Socialist Laments
Musical Mourning in the German Democratic Republic
Seiten
2021
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-754632-1 (ISBN)
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-754632-1 (ISBN)
How do individuals, communities, and societies use music as a form of mourning? This book demonstrates how music became a crucial outlet for processing loss in communist East Germany, where the ruling Socialist Unity Party tightly regulated expressions of loss.
Antifascist and socialist monuments pervaded the landscape of the former German Democratic Republic (1949-89), presenting a distorted vision of the national past. Official commemorative culture in East Germany celebrated a selective set of political heroes, seeming to leave no public space for mourning those who were excluded from the country's founding myths. Socialist Laments: Musical Mourning in the German Democratic Republic examines the role of music in this nation's memorial culture, demonstrating how music facilitated the expressions of loss within spaces of commemoration for East German citizens. Music performed during state-sponsored memorial rituals no doubt bolstered official narratives of the German past. But it simultaneously provided an outlet for mourning in highly politicized environment. The book presents both a history and theory of musical mourning in East Germany. Using a site-specific approach to analysis, author Martha Sprigge demonstrates how the multiple semantic networks opened up by these musical works facilitated many memorial associations without necessitating the overt articulation of a mourned subject. Throughout the country's forty-year existence, music offered East German citizens an audible outlet for working through traumatic losses-both collective and individual-that was distinct from other artistic expressive possibilities. The book reveals the ways that East Germany's extensive commemorative repertoire helped composers, performers, and audiences navigate between the inevitable need to mourn on the one hand, and the seeming impossibilities of mourning on the other.
Antifascist and socialist monuments pervaded the landscape of the former German Democratic Republic (1949-89), presenting a distorted vision of the national past. Official commemorative culture in East Germany celebrated a selective set of political heroes, seeming to leave no public space for mourning those who were excluded from the country's founding myths. Socialist Laments: Musical Mourning in the German Democratic Republic examines the role of music in this nation's memorial culture, demonstrating how music facilitated the expressions of loss within spaces of commemoration for East German citizens. Music performed during state-sponsored memorial rituals no doubt bolstered official narratives of the German past. But it simultaneously provided an outlet for mourning in highly politicized environment. The book presents both a history and theory of musical mourning in East Germany. Using a site-specific approach to analysis, author Martha Sprigge demonstrates how the multiple semantic networks opened up by these musical works facilitated many memorial associations without necessitating the overt articulation of a mourned subject. Throughout the country's forty-year existence, music offered East German citizens an audible outlet for working through traumatic losses-both collective and individual-that was distinct from other artistic expressive possibilities. The book reveals the ways that East Germany's extensive commemorative repertoire helped composers, performers, and audiences navigate between the inevitable need to mourn on the one hand, and the seeming impossibilities of mourning on the other.
Martha Sprigge is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of California - Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on musical expressions of mourning, grief, and remembrance in Germany after World War II. Her essays on musical commemorative practices in East Germany appear in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, the journal Twentieth-Century Music, as well as in recent edited volumes on German music and culture.
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Listening Guide for East German Commemorative Music
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Ruin
Chapter 2: The Socialists' Cemetery
Chapter 3: The Church
Chapter 4: Concentration Camp Memorials
Chapter 5: The Artists' Cemetery
Bibliography
Index
| Erscheinungsdatum | 29.04.2021 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | New Cultural History of Music |
| Zusatzinfo | 25 figures and 40 music examples |
| Verlagsort | New York |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 239 x 155 mm |
| Gewicht | 703 g |
| Themenwelt | Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik ► Musiktheorie / Musiklehre |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-19-754632-3 / 0197546323 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-19-754632-1 / 9780197546321 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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