Classical Music in the German Democratic Republic: Production and Reception (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture, 163)

Approaches the topic of classical music in the GDR from an interdisciplinary perspective, questioning the assumption that classical music functioned purely as an ideological support for the state. Classical music in the German Democratic Republic is commonly viewed as having functioned as an ideological support or cultural legitimization for the state, in the form of the so-called "bourgeois humanist inheritance." The largenumbers of professional orchestras in the GDR were touted as a proof of the country's culture. Classical music could be seen as the polar opposite of Americanizing pop culture and also of musical modernism, which was decried as formalist. Nevertheless, there were still musical modernists in the GDR, and classical music traditions were not only a prop of the state. This collection of new essays approaches the topic of classical music in the GDR from an interdisciplinary perspective, presenting the work of scholars in a number of complementary disciplines, including German Studies, Musicology, Aesthetics, and Film Studies. Contributors to this volume offer a broad examination of classical music in the GDR, while also uncovering nonconformist tendencies and questioning the assumption that classical music in the GDR meant nothing but (socialist) respectability. Contributors: Tatjana Böhme-Mehner, Martin Brady, Lars Fischer, Kyle Frackman, Golan Gur, Peter Kupfer, Albrecht von Massow, Carola Nielinger-Vakil, Jessica Payette, Larson Powell, Juliane Schicker, Martha Sprigge, Matthias Tischer, Jonathan L. Yaeger, Johanna Frances Yunker Kyle Frackman is Assistant Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of British Columbia. Larson Powell is Professor of German at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Classical music in the German Democratic Republic is commonly viewed as having functioned as an ideological support or cultural legitimization for the state, in the form of the so-called "bourgeois humanist inheritance." The large numbers of professional orchestras in the GDR were touted as a proof of the country's culture. Classical music could be seen as the polar opposite of Americanizing pop culture and also of musical modernism, which was decried as formalist. Nevertheless, there were still musical modernists in the GDR, and classical music traditions were not only a prop of the state. This collection of new essays approaches the topic of classical music in the GDR from an interdisciplinary perspective, presenting the work of scholars in a number of complementary disciplines, including German Studies, Musicology, Aesthetics, and Film Studies. Contributors to this volume offer a broad examination of classical music in the GDR, while also uncovering nonconformist tendencies andquestioning the assumption that classical music in the GDR meant nothing but (socialist) respectability. Contributors: Tatjana Böhme-Mehner, Martin Brady, Lars Fischer, Kyle Frackman, Golan Gur, Peter Kupfer, Albrecht von Massow, Carola Nielinger-Vakil, Jessica Payette, Larson Powell, Juliane Schicker, Martha Sprigge, Matthias Tischer, Jonathan L. Yaeger, Johanna Frances Yunker Kyle Frackman is Assistant Professor of German at the University of British Columbia. Larson Powell is Professor of German at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Frontcover Contents Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: Music and Heritage in the German Democratic Republic 1: Provincialism, Modernity, and the Classical Heritage: The Administrative Structure of the GDR and the Situation of Music Production 2: Classicism as Anti-Fascist Heritage: Realism and Myth in Ernst Hermann Meyer’s Mansfelder Oratorium (1950) 3: Positioning Georg Knepler in the Musicological Discourse of the GDR 4: Ehrt euren Deutschen Meister: Reproducing Wagner in the GDR 5: The Embodiment of Collective Memory in Neue Odyssee 6: Marxism and Feminism in Ruth Berghaus’s Staging of Don Giovanni 7: Beyond the Gewandhaus: Mahler and the GDR 8: Hanns Eisler’s Funeral and Cultures of Commemoration in the GDR 9: Exile—Remigration—Socialist Realism: The Role of Classical Music in the Works of Paul Dessau 10: “What a Satisfying Task for a Composer!”: Paul Dessau’s Music for The German Story (. . .Du und mancher Kamerad) 11: Friedrich Schenker and the Third Way 12: A Prism of East German Music: Lothar Voigtländer Notes on the Contributors Index