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Composers who resisted tyrannical regimes

20K views 71 replies 30 participants last post by  Johnnie Burgess 
#1 · (Edited)
On this forum there has been much discussion of issues to do with the relationship between composers and their political views, particularly in light of Wagner but also many others.

I thought I'd do this thread focussing on those composers who in some way resisted or opposed tyrannical regimes. This is in part because often in our discussions here we focus on the composers who served these regimes and those who resisted them are often left out of the picture. There is an assumption by some that serving such regimes, either overtly or covertly, was the only option available to people. With this thread I am giving an opportunity to put the other side of the story.

I think there is at least sometimes a relationship between such composers' resistance in political terms and their music. In other ways they also often bear witness to the extraordinary - and at times horrific - events going on around them.

There are instances of these things from all parts of the world (sadly), however in this opening post I will focus on the resistance during World War II.

An example I have cited at times on this forum is Zoltan Kodaly, who was involved in the resistance during World War II. After the war he was also supportive of reestablishing Hungarian democracy during the ill-fated 1956 uprising against Soviet rule. Another one I have talked of before is K.A. Hartmann, who during the war went into a kind of internal exile. He didn't allow any of his works to be performed in Nazi Germany or the countries occupied by it. After the war Hartmann established Musica Viva, an organisation dedicated to repairing some of the damage done by the Nazis, allowing for more opportunities to perform new music.

Kodaly was a Christian and Hartmann a Communist, and this speaks to how many people like them joined together in a common effort to defeat fascism.

Others similar to Hartmann, on the left of the political spectrum, who where in the resistance in their countries where Luigi Nono of Italy, Louis Duray (formerly of the Les Six group) of France and Iannis Xenakis of Greece. Another one from Greece was Mikis Theodorakis, who is now in his eighties. One who was similar to Kodaly was Olivier Messiaen, he survived a period interned as a prisoner of war, and there he wrote his Quartet for the End of Time - a work drawing on his views of spirituality, nature and humanity.

In terms of conductors, Louis Fremaux and Erich Kleiber where part of the resistance as well.

These guys took great risks. Kodaly had to go into hiding with his family for a couple of months during the Winter of 1944. The Hungarian fascists wanted him dead. He hid in an annexe underneath Budapest's main cathedral and it was there that his Missa Brevis in Tempore Belli was given its premiere, for his ears only. Xenakis was nearly killed in the Greek civil war after the end of WWII, an explosion disfiguring his face. Theodorakis was put into a concentration camp and buried alive. Hartmann witnessed a death march during the end of the war and commemorated that in his Piano Sonata '27 April 1945.'

Another type of resistance was like that of Paul Hindemith, who tried to separate himself from politics as much as possible during the Nazi era, but in the end he was forced to leave Germany as this was impossible. The famous story behind his work Mathis der maler (which exists as both an opera and symphony) highlights the plight of composers under the Third Reich. They simply could not be apolitical, they had to make some sort of choice to adapt themselves to the regime, and if they didn't do this they would be counted as enemies. It can basically be summed up in the line "you're either with us or against us."

So I'm inviting a discussion of the composers and musicians who took part in resisting such despotic regimes.
 
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#13 · (Edited)
Need I mention Ligeti ?

Only he and his mother survived the concentration camps...
Those that where of Jewish heritage where targets of the Nazi regime by default, whether they resisted or not. I wasn't thinking of composers like that when making this thread, but of course it is relevant here in a broader sense.

Its the same with those who where targeted under Stalinism, which included Jews to some extent (Stalin was just as much an anti-Semite as Hitler was, but liked to use Jews who he saw as being in a weak position and therefore prone to being servile in his divide and conquer games, eg. his right hand man Lavrenty Beria was Jewish), but also Christians.

There was also a resistance in Russia during WWII which fought against the Nazi occupiers but as the war drew to a close, sought to rid Russia of Stalinism and ultimately Communism. Needless to say they where targeted and liquidated by Stalin, and the West was to some extent complicit in this, but that is too specific a part of history for me to go into any detail here. I don't know if any composers or musicians where involved in the Russian anti-Nazi resistance though.

Hindemith's wife was partially Jewish. It appears from what I have read that this one of the reasons he left.

Alfredo Casella was a big supporter of Mussolini. Casella's wife was a French Jew. In this situation Casella's ties with the facist may have save his wife.

