Music in World War II

Last updated

Royal Navy crew members aboard a minesweeper perform as part of an amateur dance band. The Royal Navy during the Second World War A8041.jpg
Royal Navy crew members aboard a minesweeper perform as part of an amateur dance band.

World War II was the first conflict to take place in the age of electronically distributed music.

Contents

Many people in the war had a pressing need to be able to listen to the radio and 78-rpm shellac records en masse. By 1940, 96.2% of Northeastern American urban households had radio. The lowest American demographic to embrace mass-distributed music, Southern rural families, still had one radio for every two households. [1]

Similar adoption rates and mass distribution of music occurred in Europe. During Nazi rule, radio ownership in Germany rose from 4 to 16 million households. [2] As the major powers entered the war, millions of citizens had home radio devices that did not exist in the First World War.

Therefore, World War II was a unique situation for music and its relationship to warfare. Never before was it possible for not only single songs, but also single recordings of songs to be so widely distributed to the population. Never before had the number of listeners to a single performance (a recording or broadcast production) been so high. Along with that, never before had states had so much power to determine not only what songs were performed and listened to, but also to control the recordings, not allowing local people to alter the songs in their own performances. Though local people still sang and produced songs, this form of music faced serious new competition from centralized electronic music.

German-English song

"Lili Marlene" was the most popular song of World War II with both German and British forces. Based on a German poem, the song was recorded in both English and German. The poem was set to music in 1938 and was a hit with troops in the Afrika Korps. Mobile desert combat required a large number of radio units, and the British troops in the North African Campaign started to enjoy the song so much that it was quickly translated into English. The song was used throughout the war as a propaganda tool.

American music

American troops had regular access to radio in all but the most difficult combat situations, and not only did soldiers know specific songs but also specific recordings. This gave a nature to American troops' music during WWII: not as many songs were sung around a fire or while marching, but instead were listened to between combat on Armed Forces Radio.

In a nod to the special services and sacrifices the troops were making both overseas as well as domestically, many of these songs were specially re-recorded by their original artists for a Department of Defense musical and morale mission entitled V-Discs for the exclusive consumption by military personnel, similar to Armed Forces Radio.

As the United States was able to utilize the exponential growth of the technological age to compose music, in Sounds of War: Music in the United States during World War II , it is made clear that music had various purposes, but more importantly, it mentions the tension that grew between institutions in order to find the right way to use music for U.S. overall interest. Examples can be seen throughout the different types of songs being produced and publicized during this time. Songs like I'll Be Seeing You (1938) and Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition (1942) were songs that kept the citizens back in the U.S. calm and hopeful for the return of their loved ones. [3] On the other hand, these songs had other effects on the soldiers fighting abroad. For them, songs like these brought nostalgia and homesickness.

With the war continuing through the 1940s, other initiatives to muster morale arose. With drafting numbers reaching close to 500,000, the Defense institutions began to make military bands on the home front, to support patriotism and nationalism. The first patriotic war song of WWII in the U.S. was " God Bless America ," written by Irving Berlin for a World War I wartime revue, but it was withheld and later revised and used in World War II. [4] There were many other patriotic wartime songs during this time such as, " A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square " by Glenn Miller and "Arms for the Love of America" by Irving Berlin in 1941. [4]

After the successful incorporation of music into the war efforts, more was needed in order to keep hopes alive and stable in the U.S. and on the front. At various times music was used as a tool for war, whether it was to entertain or to recuperate soldiers. [3] Furthermore, consideration must be given to the impact that music had on people then and the effect that it continues to have now. Sounds of War: Music in the United States during World War II argues that music composed during the 1940s was unlike any other era of music because of its emphasis on making the listener feel like they are part of the war or if they are somewhere else. [3] It adds that songs from World War II continue to be used today in order to remember those harsh times of war and to remind everyone of the costs of liberty and freedom. [3] Some examples of this would include Aaron Copland's " Fanfare for the Common Man " (1942) and " Lincoln Portrait " (1942). These are still played for presidential inaugurations and continue to have the effect of "loss for freedom".

