Music Theatre and Politics in Germany

Music theatre and politics have maintained a long-standing if varying and problematic relationship. In the Ancient World the relationship used to be a harmonious one scholars have us believe glorifying the moment at the beginning of Western history when a political community or polis affirmed itself in a practice that purportedly achieved the perfect integration of music and theatre. To revive this original harmony was of course one of the main impulses that engendered the genre of opera. However while it is widely recognized that the political represented a prius in the Ancient triangle of music theatre and politics there has been little attention to the status of the political in the triangle's modern variety. Nonetheless the relationship between the three continues to be strong. In many contexts the political still takes priority encouraging or curbing artistic creativity. The contributions in this volume bridge the conventional chronological division between 'late Romantic' and 'modern' music to thematize a wide array of issues in the context of Germany. The contributors focus on a national tradition and period in which the friction between music theatre and politics grew particularly intense. Major themes include: reception history; the entwining of aesthetic and political intentions on the part of composers critics and historians; and the construction and/or critique of collective political identities in and through music theatre.