Erik Levi Livres

In this authoritative study, one of the first to appear in English, Erik Levi explores the ambiguous relationship between music and politics during one of the darkest periods of recent cultural history. Utilising material drawn from contemporary documents, journals and newspapers, he traces the evolution of reactionary musical attitudes which were exploited by the Nazis in the final years of the Weimar Republic, chronicles the mechanisms that were established after 1933 to regiment musical life throughout Germany and the occupied territories, and examines the degree to which the climate of xenophobia, racism and anti-modernism affected the dissemination of music either in the opera house and concert hall, or on the radio and in the media.

Despite the apparent incompatibility between Mozart's humanitarian and cosmopolitan outlook and Nazi ideology, the Third Reich tenaciously promoted the great composer's music to further the goals of the fascist regime. This book provides a fresh understanding of how the Nazis shamelessly manipulated Mozart for their own political advantage.

The impact of Nazism on twentieth-century music was immense as evidenced by this volume featuring seventeen essays by a group of internationally recognised scholars. The range of enquiry is extraordinarily wide, covering the issue of “Inner Emigration” during the Third Reich and remigration in the Netherlands after the Second World War, as well as the work of exiled composers such as Korngold, Weill, Weigl, Ullmann, Eisler, Achron, Goldschmidt and Gál. In addition, there are penetrating discussions of the employment of Handel’s music in the Jewish Cultural League, Nazi musical censorship in occupied Poland and the fate of émigré musicians and musicologists in wartime Britain. Three chapters detail the musical relationship between Franco’s Spain and the Third Reich.