Skip to Main Content

Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw in Postwar Europe

Online ISBN:
9780520957701
Print ISBN:
9780520281868
Publisher:
University of California Press
Book

Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw in Postwar Europe

Published online:
18 September 2014
Published in print:
15 March 2014
Online ISBN:
9780520957701
Print ISBN:
9780520281868
Publisher:
University of California Press

Abstract

Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw seemed designed to irritate every exposed nerve in postwar Europe. A twelve-tone piece in three languages about the Holocaust, it was written for an American audience by a Jewish composer whose oeuvre had been the Nazis’ prime exemplar of entartete (degenerate) music. Both admired and reviled as a pioneer of dodecaphony, Schoenberg had immigrated to the United States and become an American citizen. At approximately seven minutes, A Survivor is too short to occupy half of a concert, yet it is too fraught to easily share the bill with anything else. A cultural history of postwar Europe on both sides of the Cold War divide comes into focus when viewed through the lens of A Survivor. This book investigates the meanings attached to the work as it circulated through Europe between 1948 and 1968 in a kind of symbolic musical remigration, focusing on six case studies: West Germany, Austria, Norway, East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The details are specific to each, but common themes emerge in anxieties about musical modernism, Holocaust memory and culpability, the coexistence of Jews and former Nazis, anti-Semitism, dislocation, and the presence of occupying forces.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close