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Author Tompkins, David G., author.

Title Composing the party line : music and politics in early cold war Poland and East Germany / David G. Tompkins.

Publication Info. West Lafayette, Indiana : Purdue University Press, [2013]
©2013

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 300 pages) : illustrations.
Series Central European studies
Central European studies.
Summary This book examines the exercise of power in the Stalinist music world as well as the ways in which composers and ordinary people responded to it. It presents a comparative inquiry into the relationship between music and politics in the German Democratic Republic and Poland from the aftermath of World War II through Stalin's death in 1953, concluding with the slow process of de-Stalinization in the mid-to late-1950s. The author explores how the Communist parties in both countries expressed their attitudes to music of all kinds, and how composers, performers, and audiences cooperated with, resisted, and negotiated these suggestions and demands. Based on a deep analysis of the archival and contemporary published sources on state, party, and professional organizations concerned with musical life, Tompkins argues that music, as a significant part of cultural production in these countries, played a key role in instituting and maintaining the regimes of East Central Europe. As part of the Stalinist project to create and control a new socialist identity at the personal as well as collective level, the ruling parties in East Germany and Poland sought to saturate public space through the production of music. Politically effective ideas and symbols were introduced that furthered their attempts to, in the parlance of the day, "engineer the human soul." Music also helped the Communist parties establish legitimacy. Extensive state support for musical life encouraged musical elites and audiences to accept the dominant position and political missions of these regimes. Party leaders invested considerable resources in the attempt to create an authorized musical language that would secure and maintain hegemony over the cultural and wider social worlds. The responses of composers and audiences ran the gamut from enthusiasm to suspicion, but indifference was not an option.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-286) and index.
Contents The rise and decline of socialist realism in music -- The composers' unions between party aims and professional autonomy -- The struggle over commissions -- The music festival as pedagogical experience -- The concert landscape.
Note Print version record.
Subject Music -- Political aspects -- Poland -- History -- 20th century.
Music -- Political aspects -- Germany (East) -- History -- 20th century.
Music and state -- Poland -- History -- 20th century.
Music and state -- Germany (East) -- History -- 20th century.
Music -- Political aspects -- fast -- (OCoLC)fst01030414.
Music and state -- fast -- (OCoLC)fst01030489.
Germany (East) -- fast -- (OCoLC)fst01210274.
Poland -- fast -- (OCoLC)fst01206891.
HISTORY -- Europe -- Eastern.
HISTORY -- Modern -- 20th Century.
Music and state. (OCoLC)fst01030489
Music -- Political aspects. (OCoLC)fst01030414
Germany (East) (OCoLC)fst01210274
Poland. (OCoLC)fst01206891
Musik. (DE-588)4040802-4
Musikleben. (DE-588)4075128-4
Politik. (DE-588)4046514-7
Germany DDR. (DE-588)4011890-3
Poland. (DE-588)4046496-9
Chronological Term 1900-1999
Genre/Form History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
Other Form: Print version: Tompkins, David G. Composing the party line. West Lafayette, Indiana : Purdue University Press, 2013 9781557536471 (DLC) 2013013467 (OCoLC)839661138
Standard No. 40022828674
ISBN 9781461957157 (electronic bk.)
146195715X (electronic bk.)
9781612492896 (electronic bk.)
1612492894 (electronic bk.)
9781557537027
155753702X
9781612492902
1612492908
9781557536471 (paperback;) (alk. paper)
1557536473 (paperback;) (alk. paper)
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