Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits

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Preface
Werner Egk: The Enigmatic Optimist
Paul Hindemith: The Reluctant Emigre
Kurt Weill: A Survivor on Two Continents
Karl Amadeus Hartmann: The Composer as Dissident
Carl Orff: Man of Legend
Hans Pfitzner: Magister Teutonicus Miser
Arnold Schoenberg: Musician of Contrasts
Richard Strauss: Jupiter Compromised
Conclusion
Notes
Index

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How does creativity thrive in the face of fascism? How can a highly artistic individual function professionally in so threatening a climate? The final book in a critically acclaimed trilogy that includes Different Drummers (OUP 1992) and The Twisted Muse (OUP 1997), this is a detailed study of the often interrelated careers of eight outstanding German composers who lived and worked amid the dictatorship of the Third Reich: Werner Egk, Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Carl Orff, Hans Pfitzner, Arnold Schoenberg, and Richard Strauss. Noted historian Michael H. Kater weighs issues of accommodation and resistance to ask whether these artists corrupted themselves in the service of a criminal regime--and if so, whether this is evident in their music. He also considers the degrees to which the Nazis politically, socially, economically, and aesthetically succeeded in their treatment of these individuals, whose lives and compositions represent diverse responses to totalitarianism.

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A very impressive achievement - for two reasons above all. First, the range of Kater's research and documentation is awe-inspiring. Second, Kater sets out neither to canonise or to demonise ... Ultimately, this is a book which provokes thoughts rather than spelling them out ... Kater doesn't offer answers, but after reading his book, we can at least see the questions more clearly

Kater's background knowledge is impressive, and he refuses to oversimplify of to make facile judgements ... well worth reading

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