The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich [Paperback]

In literature, music is the food of love and soothes the savage beast; in politics, it can be perverted by the worst of causes. So claims Michael Kater in his compelling study of music and musicians in the Third Reich, The Twisted Muse. What did it mean to compose music for Hitler and his Nazi regime? Kater asks; can artists working in a climate of oppression and fascist demagoguery dismiss their roles by claiming they created or performed for the sake of art alone? To answer these questions, Kater approaches his subject from two different angles: first, he examines the lives of musicians living under the Nazi regime--from little known musicians struggling in the orchestra pit to the great and famous, including Richard Strauss and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Next, he examines the role music played in the Third Reich and the ways in which the Nazis manipulated it as propaganda.

The Twisted Muse is part biography, part history, but it is wholly fascinating. Michael Kater's unique approach to the subject of music and musicians as tools of the state ensures a wide audience, not only among music lovers, but among all those interested in politics, culture, or psychology. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The fate of musicians in Nazi Germany is a controversial subject that has been dealt with only sparingly in the past, mostly in the course of studies of such superstars as Wilhelm Furtwangler, Herbert von Karajan, Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, Otto Klemperer and Bruno Walter. Kater, a cultural historian based at York University in Toronto, who has already written books on jazz in Nazi Germany and on how doctors fared under Hitler, has done prodigious primary research, much of it in hitherto unexamined files, to emerge with a mountain of fresh material. He does indeed discuss the well-known names-finding in most cases that their behavior falls within a gray area rather than the stark black-and-white outlines so often presented by admirers or detractors-but also examines the fate of ordinary orchestral musicians, and of journeyman soloists and composers, some of whom were never known outside the country. He writes of the Nazis' frustrating attempts to create a valid contemporary music style free of "Jewish" and jazz influences, the role serious music played in the war effort and the remarkably different routes to survival chosen by composers as unlike as Richard Strauss, Hans Pfitzner, Carl Orff and Karl Amadeus Hartmann. A work this exhaustive and extensively footnoted is obviously not for a casual reader; but anyone seriously interested in the interface of art and a peculiarly threatening political culture will find it endlessly fascinating.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

This exhaustively researched book fills a conspicuous lacuna in 20th-century musicology. Kater, a Canadian researcher based at York University, presents a detailed, disturbing, but always compelling account of the musical scene in Germany during the Nazi era. Clearly and logically organized, the five chapters deal with the Nazi music bureaucracy, political compromise among music professionals, the persecuted Jewish and anti-Nazi musicians, music in educational and religious institutions, and the Nazis' concept of modernity in music and its impact on the leading composers and conductors of the time. Complex figures such as Richard Strauss and Wilhelm Furtwangler are treated thoroughly and dispassionately. Strauss emerges more sympathetically than in previous studies, while Furtwangler is shown to have been more odious in his thoughts and actions than previously believed. There is a great deal here to engage scholars and professional musicians as well as general readers interested in the study of music and ideology. Highly recommended for all libraries.?Larry Lipkis, Moravian Coll., Bethlehem, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

"Mr. Kater...has extracted masses of information from far-flung sources, including public and private archives in Germany and elsewhere, and has drawn level-headed, intelligent conclusions from his research....The broadest and clearest study of classical music in Hitler's Germany that has appeared to date....Mr. Kater's treatment of the complicated--and hotly debated--case of the conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler is thorough and convincing....A great deal more is packed into [this book], including fresh looks at the Wagner family's complicity with the Nazis and the cases of Paul Hindemith...and Herbert von Karajan....Anyone interested in the depressing but fascinating subject of art and politics will find this book exceptionally worthwhile."--The Wall Street Journal

"Kater...has done prodigious primary research, much of it in hitherto unexamined files, to emerge with a mountain of fresh material....Anyone seriously interested in the interface of art and a peculiarly threatening political culture will find [this book] endlessly fascinating."--Publishers Weekly

"[Gives] more analytical attention to the entire [Nazi] era's secrets. Kater...has combed newspaper archives, studied economic statistics, interviewed surviving composers and meticulously correlated information from denazification proceedings. His account...is the most throrough and nuanced now available of Nazi musical alliances, allegiances and ambiguities....Brings us to a more complicated understanding without tolerating latent defenses of old friends or 'Vissi d'Arte' alibis."--New York Times Book Review

"Fills a conspicuous lacuna in 20th-century musicology. Kater...presents a detailed, disturbing, but always compelling account....There is a great deal here to engage scholars and professional musicians as well as general readers interested in the study of music and ideology. Highly recommended for all libraries."--Library Journal

"The best source of information about conductors and other musicians in the Third Reich is now Mr. Kater's book, dense with facts, many of them newly unearthed."--New York Times

"[An] impressive new book...far and away the finest and canniest treatment of the Nazi musical nightmare to date, presents an excellent case study of two conductors who were judged not ideologically but aesthetically."--The New Yorker

"This absorbing study provides a painful reminder of the degree to which musicians were prepared to compromise their artistic integrity in order to appease the political hierarchy during the Third Reich."--Music Magazine

"This work, with its emphasis on the social and political nature of music and the political attitude of musicians during the Nazi regime, is the first of its kind. It will be of interest to scholars and general readers eager to understand Nazi Germany, to music lovers and to anyone interested in the interchange of music and politics, and culutre and ideology."--Avid-Magazine

"...a well informed study of the state of serious or classical music....Kater is extemely knowledgeable about the varieties of political allegiances deployed by the musical fraternity....[His] almost-encyclopedic study of these musicians' activities in the Third Reich reveals a great deal more than was hitherto documented about the least desirable sides of these men's characters."--Vancouver Sun

"The most authoritative account to date of music and musicians in the Third Reich."--American Historical Review

Is music removed from politics? To what ends, beneficent or malevolent, can music and musicians be put? In short, when human rights are grossly abused and politics turned to fascist demagoguery, can art and artists be innocent? These questions and their implications are explored in Michael Kater's broad survey of musicians and the music they composed and performed during the Third Reich. Great and small--from Valentin Grimm, a struggling clarinetist, to Richard Strauss, renowned composer--are examined by Kater, sometimes in intimate detail, and the lives and decisions of Nazi Germany's professional musicians are laid out before the reader. Kater tackles the issue of whether the Nazi regime, because it held music in crassly utilitarian regard, acted on musicians in such a way as to consolidate or atomize the profession. Kater's examination of the value of music for the regime and the degree to which the regime attained a positive propaganda and palliative effect through the manner in which it manipulated its musicians, and by extension, German music, is of importance for understanding culture in totalitarian systems. This work, with its emphasis on the social and political nature of music and the political attitude of musicians during the Nazi regime, will be the first of its kind. It will be of interest to scholars and general readers eager to understand Nazi Germany, to music lovers, and to anyone interested in the interchange of music and politics, culture and ideology.

Michael H. Kater is Distinguished Research Professor of History at the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies at York University, Toronto, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is also the author of Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (OUP, 1992).