During the 1940s the United States State Department also encouraged the mutual exchange of music on the radio with the neutral countries of Latin America in order to promote President Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy and Pan-Americanism. [5] Through the establishment of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA), President Roosevelt utilized music as a form of cultural diplomacy in order to improve international relations with Latin America and forestall the spread of military hostilities throughout the Americas. [6] [7] [8] Professional musicians and composers from both North and South America were invited to concertize together on radio shows such as Viva América to support these efforts. [8] [6] [9] Included among these musicians were: Alfredo Antonini, Juan Arvizu, Nestor Mesta Chayres, Eva Garza, Elsa Miranda, Miguel Sandoval, John Serry Sr. and Terig Tucci. [10] [11] [12] [13]

In the years immediately after World War II, the United States Army continued to utilize music as a form of cultural diplomacy amidst the ruins of western Europe. In 1952, the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra was established under the musical direction of the composer Samuel Adler in an effort to demonstrate the shared musical heritage of the United States and Europe. Through a series of live musical performances and broadcasts over the Armed Forces Radio Services network, the orchestra successfully promoted mutual understanding and peace between the German and American people for a decade until 1962. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]

The role of music not only had effects in the international sphere but in the domestic society of the United States as well, [3] since the prolific number of war songs caused the number of concerts performed to greatly increase, along with the incorporation of women and African American musicians into military bands and groups.

Japanese music

Music in the Democratic Allies

The American and British government could count on popular music reflecting the same war aims that the government wanted due to sharing the views of the people. Americans wanted a quick final victory over the Axis without compromise and the songs about a world after the war at peace with the boys coming home not only met the personal desires of people but also reflected the goals of US government.

During the war, the BBC was forced to adapt, if only because British soldiers were listening to German radio stations to hear dance music. This adaptation did not commence without conflict. The BBC increased the amount of dance music played, but censorship was severe. The American hit "Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer," for example, was censored because of its almost blasphemous mix of religious words and a foxtrot melody. BBC heads were also worried about American-style crooners undermining the virility of British men.

The BBC tried hard to stick to the jaunty tone which they felt had helped to win the first world war - so George Formby and Gracie Fields were regularly played.

Britain did have a mass media which played popular music, much enjoyed by the Germans stationed in France and the Low Countries or flying over Britain. The most famous single performer was Vera Lynn who became known as "the forces' sweetheart".

Popular concert songs in Britain during the war included:

This is perhaps the most famous wartime song with the lines:
We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again some sunny day
Vera Lynn's recording was memorably played during an apocalyptic scene in Dr. Strangelove; the Byrds covered it (to similarly ironic effect) on their first album.

The theme tune of the TV series Dad's Army, "Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler?" does not date from the war, although it was intended as a gentle pastiche of wartime songs. With lyrics by Jimmy Perry and music by Perry and Derek Taverner, it was sung by one of Perry's childhood idols, wartime entertainer Bud Flanagan who died in 1968, soon after the first episode played.

Soviet music

German music

The Nazi government took a strong interest in promoting Germanic culture and music, which returned people to the folk culture of their remote ancestors while promoting the distribution of radio to transmit propaganda. The Nazi government had an obsession with controlling culture and promoting the culture it controlled. For this reason, the common people's tastes in music were much more secret. Many Germans used their new radios to listen to the jazz music hated by Hitler but loved all over the world.

In art, this attack came after expressionism, impressionism, and all forms of modernism. Forms of music targeted included jazz as well as the music of many of the more dissonant modern classical composers, including that of Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, and Arnold Schoenberg. Hindemith was one of many composers who fled the Third Reich as a result of musical persecution (as well as racial persecution, since Hindemith's wife, was part Jewish). Modern composers who took a more conventional approach to music, however, were welcomed by the Third Reich; Carl Orff and Richard Strauss, for example, were able to stay in the country during the Nazi period.

