The Church

This chapter examines how the East German government commemorated the firebombing of Dresden at the end of World War II. Religious spaces and musical institutions became central to the state’s antifascist propaganda as commemorative rituals for the firebombing took shape in the early 1950s. On the tenth anniversary of the attack, in 1955, local politicians participated in a grand reopening ceremony of the city’s oldest church, consecrated with performances of Rudolf Mauersberger’s Dresdner Requiem (1947/1948). Annual performances of this work allowed congregants to maintain ties to the Lutheran faith in a socialist society, and created a context for the expression of narratives about the firebombing that could not be voiced openly in public spaces. Drawing on performers’ testimonies, audience accounts, and Mauersberger’s revisions to the score, this chapter demonstrates how the Dresdner Requiem served as an outlet for grief in postwar Dresden.

Beethoven’s Anniversary in Sarajevo in 1927

In 1927, Europe marked the centennial of the death of one of its greatest composers, Ludwig van Beet ho­ ven. At the same time, Bosnia and Herzegovina within the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) was building the foundations of its musical institutions and trying to follow up with the more advanced cultural centers of the new state, Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Belgrade. The main feature of Bosnian musical life of the time (1918–1941) pertains to the establishment of the new musical institutions such as the National Theater (Narodno pozorište) and the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra (Sarajevska filharmonija), the fundamental institutions of musical culture in Bosnia and Herzegovina even today. This paper aims at providing an insight into the presence of Beethoven’s works in concert repertoires in Sarajevo (1918–1941), especially of the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra but also to point out the special occasion of Beethoven’s anniversary in 1927. The Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra was the only musical institution of this kind, and the most important musical society for the development of musical culture of the time; consequently, the research is based on the analysis of the society’s concert repertoire and reviews from the daily newspapers.

Verfolgungsinstrument Schwarze Liste

The article investigates the importance of ‚blacklists‘ as a tool of Fascist and National Socialist racial policy in the field of music. It critically examines the radicalizing effects that National Socialist antisemitism exerted on Fascist racial policy, which has often been described as yielding to German pressure. In fact, Fascist leaders demonstrated their will to cooperate on the ‚Jewish question‘ very early, though Fascist antisemitism never reached the exterminatory dimensions of the Nazi Holocaust. Already in 1936, cultural policymakers were working towards the goals of their German allies, taking initial steps to discriminate against Jewish musicians long before the Racial Laws were introduced in 1938. Various documents recently discovered in the historical archives of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome also highlight the pivotal role of musical institutions and their rich documentation in the investigation of cultural policy under Fascist rule, especially since the vast majority of the official records belonging to central institutions like the Italian Propaganda Ministry must be considered lost.

Bells and Music in the Zhou

This chapter describes the nature and scope of musical practice and performance during Zhou-dynasty China and the roles that music was thought to play in promoting political stability and social harmony. Following a quick overview of instrumental finds from the Neolithic and Shang periods, the chapter examines textual and archaeological evidence to provide a synopsis of instrumental types and ensembles as they developed into the Zhou, and then proceeds to describe the musical system—from the five tones (wuyin五音) to the twelve pitch-standards (liulü六律)—within which those instruments were both manufactured and performed, with particular attention to the bell and chimestone sets of Marquis Yi of Zeng 曾侯乙. The chapter concludes with a discussion of musical institutions and regulations during the Zhou dynasty, followed by a very brief overview of philosophies of music in the Warring States.

NIKOLAI MEDTNER ― PROFESSOR OF MOSCOW CONSERVATORY

The article presents the history of the pedagogical activity of the Russian composer and pianist N. K. Medtner, whose 140th birthday is celebrated in 2020. The article presents new information about Medtner's first piano mentors, as well as about Medtner as a teacher, and his musical preferences. Based on archives of The Moscow State Conservatory, as well as on the memories of Medtner's students, a list of master's successors who studied in his class for approximately seven years during his teaching in Russia was revealed. The study of personal files of students of the first decade of the XXth century allows us to touch upon fundamental questions: what material was used for the pedagogical process of Medtner, whether he used his own compositions for teaching students in his class. Among classical composers Medtner chose for his class J. S. Bach, L. van Beethoven, R. Schumann, F. Chopin and F. Liszt. The Russian repertoire was represented by the works from M. A. Balakirev to A. N. Scriabin. Students often made requests to include their Professor's essays in their programs, which Medtner rarely granted. It is noted, that N. K. Medtner's teaching at The Moscow Conservatory and in private musical institutions in Moscow, did not complete his mentoring pedagogical activity, which continued later outside of Russia.

Locating Classical Music in Culture

This chapter reframes existing research on classical music by putting it into dialogue with sociological understandings of class and gender to outline what a social analysis of classical music should look like. This also lays the foundations for theorizing more widely how music might be analysed in relation to class, an urgent theoretical intervention at a time of increasing economic inequality within many nation-states. It asks, how are musical institutions, practices, and aesthetics shaped by wider conditions of economic inequality, and in what ways might music enable and entrench such inequalities or work against them? The chapter argues for understanding music and inequality through a multi-scalar approach that examines how sociocultural discourses and practices can be traced within musical practices, and how such practices can then be heard in the aesthetic that they create.

Decontextualizing Arabic Music in France and in the United States

This paper traces the various steps of the redefinition process implemented by Arab musicians performing in France and in the United States. The assembling of Arabic music groups outside their institutional and national borders reveals new patterns and raises several questions: (1) While most Arabic countries do not share the same institutional music traditions, or the same repertoires (Arab-Andalusian vs. maqamat), how can Arabic musicians from different countries assemble outside their institutional and national borders? (2) How can we understand the heterogeneity of repertoires (scholarly and popular) when the musicians come from different traditions and institutions? Can musicians pursue the legacy—and legitimacy—of classical repertoires or do they necessarily have to embrace Arabic pop culture? Finally, (3) while they were part of the elite in their home countries, how are Arab musicians considered outside their musical institutions, in their new countries such as France and the United States? Have they remained elite musicians in the eyes of their new audiences? Or have they simply become ‘popular’ musicians, regardless of the repertoire they play?