Virtuosi Abroad

Download Virtuosi Abroad full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Virtuosi Abroad ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Virtuosi Abroad

Author : Kiril Tomoff
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501701827
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Virtuosi Abroad by : Kiril Tomoff

Download or read book Virtuosi Abroad written by Kiril Tomoff and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-12 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1940s and 1950s, Soviet musicians and ensembles were acclaimed across the globe. They toured the world, wowing critics and audiences, projecting an image of the USSR as a sophisticated promoter of cultural and artistic excellence. In Virtuosi Abroad, Kiril Tomoff focuses on music and the Soviet Union's star musicians to explore the dynamics of the cultural Cold War. He views the competition in the cultural sphere as part of the ongoing U.S. and Soviet efforts to integrate the rest of the world into their respective imperial projects. Tomoff argues that the spectacular Soviet successes in the system of international music competitions, taken together with the rapturous receptions accorded touring musicians, helped to persuade the Soviet leadership of the superiority of their system. This, combined with the historical triumphalism central to the Marxist-Leninist worldview, led to confidence that the USSR would be the inevitable winner in the global competition with the United States. Successes masked the fact that the very conditions that made them possible depended on a quiet process by which the USSR began to participate in an international legal and economic system dominated by the United States. Once the Soviet leadership transposed its talk of system superiority to the economic sphere, focusing in particular on consumer goods and popular culture, it had entered a competition that it could not win.

The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sports Bureaucracy, and the Cold War

Author : Jenifer Parks
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498541194
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sports Bureaucracy, and the Cold War by : Jenifer Parks

Download or read book The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sports Bureaucracy, and the Cold War written by Jenifer Parks and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-12-27 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using previously inaccessible archival documents, this study provides a longitudinal investigation of the middle levels of Soviet bureaucracy responsible for overseeing Olympic Sport during the Cold War. Spanning the period from the USSR’s Olympic debut in 1952 through the 1980 Games held in Moscow, this book argues that behind the high-profile performances of Soviet elite athletes, a legion of sports administrators worked within international sports organizations and the Soviet party-state to increase Soviet chances of success and make Soviet representatives a respected voice in international sports. Soviet officials helped expand the Olympic movement, increasing the participation of women, developing nations, and socialist bloc countries, while achieving Soviet political and diplomatic aims. Soviet representatives, over the course of only a few decades, became a dominant and respected voice within international sports circles, actively promoting Olympic ideals abroad even as they transformed those ideals to better align with Soviet goals. In the process, Soviet sports contributed to the evolution of Olympic sport, integrating the Soviet Union into an emerging global culture, and contributing to transformations within the Soviet Union. Back home in the USSR, the Sports Committee's leading personalities represented a new kind of Soviet bureaucrat, who emerged in the late years of Stalinism and contributed to the professionalization of party-state apparatus. Standing at the intersection between state and society, between Soviet political goals and their execution, and between Olympic sport and Communist ideology, mid-level Soviet sports administrators demonstrated ideological drive, political savvy, and professional pragmatism, providing the impetus, expertise, and experience to transform broad ideological constructs into specific policies and procedures in the Soviet Union and realize Soviet propaganda and foreign policy goals in international and Olympic sports.

Tourism and Travel during the Cold War

Author : Sune Bechmann Pedersen
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429575009
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (295 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Tourism and Travel during the Cold War by : Sune Bechmann Pedersen

Download or read book Tourism and Travel during the Cold War written by Sune Bechmann Pedersen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-11 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iron Curtain was not an impenetrable divide, and contacts between East and West took place regularly and on various levels throughout the Cold War. This book explores how the European tourist industry transcended the ideological fault lines and the communist states attracted an ever-increasing number of Western tourists. Based on extensive original research, it examines the ramifications of tourism, from sun-and-sea package tours to human rights travels, in key Eastern European locations including East Berlin, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Albania. The book’s analysis of the politics, culture, and history of tourism to the East offers important new perspectives on European tourism in the twentieth century. The Introduction of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Performing Peace and Friendship

Author : Pia Koivunen
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110761386
Total Pages : 318 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Performing Peace and Friendship by : Pia Koivunen

