Music in the Age of Dictators: St...

Music in the Age of Dictators: Stalinism, Nazism and the Popular Front

Music and Global Politics di Adam J Sacks

Note sull'episodio

In this episode of "Music & Politics" we explore music in the age of dictators, in the 1930s and 1940s: Stalinism, Nazism and the Popular Front. Though "totalitarianism" is a contested term of the Cold War era, it well applies to the musical aesthetic of the great works of art-music of the 1930s. As we suggest at the outset, even the output of Hollywood's Golden Age like Max Steiner's soundtrack to "Gone with the Wind," or Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" can be understood as examples of totalitarian democracy in music. This is a music of monumental scale that overwhelms the listener by setting its work on the scale of giants. Sergei Prokofiev's soundtrack to the 1938 war/action propaganda film "Alexander Nevsky" conjures a mythical medieval Russia prince who leads his people into battle against the terrifying foe of the Teutonic  ... 

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Parole chiave
HitlerNazismStalinismEisensteinOrffCarmina BuranaPopular FrontPaul RobesonWoody GuthrieDust BowlDesertificationCoplandHollywoodGone with the WindProkofievAlexander NevskyStalin