‘Liberty, I Write Your Name’ 1944–1952

Poulenc ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 172-214
Author(s):  
Roger Nichols

This chapter looks into Francis Poulenc's performance of the Figure humaine after the liberation of France from the Second World War. It talks about Poulenc's Les Mamelles in which the BBC Director of Music, Victor Hely-Hutchinson, expressed gratitude for the chance to peruse the score and agreed enthusiastically to recordand perform it. It also recounts Poulenc's visit to London in 1945, where he gave recitals with Pierre Bernac at the Wigmore Hall and the National Gallery. The chapter looks into the event of Poulenc joining Benjamin Britten in a performance of the Two-Piano Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Basil Cameron. It also describes the triumphant premier of Poulenc's concert called Un Soir de neige, which happened at the same time as Olivier Messiaen's Trois petites Liturgies de la Présence divine.

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-112
Author(s):  
Kevin Salfen

Abstract Benjamin Britten was one of several twentieth-century British composers active before the Second World War who wrote “anthology cycles”—that is, cyclic vocal works on poetry anthologies of the composer's own making. This apparently British invention is deeply indebted to the widespread success of the anthology as a literary form in classrooms, homes, and marketplaces of Victorian and Edwardian England. Britten's early attraction to canonical anthologies such as Arthur Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of English Verse (1900), for example, is representative of a cultural practice of reading. Britten and other British composers renewed their connection to that practice when they became anthologists for their musical works, identifying themselves as arbiters of poetic and musical taste. Britten's anthology cycle Serenade for tenor, horn, and strings (1943) uses Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book for as many as four of its six texts, many of which share pastoral themes. And yet the composer's musical settings often seem to challenge a conventional reading of the chosen texts and the generic titles Britten assigned to each movement. By creating a canonical, pastoral anthology and then challenging it through music, Britten, who had just returned to England from the United States, invested Serenade with the potential to present the world of prewar England as embattled.


Author(s):  
Corinna Peniston-Bird ◽  
Emma Vickers

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (185) ◽  
pp. 543-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingo Schmidt

This article draws on Marxist theories of crises, imperialism, and class formation to identify commonalities and differences between the stagnation of the 1930s and today. Its key argument is that the anti-systemic movements that existed in the 1930s and gained ground after the Second World War pushed capitalists to turn from imperialist expansion and rivalry to the deep penetration of domestic markets. By doing so they unleashed strong economic growth that allowed for social compromise without hurting profits. Yet, once labour and other social movements threatened to shift the balance of class power into their favor, capitalist counter-reform began. In its course, global restructuring, and notably the integration of Russia and China into the world market, created space for accumulation. The cause for the current stagnation is that this space has been used up. In the absence of systemic challenges capitalists have little reason to seek a major overhaul of their accumulation strategies that could help to overcome stagnation. Instead they prop up profits at the expense of the subaltern classes even if this prolongs stagnation and leads to sharper social divisions.


2017 ◽  
pp. 437-446
Author(s):  
Maria Ciesielska

Men’s circumcision is in many countries considered as a hygienic-cosmetic or aesthetic treatment. However, it still remains in close connection with religious rites (Judaism, Islam) and is still practiced all over the world. During the Second World War the visible effects of circumcision became an indisputable evidence of being a Jew and were often used especially by the so-called szmalcownicy (blackmailers). Fear of the possibility of discovering as non-Aryan prompted many Jews hiding on the so-called Aryan side of Warsaw to seek medical practitioners who would restore the condition as it was before the circumcision. The reconstruction surgery was called in surgical jargon “knife baptizing”. Almost all of the procedures were performed by Aryan doctors although four cases of hiding Jewish doctors participating in such procedures are known. Surgical technique consisted of the surgical formation of a new foreskin after tissue preparation and stretching it by manual treatment. The success of the repair operation depended on the patient’s cooperation with the doctor, the worst result was in children. The physicians described in the article and the operating technique are probably only a fragment of a broader activity, described meticulously by only one of the doctors – Dr. Janusz Skórski. This work is an attempt to describe the phenomenon based on the very scanty source material, but it seems to be the first such attempt for several decades.


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