Download or read book Performing Peace and Friendship written by Pia Koivunen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-11-07 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Performing Peace and Friendship tells the story of how the Soviet Union succeeded in utilizing the World Festival of Youth and Students in its cultural diplomacy from late Stalinism through the early Khrushchev period. Pia Koivunen discusses the evolution of the youth gathering into a Soviet cultural product starting from the first festival held in Prague in 1947 and ending with the Moscow 1957 gathering, the latter becoming one of the most frequently referred moments of Khrushchev’s Thaw. By combining both institutional and grass-roots’ perspectives, the book widens our understanding of what Soviet cultural diplomacy was in practice, re-evaluates the agency of young people and provides new insights into the Soviet role in the cultural Cold War. Koivunen argues that rather than simply being orchestrated rallies by the Kremlin bureaucrats, the World Youth Festivals also became significant spaces of transnational encounters for young people, who found ways to employ the event for overcoming the various restrictions and boundaries of the Cold War world.

Entangled East and West

Author : Simo Mikkonen
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110573164
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Entangled East and West by : Simo Mikkonen

Download or read book Entangled East and West written by Simo Mikkonen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite increasing scholarship on the cultural Cold War, focus has been persistently been fixed on superpowers and their actions, missing the important role played by individuals and organizations all over Europe during the Cold War years.This volume focuses on cultural diplomacy and artistic interaction between Eastern and Western Europe after 1945. It aims at providing an essentially European point of view on the cultural Cold War, providing fresh insight into little known connections and cooperation in different artistic fields. Chapters of the volume address photography and architecture, popular as well as classical music, theatre and film, and fine arts. By examining different actors ranging from individuals to organizations such as universities, the volume brings new perspective on the mechanisms and workings of the cultural Cold War. Finally, the volume estimates the pertinence of the Cold War and its influence in post-1991 world.The volume offers an overview on the role culture played in international politics, as well as its role in the Cold War more generally, through interesting examples and case studies.

Soviet Americana

Author : Sergei Zhuk
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 178673303X
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (867 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Soviet Americana by : Sergei Zhuk

Download or read book Soviet Americana written by Sergei Zhuk and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-01-08 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Americanist community played a vital role in the Cold War, as well as in large part directing the cultural consumption of Soviet society and shaping perceptions of the US. To shed light onto this important, yet under-studied, academic community, Sergei Zhuk here explores the personal histories of prominent Soviet Americanists, considering the myriad cultural influences - from John Wayne's bravado in the film Stagecoach to Miles Davis - that shaped their identities, careers and academic interests. Zhuk's compelling account draws on a wide range of understudied archival documents, periodicals, letters and diaries as well as more than 100 exclusive interviews with prominent Americanists to take the reader from the post-war origins of American studies, via the extremes of the Cold War, thaw and perestroika, to Putin's Russia. Soviet Americana is a comprehensive insight into shifting attitudes towards the US throughout the twentieth century and an essential resource for all Soviet and Cold War historians.

The Performance Complex

Author : David Stark
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192606123
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (926 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Performance Complex by : David Stark

Download or read book The Performance Complex written by David Stark and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What's valuable? Market competition provides one kind of answer. Competitions offer another. On one side, competition is an ongoing and seemingly endless process of pricings; on the other, competitions are discrete and bounded in time and location, with entry rules, judges, scores, and prizes. This book examines what happens when ever more activities in domains of everyday life are evaluated and experienced in terms of performance metrics. Unlike organized competitions, such systems are ceaseless and without formal entry. Instead of producing resolutions, their scorings create addictions. To understand these developments, this book explores discrete contests (architectural competitions, international music competitions, and world press photo competitions); shows how the continuous updating of rankings is both a device for navigating the social world and an engine of anxiety; and examines the production of such anxiety in settings ranging from the pedagogy of performance in business schools to struggling musicians coping with new performance metrics in online platforms. In the performance society, networks of observation - in which all are performing and keeping score - are entangled with a system of emotionally charged preoccupations with one's positioning within the rankings. From the bedroom to the boardroom, pharmaceutical companies and management consultants promise enhanced performance. This assemblage of metrics, networks, and their attendant emotional pathologies is herein regarded as the performance complex.

