Music 3762A

Music and Politics in the Twentieth Century

Fall 2012
Tuesdays 1.30pm-3.30pm and Fridays 2.30pm-3.30pm, TC343
Instructor: Dr. Emily Ansari
Office: Talbot College 229

emily.ansari@uwo.ca
Office hours: Tuesdays, 3.3opm-5.30pm

Course description
Using historical, political, and musical sources, this class will examine interactions
between music and politics by considering musics relationship to government, to war,
and to protest. In the process we consider twentieth-century music that was politically
significant in Germany, the USSR, the United States, and Canada, assessing cultural
policy under authoritarian regimes and politically motivated music composed in a
democratic society. We will also analyze the long-term ramifications of using
seemingly non-political musical works for political ends.
Objectives
1. Gain an understanding of some of the many ways in which music has interacted
with politics in the twentieth century and the ways in which the arts can be politicized.
2. Become more familiar with some important twentieth-century works of music that
were written to be, or have become, politically significant.
3. Understand some of the key debates in contemporary musicology concerning
twentieth-century composers and the politics of their works.
4. Develop critical thinking skills and the ability to assess music in intellectual and
socio-cultural terms.
5. Improve abilities to analyze the scholarly and political positions of others and
articulate your own position on these debates, both verbally and in writing.
Readings, Scores and Recordings
Pdfs of all the course readings are available on webct.
All the books from which the readings are taken are also on 1-day reserve. If you need
additional books that turn out to be in high demand to be placed on reserve, please let
me know.
Please listen to the works that are to be presented on before class. All scores and CDs
of these works are on 2-hour reserve.
Evaluation
Attendance and Participation
Film review
In-class Presentation
Final exam
Final paper

15%
10%
20%
25%
30%

Assignment summary
1. Film analysis (3-5 pages, submit to EAA via turnitin before class on October 9).
Write a response to the film Shostakovich Against Stalin: The War Symphonies.
How does the filmmaker use the material available on Shostakovich to construct
this film? Is he taking a particular viewpoint? Assess the films content within the
context of Shostakovich scholarship.
2. Presentation with a colleague: work with a friend to put together a 20-minute
presentation on an assigned topic to present to the class. Your presentation should
give a sense of the works musical content, but most of your time should be spent
considering the piece within the context of issues discussed in this course,
including its political message (if it has one), the way it has been employed
politically by others, and a sense of the political context in which it was written.
Avoid duplicating the assigned readings that your colleagues will have readI will
be looking for evidence you have undertaken broad research and found other
scholarly material relating to this works political contexts, as well as incorporating
your own assessment and ideas. An A grade presentation will put forward a clear
argument, incorporate supporting materials such as powerpoint, handouts, and
musical examples, be carefully structured and clear, offer a nuanced incorporation
of existing scholarship, and present some original ideas of your own.
3. Final paper (10-12 pages, submit to EAA via turnitin before class on November 23).
Review the debates and interpretations surrounding a piece of music (other than
those discussed in class) written during the 20th century that is associated in some
way with politics. An A grade paper will contain most of the same characteristics
of a strong presentation (listed above), although elegant and intelligent writing and
a clearly articulated argument will obviously be given a greater emphasis here. The
piece of music can come from any genre and any part of the world. A page
proposal for your final paper is due October 26.
4. Final take-home exam, distributed in the final class and submitted to EAA via
turnitin by 5pm, December 8. This open-book exam will concern readings and
music discussed in class. An ability to demonstrate an intelligent engagement with
the issues and music discussed during the term (going beyond the textbook) will
give you the highest grade. There will be 3 short answer questions (1 page, double
spaced) and one long-answer question (2 pages, double-spaced).
Course policies
This course is all about discussion and participation: attendance and
participation represent 15% of your grade. If you miss classes or are silent in
class, this grade will be affected. If you cannot attend class for a degree-related
or medical reason, please let me know in advance. Documentation will be
required in the case of medical-related absences. For UWOs Policy on
Accommodation for Medical Illness see
www.studentservices.uwo.ca/secure/index.cfm.
Please come to each class having done the reading and listening assignments
and having considered the issues and questions listed on this syllabus for the
class. Your participation grade will be even higher if you also bring questions
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and issues of your own to raise in class. Remember that this is a topic with very
few right or wrong answers, so dont be afraid to speak up. The more you have
to say, the more stimulating class will be, the more you will learn, and the better
you will do.
How you present your thoughts in presentations and papers represents the
major part of your grade. Please take time to craft these assignments so that
they have a thesis and a clear, cogent argument. And dont forget to proof-read.
An A paper or presentation will contain a clear and thoughtful presentation of
your ideas that brings new ideas to the discussion.
Please turn off your cell phone and dont surf the web during class. Laptops are
strongly discouraged.
Unless you have either the requisites for this course or written special
permission from your Dean to enroll in it, you may be removed from this course
and it will be deleted from your record. This decision may not be appealed. You
will receive no adjustment to your fees in the event that you are dropped from a
course for failing to have the necessary prerequisites.
Plagiarism: Scholastic offences are taken seriously and students are directed to
read the appropriate policy, specifically, the definition of what constitutes a
Scholastic Offence, as found at
www.uwo.ca/univsec/handbook/appeals/scholoff.pdf. Students must write their
essays and assignments in their own words. Whenever students take an idea, or
a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using
quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as footnotes
or citations. Plagiarism is a major offense (see Scholastic Offense Policy in the
Western Academic Calendar). All required papers may be subject to submission
for textual similarity review to the commercial plagiarism detection software
under license to the University for the detection of plagiarism. All papers
submitted will be included as source documents in the reference database for
the purpose of detecting plagiarism of papers subsequently submitted to the
system. Use of the service is subject to the licensing agreement, currently
between the University of Western Ontario and Turnitin.com
(http://www.turnitin.com).
Class schedule
Fri Sept 7: Introduction In what ways can Music and Politics interact?
Tues Sept 11: Music History and the Idea of Autonomy
Readings:
Lydia Goehr, Political Music and the Politics of Music. The Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism 52/1 (Winter 1994), 99-112.
Carl Dahlhaus, Foundations of Music History, Translated by J.B. Robinson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983), 19-32.