Maybe some of you may have further information about this.
I didn't know about Casella, or recall it about Hindemith, but I know the operetta composer Franz Lehar whose Merry Widow Hitler adored, he had a Jewish wife. Lehar expanded and arranged the overture to that operetta for large orchestra and dedicated it to Hitler. I don't know if it saved his wife, but she was not taken to the camps and survived the war. I think its unlikely that Hitler would have taken away the wife of one of his favourite living composers but who knows.

Another operetta composer, Emmerich Kalman was himself Jewish but received assurances from Hitler that he would receive special treatment, that no harm would come to him. But Kalman didn't take Hitler's word, and left for the USA. These and many other cases show how regimes like this act in highly arbitrary ways to say the least. Its this same unpredictable element that was a risk to those who sought and successfully curried favour with them. One minute you where in their good books, the next minute you could be persona non grata and blacklisted, or dead.
 
#3 ·
Richard Strauss pretty much resisted the Nazis in the sense that he ws still able to compose relatively freely and above all, be successul as a composer as far as his art was concerned.
 
#4 ·
Another type of resistance was like that of Paul Hindemith, who tried to separate himself from politics as much as possible during the Nazi era, but in the end he was forced to leave Germany as this was impossible.
Hindemith's level of resistance has been the center of a minor debate recently. Furtwängler certainly tried very hard to convince the state to accommodate Hindemith, and it would be very interesting to know how much of that was done with Hindemith's knowledge or approval. Some historians find it a little suspicious that Hindemith left Germany only after it was clear that accommodation would not be forthcoming.
 
#6 · (Edited)
I find Hindemith interesting in that, as far as I know, he tried hard to stay out of politics and stay in Germany. I'd guess that after the Nazis took power, he would have sworn the loyalty oath to the Reich and the Fuhrer, which is what all public servants and university staff did. I think he wanted to avoid trouble or ruffling any feathers. Even his concept of Gebrauchsmusik (music for use - that is teaching and learning of music, pedagogy) could have maybe kind of been acceptable to the Nazis in terms of that aspect of bringing music to the people, making it accessible and so on.

I know that Mathis der maler was controversial, not least in that the background of the opera's plot involved the peasant rebellion during the 16th century. But my suspicion is that they had it in for him regardless. Nazi cultural policy was basically applied as they wanted. In Hindemith's case, I know Hitler had little time for him because during the roaring twenties Hindemith was like the German version of Prokofiev - a lot of what he did that decade was aimed to shock, and it did. I read of one opera by Hindemith, which Hitler saw in the 1920's, in which a female sings an aria naked in the bath. Tyrannical regimes seemed to share this concern with suppressing sexuality, there is this kind of moral prudery in both Nazism and Stalinism. Another thing was Hindemith's free association with Jewish musicians, despite this being a big no-no once the Nazis came to power. So there where all these things.

Hindemith left, first went to Turkey where he worked to establish music education, then he sat the war out in the USA. He taught at Yale and became an American citizen in 1946. This apparently didn't go down well with some Germans, who saw this as almost betrayal. Once Hindemith did return to Europe, he did conduct in Germany, but made Switzerland his home. It is apparent that he did harbour some bitterness and grudges himself for the shoddy treatment he got, both during and after the Nazi era. He kind of fell between two stools, so to speak. His bid to pursue music and stay out of the political limelight during the Nazi era failed, and I think he never got over it fully.
 
#5 · (Edited)
Alexander Lokshin (1920-1987) was one of the marginalized USSR cases, being interested in Mahler and the Neue Wiener Schule from early on, and inspired by them. He was supported by Rudolf Barshai, Nikolay Myaskovsky and the pianists Maria Yudina and Maria Grinberg among others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Lokshin, and http://lokshin.org/en.htm, which includes legitimate downloads http://lokshin.org/en.htm, besides you-t.

The fine & intense 4th Symphony (1968) is characteristic of his somewhat Berg-like style
 
#11 ·
Hindemith's wife

Hindemith's wife was partially Jewish. It appears from what I have read that this one of the reasons he left.

Alfredo Casella was a big supporter of Mussolini. Casella's wife was a French Jew. In this situation Casella's ties with the facist may have save his wife.

Maybe some of you may have further information about this.
 
#19 ·
Wagner was pretty much against capitalism, industrialism, materialism, so that's at least three tyrannical regimes.
 
