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The Radio 3 Boards > The Music Boards > Music Through The Ages > 20th Century > Music and the Cold War
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Author Topic: Music and the Cold War  (Read 876 times)
Ian Pace
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« Reply #30 on: 01:39:06, 29-09-2007 »
Another article which might be of interest in the context of this thread, for those with academic servers, is Ann C. Schreffler's 'Berlin Walls: Dahlhaus, Knepler, and Ideologies of Music History', in The Journal of Musicology Vol. 20 No. 4 (Autumn 2003), pp. 498-525. She looks at the different approaches to studying music history in West and East Berlin as practised by Carl Dahlhaus and Georg Knepler respectively, including the attempts by Dahlhaus to develop a socially-aware and engaged but non-Marxist approach in response to the work emanating from the East. Fascinating stuff.
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
xyzzzz__
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« Reply #31 on: 12:58:27, 29-09-2007 »
"By the way, with respect to Darmstadt, it's worth bearing in mind that in terms of the type of music now most closely associated with the place, that didn't really take a hold until the 1950s; in the late 1940s (i.e. following on from when it was founded, the circumstances of which have not yet been fully explained), much of the music performed was more in what some characterise as a Schoenberg-Bartók-Hindemith mainstream. It would be very hard, even with hindsight, to imagine that Wolfgang Steineke set it up with a view to its becoming a centre for total serialism and the like."

There ws a radio 4 half-hour (w/Christopher Fox) doc I heard about a year ago that talked about the beginnings of Darmstadt in shadowy and sinister terms. Seemed in part to be v gossipy about how the CIA infiltrated and watched the early years very closely, and so on.
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TimR-J
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« Reply #32 on: 15:43:00, 29-09-2007 »
I think there's a kinder way to look at American funding of the early Darmstadt years (and hadn't funding finished by the end of 1949?) as aid in the rebuilding of (West) German culture in general, and not - at first - as something immediately directed towards Cold War aims. I haven't looked at any of the relevant primary sources to establish this myself, but I suspect that there should be a line drawn between the American support of Darmstadt of 1946–9 and the CIA-backed Congress for Cultural Freedom that was behind many events in the 1950s, in terms of their explicit role in opposing Soviet ideology.

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what happens when we forget the first and paramount principle "Art for Art's sake"!

Funnily enough I would sort of agree, Sydney, in that I think rather a lot of time is being spent in such Cold War studies talking around the music, without ever bothering to listen to it.
« Last Edit: 15:47:05, 29-09-2007 by TimR-J » Logged
TimR-J
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« Reply #33 on: 15:48:01, 29-09-2007 »
(Ian - I've noted your post above on Jauss etc - I'll come back to it when I have more time!)
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #34 on: 00:38:46, 03-10-2007 »
Quote from: xyzzzz__ on 12:58:27, 29-09-2007
There ws a radio 4 half-hour (w/Christopher Fox) doc I heard about a year ago that talked about the beginnings of Darmstadt in shadowy and sinister terms. Seemed in part to be v gossipy about how the CIA infiltrated and watched the early years very closely, and so on.
I think the only person on that programme who supported the case that the CIA were behind Darmstadt was Francis Stonor Saunders, but she is not an expert in new music, let alone the period and institutions in question. The two contributors in particular who are - Toby Thacker and Amy C. Beal - both denied that there was any evidence of such a thing. That said, there are still plenty of questions to be asked about the circumstances that led to the founding (and funding) of the Ferienkurse.
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
TimR-J
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« Reply #35 on: 09:36:45, 03-10-2007 »
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I think the only person on that programme who supported the case that the CIA were behind Darmstadt was Francis Stonor Saunders, but she is not an expert in new music

And she makes no more than the most passing reference to a connection in Who Paid the Piper.
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