Theodor W. Adorno, Attitude toward Society in Philosophy of Modern Music

(translated by Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster) (London: Sheed and
Ward, 1973), 129-133.
I: MUSIC AND GOVERNMENT
Fri Sept 14: Soviet Russia and Socialist Realism
Reading:
Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, volume 4 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005), 743-8, 775-796.
[Various primary sources], Nicolas Slonimsky, Music Since 1900 (New York: C.
Scribners Sons, 1971), 1358-1377.
Tues Sept 18: Soviet Russia and Socialist Realism
Readings:
Simo Mikkhonen, Music and Power in the Soviet 1930s: A History of Composers
Bureaucracy (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Meller Press, 2009), 181-212.
Irina Gutkin, The Cultural Origins of the Socialist Realist Aesthetic, 1890-1934
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999), 38-51.
Fri Sept 21: The Shostakovich Wars
Readings:
Solomon Volkov, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich as related to and
edited by Solomon Volkov. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis (New York: Harper
and Row, 1979), xi-xviii.
Laurel E. Fay, Volkovs Testimony Reconsidered, in Malcolm Hamrick Brown, A
Shostakovich Casebook (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 2004), 22-68.
Tues Sept 25: The Shostakovich Wars
Presentation topic: Shostakovich Symphony #5 (M1001.S46 op.47 .S4, MCD3373)
Readings:
Richard Taruskin, Shostakovich and Us, in Rosamund Bartlett, Shostakovich in
Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1-30.
Fri Sept 28: Music and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany
Presentation topic: Arnold Schoenberg, Survivor from Warsaw (M1625.S34 op.46 B6,
MCD6136)
Readings:
Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter, Music and German National Identity (Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 1-35.
Tues Oct 2: Music and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany
Presentation topic: Ernst Krenek, Jonny Spielt Auf (M1503.K74J6U6, MCD8594)
Readings:
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Lily E. Hirsch, A Jewish Orchestra in Nazi Germany: Musical Politics and the Berlin
Jewish Culture League (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 1-36.
Fri October 5: Composing in Nazi Germany
Listening:
Hartmann, Sinfonia Tragica (available online from Naxos via library website,
M1001.H376S5 1989)
Reading:
Michael Kater, Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000), 86-110.
Tues October 9: Composing in Nazi Germany
-> Film analysis due before class
Presentation topic: Carl Orff, Carmina Burana (M1530.O74C3S3 1965, MCD14649)
Readings:
Michael Kater, Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000), 111-143.
Richard Taruskin, Orffs Musical and Moral Failings, New York Times, May 6, 2001.
Fri Oct 12: Canadian Music and Government-promoted nationalism
Presentation topic: Canadian Content and the search for Canadian cultural identity
Reading:
Robert A. Wright, Dream, Comfort, Memory, Despair: Canadian Popular Musicians
and the Dilemma of Nationalism, 1968-1972, in Beverley Diamond and Robert
Witmer, Canadian Music: Issues of Hegemony and Identity (Toronto: Canadian
Scholars Press, 1994), 283-301.
Tues Oct 16: Canadian Music and Government-promoted nationalism
Presentation topic: R. Murray Schafer, Patria: Prologue: Princess of the Stars
(M1505.S385P3 1986, MCD11079)
Readings:
R. Murray Schafer, Music in the Cold (Bancroft, ON: Arcana Editions, 1977). NOT ON
WEBCT: Consult on reserve (PR9299.1.S2455M8 1977)
R. Murray Schafer, Canadian Culture: Colonial Culture (1983), in On Canadian Music
(Bancroft, ON: Arcana Editions, 1984), 75-94.

