Music in the Third Reich

In this authoritative study, one of the first to appear in English, Erik Levi explores the ambiguous relationship between music and politics during one of the darkest periods of recent cultural history. Utilising material drawn from contemporary documents, journals and newspapers, he traces the evolution of reactionary musical attitudes which were exploited by the Nazis in the final years of the Weimar Republic, chronicles the mechanisms that were established after 1933 to regiment musical life throughout Germany and the occupied territories, and examines the degree to which the climate of xenophobia, racism and anti-modernism affected the dissemination of music either in the opera house and concert hall, or on the radio and in the media.

Acknowledgements - List of Illustrations - Introduction - Conservative Musical Reaction in the Weimar Republic 1919-1933 - Music and State Control - Anti-Semitism - Entartete Musik: The War against Modernism -Technology services music: Radio and Recording during the Third Reich - Responding to the Market: Music Publishing in the Third Reich - Conformity or Challenge: The Opera House in the Third Reich - Continuity or Change: The Symphony Orchestra and its Repertoire - Rewriting Musical History: Music Literature and the Musical Press - Glossary -Chronology - Bibliography - Index