Also, a subtle factor of history makes gaining a reliable picture of the music of Germany more difficult than among the Allies. World War II in the English speaking world is usually remembered as a great triumph and the music is often performed with a sense of pride. Therefore, over time the collective consciousness of this period's music has become stronger. In Germany, World War II is generally seen as a shameful period; it would be difficult to imagine a band playing 'all the old favourites' of World War II in a public place.

Popular music is tied with nostalgia and collective memory. Though a historian can find samples of music that were played on the radio or can collect soldiers' songs from a period, ranking the subjective meaning and value assigned to a song by the people of that period will be greatly impacted by those subjects' later opinion of that music.

For example, it is known that many Germans enjoyed American jazz, and it is also known that Germans sang songs in Nazi sponsored events, but it would be difficult to determine the relative popularity of this music in the current context of shame concerning the war.

Therefore, the best that can be understood about German Music during the war is the official Nazi government policy, the level of enforcement, and some notion of the diversity of other music listened to, but as the losers in the war German Music and Nazi songs from World War II has not been assigned the high heroic status of American and British popular music. As the music itself goes, however, it is considered by many as being above the level of the latter, which is also true of Fascist Italian music of the time.

Approved and unapproved German music

The Nazis were dedicated to the concept that German Culture was the greatest in history, but, as with all parts of art, Hitler took an interest in suppressing the work of all those he considered "unfit" while promoting certain composers as proper Germans. All musicians were required to join the Reichsmusikkammer , or "Reich Music Chamber", part of the Reich Chamber of Culture founded by Joseph Goebbels in 1933. Membership required a so-called Aryan certificate, meaning that Jewish musicians could no longer work.

Along with exhibitions of "degenerate art" (entartete Kunst) the Nazi government identified certain music, composers and performers as entartete Musik . Designation into this category was based upon the race, ethnicity, and political orientation of the composers and performers in question. The works of Jewish classical composers were banned, including those of Gustav Mahler, Felix Mendelssohn, Arnold Schoenberg, George Gershwin and Claude Debussy (who had a Jewish wife). The popular music of Irving Berlin (also Jewish) was completely banned.

In 1938 Nazi Germany passed an official law on Jazz music. Not surprisingly it deals with the racial nature of the music and makes laws based on racial theories. Jazz was "Negroid"; It posed a threat to European higher culture, and was therefore forbidden except in the case of scientific study.

Music permitted under the Nazis

The Reichsmusikkammer promoted classical music by German composers such as Beethoven and Wagner, as well as Austrians such as Mozart. Military music was also promoted, but lighter, non-political music was a source of escapism for many. The Wunschkonzert für die Wehrmacht  [ de ], or "Request Concert for the Armed Forces", was a radio program broadcast from Berlin. The subject of a 1940 film, it consisted of live music requested by soldiers. Connecting the military to the home front and vice versa, contributed to the Volksgemeinschaft , the Nazi concept of a "people's community". [20]

Degrees of censorship varied, and the Germans were likely more concerned with the war than styles of music. But as the war went poorly the objectives of the government moved from building a perfect German state to keeping the population in line, and the relative importance of morale-raising songs would have increased.

Popular songs were officially encouraged during the war including:

Goebbels commissioned a swing band called "Charlie and His Orchestra" which existed for supplying propaganda to British and American troops over the radio. Popular tunes were sung in English with Nazi propaganda. The musicians were competent (they were spoofing highly polished Big Band music). As an example, the singers would twist a hit such as Bob Hope's "Thanks for the Memory" with a taunt to English-speaking soldiers about the fall of Singapore, rhyming "Singapore" with "we don't go there anymore".

Polish music

There were specific songs of Polish resistance, Polish Armed Forces in the West and Polish Armed Forces in the East. These included Siekiera, motyka , the most popular song in occupied Poland; "Rozszumiały się wierzby płaczące" - a song associated with the Polish partisans; Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino - a song connected with the Polish Armed Forces in the West; Oka, a favourite song of the Polish Armed Forces in the East, and Marsz Gwardii Ludowej - a song also known as Partisans' Song anthem of GL.