Ballet in the Cold War

Author : Anne Searcy
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0190945109
Total Pages : 199 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (99 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Ballet in the Cold War by : Anne Searcy

Download or read book Ballet in the Cold War written by Anne Searcy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice-versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today"--

The Propaganda of Freedom

Author : Joseph Horowitz
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252054792
Total Pages : 198 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Propaganda of Freedom by : Joseph Horowitz

Download or read book The Propaganda of Freedom written by Joseph Horowitz and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2023-09-26 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The perils of equating notions of freedom with artistic vitality Eloquently extolled by President John F. Kennedy, the idea that only artists in free societies can produce great art became a bedrock assumption of the Cold War. That this conviction defied centuries of historical evidence--to say nothing of achievements within the Soviet Union--failed to impact impregnable cultural Cold War doctrine. Joseph Horowitz writes: “That so many fine minds could have cheapened freedom by over-praising it, turning it into a reductionist propaganda mantra, is one measure of the intellectual cost of the Cold War.” He shows how the efforts of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom were distorted by an anti-totalitarian “psychology of exile” traceable to its secretary general, the displaced Russian aristocrat/composer Nicolas Nabokov, and to Nabokov’s hero Igor Stravinsky. In counterpoint, Horowitz investigates personal, social, and political factors that actually shape the creative act. He here focuses on Stravinsky, who in Los Angeles experienced a “freedom not to matter,” and Dmitri Shostakovich, who was both victim and beneficiary of Soviet cultural policies. He also takes a fresh look at cultural exchange and explores paradoxical similarities and differences framing the popularization of classical music in the Soviet Union and the United States. In closing, he assesses the Kennedy administration’s arts advocacy initiatives and their pertinence to today’s fraught American national identity. Challenging long-entrenched myths, The Propaganda of Freedom newly explores the tangled relationship between the ideology of freedom and ideals of cultural achievement.

French and Soviet Musical Diplomacies in Post-War Austria, 1945-1955

Author : Alexander Golovlev
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000827763
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis French and Soviet Musical Diplomacies in Post-War Austria, 1945-1955 by : Alexander Golovlev

Download or read book French and Soviet Musical Diplomacies in Post-War Austria, 1945-1955 written by Alexander Golovlev and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: French and Soviet Musical Diplomacies in Post-War Austria, 1945-1955 investigates how promoting 'national' music and musicians was used as an important asset by France and the USSR in post-Nazi Austria, covering music’s role in international relations at various levels, within changing power frameworks. Bridging international relations, musical sociology, media studies, and Cold War history, four incisive chapters examine the crossroads of Soviet, French, and Austrian cultural politics and discourse-building, presented in two parts - institutions of musical diplomacy: Soviet and French cultural diplomats in comparison; sounds of music coming to Austria: Soviet and French musicians on tour. Using a communication- and media-oriented approach, this study casts new light, firstly, on the interpretative power of 'receiving' publics and, secondly, on the role of cultural transmitters at different levels. This is a valuable study for those specialising in Russian and East European music and music and politics. It will also appeal to cultural historians and all those interested in the intersections between music, international relations, and Cold War history.

To See Paris and Die

Author : Eleonory Gilburd
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674989759
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis To See Paris and Die by : Eleonory Gilburd

Download or read book To See Paris and Die written by Eleonory Gilburd and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-05 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Stalin died a torrent of Western novels, films, and paintings invaded Soviet streets and homes. Soviet citizens invested these imports with political and personal significance, transforming them into intimate possessions. Eleonory Gilburd reveals how Western culture defined the last three decades of the Soviet Union, its death, and afterlife.

