“Soul Is But Harmony”: David Josef Bach and the Workers' Symphony Concert Association, 1905–1918

2008 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 66-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Koehler
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
World War ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Cultural Divide ◽  
Mass Politics ◽  
Great Attraction

Ifhigh culture, asTheodorAdornoonce proposed, promises a reality that does not exist, why, at the fin de siècle, did it hold such great attraction for Central Europe's populist politicians who were most attuned to the realities of everyday life? The answer, at least for imperial Austria, is that those politicians believed high culture to possess an integrative social function, which forced them to reconcile notions of “high” culture with “mass” culture. This was particularly true in Vienna, where the city's public performance venues for art, music, stage theater, and visual art stood as monuments to the values that the liberal middle classes had enshrined in the 1867 Constitution. A literate knowledge of this cultural system—its canon of symphonic music; the literature of tragedy, drama, and farce; and classical and contemporary genres of painting—was essential for civic participation in an era of liberal political and cultural hegemony. This article examines one cultural association that attempted to exploit the interaction between German high culture and two spheres, which are commonly thought to stand at odds with elite, high culture: popular culture and mass politics. Rather than a simple, cultural divide, this relationship created a contested “terrain of political and social conflict” in the decades preceding World War I. This terrain was of enormous consequence for Viennese of every social class.

“Ballad for Americans”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Gough ◽  
Peggy Seeger
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Music Programs ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Productions

This chapter argues that overtly political themes never dominated Federal One productions. Yet, some of the beliefs espoused by the 1930s Left took root and found appeal among subsequent generations of Americans. Much as pre-World War I bohemians saw many of their ideas absorbed into the mass culture of the 1920s, so did the goals and convictions of the 1930s Left enter mainstream social movements of the post-World War II period. These causes found inspiration to varying degrees in musical expression, as well as particular elements of the radical political activism of the 1930s. Though notably less contentious than other WPA cultural productions, the Federal Music programs in the regional West should also be viewed as harbingers of these later social developments.

scholarly journals Women of the bohemian circles of Paris in establishment of French theatricality of “Belle Epoque”

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-77
Author(s):  
Mariya Vadimovna Vyrodova
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Personal Growth ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Life Strategy ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Belle Epoque ◽  
World War ◽  
Belle Époque ◽  
The Russian Language

The period of last quarter of the XIX – beginning of the XX century in France after the World War I receives a name “Belle Epoque”. It is the time of development of entertainment industry, origination of mass culture, where women play a special role. The object of this research is the life strategies of women of the bohemian circles of Paris of “Belle Epoque”. The subjects is the women in French theatricality of the late XIX – early XX century. The goal of the work consists in determining the role played by thre women with a new female life strategy in formation of the phenomenon of French theatricality of “Belle Epoque”. Methodology is based on the sociocultural approach towards the problem, and suggests detailed analysis of the rare memoires of the performers, actresses and dancers, which were not published in Russian or translated into the Russian language. It is noted that women in the bohemian circles reconsidered their strategies in achieving life goals, putting the questions of career and personal growth to the forefront. They also were able to respond to the desires of audience of the late XIX – early XX century, attracting attention to the art of dance, pantomime, theatre, bringing their personal outlook upon the manner of performing. Women performed equal to men, often superseding them in some fields of art due to their natural femininity and talent.

Africa for the Africans!

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Ewing
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Black Men ◽  
African Descent ◽  
West Indian ◽  
World War ◽  
New Negro ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Mass Politics ◽  
Global Reach

This chapter examines the extent of Garveyism's global reach in the aftermath of World War I. It looks at how the spread of radical Garveyism transcended its West Indian skeleton, enlivening the dreams of black men and women throughout the Americas and Africa, projecting a dazzling interpretation of world events and scriptural destiny that built on and paid respect to rich histories of struggle while plotting a new future and a new identity—a New Negro. Radical Garveyism urgently articulated a moment in which the outlines of the postwar world were uncertain, and in which peoples of African descent sensed an opportunity to redraw them. Its dramatic reception both explained a moment of global mass politics and catalyzed new and often explosive expressions of dissent.

Composition

2021 ◽  
pp. 317-355
Author(s):  
Katharine Ellis
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Career Paths ◽  
Art Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
World War ◽  
French Music ◽  
Schola Cantorum

Despite its “regional” label, the 1937 Exposition offered meagre support for folk-related art music written by regionalists, suggesting that the tempering of folk music’s power was just as important here as in its popular sung and danced forms. Consistently across the century from the 1830s, provincial career paths for composers offered many more opportunities for decentralized or centralist activity (secular or as a maître de chapelle) than for regionalist expression, and the Schola Cantorum was not the catalyst for change to the extent that has hitherto been assumed. Discussion of the influence of the “Russian Five” on French music, and the contrasting ways regions (native and adoptive) are presented in new music, leads to case studies of operas by Bruneau, Séverac, Ropartz, Canteloube, and Leroux to show how French local and regionalist content played out in Paris during periods of changing nationalist intensity, including during World War I. The allegorical tactics of creative anachronism (Ropartz) prompt a broader discussion about the folk-historical nexus in French music from Chabrier to Poulenc, underpinned via modality. This nexus is what explains why France emerges with one of the few European modernisms to eschew folk sources except as folded into an upper-class patrimoine—the balletic dance that underpins much French neoclassicism.