Propaganda against the enemy

They played a few American records first. I don't remember everything she said. She said, "Your wives and girlfriends are probably home in a nice warm building, dancing with some other men. You're over here in the cold." It was cold and it was snowing. Dent Wheeler on Axis Sally during the battle of the Bulge [22]

"There is no 'Tokyo Rose'; the name is strictly a GI invention. The name has been applied to at least two lilting Japanese voices on the Japanese radio. Government monitors listening in 24 hours a day have never heard the words 'Tokyo Rose' over a Japanese-controlled Far Eastern radio." [23]

During World War II, often cut off troops or isolated outposts found themselves exposed in the radio range of the enemy, which used popular music as a means to attract listeners and then provide propaganda messages.

This type of propaganda was performed by both sides and is some of the earliest mass psych-ops. Often the propagandist was listened to by the other sides, and there is little evidence that these had any impact, except that the Axis participants were often detained and if originally from allied countries prosecuted, while Allied broadcasters were seen as legitimate in Allied countries. Again it shows the way music is understood in the context of World War II is from the winners' point of view, whereas Tokyo Rose (Iva Ikuko Toguri D'Aquino) and Axis Sally (Mildred Gillars) faced years of persecution after the war. England executed Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce) for treason, in 1946.

Songs, compositions and others written after the war

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "How America adopted radio: demographic differences in set ownership reported in the 1930–1950 U.S. censuses" by Steve Craig June 2004.
  2. ↑ http://www.historyonthenet.com
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Fauser, Annegret (2013). Sounds of War: Music in the United States during World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-932376-0.
  4. 1 2 Winkler, Sheldon (2013). The Music of World War II: War Songs and their Stories. Bennington: Merriam Press. ISBN   978-1-4825-3626-3.
  5. ↑ "84 - Executive Order 8840 Establishing the Office of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, July 30, 1941", The American Presidency Project
  6. 1 2 Media Sound & Culture in Latin America. Editors: Bronfman, Alejanda & Wood, Andrew Grant. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 2012, Pgs. 41-54 ISBN   978-0-8229-6187-1 books.google.com See Pgs. 41-54
  7. ↑ Anthony, Edwin D. (1973). Records of the Office of Inter-American Affairs (PDF). Vol. Inventory of Record Group 229. Washington D.C.: National Archives and Record Services - General Services Administration. pp. 1–8. LCCN   73-600146.
  8. 1 2 Dissonant Divas in Chicana Music: The Limits of La Onda Deborah R. Vargas. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2012 p. 152-158 ISBN   978-0-8166-7316-2 FDR's Good Neighbor Policy, CBS, Viva America and Eva Garza on google.books.com
  9. ↑ The Directory of the Armed Forces Radio Service Series Mackenzie, Harry. Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport CT, 1999 p. 21 ISBN   0-313-30812-8 Viva America and Armed Forces Radio Services on books.google.com
  10. ↑ Media Sound & Culture in Latin America & the Caribbean. Editors - Bronfman, Alejandra & Wood, Andrew Grant. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 2012 p. 47- 49 ISBN   978-0-8229-6187-1 Viva America, Alfredo Antonini, Nestor Mesta Chayres, Juan Arvizu, Elsa Miranda, Terig Tucci on Books.Google.Com See Pg. 49
  11. ↑ Dissonant Divas in Chicana Music: The Limits of La Onda Deborah R. Vargas. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2012 p. 152-158 ISBN   978-0-8166-7316-2 CBS, Viva America and Eva Garza on google.books.com
  12. ↑ The Strachwitz Frontera collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings- Eva Garza Biography and CBS's Viva America on frontera.library.ucla.edu
  13. ↑ Settel, Irving (1967) [1960]. A Pictorial History of Radio. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. p. 146. LCCN   67-23789. OCLC   1475068. (John Serry & Juan Arvizu & Alfredo Antonini in photograph of CBS Pan American Orchestra)
  14. ↑ A Dictionary for the Modern Composer, Emily Freeman Brown, Scarecrow Press , Oxford, 2015, p. 311 ISBN   9780810884014 Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra founded by Samuel Adler in 1952 on https://books.google.com
  15. ↑ New Music New Allies Amy C. Beal, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2006, P. 49, ISBN   978-0-520-24755-0 "Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra (1952–1962) performing works by Roy Harris, Morton Gould and Leroy Anderson" on https://books.google.com
  16. ↑ Uncle Sam's Orchestra: Memories of the Seventh Army Orchestra John Canarina, University of Rochester Press 1998 ISBN   9781580460194 194 Seventh Army Symphony on https://books.google.com
  17. ↑ "7th Army Symphony Draws Praise" Samuel Adler and Army Commendtion Ribbon with Metal Pendant" on 7aso.org
  18. ↑ The Directory of the Armed Forces Radio Service Series Harry MacKenzie, Greeenwood Press, CT. 1999, p. 198 ISBN   0-313-30812-8 "Seventh Army Symphony on Armed Forces Radio in 1961 performing works by Vivaldi and Dvorak" on https://books.google.com
  19. ↑ Adler, Samuel (2017). Thym, Jürgen (ed.). Building bridges with music : stories from a composer's life (illustrated ed.). Pendragon Press. ISBN   9781576473030.
  20. ↑ The war that Hitler won : the most infamous propaganda campaign in history. Putnam. 1978. pp. 294–295. ISBN   0-399-11845-4.
  21. ↑ "BERLIN - LIEDER - Der Textdichter Bruno Balz". Bruno Balz - Archiv. 2012. Retrieved 25 June 2014.
  22. ↑ Excerpt from Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge, edited by Robert Van Houten. Paducah, Kentucky: Turner Publishing Co., 1991. ( ISBN   1-56311-013-X)
  23. ↑ The U.S. Office of War Information, August 1945

