The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich - Softcover

Kater, Michael H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195132424 ISBN 13: 9780195132427

Publisher: Oxford University Press USA, 1997

Synopsis

Under a totalitarian regime, can art and artists be innocent? This questions and its implications are explored in Michael Kater's broad survey of musicians, and the music they composed and performed during the Third Reich.

About this title

Review:

The merit of the book lies in its detailed factual picture of the background for music and musicians in those troubled times. (Ralph F. Wells, Richard Strauss Society)

A very readable and intriguing book for those interested in the impact of Nazism on cultural life in Germany. (Ralph F. Wells, Richard Strauss Society)

Mr. Kater...has extracted masses of information from far-flung sources, including public and private archives in Germany and elsewhere, and has drawn level-headed, intelligent conclusions from his research....The broadest and clearest study of classical music in Hitler's Germany that has appeared to date....Mr. Kater's treatment of the complicated―and hotly debated―case of the conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler is thorough and convincing....A great deal more is packed into [this book], including fresh looks at the Wagner family's complicity with the Nazis and the cases of Paul Hindemith...and Herbert von Karajan....Anyone interested in the depressing but fascinating subject of art and politics will find this book exceptionally worthwhile. (The Wall Street Journal)

Kater...has done prodigious primary research, much of it in hitherto unexamined files, to emerge with a mountain of fresh material....Anyone seriously interested in the interface of art and a peculiarly threatening political culture will find [this book] endlessly fascinating. (Publishers Weekly)

[Gives] more analytical attention to the entire [Nazi] era's secrets. Kater...has combed newspaper archives, studied economic statistics, interviewed surviving composers and meticulously correlated information from denazification proceedings. His account...is the most throrough and nuanced now available of Nazi musical alliances, allegiances and ambiguities....Brings us to a more complicated understanding without tolerating latent defenses of old friends or 'Vissi d'Arte' alibis. (New York Times Book Review)

Fills a conspicuous lacuna in 20th-century musicology. Kater...presents a detailed, disturbing, but always compelling account....There is a great deal here to engage scholars and professional musicians as well as general readers interested in the study of music and ideology. Highly recommended for all libraries. (Library Journal)

The best source of information about conductors and other musicians in the Third Reich is now Mr. Kater's book, dense with facts, many of them newly unearthed. (New York Times)

[An] impressive new book...far and away the finest and canniest treatment of the Nazi musical nightmare to date, presents an excellent case study of two conductors who were judged not ideologically but aesthetically. (The New Yorker)

This absorbing study provides a painful reminder of the degree to which musicians were prepared to compromise their artistic integrity in order to appease the political hierarchy during the Third Reich. (Music Magazine)

This work, with its emphasis on the social and political nature of music and the political attitude of musicians during the Nazi regime, is the first of its kind. It will be of interest to scholars and general readers eager to understand Nazi Germany, to music lovers and to anyone interested in the interchange of music and politics, and culture and ideology. (Avid-Magazine)

Synopsis:

Is music removed from politics? To what ends, beneficent or malevolent, can music and musicians be put? In short, when human rights are grossly abused and politics turned to fascist demagoguery, can art and artists be innocent? These questions and their implications are explored in Michael Kater's broad survey of musicians and the music they composed and performed during the Third Reich. Great and small--from Valentin Grimm, a struggling clarinetist, to Richard Strauss, renowned composer--are examined by Kater, sometimes in intimate detail, and the lives and decisions of Nazi Germany's professional musicians are laid out before the reader. Kater tackles the issue of whether the Nazi regime, because it held music in crassly utilitarian regard, acted on musicians in such a way as to consolidate or atomize the profession. Kater's examination of the value of music for the regime and the degree to which the regime attained a positive propaganda and palliative effect through the manner in which it manipulated its musicians, and by extension, German music, is of importance for understanding culture in totalitarian systems.This work, with its emphasis on the social and political nature of music and the political attitude of musicians during the Nazi regime, will be the first of its kind.

It will be of interest to scholars and general readers eager to understand Nazi Germany, to music lovers, and to anyone interested in the interchange of music and politics, culture and ideology.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0195132424
• ISBN 13: 9780195132427
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344