| Popis: |
This chapter analyzes music by composers who participated in a widespread artistic preoccupation with Germany’s ruined cityscapes during and shortly after World War II. These first musical responses to the war—written at a time of great emotional, physical, and political uncertainty—had a significant impact on musical mourning practices in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany, which became the German Democratic Republic in 1949. The chapter focuses on three examples by composers who wrote musical responses to the air war and went on to have successful careers in East Germany. These composers had very different experiences in the Third Reich: Rudolf Mauersberger was a member of the Nazi Party; Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau were political and religious exiles. Yet they each used music to make sense of wartime trauma, by transforming the aftermath of the bombing—the rubble—into an aesthetic object—or ruin. |