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Amadeus Hartmann</span> German composer

Karl Amadeus Hartmann was a German composer. A major figure of the musical life of post-war Germany, he has been described as the greatest German symphonist of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kurt Weill</span> German composer (1900–1950)

Kurt Julian Weill was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work, The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose, Gebrauchsmusik. He also wrote several works for the concert hall and a number of works on Jewish themes. He became a United States citizen in 1943.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Strauss</span> German composer and conductor (1864–1949)

Richard Georg Strauss was a German composer and conductor best known for his tone poems and operas. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Hindemith</span> German composer (1895–1963)

Paul Hindemith was a German and American composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the Neue Sachlichkeit style of music in the 1920s, with compositions such as Kammermusik, including works with viola and viola d'amore as solo instruments in a neo-Bachian spirit. Other notable compositions include his song cycle Das Marienleben (1923), Der Schwanendreher for viola and orchestra (1935), the opera Mathis der Maler (1938), the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943), and the oratorio When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (1946), a requiem based on Walt Whitman's poem. Hindemith and his wife emigrated to Switzerland and the United States ahead of World War II, after worsening difficulties with the Nazi German regime. In his later years, he conducted and recorded much of his own music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilhelm Furtwängler</span> German conductor and composer (1886–1954)

Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is regarded as one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. He was a major influence for many later conductors, and his name is often mentioned when discussing their interpretative styles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruno Walter</span> German-born conductor, pianist, and composer (1876–1962)

Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor, pianist, and composer. Born in Berlin, he escaped Nazi Germany in 1933, was naturalised as a French citizen in 1938, and settled in the United States in 1939. He worked closely with Gustav Mahler, whose music he helped to establish in the repertory, held major positions with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Salzburg Festival, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Staatsoper Unter den Linden and Deutsche Oper Berlin, among others, made recordings of historical and artistic significance, and is widely considered to be one of the great conductors of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herbert von Karajan</span> Austrian conductor (1908–1989)

Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian conductor. He was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for 34 years. During the Nazi era, he debuted at the Salzburg Festival, with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, and during World War II he conducted at the Berlin State Opera. Generally regarded as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, he was a controversial but dominant figure in European classical music from the mid-1950s until his death. Part of the reason for this was the large number of recordings he made and their prominence during his lifetime. By one estimate, he sold an estimated 200 million records.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rafael Kubelík</span> Czech conductor and composer (1914–1996)

Rafael Jeroným Kubelík, KBE was a Czech conductor and composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Symphony No. 7 (Shostakovich)</span> 1941 symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60, nicknamed the Leningrad Symphony, was begun in Leningrad, completed in the city of Samara in December 1941, and premiered in that city on March 5, 1942. At first dedicated to Lenin, it was eventually submitted in honor of the besieged city of Leningrad, where it was first played under dire circumstances on August 9, 1942, nearly a year into the siege by German forces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Horst-Wessel-Lied</span> Co-national anthem of Germany (1933–1945)

The "Horst-Wessel-Lied", also known by its incipit "Die Fahne hoch", was the anthem of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 1930 to 1945. From 1933 to 1945, the Nazis made it the co-national anthem of Germany, along with the first stanza of the "Deutschlandlied".

Charlie and his Orchestra were a Nazi-sponsored German propaganda swing band. Jazz music styles were seen by Nazi authorities as rebellious but, ironically, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels conceived of using the style in shortwave radio broadcasts aimed initially at the United Kingdom, and later the United States, after the German declaration of war on 11 December 1941.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bei Mir Bistu Shein</span> Yiddish song by Jacob Jacobs and Sholom Secunda

"Bei Mir Bistu Shein" is a popular Yiddish song written by lyricist Jacob Jacobs and composer Sholom Secunda for a 1932 Yiddish language comedy musical, I Would If I Could, which closed after one season at the Parkway Theatre in Brooklyn, New York City. The score for the song transcribed the Yiddish title as "Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn". The original Yiddish version of the song is a dialogue between two lovers. Five years after its 1932 composition, English lyrics were written for the tune by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin, and the English version of the song became a worldwide hit when recorded by The Andrews Sisters under a Germanized spelling of the title, "Bei mir bist du schön", in November 1937.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fritz Busch</span> German conductor (1890–1951)

Fritz Busch was a German conductor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt</span> German conductor and composer

Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt was a German conductor and composer. After studying at several music academies, he worked in German opera houses between 1923 and 1945, first as a répétiteur and then in increasingly senior conducting posts, ending as Generalmusikdirektor of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

An overview of the evolution of Jazz music in Germany reveals that the development of jazz in Germany and its public notice differ from the "motherland" of jazz, the US, in several respects.

Karl Emil Heinrich Schwedler, also known as Charlie Schwedler was a singer and leader of the Nazi propaganda jazz band Charlie and His Orchestra during World War II. He was born in Duisburg, Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American music during World War II</span>

American music during World War II was considered to be popular music that was enjoyed during the late 1930s through the mid-1940s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music in Nazi Germany</span> The controlled and "co-ordinated" music in Nazi Germany

Music in Nazi Germany, like all cultural activities in the regime, was controlled and "co-ordinated" (Gleichschaltung) by various entities of the state and the Nazi Party, with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and the prominent Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg playing leading – and competing – roles. The primary concerns of these organizations was to exclude Jewish composers and musicians from publishing and performing music, and to prevent the public exhibition of music considered to be "Jewish", "anti-German", or otherwise "degenerate", while at the same time promoting the work of favored "Germanic" composers, such as Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven and Anton Bruckner. These works were believed to be positive contributions to the Volksgemeinschaft, or German folk community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leningrad première of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7</span>

Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 had its Leningrad première on 9 August 1942 during the Second World War, while the city was under siege by the Nazi German forces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra</span>

The Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra was the only symphonic orchestral ensemble ever created under the supervision of the United States Army. Founded by the composer Samuel Adler, its members participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in an effort to demonstrate the shared cultural heritage of the United States, its European allies and the vanquished countries of Europe during the post World War II era.

References

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.