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#23 · (Edited)
The premise of this thread was about what composers did, rather than what they wrote or said. Wagner's views (which of course remain controversial and hotly debated) contradicted his actions. He was a republican whose biggest backer was a monarch.

But he's not alone, for example his big contemporary Brahms was for all intents and purposes okay with what Germany became upon unification - a constitutional monarchy with elements of parliamentary system, so you had the ancien regime grafted upon a system allowing many economic freedoms (but in terms of political, less so). Brahms was amongst the first bourgeois composers, so too Dvorak. Class was an issue at the time, but it didn't stop these guys from humble backgrounds rising through the ranks. Both of them got honorary doctorates and both got medals from the monarchy.

They where both sceptical of the system to some extent, for example Dvorak got a seat in parliament (the Habsburg's equivalent of the British House of Lords), but only sat for a day there. He joked to his wife that the pencils they issued to all members would come in handy to compose music (he took them in his pocket!). When an aristocrat tried to be smart and pull Brahms down for that very apparent near-quotation of Beethoven's Choral symphony at the end of his first symphony, Brahms said any person could tell that (implying its a homage, you idiot).

But overall I think a big problem then was that political rights where slower to develop than economic ones. That proves background for what would happen in the 20th century, when the ancien regime went belly up after WWI, civil society wasn't strong enough to develop into stable democracy in Europe. So you got those dictatorships.

Having said that, I don't want this thread to deteriorate into another Wagner debate, just adding this about Brahms and Dvorak since its recent reading. I even thought of creating thread to do with the rise of the bourgeois composers in the 19th century. Those that didn't only say they where independent of the aristocracy (like Beethoven and Wagner) but actually where (like Brahms, Dvorak, Elgar in the UK would be another one, all largely relying on music commissioned by orchestras, musicians and publishers). But I don't have time to devote to it, however its yet another fascinating area in the history of how classical music developed away from its roots in the church and nobility.
 
#21 · (Edited)
"To [Richard] Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to [Richard] Strauss the man I put it back on again!" (Arturo Toscanini)

Personally I wholeheartedly admire a composer or musician who has deep feelings for peace, freedom, humanity, or any other - considered - positive value in life... but even if they don't carry such great personality, we can not deny their genius or their artistic achievements (at least from the technical or aesthetic point of view as for Cortot, Gieseking and many others).
 
#22 ·
William Byrd - late 16th Century England

Byrd risked his life by composing liturgical music with Latin texts and featuring texts that had a subversive character - his music was clearly sympathetic to Catholicism at a time when Anglicanism was the dominant form of belief. I read somewhere once that the proportion of the population of Tudor England that was killed by state suppression was comparable to that of Stalinist Russia (unfortunately, I cannot remember where I read this - sorry - but it was clearly a very dangerous thing to be a Catholic at that time)
 
#25 · (Edited)
This is probably not true because no early modern state had the kind of power that a modern state has. Henry VIII probably would've been willing to kill on a Stalinist scale, but he didn't have the means.

I've heard the atmosphere around him compared to to the atmosphere around Stalin during the purges. I think I can track that down if you want to see whether that is what you'd read.
 
#24 · (Edited)
Soviet composers were put to the test in 1948 when several were denounced for "formalism" after the second Zhdanov decree. Their responses varied.

Kabalevsky got his name removed from the "bad boys" list somehow, and I have read that he happily joined in the denunciations of his fellow composers.

Khachaturian handsomely admitted his sins but was still exiled to Armenia. However, he was restored to favor at the end of 1948.

Miaskovsky, hardly a firebrand, refused to attend the proceedings at all despite Khrennikov's urging that he deliver a speech of repentance. He was not rehabilitated until after his death in 1950.

Shostakovich, flexible as always, did his bit of compulsory groveling. But he was still removed from his professorship at the university and had some hard years since it was considered risky to perform his works. His restrictions were relaxed somewhat in 1949 when Stalin decided to send him to New York, but things didn't approach "normal," or what passed for normal, until after 1953.

Prokofiev attended the proceedings but, I believe, refused to participate and sat in a chair facing away from the podium. Many of his works were banned outright and most of the others not programmed due to fear of the consequence. He was already ill, and this disaster hurt him badly financially and in other ways as well. He wrote only a few more pieces of significant music before his death on the same day as Stalin, in 1953.

