Music in the Age of Dictators: Stalinism, Nazism and the Popular Front

In this episode of "Music & Politics" we explore music in the age of dictators, in the 1930s and 1940s: Stalinism, Nazism and the Popular Front. Though "totalitarianism" is a contested term of the Cold War era, it well applies to the musical aesthetic of the great works of art-music of the 1930s. As we suggest at the outset, even the output of Hollywood's Golden Age like Max Steiner's soundtrack to "Gone with the Wind," or Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" can be understood as examples of totalitarian democracy in music. This is a music of monumental scale that overwhelms the listener by setting its work on the scale of giants. Sergei Prokofiev's soundtrack to the 1938 war/action propaganda film "Alexander Nevsky" conjures a mythical medieval Russia prince who leads his people into battle against the terrifying foe of the Teutonic Knights. Foreshadowing the coming conflict with Nazi Germany, Prokofiev deftly adapts Soviet-style marching music onto medieval times. Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana," perhaps the most popular work of the classic repertoire is not usually associated with the Nazi era, yet its latent links to that ideology are strong. Conceived and premiered in the Nazi era, this too is a work of medieval grandeur, archaic monastic latin drinking songs about fortune dwarf the listener in their sheer power, much like the Nazi rally architecture of Albert Speer. We conclude the episode by examining the musical response to this crisis of liberalism and democracy, namely the Popular Front. A grand political alliance of anti-fascism, Paul Robeson and Woody Guthrie are two prominent examples of musical artists that rose to the challenge presented by totalitarianism. Both committed to antifascism and the art of the folk song, Robeson, a Renaissance polymath, sang songs of struggle in many languages, and forged a crucial link between the African-American freedom struggle and global decolonisation. A bard of Great Depression era dispossession Guthrie chronicled the ravaging of the Dust Bowl, fusing poetry, philosophy and politics into a revitalized musical form soon to be imitated by Bob Dylans, and many others the world over. Please do not forget to like and subscribe and support us on Patreon at musicandpoliticspod.