Classical Music Forum banner

Which Composers were the Most Political?

10K views 10 replies 11 participants last post by  Meyerbeer Smith 
#1 ·
Which composers were the most politically active? Who voiced their opinions the loudest?
 
#2 · (Edited)
Beethoven wasn't very politically active but wasn't shy about expressing his opinions. It got him crosswise with the authorities, it seems, on one occasion ca 1815-16. This was dramatized in the movie Immortal Beloved. I don't see reference to it in his biographies, but it rings true!

Wagner was very politically active and became a fugitive from justice (or what passed for it in those days) in 1849, reportedly passing grenades to fighters on the barricades in Dresden. He was unable to return to Germany until 1862.

A number of American composers were Communists or close to it (no crime in the 1930s) and had to pay their dues in front of the House Committee on Unamerican Activities (HUAC) in the early 1950s during the anti-red purges of those days. Aaron Copland was among them.
 
#3 · (Edited)
Wagner was very politically active and became a fugitive from justice (or what passed for it in those days) in 1849, reportedly passing grenades to fighters on the barricades in Dresden. He was unable to return to Germany until 1862.
We know what you all are thinking when Wagner and politics is mentioned, but it has to be said that Wagner was involved in a left-wing, pro-democratic uprising.
 
#9 ·
As were Michael Tippett and Ronald Stevenson (although the former had been very pro-Mussolini during the 1930s but underwent an almost total volte-face between then and the middle of WWII). Bernard Stevens embraced Communism and Alan Bush went as far as to join the party.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Bela Bartok was outspoken politically, especially against Fascism and Nazism, leaving Hungary for the USA after the absorption of Austria into the Reich. In his last few years, just before he emigrated, he requested that no memorial of any kind was to be erected in his honor in Hungary if anyplace or anything there was named for either Hitler or Mussolini. He died in the US in 1945.

Rimsky-Korsakov also was somewhat political. As I recall, he was fired as a teacher from the Saint Petersburg conservatory for supporting someone or something that the tsarist regime opposed--don't recall any details.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top