In this case, it seems that Miaskovsky and Prokofiev were the "resisters," and they paid the price. There was no justice while they lived. Khachaturian and Shostakovich bent to the wind and lived on, to compose works we still enjoy today. Who was right, who was wrong?
 
#26 ·
Well, Science, if you have read extensively on Tutor history from academic sources and wish to maintain your assertion that the Tudor kings lacked the power to engage in systematic and extensive persecution, then so be it - I shall not argue with you .... Nonetheless, there is ample evidence from across large swathes of Europe for the existence of appalling levels of state terror in the C16 and C17 (surprising as that may sound).
 
#29 ·
Regarding the debate about Byrd, I was prompted to listen to his great three masses by reading your debate earlier, science and Headphone Hermit. Those three masses, all for the Catholic mass (in Latin) where published at the time. Looks like didn't convert to Anglicanism, for he attended Catholic masses put on in secret by his friends. This is maybe where those masses where performed. Nevertheless, he retained his position in the Chapel Royal, and wrote music for the Anglican liturgy, namely The Great Service and the anthem Sing Joyfully. Below is an extract from one person's memoirs which mention Byrd going to those underground Catholic masses:

"The following day we left the city and went out nearly thirty miles to the home of a catholic gentleman, a close friend of mine…In the house was a chapel, set aside for the celebration of the church's offices. The gentleman was a skilled musician, and there were an organ, other musical instruments, and choristers both male and female. During those eight days it was just as if we were celebrating the octave of some great feast…Mr Byrd the very famous musician and organist was among the company"
- Father William Weston, in Autobiography of an Elizabethan.

Byrd comes across as being protected by his esteem amongst fellow musicians and the elite at the time. Accounts I have read by fellow composers speak of him very highly. I also didn't realise how prolific he was, beyond choral music he did a good deal of instrumental music (for the virginal, an early keyboard instrument, in particular).

This has parallels with the regimes of the 20th century, for example the conductor Hans Knappertsbusch was against the Nazis and upon their coming to power lost his job as chief conductor in Munich. However, after a period of being banned from working in music, he was allowed to be guest conductor for the most prestigious orchestras. I have a recording of him done during the war conducting the Berlin and Vienna philharmonic orchestras.

I suppose its how far you cross the line of dissent that matters. If you have enough prestige and respect as a musician, they can't touch you, or not too much. Its really bad public relations for a regime to meddle too much in a composer's life, let alone do something like kill him. All regimes have limitations to their power, but of course its the arbitary nature of this that's the problem. One minute you can be in their good books, the next minute they may want you to leave (or worse!).



He's a good example, and I mentioned both him and Theodorakis in my opening post. The Greek civil war seems to be largely forgotten, and that's a shame, it was such a travesty (and not Churchill's finest hour, it was largely due to him that outside powers meddled in Greece's affairs and democracy didn't come there until the 1970's). Theodorakis actually went back after democracy was established and became a member of parliament.
 
#30 ·
Nice post, Sid

Yes, Byrd was both prolific and was very high quality. It does seem almost certain that he was protected at the time by someone (quite possibly by a number of the powerful) and yet I wonder if part of the reason for his low profile thereafter had soemthing to do with him not being part of the music-making of the establishment .... or perhaps he just belongs to that rather large body of late-medieval and Tudor British composers who found themselves (rather unfairly) in the backwaters of musical history.
 
#31 ·
Thanks Headphone Hermit.

I am no expert on music of this era, however Palestrina provides another example of the power of religious dogma during that time. He was asked (or probably more accurately, ordered) by the pope to simplify his settings of the Latin mass. The text was paramount, there was to be minimal fancy things (eg. not too contrapuntal). As with Byrd, my familiarity with his music is not great, although I really like what pieces I know by him. Palestrina was and is very influential on Western classical music, right up until today.

However the Florentine dictator of the 15th century, Savanarola, was the worst I can think of in terms of repression of culture prior to the 20th century (including, I think, aspects of music). The demise of his government at the hands of foreign armies, and him being killed by his own people, provided a precursor to events in more recent times - exactly the same thing happened to Mussolini.
 