Empire of Friends

Author : Rachel Applebaum
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501735586
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Empire of Friends by : Rachel Applebaum

Download or read book Empire of Friends written by Rachel Applebaum and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-15 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The familiar story of Soviet power in Cold War Eastern Europe focuses on political repression and military force. But in Empire of Friends, Rachel Applebaum shows how the Soviet Union simultaneously promoted a policy of transnational friendship with its Eastern Bloc satellites to create a cohesive socialist world. This friendship project resulted in a new type of imperial control based on cross-border contacts between ordinary citizens. In a new and fascinating story of cultural diplomacy, interpersonal relations, and the trade of consumer-goods, Applebaum tracks the rise and fall of the friendship project in Czechoslovakia, as the country evolved after World War II from the Soviet Union's most loyal satellite to its most rebellious. Throughout Eastern Europe, the friendship project shaped the most intimate aspects of people's lives, influencing everything from what they wore to where they traveled to whom they married. Applebaum argues that in Czechoslovakia, socialist friendship was surprisingly durable, capable of surviving the ravages of Stalinism and the Soviet invasion that crushed the 1968 Prague Spring. Eventually, the project became so successful that it undermined the very alliance it was designed to support: as Soviets and Czechoslovaks got to know one another, they discovered important cultural and political differences that contradicted propaganda about a cohesive socialist world. Empire of Friends reveals that the sphere of everyday life was central to the construction of the transnational socialist system in Eastern Europe—and, ultimately, its collapse.

Internationalists in European History

Author : Jessica Reinisch
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350107379
Total Pages : 359 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Internationalists in European History by : Jessica Reinisch

Download or read book Internationalists in European History written by Jessica Reinisch and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representing a crucial intervention in the history of internationalism, transnationalism and global history, this edited collection examines a variety of international movements, organisations and projects developed in Europe or by Europeans over the course of the 20th century. Reacting against the old Eurocentricism, much of the scholarship in the field has refocussed attention on other parts of the globe. This volume attempts to rethink the role played by ideas, people and organisations originating or located in Europe, including some of their consequential global impact. The chapters cover aspects of internationalism such as the importance of language, communication and infrastructures of internationalism; ways of grappling with the history of internationalism as a lived experience; and the roles of European actors in the formulation of different and often competing models of internationalism. It demonstrates that the success and failure of international programmes were dependent on participants' ability to communicate across linguistic but also political, cultural and economic borders. By bringing together commonly disconnected strands of European history and 'history from below', this volume rebalances and significantly advances the field, and promotes a deeper understanding of internationalism in its many historical guises. The volume is conceived as a way of thinking about internationalism that is relevant not just to scholars of Europe, but to international and global history more generally.

Defectors

Author : Erik R. Scott
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197546870
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (975 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Defectors by : Erik R. Scott

Download or read book Defectors written by Erik R. Scott and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Defectors fleeing the Soviet Union seized the world's attention during the Cold War. Their stories were told in sensational news coverage and dramatized in spy novels and films. In contrast to other refugees, they were pursued by the states they left even as they were sought by the United States and other Western governments eager to claim them. Taking part in a risky game that played out across the globe, defectors sought to transcend the limitations of the Cold War world. The book follows their treacherous journeys and looks at how their unauthorized flight gave shape to a globalized world. It charts a global struggle over defectors that unfolded in a crowded courtroom in Paris, among rival intelligence agencies operating in the shadows of an occupied Europe, in the forbidden border zones of the USSR, in the disputed straits of the South China Sea, on a hijacked plane 10,000 feet in the air, and around the walls of Soviet embassies. In doing so, the book reveals a Cold War world whose borders were far less stable than the notion of an "Iron Curtain" suggests. Surprisingly, the competition for defectors paved the way for collusion between the superpowers, who found common interest in regulating the unruly spaces through which defectors moved. Disputes over defectors mapped out the contours of modern state sovereignty in previously contested places, and defection's ideological framework hardened borders by reinforcing the view that asylum should only be granted to migrants with clear political claims. Although defection all but disappeared after the Cold War, it helped forge an international refugee system whose legacy and limitations remain with us to this day"--

The Post-Communist World in the Twenty-First Century

Author : Barbara Ann Chotiner
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793636109
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Post-Communist World in the Twenty-First Century by : Barbara Ann Chotiner

