MUSI 006B: Music and War (SC)

2021, edited by Alessandro Carrieri and Annalisa Capristo. "This book is the first collection of multi-disciplinary research on the experience of Italian-Jewish musicians and composers in Fascist Italy. Drawing together seven diverse essays from both established and emerging scholars across a range of fields, this book examines multiple aspects of this neglected period of music history, including the marginalization and expulsion of Jewish musicians and composers from Italian theatres and conservatories after the 1938-39 Race Laws, and their subsequent exile and persecution. Using a variety of critical perspectives and innovative methodological approaches, these essays reconstruct and analyze the impact that the Italian Race Laws and Fascist Italy's musical relations with Nazi Germany had on the lives and works of Italian Jewish composers from 1933 to 1945. These original contributions on relatively unresearched aspects of historical musicology offer new insight into the relationship between the Fascist regime and music."

by John C. Hajduk. A good overview article and bibliography.

2020, edited by Pamela M. Potter, Christina Baade, and Roberta Montemorra Marvin. "How can music withstand the death and destruction brought on by war? Global conflicts of the 20th century fundamentally transformed not only national boundaries, power relations, and global economies, but also the arts and culture of every nation involved. An important, unacknowledged aspect of these conflicts is that they have unique musical soundtracks. Music in World War II explores how music and sound took on radically different dimensions in the United States and Europe before, during, and after World War II. Additionally, the collection examines the impact of radio and film as the disseminators of the war's musical soundtrack. Contributors contend that the European and American soundtrack of World War II was largely one of escapism rather than the lofty, solemn, heroic, and celebratory mode of "war music" in the past. Furthermore, they explore the variety of experiences of populations forced from their homes and interned in civilian and POW camps in Europe and the United States, examining how music in these environments played a crucial role in maintaining ties to an idealized "home" and constructing politicized notions of national and ethnic identity. This fascinating and well-constructed volume of essays builds understanding of the role and importance of music during periods of conflict and highlights the unique aspects of music during World War II."

2013, by Annegret Fauser. "What role did music play in the United States during World War II? How did composers reconcile the demands of their country and their art as America mobilized both militarily and culturally for war?Annegret Fauser explores these and many other questions in the first in-depth study of American concert music during World War II. While Dinah Shore, Duke Ellington, and the Andrew Sisters entertained civilians at home and G.I.s abroad with swing and boogie-woogie, Fauser shows it was classicalmusic that truly distinguished musical life in the wartime United States. Classical music in 1940s America had a ubiquitous cultural presence - whether as an instrument of propaganda or a means of entertainment, recuperation, and uplift - that is hard to imagine today, and Fauser suggests that noother war enlisted culture in general and music in particular so consciously and unequivocally as World War II.Indeed, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Group Theatre director Harold Clurman wrote to his cousin, Aaron Copland: "So you're back in N.Y. . . ready to defend your country in her hour of need with lectures, books, symphonies!" Copland was in fact involved in propaganda missions of theOffice of War Information, as were Marc Blitzstein, Elliott Carter, Henry Cowell, Roy Harris, and Colin McPhee. It is the works of these musical greats - as well as many other American and exiled European composers who put their talents to patriotic purposes - that form the core of Fauser'senlightening account.Drawing on music history, aesthetics, reception history, and cultural history, Sounds of War recreates the remarkable sonic landscape of the World War II era and offers fresh insight to the role of music during wartime."

2007, by William H. Young and Nancy K. Young. "In the World War II era, big bands and swing music reached the heights of popularity with soldiers as well as friends and loved ones back home. Many entertainers such as Glenn Miller also served in the military, or supported the war effort with bond drives and entertaining the troops at home and abroad. In addition to big band and swing music, musicals, jazz, blues, gospel and country music were also popular. Chapters on each, along with an analysis of the evolution of record companies, records, radios, and television are included here, for students, historians, and fans of the era. Includes a timeline of the music of the era, an appendix of the Broadway and Hollywood Musicals, 1939-1945, and an appendix of Songs, Composers, and lyricists, 1939-1945. An extensive discography and bibliography, along with approximately 35 black and white photos, complete the volume."

2006, by John Bush Jones, "Poet Rod McKuen once observed that "1939-1945 was a terrible time for the world, but it was a glorious time for songs and fighter pilots." Anyone who was alive during World War II remembers with fondness the music of the period. Songs such as "I'll Be Seeing You," "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," "It's Been A Long, Long Time," and "Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition" became standards that are still around today. But what's most amazing about the popular songs of the war years is just how many there were. World War II was one of the most fertile periods of American popular songwriting; it was also the heyday of such "big bands" as those of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Harry James, and of vocalists such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, Kitty Kallen, and, of course, the Andrews Sisters. This outpouring of music included romantic ballads, rhythm numbers, dance tunes, and novelty songs, and the war itself occasioned the writing, publishing, recording, and performance of thousands of war-inspired songs. Professionals wrote virtually all of the wartime songs we still sing today, but thousands of other numbers were written by inspired (or not-so-inspired) amateurs: men, women, and even children eager to express their patriotism through lyric and melody. Although a central part of home front popular culture during World War II, these war-related and war-inspired songs had never been systematically analyzed or interpreted. In The Songs That Fought The War, John Bush Jones examines hundreds of these tunes in the context of the times. He begins with a look at the contemporary music industry and the astonishing array of songwriters (including amateurs) prior to Pearl Harbor and during the war. Then he turns to songs written and popularized before Pearl Harbor, including tunes that touted isolationism and patriotism in the late 1930s, songs written by Americans about the European allies, and songs from England that became popular in the United States. Post-Pearl Harbor tunes included songs about the draft, enlistment, army life, national pride, and a few about wartime personalities such as FDR and MacArthur. Humorous songs about shortages, rationing, and Victory Gardens and sentimental ballads about boys abroad missing girls back home (and vice versa) expressed home front anxieties and efforts, not least of which was the German hit among both the Allies and the Axis, "Lili Marlene.""

2002, by Michael H. Kater. "How does creativity thrive in the face of fascism? How can a highly artistic individual function professionally in so threatening a climate?Composers of the Nazi Era is the final book in a critically acclaimed trilogy that includes Different Drummers (OUP 1992) and The Twisted Muse (OUP 1997), which won the Wallace K. Ferguson Prize of the Canadian Historical Association. Here, historian Michael H. Kater provides a detailed study ofthe often interrelated careers of eight prominent German composers who lived and worked amid the dictatorship of the Third Reich, or were driven into exile by it: Werner Egk, Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Carl Orff, Hans Pfitzner, Arnold Schoenberg, and Richard Strauss. Katerweighs issues of accommodation and resistance to ask whether these artists corrupted themselves in the service of a criminal regime--and if so, whether this may be discerned from their music. After chapters discussing the circumstances of each composer individually, Kater concludes with an analysisof the composers' different responses to the Nazi regime and an overview of the sociopolitical background against which they functioned. The final chapter also extends the discussion beyond the end of World War II to examine how the composers reacted to the new and fragile democracy inGermany."

1985, by Joza Karas. "When Adolf Hitler created the model camp at Theresienstadt (Terezín in Czech) for the better-known of Europe's Jewish transportees, he gathered together many of the continent's finest musicians. This examination of the associations, the compositions, the performances, and above all, the people in Terezín accentuates the roles the active musical life played in the struggle for hope in those darkest of times."