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music and politics

8K views 19 replies 14 participants last post by  Pugg 
#1 ·
Hi everyone,

I'm working on a school project, the theme is "music and politics" and I've chosen to work on classical music. This subject is extremely wide so i have to define what i want to work on more precisely. Therefore, I'd like to know what comes to your mind when both classical music and politics are mentioned ?
 
#2 ·
A good place to start would be looking through "Politics and Religion in Classical Music," which is a subdivision of the Religious Music Forum above. Good luck wading through that!
 
#4 ·
When I think of music and politics, Shostakovich is the first name that pops into my head. The relationship between Shostakovich's music and Soviet politics is endlessly fascinating and complicated. This relationship has served as the basis of numerous books and articles--as well as a great many heated debates here on TC! ;)

If you're interested in exploring this topic, the writings of Richard Taruskin are a good place to start. Here's a New York Times article by Taruskin which lays out some of the controversies and theories surrounding Shostakovich's political beliefs: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/arts/music/julian-barnes-the-noise-of-time-shostakovich.html?_r=0
 
#18 ·
Yes ! the melody also reminds the french national anthem. Stravinski, Prokofiev, Rachmaniov and many others have also lived in Russia and have had complicated relationships with the government.. but unlike Shoatakovich, they left the country.. but it is indeed a very interesting and wide topic that could be explored :) thanks for the reference
 
#5 ·
La muette de Portici!!

A performance of that opera at Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels stirred up the revolutionary and nationalist feelings and is considered to be at the base of the founding of Belgium in 1830. Before that, belonging to Holland of Willem I.

So as a classical music-lover I should be proud to be Belgian ;)
 
#8 · (Edited)
A number of interesting ideas have been presented so far but I would think that you want something a bit more generalized. One idea would be how governments used and abused music as a tool of political control. You could focus on Nazi Germany and particularly the use of Wagner's Germanic ideals as a positive, also the concept of 'degenerate' music (usually Jewish). The communist block put in a lot of effort to control both composers and performers during the 30's thru 80's with Shostakovich being just one example. Others would be Lutoslawski and Pendercki in Poland, An interesting side note to the latter is the impact in the Soviet Union when an American, Van Cliburn, won the Tchaikovsky piano competition. That may not see like a big deal here, but it was there and then.
 
#11 ·
If we define "politics" rather broadly to include all sorts of interactions between people, money, institutions, etc., you could examine the internal politics of classical music on several levels. Norman Lebrecht often writes on this sort of politics within CM. His book, Who Killed Classical Music? is one such.
 
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