Degenerate music ( ) was a
label applied in the 1930s by the Nazi
government in Germany
to certain
forms of music that it considered to be harmful or decadent. The Nazi government's concern for
degenerate music was a part of its larger and more well-known
campaign against
degenerate art
('Entartete Kunst'). In both cases, the government attempted to
isolate, discredit, discourage, or ban the works.
The Nazi government considered several types of music to be
degenerate, for several different reasons. Any music that was
opposed to the Nazi regime by virtue of its content or the
political views of its composers and performers was considered
degenerate. This included works by Jewish and Jewish-origin
composers (such as
Felix
Mendelssohn,
Arnold
Schoenberg,
Franz Schreker,
Kurt Weill,
Gustav Mahler, and
Berthold Goldschmidt); works that
featured Jewish or African characters (such as those by
Ernst Krenek); or works by composers of Marxist
persuasion, eg
Hanns Eisler. It also
applied to artists that had shown sympathy for opponents of the
Nazi Regime (such as
Anton Webern, who
had been a moderate supporter of Adolf Hitler but had maintained a
friendship with the Jewish composer Schoenberg during his exile
from Germany).
Modernist music, such
as works by
Paul Hindemith,
Alban Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern, was also
considered degenerate. Modernist music was judged to be inferior to
previous classical music, and it therefore offended the Nazis'
sense of progress and civilization in general — and in particular
their loyalty to Germany's many great classical composers. In
addition, one might speculate that Modernist music's abandonment of
structure and form presented a threat, albeit immaterial, to the
culture of order and control that fascist regimes such as the Nazi
party both developed and relied on. Finally,
Jazz music was considered degenerate because of its
roots in and association with the African-American culture.
From the Nazi seizure of power onward, these composers found it
increasingly difficult, and often impossible, to get work or have
their music performed. Many went into exile (eg Schoenberg, Weill,
Hindemith, Goldschmidt); or retreated into '
internal exile' (eg
Karl Amadeus Hartmann,
Boris Blacher); or ended up in the
concentration camps (eg
Viktor
Ullmann, or
Erwin
Schulhoff).
Some works which were later enthusiastically adopted by the Nazi
regime, such as the hugely popular
Carmina Burana by
Carl Orff (1937), were initially described as
degenerate by local music critics.
Like degenerate art, examples of degenerate music were displayed in
public exhibits in Germany beginning in 1938.
One of the first of
these was organized in Düsseldorf
by Adolf Ziegler, at
the time superintendent of the Weimar National Theatre, who
explained in an opening speech that the decay of music was "due to
the influence of Judaism and capitalism". Ziegler's exhibit was
organized into seven sections, devoted to (1) the influence of
Judaism, (2) Schoenberg, (3) Kurt Weill and
Ernst Krenek, (4) "Minor Bolsheviks" (Schreker,
Berg,
Ernst Toch, etc.), (5) Leo
Kestenberg, director of musical education before 1933, (6)
Hindemith's operas and oratorios, and (7)
Igor Stravinsky (anon. 1938, 629).
From the mid-1990s the
Decca Record
Company released a series of recordings under the title 'Entartete
Musik: music suppressed by the third reich' covering lesser-known
works by several of the above-named composers.
References
- Anon. 1938. "Musical Notes from Abroad" Musical Times
79, no. 1146 (August): 629–30.
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