Download or read book The Post-Communist World in the Twenty-First Century written by Barbara Ann Chotiner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Post-Communist World in the Twenty-First Century presents studies by senior scholars and practitioners that are highly relevant to contemporary political challenges. The democratic vision that accompanied the collapse of communist regimes in the Soviet Union and East Central Europe has been replaced by a range of authoritarian, semi-authoritarian and democratic regimes, and growing division between Western and Russian influence. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to renewed tensions and international crisis. China, which presents major challenges to the US, Europe, and the global order, has emerged as a critical actor in the international conflict. The need to understand the internal dynamics and international behavior of communist and authoritarian regimes is more urgent at this time. The expertise provided by the volume’s contributors is especially timely, offering new insights into the past and contemporary politics of these states, the agendas driving their behavior, regimes’ domestic strengths and weaknesses, and the role of leaders’ differing perceptions in exacerbating international conflict. Practitioners demonstrate how such knowledge can inform effective policy and ameliorative efforts.

Rethinking Prokofiev

Author : Rita McAllister
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190670797
Total Pages : 545 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Rethinking Prokofiev by : Rita McAllister

Download or read book Rethinking Prokofiev written by Rita McAllister and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-23 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among major 20th-century composers whose music is poorly understood, Sergei Prokofiev stands out conspicuously. The turbulent times in which Prokofiev lived and the chronology of his travels-he left Russia in the wake of Revolution, and returned at the height of the Stalinist purges-have caused unusually polarized appraisals of his music. While individual, distinctive, and instantly recognizable, Prokofiev's music was also idiosyncratically tonal in an age when tonality was largely passé. Prokofiev's output therefore has been largely elusive and difficult to assess against contemporary trends. More than sixty years after the composer's death, editors Rita McAllister and Christina Guillaumier offer Rethinking Prokofiev as an assessment that redresses this enigmatic composer's legacy. Often more political than artistic, these appraisals have depended not only upon the date of publication but also the geographical location of the writer. Commissioned from some of the most distinguished and rising scholars in the field, this collection highlights the background and context of Prokofiev's work. Contributors delve into the composer's relationship to nineteenth-century Russian traditions, Silver-Age and Symbolist composers and poets, the culture of Paris in the 1920s and '30s, and to his later Soviet colleagues and younger contemporaries. They also investigate his reception in the West, his return to Russia, and the effect of his music on contemporary popular culture. Still, the main focus of the book is on the music itself: his early, experimental piano and vocal works, as well as his piano concertos, operas, film scores, early ballets, and late symphonies. Through an empirical examination of his characteristic harmonies, melodies, cadences, and musical gestures-and through an analysis of the newly uncovered contents of his sketch-books-contributors reveal much of what makes Prokofiev an idiosyncratic genius and his music intriguing, often dramatic, and almost always beguiling.

Dangerous Melodies: Classical Music in America from the Great War through the Cold War

Author : Jonathan Rosenberg
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393608433
Total Pages : 449 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (936 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Dangerous Melodies: Classical Music in America from the Great War through the Cold War by : Jonathan Rosenberg

Download or read book Dangerous Melodies: Classical Music in America from the Great War through the Cold War written by Jonathan Rosenberg and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Juilliard-trained musician and professor of history explores the fascinating entanglement of classical music with American foreign relations. Dangerous Melodies vividly evokes a time when classical music stood at the center of twentieth-century American life, occupying a prominent place in the nation’s culture and politics. The work of renowned conductors, instrumentalists, and singers—and the activities of orchestras and opera companies—were intertwined with momentous international events, especially the two world wars and the long Cold War. Jonathan Rosenberg exposes the politics behind classical music, showing how German musicians were dismissed or imprisoned during World War I, while numerous German compositions were swept from American auditoriums. He writes of the accompanying impassioned protests, some of which verged on riots, by soldiers and ordinary citizens. Yet, during World War II, those same compositions were no longer part of the political discussion, while Russian music, especially Shostakovich’s, was used as a tool to strengthen the US-Soviet alliance. During the Cold War, accusations of communism were leveled against members of the American music community, while the State Department sent symphony orchestras to play around the world, even performing behind the Iron Curtain. Rich with a stunning array of composers and musicians, including Karl Muck, Arturo Toscanini, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Kirsten Flagstad, Aaron Copland, Van Cliburn, and Leonard Bernstein, Dangerous Melodies delves into the volatile intersection of classical music and world politics to reveal a tumultuous history of twentieth-century America.