Uso de tópicos de estilo en la música de la Alemania nazi. Friedenstag

Abstract

In 1933 Germany experienced the rise of Nazism to power. It was a fascist government with some characteristics of its own that did not distract it from the essential authoritarianism of these ideological currents, which were gaining presence in those years throughout the world and especially in Europe. Nazism prevailed between 1933 and 1945, twelve years during which the government's willingness to control at all levels -political, social, economic and, of course, cultural- became clear. The culture received special attention from the National Socialists as a particularly effective means for the control of the masses. Theater, painting, film, radio and, of course, music attracted a wide variety of audiences in all social segments, publics that were quickly exposed to the regime's intense propaganda campaigns. Therefore, from the beginning, the Nazis tried to organize every sector of culture and keep them all centralized under one command (Reichskulturkammer). This task was rigorously applied also to the musical world obtaining a certain success mostly because it was perceived as a hopeful response to a long historical claim of organization of a sector very subverted by the amateur world. To achieve this, attempts were made, among many other measures, to create directions that tended to facilitate a type of production acceptable to certain conservative tastes. These directions, indeed, were very difficult to realize, especially since they did not take into account the deeply individualistic character of the artists as creators. Despite this, it is indisputable that there was a pressure, often intense, and that the efforts to implement these rules were strong during the period. There is no doubt that this created a series of factual conditions that, in one way or another, gave a certain shape to the musical production of that time, an aspect that is perceived with singular clarity through the processes of style analysis that distill the use of certain topics -surprisingly characteristics- in accordance with the tastes of the dominant ideology. As a demonstration, we have chosen the opera Friedenstag, by Richard Strauss, which shows unequivocally that the conditions imposed by Nazism affected the language and aesthetics of the composers during that period.

Date of Award	15 Dec 2017
Original language	Spanish
Supervisor	Francesc Cortes Mir (Director)