtwangler faced criticism from the Nazis for performing it - hardly a work taken up by the Nazi regime .

Yes - 1934-35. It wasn't performed until 1938, the year that Hindemith moved to Switzerland and two years before he moved to the US. The first performance was in Zurich. There are some parallels between Hindemith and Strauss re Jewish relatives which is to say that Hindemith's wife was partly Jewish; neither composer throughout the 1930s knew quite what to do given the political position although each was wary - for the interpretive complexities of Mathis der Maler perhaps also see the veiled criticism in Friedenstag; and for every moment the Nazis were in favour of their music, the next they were against it. Which raises an additional point actually. As was clearly displayed in the programme, further east Shostakovich also fell in and fell out of favour. This tended to be the way under such regimes with composers who could not be unequivocally opposed for reasons of ethnicity or outright opposition. So, while one could say that a fair amount depended on the output of the composers themselves, to believe that authoritarian regimes know precisely what they want of music could be giving them too much credit for clarity. Any clarity in being prescriptive was accompanied by fickleness, irrationality, personal idiosyncrasy and sheer muddle.

[LMcD]

Barshai on Brilliant Classics perhaps

That would also be my choice. It's quite a journey from the vigour and optimism of the 1st symphony (a remarkable student work) to the eerie, gaunt world of the 15th, where he uses symphonic forces to recreate the quietness and despair of much of the later chamber works. The string quartets are also well worth investigating (!)

[P. G. Tipps]

Hiya ardcarp,

Away from the dynamic of the time they were written I am comfortable hearing all works that the National Socialists promoted in Germany such as those by Wagner, Liszt, Bruckner, Pfitzner, Orf, Richard Strauss etc.

Quite ... not to mention Beethoven.

Though I'm a huge Suzy fan I had no intention of watching the programme. I detest the way that some music has been hi-jacked by politicians, whether tyrants or not, for their own grubby, self-serving little purposes. This has happened throughout history and should simply be either ignored or treated with the contempt.it deserves.

I see some pop-stars (who I'd never heard of before) recently complained that some of their music had been played at the Tory Party Conference.

And I'll say no more about the actual (if not official) origins of the innocent little melody used in Leftist Labour's idolising chant .. 'Ohhhh ... JERemy CORbyn!'.

Sometimes, just sometimes, political ignorance, alongside a general public unawareness, can indeed be a comparative bliss for others!

[Richard Tarleton]

OT, a ragbag of a programme on BBC2 last night on the Russian Revlution - amusing to hear Orlando Figes juxtaposed with Tariq Ali offering completely contrasting views on Lenin's actions and motivations...even Martin Amis was there, not entirely sure why, thought he was a novelist.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

OT, a ragbag of a programme on BBC2 last night on the Russian Revlution - amusing to hear Orlando Figes juxtaposed with Tariq Ali offering completely contrasting views on Lenin's actions and motivations...even Martin Amis was there, not entirely sure why, thought he was a novelist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koba_the_Dread

[Richard Tarleton]

Ah, thanks. Yes I now remember his spat with Christopher Hitchens.

[gurnemanz]

Off topic, though related. I would hope someone knows of this:



Some years ago, Charle Mackerras, in an interview, described Richard Strauss introducing his son and daughter-in-law to Hitler. Knowing that Alice was Jewish, Hitler reportedly said to her - and I cannot remember the crucial verb here - Wir haben Sie aufgexxxxx - with the meaning of something like promoted you out of Jewishness.

I would be pleased if anyone knows the source of Mackerras's anecdote.

I don't know the quote but I know German and my first reaction was that it would be "aufgenommen" - "taken up" or "adopted" and I cannot offhand think of any other possibility. I have read (here) that Alice was declared to be "Ehrenarierein" (honorary Aryan). That did not prevent 26 members of her family from dying in the holocaust.

[kernelbogey]

I don't know the quote but I know German and my first reaction was that it would be "aufgenommen" - "taken up" or "adopted" and I cannot offhand think of any other possibility. I have read (here) that Alice was declared to be "Ehrenarierein" (honorary Aryan). That did not prevent 26 members of her family from dying in the holocaust.

Many thanks for this, Gurnemanz. I think I may simply have mis-remembered the quote from Sir Charles. Maybe the word was Ehrenarierein, or something close. Your quoted source makes chilling reading - thanks.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Barshai on Brilliant Classics perhaps

Yes - the price has gone up somewhat from the 50p (or similar) that Bryn and others paid for the whole set from Superdrug some years ago, but for consistency and excellence of both performances and recordings, Barshai's set is about the best that's easily available.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shostakovich-Complete-Symphonies-Dmitry/dp/B00005UW2B

(The MP3 sound isn't terrible, and makes the £7.99 asking price very recommendable.)

[Serial_Apologist]

As was clearly displayed in the programme, further east Shostakovich also fell in and fell out of favour. This tended to be the way under such regimes with composers who could not be unequivocally opposed for reasons of ethnicity or outright opposition. So, while one could say that a fair amount depended on the output of the composers themselves, to believe that authoritarian regimes know precisely what they want of music could be giving them too much credit for clarity. Any clarity in being prescriptive was accompanied by fickleness, irrationality, personal idiosyncrasy and sheer muddle.

Local folk music traditions were actually encouraged under Stalin, for opportunistic reasons - the Armenian composer Khatachurian the probably being the best known example in the west. Interviewed in the early 1960s, the English composer Alan Bush spelt out the then-current rationale for Soviet nationalism - "socialism in one country" - in contradistinction (from the uncritical Communist Party Defense of the Soviet Union angle) with fascist ideals of art being required to be an expression of nationhood:

"Art is the expression of an individual, but an individual incorporates within himself the feelings and ideals of the society around him. In fact the greatest artists are those who sum up in their work the most general feelings and ideals of the largest numbers of people. But the artist is, after all, a person born in a particular country with a special culture, a language and a way of life, that is most particularly his own. This fact conditions him from the moment he is born until the time he begins to create art. Marxism teaches that this fact should be accepted by the artist, in fact that he should glory in it and attempt to work out his ideas within the framework of that culture which is most particularly his own. This idea is not peculiar to Marxism alone: Vaughan Williams and many other composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have accepted the idea that national characteristics inherent in art should be brought out. This is something fundamental to great artists and not a narrow doctrine in any way.

"The fascist believes that one nationalism is foreordained to be superior and to suppress other nationalisms. Marxism teaches the exact oppostie of this. Each national culture has its own contribution to make regardless of its size or degree of cultural development. What they are all striving to reflect through their art is fundamentally the same - the experiences of human life; these experiences are, however, different in every national grouping and at different periods of history"*.

Of course it goes without saying that Marxism teaches no such thing!

(Murray Shafer British Composers in Interview (1963) Faber and Faber, London, PP57-58)