II: MUSIC AND WAR

Fri Oct 19: Music and US Cultural Diplomacy
Readings:
Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945-61
(New York, St Martins Press, 1997), 1-28.

Tues Oct 23: Music and US Cultural Diplomacy

Presentation topic: Jazz and Cold War Diplomacy
Emily Abrams Ansari, Aaron Copland and the Politics of Cultural Diplomacy, Journal
of the Society for American Music 5/3 (2011): 335-364.
Fri Oct 26: Writing about Music and Politics
-> Half-page final paper proposal due (print and bring to class)
Tues Oct 30: Music and War Today
Presentation topic: Country music responds to the War on Terror
Reading:
Jonathan Pieslak, Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 1-15. Also watch videos and
interviews at http://www.soundtargets.com/.
Fri Nov 2: INSTRUCTOR AWAY (at American Musicological Society Conference)
Tues Nov 6: Music and War today
Presentation topic: John Adams, The Death of Klinghoffer (M1503.A23D4 1994,
MCD8468)
Readings:
Suzanne G. Cusick, You are in a place that is out of the world. . .: Music in the
Detention Camps of the Global War on Terror, Journal of the Society for
American Music, 2/1 (February 2008), 1-26.
James Deaville, Selling War: Television News Music and the Shaping of American
Public Opinion, Echo: A Music Centered Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2006). NB Not
on webct: Read at http://www.echo.ucla.edu/Volume8Issue1/roundtable/deaville.html
III: MUSIC AND PROTEST
Fri Nov 9: Anti-War Protest and Youth Movements During the 1960s
Reading:
Detlef Siegfried, Music and Protest in 1960s Europe, in Martin Klimke and Joachim
Scharloth, 1968 in Europe: A History of Protest and Activism, 1956-77 (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 57-70.
Tues Nov 13: Anti-War Protest and Youth Movements During the 1960s
Presentation topic: Benjamin Britten, War Requiem (M2010.B75 op.66 1962, MCD15517)
Readings:
John Street, The Pop Star as Politician: From Belafonte to Bono, from Creativity to
Conscience, in Ian Peddie (ed.), The Resisting Muse: Popular Music and Social
Protest (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 49-61.

Donald Mitchell, Violent Climates, in Mervyn Cooke (ed.), The Cambridge

Companion to Benjamin Britten (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999),
188-216.
Fri Nov 16: Anti-War Protest and Youth Movements During the 1960s
Presentation topic: Tom Stoppards play, Rock n Roll (PR6069.T65R57 2006)
Listening:
The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground & Nico (MCD18043)
Tues Nov 20: Womens Protest
Presentation topic: The Music of Joan Baez (MCD6238)
Reading:
Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann, Finding Her Voice: Women in Country
Music, 1800-2000 (Nashville: Country Music Foundation Press, 2003), 93-105.
Fri Nov 23: Womens Protest
-> Final paper due before class
Reading:
Jane A. Bernstein, Thanks for My Weapons in BattleMy Voice and the Desire to
Use It: Women and Protest Music in the Americas, in Jane A. Bernstein (ed.),
Womens Voices Across Musical Worlds (Boston: Northeastern University Press,
2004), 166-186.
Tues Nov 27: The Civil Rights Era
Presentation topic: Songs of Civil Rights protest
Reading:
T.V. Reed, The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to
the Streets of Seattle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Pres, 2005), 1-39.
See also: http://www.upress.umn.edu/artofprotest/chapter1.html
Fri Nov 30: The Civil Rights Era
Reading:
Jon Michael Spencer, Protest and Praise: Sacred Music of Black Religion (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1990), 83-105.
Tues Dec 4: Closing Thoughts
Final take-home exam distributed in class; submit to Prof. Ansari via webct by
5pm, December 8.