#32 · (Edited)
Hmm, Sid,

I am not convinced that Palestrina gained much credit for being a composer who resisted tyrannical regimes. Yes there is a widely held story of Palestrina composing Missa Papae Marcelli as a response to strictures issued by the Council of Trent, but it appears that this is myth

With apologies for referring to Wikipedia (the page on Palestrina), but ... One of his most important works, the Missa Papae Marcelli (Pope Marcellus Mass), has been historically associated with erroneous information involving the Council of Trent. According to this tale (which forms the basis of Hans Pfitzner's opera Palestrina), it was composed in order to persuade the Council of Trent that a draconian ban on the polyphonic treatment of text in sacred music (as opposed, that is, to a more directly intelligible homophonic treatment) was unnecessary.[7] However, more recent scholarship shows that this mass was in fact composed before the cardinals convened to discuss the ban (possibly as much as ten years before).[7] Historical data indicates that the Council of Trent, as an official body, actually never banned any church music and failed to make any ruling or official statement on the subject. These stories originated from the unofficial points-of-view of some Council attendees who discussed their ideas with those not privy to the Council's deliberations. Those opinions and rumors have, over centuries, been transmuted into fictional accounts, put into print, and often incorrectly taught as historical fact.
 
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#34 ·
(1) Rimsky-Korsakov encouraged his students to protest against the Tsar's government after the disastrous Russo-Japanese war. He orchestrated their protest song "Dubinushka" -recorded several times - and was sacked from his official posts as a result.

(2) The conductor Paul Paray - most famous for leading the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in the 1950s - was a member of the French Resistance during the Second World War. He also publicly defied the Nazis by playing music by Jewish composers, publicly objecting to the renaming of the Colonne Orchestra (Colonne had been a Jew) and protesting against the sacking of Jewish players from his orchestra.
 
#35 ·
RE Richard Strauss, it's a bit complicated. He was no Nazi, and got into trouble when the Gestapo (I think) read a letter he wrote to his Jewish librettist, Stefan Zweig. He allowed himself to be used by the Nazis as a figurehead , heading up the national association, but was also in considerable fear for his Jewish daughter-in-law, Alice, and feared rocking the boat. He wanted to be left alone to compose, but politicians - especially totalitarians - don't like leaving people alone.
 
#36 ·
One of my greatest musical heroes is the Belgian violinist Arthur Grumiaux who was pretty heroic in a minor way. The Nazis wanted to make him concertmaster of a German orchestra. He refused, and had to go into hiding. It is easy to underestimate today the sort of courage that must have taken.
 
#37 ·
In 1799, Domenico Cimarosa was imprisoned by the Bourbon regime in Naples for his republican sympathies. Although released after a short time he was in poor health and was then kicked out of Naples. He died less than two years later after moving back to his birthplace of Venice.
 
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#39 · (Edited)
I didn't note many composers who call themselves Americans though they live in one part of America, the USA, objecting to the USA's rape of Vietnam, Panama, nor did I hear much if any objection to the absolutely filthy lies the Bush regime used as their excuse to bomb the daylight out of Iraq. I didn't hear any objections from British composers either for that matter. They were particularly silent during the so-called Falklands war.
 
#40 ·
For all his supposed republican views and admiration for Napoleon, Beethoven continued to believe in rule by an enlightened royalty (as did many in Vienna and German environs). A democrat he was not. He happily wrote music for the Congress of Vienna, which imposed the equivalent of a police state on much of Europe.

He did gripe endlessly to friends, but was considered by the authorities (who were paying attention) a harmless crank, which of course he was.
 
#45 ·
Dieter, I'm reluctant to get into a row about territorial disputes otherwise we'll be volleying over the net ad nauseam and the thread itself could be threatened. I appreciate your anti-war stance but I just wanted to point out that conflicts are fought for different reasons, and the Falklands situation was different to that of Vietnam, Iraq etc, whereas I got the impression that you were lumping them all in together.

The geographical proximity of the Falkland Islands has nothing to do it - ask the descendants of the original settlers who actually live there and work the land who they consider themselves to be and find out if Argentina, before or after she became established as a single nation after the break-up of the United provinces of the Rio de la Plata nearly 200 years ago, made any serious efforts to set up colonies of their own.

If you wish to use the Falkland Islands as an example, then should the UK demand the Faroe Islands seeing they are closer to the UK than they are to Denmark?
 
#47 · (Edited)
I agree to disagree. However, I would like to point out the one-sidedness of your point about 'asking the descendents':I guess it's the British way, after all, they were born to rule the world in their opinion. For example, the Germans who were the majority in Sudetenland,Alsace, Danzig etc etc weren't exactly consulted when their regions and cities were allocated to other countries.
 
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