Section V: Music, Politics, Contemporary History
Friday, 5th November 2010
09.00 am - 1.00 pm
DHI, Musikgeschichtliche Abteilung, Lesesaal
Program
09.00 Die Werte Arkadiens zwischen Ästhetik und Politik in der
mitteleuropäischen Frauenkomposition des 18. Jahrhunderts
Mariacarla De Giorgi
09.30 »Wo etwas grüßt, muss man wieder grüßen«: Das russische Musikleben in
Berlin in den zwanziger Jahren
Annamaria Fortunova
10.00 Das musikalische Leben im Italien Mussolinis im Spannungsfeld zwischen
Kompromiss und Konflikt
Minari Bochmann
10.30 Coffee break
11.00 »Nichtarische« Studierende der Hochschule für Musik in Berlin 1933–1945
Franziska Stoff
11.30 »…die Enzyklopädie auf die Grundlage weitester internationaler
Zusammenarbeit zu stellen«. Exilierte Musikwissenschaftler als Mitarbeiter an der MGG
Philine Lautenschläger
12.00 Musikausbildung im geteilten Berlin nach 1945 – Die Situation der
Musikhochschulen zwischen Neuanfang und Kontinuität
Cordula Heymann-Wentzel
Abstracts
Mariacarla de Giorgi (Salerno): Arcadian ideals between aesthetics and politics in central European female opera of the 18th century
The paper is concerned with female composers between Italy and the countries north of the Alps, who were protagonists on the political and cultural scene in 18th century Europe and whose model of »opera seria« was strongly influenced by the Roman Arcadia.
Beginning from musical-stylistic and thematic analysis of some selected female works, examinated in their political and cultural context, the contribution tries to give a picture, which from Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini (1720-1795) reaches to margravine Wilhelmine of Bayreuth (1709-1758), from electress Maria Antonia Walpurgis of Saxonia to Duchess Anna Amalia of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel.
Their works are connected by the same aesthetic and political ideals of the »Accademia dell'Arcadia«, whose bold sociocultural enterprise allows the female figure to advance, as well on the political as on the cultural level, towards new and richer prospects of social integration, which point to the transition of Europe from Absolutism to Enlightenment.
Anna Fortunova (Hannover): »Wo etwas grüßt, muss man wieder grüßen«: Russian musical life in Berlin in the 1920s
The themes of wandering and journeying have long been important in Russian culture and the Russian mentality. Yet following the October Revolution of 1917 the numbers of unwilling exiles were higher than ever before. These were emigrants, who had to leave their homeland and were forced to build a new life abroad. A fifth of these lived in Germany, and more than a tenth – over 300,000 – at the beginning of the 1920s in Berlin, a city which as a consequence became known as the »third capital of Russia«.
There was a particular group of people in Berlin that had left Russia despite their political engagement and ties with their homeland. These were the so-called intelligentsia. Why had they escaped, given the hardship this inevitably entailed? Many artists left their homeland because the new social relationships in the post-revolutionary era provided no possibility of producing art freely. To this group belonged composers, directors, conductors, actors, writers, painters, singers and interpreters. A quotation from Sergei Rachmaninov clearly encapsulates this sense of oppression felt by artists in their native land: »I felt freer under Nicholas II than I do at present, and the term »freedom« now sounds like a mockery of the word«.
Many aspects of the life of Russian emigrants in Berlin is well researched, yet virtually nothing can be found concerning the Russian musical life of Berlin, despite its undoubted great significance. The names of Russian musicians Berlin could boast of include Alexander Glazunov, Sergei Rachmaninov, Nikolai Medtner, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Feodor Chaliapin, Sergei Koussevitzky and Gregor Piatigorsky.
Who were the principal figures in Russian musical-life in Berlin? What connections and contact existed between Russian and German artists in the city? What meaning did this culture have for both the German capital and for the whole country? These and other questions about Russian musical life in Berlin in the 1920s form the basis of my paper.
Minari Bochmann (Halle): The musical life in Mussolini's Italy in the area of tension between compromise and conflict
Until 1937, the regime represented the original interest of Italian fascism and tried to connect all musical styles to it. The renaming of the Ministero per la Stampa e la Propaganda to Ministero della Cultura Popolare made already obvious that the Italian fascism shifted its interest to the diffusion of the »racial culture«. However, the racial myths that were discussed in Italy soon raised the question of Italy's cultural primacy and the demonstration of its »cultural-political independence« towards the »Third Reich«. The presentation deals with the possibilities of expression that music in Italy had under the purely power-political decisions of the fascistic potentates as well as with the role of the cultural policy of the »Third Reich« for the development of music in Italy.
Franziska Stoff (Berlin): »Non-aryan« students at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin 1933-1945
The lecture will display - next to a short explanation of the special position of the Academies of the Arts within the »special decree landscape« of Nazi-Germany - how the as »non-aryan« stigmatised students were treated at the University and how this »treatment« changed during the course of the nazi rule.
To clarify this »treatment«, a number of statistics and diagrams (made by the author) will show e.g. the performance frequency of the students termed as »non-aryan«, the practice of granting scholarships to them and the degrees these students could obtain.
These accounts will be accompanied by an explanation of the several changes in the valid ministerial decrees (on the treatment of »non-aryan« students), in order to come close to a verdict on the position of the University of Music in the »Third Reich« towards its students.
Philine Lautenschläger (Berlin): »...die Enzyklopädie auf die Grundlage weitester internationaler Zusammenarbeit zu stellen.« Exilierte Musikwissenschaftler als Mitarbeiter an der MGG
Among the authors of The Encyclopedia »Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart« (ed. Friedrich Blume), one finds a number of immigrants who had to leave Germany in the 1930s, and who hoped to continue their careers abroad.
The correspondence between the editors and the immigrants, held by the Barenreiter Archive in Kassel, offers insight into the dialog between the exiled musicologists and those who remained in Germany.
The latter included older researchers such as Curt Sachs and Richard Engländer, as well as younger scholars such as Manfred Bukofzer and Edith Gerson-Kiwi.
The paper investigates the criteria used for selecting authors, and chronicles the topics discussed in the correspondence, particularly those concerning the subject of exile. It will also address the question of which musicological methods and ideas returned to Germany through the publication of the Encylopedia.
Cordula Heymann-Wentzel (Berlin): Between renewal and continuity. Music education in a divided Berlin at the two music colleges of the city after 1945
The development and orientation of the two major music training institutes of the city after the end of World War II is to be exemplary compared with each other. The focus is hereby on the denazification and re-orientation of Music College in West Berlin vis-à-vis the »German Academy of Music« established as the new music college of the young GDR on the 10.01.1950. The former »Royal Academy of performing musical arts« and today's »College of Music« already looks back at a long tradition that is marked by attempts to establish an association to modernity under the directorship of Boris Blacher. In the eastern part, however, a new training facility was called to live - headed by the directors Georg Knebler and later Eberhard Rebling that associated the name »Hanns Eisler« also with a political program. The focus is aimed at providing a comparison between the personnel structures, whereby special attention is given to the returning exiles and the transfer of culture initiated by them. In addition, course content and training objectives will also be compared.
The lecture is a first interim report on the work that is led by Prof. Dr. Dorte Schmid within the framework of the research project funded by the DFG: »continuities and discontinuities in the musical life of the post-war period, project part IV: The return of persons, works and ideas.«