Dix, Otto (1891–1969)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Van Dyke
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Academic Appointment ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

Otto Dix was a painter who emerged as a leading figure of the German avant-garde after World War I. His expressionist caprices, dadaist collages, and verist grotesques challenged prevalent norms of taste and propriety in a number of ways, which include but are not limited to the mixing of high art with mass culture, testing the limits of obscenity and transgressing traditionally heroic images of war. These tactics, coupled with the energetic promotion of his work in the modern dealer–critic system, laid the foundation for the painter’s rapid professional ascent, which culminated in an academic appointment in 1926. At the same time, conservative, nationalist and Nazi artists, critics, and activists frequently attacked Dix’s work, which was prominently displayed in anti-modernist exhibitions such as Degenerate Art between 1933 and 1938. During the Third Reich, Dix was marginalized; he adapted by producing ideologically equivocal, marketable landscapes and religious scenes. After 1945, Dix abandoned the techniques and themes of his earlier, best-known work and sought to position himself in West and East Germany while maintaining his independence from both abstraction and Socialist Realism. His work of the 1920s is now canonical, although the character of his political ideology and the causes and implications of his depictions of the female body and sexual violence continue to be debated.

Introduction: From Bourgeois to Corporatist Europe

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Maier
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
World War I ◽  
European Society ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
World War ◽  
Mass Politics ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Economic Stabilization ◽  
Elected Representatives

This introductory chapter explains that the book examines the process by which three European nations—France, Germany, and Italy—achieved political and economic stabilization in the decade after World War I. It shows how conservatives aimed at a stability and status associated with prewar Europe, employing the term “bourgeois” as a shorthand for all they felt threatened by war, mass politics, and economic difficulty. The book describes the emergence of a corporatist political economy that involved the displacement of power from elected representatives or a career bureaucracy to the major organized forces of European society and economy. This evolution toward corporatism meant the decline of sovereignty and of parliamentary influence. The book highlights two further significant developments that emerged only with the massive economic mobilization of World War I: the integration of organized labor into a bargaining system supervised by the state, and the wartime erosion of the distinction between private and public sectors.

Conflict and Journalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fay Anderson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
New Media ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
The Press ◽  
Media Organizations

The 20th century was defined by violent conflict: war, genocide, and military occupation. World War I left approximately 10 million dead and World War II had a death toll estimated at 55 million. It has been conservatively calculated that the total number of dead killed in wars during the century was 108 million, as the casualties shifted from armed combatants to victims of mass extermination in civil wars and wars of colonization. Civilian collateral damage and the targeting of civilians by ethnicity and religion became tragically common. Journalists have witnessed and chronicled the seismic military, social, cultural, and political transformations, as well as providing a vital democratic function. Paralleling this age of devastation was the ascendant power of legacy media and its golden age in the West. The combination of technological advancement, the professionalization of the industry, greater literacy and expanded newspaper readerships, and mass culture brought the press to the frontline in unprecedented numbers and in a new and intimate relationship. Journalists functioned and continue to operate as witnesses, communicators, recorders, and interpreters, on both the battlefield and the home front, as well as negotiating the competing demands of their media organizations, the public, political, and military elites, and their professional lives. This century had barely dawned when armies and a largely jingoistic press were marshalled in Afghanistan and Iraq after the attacks in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. The nature of warfare had evolved—from limited wars with clearly identified armies on demarcated fronts to non-conventional wars and wars of insurgency—and, with it, changes in the relations between the state, military, and media. The conflicts in this millennium provoked both long-standing and new debates surrounding the role of the press and how it actively mediates conflict, censorship, and patriotism in a hostile media environment. Journalism also experienced profound change technologically and industrially. With the fragmentation of the media business model and editorial gatekeeping, and liberated by new media, the legacy media’s relationship with conflict has changed. New voices have gained prominence. Non-Western journalists have been accorded greater recognition when reporting invasion and conflict from a local perspective. Civilians also became both an important conduit and problematic source of news, there has been an upsurge of government and military propaganda, and terrorists have become chilling media producers. For other state media organizations in the East, their global footprint has expanded rather than diminished. Nevertheless, the debates about the image and role of journalism during armed conflict; censorship; media power, technology, and mediatization; and the physical and psychological dangers experienced by journalists when witnessing and reporting conflict, prevail.

Weimar Republic

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Silas Peterson
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
German History ◽  
World War ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Internal Struggle ◽  
German Reich

The Weimar Republic (1918/1919–1933) is a term used to describe the German Reich (Deutsches Reich) after the end of World War I and after the dissolution of the German monarchy up to 1933 with the establishment of Nazi Germany. It refers first to the new federal state, constitutional government and parliamentary democracy that initially convened in Weimar. The term also refers to a cultural period of German history associated with the Golden Twenties, Expressionism and the rise of mass culture. It can be divided into three periods: 1919–1923, the founding of the Republic and internal struggle; 1924–1929, the phase of relative stability; and 1930–1933, the phase of economic and political crisis.

ARA relief campaign in the Volga region, Jewish anthropometric statistics, and the scientific promise of integration

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Mogilner
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Volga Region ◽  
Russian Civil War ◽  
World War ◽  
Medical Statistics ◽  
Race Science ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Mass Politics ◽  
Rescue And Relief

ArgumentThe article builds a case for the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population (Obshchestvo Okhranenia Zdorov’ia Evreiskogo Naselenia [OZE]) as a project of medicalized modernity, a mass politics of Jewish self-help that relied on a racialized and medicalized vision of a future Jewish nation. Officially registered in 1912 in St. Petersburg, it created the space for a Jewish politics that focused on the state of the collective Jewish body as a precondition for Jewish participation in any version of modernity. OZE futurism survived the years of World War I and the Russian Civil War, when the organization had to concentrate on rescue and relief rather than on facilitating the development of new bodies and souls. New archival evidence reveals how race science, medical statistics, and positive eugenics became composite elements of the Jewish anticolonial message and new subjectivity.

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