MUS 3032 Department of Music Southeastern Oklahoma State University

1. Chapter 35
Lecture Slides
A History of
Western Music
TENTH EDITION
by
J. PETER BURKHOLDER
DONALD JAY GROUT
CLAUDE V. PALISCA

2. MUSIC & OPPRESSION – MUSIC & THE NAZIS
Music under the Nazis
• Nazis established Reich Chamber of
Culture under Joseph Goebbels
• included Reich Music Chamber, all musicians
had to belong
• Richard Strauss, appointed first president
• Nazi requirements expressed in negatives
• must not be: dissonant, atonal, twelve-tone,
“chaotic,” intellectual, Jewish, jazz-influenced,
left-wing
• excluded most modernist music
• exploited great German composers of
nineteenth century, especially Wagner

3. Carl Orff (1895–1982)
• won international reputation during Nazi
• Nazis celebrated his music
• naively believed music was autonomous,
stayed in Germany
• Carmina burana (1936), chorus and
orchestra
• medieval poems
• drew on Stravinsky, folk songs, chant, medieval
secular song
• pseudo-antique style based on drones,
ostinatos, harmonic stasis, strophic repetition
• developed methods for teaching music in
schools
MUSIC & OPPRESSION – MUSIC & THE NAZIS

4. 1933, Nazis came to power (Hitler
elected Chancellor)
• attacked modern music as
decadent
• banned political left and Jews
from public life
• many leading musicians took
refuge abroad
• Entartete Musik (Degenerate
Music)
• 1938 public Exhibition on degenerate
composers that should be banned all
through German and Austria
MUSIC & OPPRESSION – BANNED BY THE NAZIS

5. Weill Schoenberg Krenek Berg
Schreker Stravinsky
MUSIC & OPPRESSION – BANNED BY THE NAZIS

6. Franz Schreker (1878-1934)
• Jewish-Austrian Composer – follower of the Second
Viennese School and other trends between the world
wars
• Leading opera composer in the early 20th century in
Germany & Austria
• Conducted the premiere of Mahler’s 8th Symphony in
Prague
• Director of the Berlin School of Music (until the Nazis
fired him for being half-Jewish)
• Nazis pushed out of his job posts because of his
decadent music and learned he was half-Jewish
• Died of complications from a stroke due to the stress
• Banned by the Nazis 4 years after his death in the 1938
Entarte Musik Exhibition
• Major works: 49 Lieder, 10 choral works, 4 piano
works, 2 chamber works, 20 orchestral works, 9 operas
“One cannot make music with hate in one’s heart.” (1920)
Schreker ca. 1931
MUSIC & OPPRESSION – BANNED BY THE NAZIS

7. Ernst Krenek (1900–1991)
• Austrian-Czech composer
• Jonny spielt auf (Johnny Plays On, premiered 1927), opera
• drew on jazz and simplified harmonic language
• attacked by Nazis as “degenerate,” because of the African
American elements
• Krenek was NOT Jewish, but WAS banned by the Nazis for
his opera because it featured a Black character named
and used Jazz idioms
• later adopted twelve-tone method of Schoenberg
• 1938, emigrated to United States after the Entarte Musik
Exhibition came out
MUSIC & OPPRESSION – BANNED BY THE NAZIS

8. Kurt Weill (1900–1950)
• German opera composer in Berlin
• exponent of New Objectivity - "Neue
as in the visual arts, which rejected the
sentimentality of late Romanticism and the
emotional agitation of expressionism.
• Collaborated with German Playwright/Poet
Bertolt Brecht and singer Lotte Lenya (his wife for
many years and star of his operas/shows)
• Banned by the Nazis in the Entartete Musik
Exhibition in 1938
• Moved to Paris in 1933 after Hitler came to
then London, then New York City
• second career composing Broadway musicals
• Major Works: Dreigoschenoper (The Three Penny
Opera), Der Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt
Mahagonny (opera), lots of songs, orchestral
works, chamber works, and musicals!
MUSIC & OPPRESSION – BANNED BY THE NAZIS

9. Paul Hindemith (1895–1963)
• German composer among the most prolific of the century
• important teacher of two generations
• Berlin School of Music, Yale University, University of Zurich
• thought of himself primarily as a practicing musician
• performed professionally: violinist, violist, conductor
• Nazis liked him in 1934, Goebbels praised him, then in 1936 he
was banned for his new aesthetics
• began composing in late Romantic style
• Then adopted aesthetic of New Objectivity (like Kurt Weill)
• all his music was neotonal (tonality based on one or several
nontraditional tonal conceptions, such as tonal assertion or
contrapuntal motion around a central chord)
• Mathis der Maler (Mathis the Painter, 1934–1935), opera
• opera based on life of Matthias Grünewald (Mathis Neithardt, ca.
1470–1538)
• music banned by Nazis as “cultural Bolshevism” – communist
• examined role of artist in relation to politics
MUSIC & OPPRESSION – BANNED BY THE NAZIS

10. Chapter 35
Lecture Slides
A History of
Western Music
TENTH EDITION
by
J. PETER BURKHOLDER
DONALD JAY GROUT
CLAUDE V. PALISCA

11. MUSIC & OPPRESSION: THE SOVIET UNION
Soviet Government controlled all aspects of
the arts
• as way to indoctrinate people in Marxist-
Leninist ideology
• enhance their patriotism
• after the Revolution (1917) musical institutions
were nationalized
• concert programming, repertories strictly
regulated
• 1934 - socialist realism - doctrine called for
realistic style
• works that portrayed socialism in positive
light
• celebrated revolutionary ideology, heroes
• music qualities
• relatively simple, accessible language
• centered on melody, folklike styles
• patriotic or inspiration subject matter

12. Sergey Prokofiev (1891–1953)
• Russian composer of operas ballets, symphonies
• Ballet Romeo and Juliet
• The Gambler – opera
• initial reputation as radical modernist
• left Russia after the Revolution of 1917, traveled to US, Paris,
Spain
• 1936, returned to Russia permanently under Stalin’s Regime
• Composed for the Soviets
• Soviet commissions
• Peter and the Wolf (1936), fairy tale for narrator and orchestra
• Alexander Nevsky (1938), celebrated film score
• modal melodies, orchestration conveys a Russian sound
• conforms to doctrine of socialist realism
• Died the same day as Stalin
MUSIC & OPPRESSION: THE SOVIET UNION

13. Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975)
• spent his entire career within Soviet system
• combination of traditional discipline with experimentation
• 1920s, more aligned with modernists
• First Symphony (1926), rocketed him to international prominence
• Fifth Symphony
• deep feeling and high tragedy
• outwardly conformed to socialist realism
• possible messages of bitterness and mourning
• Seventh Symphony (Leningrad, 1941)
• programmatic, heroic defense of Leningrad against Hitler
• widespread search for double meanings in Shostakovich’s works
• some hear complaint against Stalin’s repression
• Denounced twice by Stalin 1936 & 1948 for his musical style
• Anyone who opposed the Soviet Ideologies, was given a choice of exile
and their citizenship taken away, admittance into a mental hospital, or
going to a labor camp.
• Shostakovich, afraid of being arrested, conformed and apologized to
government and Stalin
MUSIC & OPPRESSION: THE SOVIET UNION