1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910956766203321

Autore

Anderton Abby

Titolo

Rubble Music : Occupying the Ruins of Postwar Berlin, 1945–1950 / / Abby Anderton

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Bloomington, Indiana : , : Indiana University Press, , [2019]

©2019

ISBN

0-253-04244-5

0-253-04243-7

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (198 pages)

Disciplina

780.94315509044

Soggetti

Nachkriegszeit

Musikleben

Klassische Musik

Music

Music - Germany - Berlin - 20th century - History and criticism

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Berlin

Germany Berlin

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- Berlin soundscapes of defeat and occupation -- Occupied music: the Berlin Philharmonic and the American military -- Rubble opera after 1945: East Berlin's Staatsoper and West Berlin's Städtische Oper -- Embodied and disembodied voices: listening to sonic ruins -- Berlin 1945: toward a ruin aesthetic in music -- Conclusion.

Sommario/riassunto

As the seat of Hitler's government, Berlin was the most frequently targeted city in Germany for Allied bombing campaigns during World War II. Air raids shelled celebrated monuments, left homes uninhabitable, and reduced much of the city to nothing but rubble. After the war's end, this apocalyptic landscape captured the imagination of artists, filmmakers, and writers, who used the ruins to engage with themes of alienation, disillusionment, and moral



ambiguity. In Rubble Music , Abby Anderton explores the classical music culture of postwar Berlin, analyzing archival documents, period sources, and musical scores to identify the sound of civilian suffering after urban catastrophe. Anderton reveals how rubble functioned as a literal, figurative, psychological, and sonic element by examining the resonances of trauma heard in the German musical repertoire after 1945. With detailed explorations of reconstituted orchestral ensembles, opera companies, and radio stations, as well as analyses of performances and compositions that were beyond the reach of the Allied occupiers, Anderton demonstrates how German musicians worked through, cleared away, or built over the debris and devastation of the war.