This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Political Sound National Socialism and Its Musical Afterlive Hallam, Huw Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 08. Oct. 2021 This electronic theses or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Title: Political Sound National Socialism and Its Musical Afterlive Author: Huw Hallam The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ You are free to: Share: to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. ! ! ! ! Political!Sound! ! National!Socialism!! and!Its!Musical!Afterlives! ! Huw$David$Hallam$ $ $ $ $ $ Thesis$submitted$in$fulfilment$of$the$degree$of$Doctor$of$Philosophy.$ Submitted$to$the$School$of$Arts$&$Humanities,$Department$of$Music,$ King’s$College$London,$University$of$London.$$ $ October,$2013 Abstract! This thesis examines the political significance of music (and sonic expression more broadly) in National Socialist Germany and the shadow cast by it over subsequent music history. I argue that sonic expression in the Third Reich held much greater political significance than has elsewhere been recognized, featuring as a prominent component of the Reich’s sovereign command structure. The thesis attempts to shed light on this intercourse between the musical and the political at a theoretical level and to trace its impact on various developments in post-1945 sonic arts practices. Part I explores ways in which sonic expression was manipulated as part of the National Socialist regime’s articulation of sovereignty. It reframes Walter Benjamin's phrase ‘aestheticization of politics’ in relation to various forms of sonic (often vocal) activity in the Third Reich. It then analyses the National Socialist radio broadcasting system as a unique, technical and bureaucratic medium of sovereign command. This gives new insight into the place of sonic expression and music in modernity and raises questions about the quality of the relationship between music and political power and how that relationship might be modulated through creative practice. Part II then considers the musical ‘afterlives’ of this meeting of politics and sonic expression. It explores how different sonic arts practices have subsequently (since 1945) rethought and reworked the political form of sonic expression, guided by the experience of National Socialism. Chapter Four analyses work by Luigi Nono and Bernd-Alois Zimmermann in relation to language and historical testimony. Chapter Five explores Karlheinz Stockhausen’s and Christina Kubisch’s engagements with technology. Finally, Chapter Six examines Mauricio Kagel’s treatment of the musical ‘work’ form’s temporal implications. Together, these analyses reveal the outline of an historically transformative approach to critical, politically self-reflexive music making. 2 ! Contents! ! ! 4 Acknowledgements 5 A note on the text 6 Introduction 22 Part I. Music and politics in the Third Reich 23 Chapter 1. Orientations: vocalizing politics 50 Chapter 2. Ideology, agency, history, law: towards a theory of political sound 88 Chapter 3. The sovereign voice 135 Conclusion to Part I. Responsibility and critique 143 Part II. Fascism’s musical afterlives: recomposing the voice 144 Chapter 4. Speaking to history: Nono, Zimmermann 179 Chapter 5. Concerning technology: Stockhausen, Kubisch 216 Chapter 6. Invocations/obligations: Kagel’s Beethoven 240 Conclusion to Part II. Re-temporalizing history 246 Appendix. Images and musical examples 269 Bibliography 3 Acknowledgements! ! ! I would like to express my sincerest thanks to many, many friends, family and colleagues who, in one way or another, have helped, supported or stimulated me intellectually during this project: Amelia Barikin, Luke Berryman, Harriet Boyd, Marc Brooks, Lauren Brown, Lyndell Brown, Justin Clemens, Felicity Colman, Henry Croft, James Currie, Kathy Fry, Clare Gasson, Kélina Gotman, Charles Green, Sarah James, Carolyn Landau, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, Michael Long, Thor Magnusson, David Martin, Thomas McAuley, Ted McDonald-Toone, Alex Murray, James Parker, Steve Potter, Stephanie Schwartz, Hugo Shirley, Erin Stapleton, Liza Thompson, Peter Tregear, Pip Willcox, Flora Wilson, Angela Woods and Jun Zubillaga-Pow. Special thanks must be made to my supervisor John Deathridge, to Georgina Born and Katherine Butler-Schofield for helpful guidance early on, and to Andrew Bowie and Björn Heile for insightful feedback that shaped the final revisions. To Christina Kubisch and Nuria Schoenberg-Nono, who allowed me access to their invaluable archives and, in Kubisch’s case, spoke with me at length and generously supplied me with a great deal of valuable material relating to her work: my appreciation is boundless. I must also acknowledge the lifeline given to my research by King’s College London and the journal Music & Letters in the form of a Studentship stipend and various travel grants. During my time in the UK, my mother and father, sister and aunt – Mary, Neville, Megan and Heather Hallam – have given me enormous support, for which I am extraordinarily grateful. But above all, I must thank my husband, Anthony Gardner, whose life I uprooted to undertake this project and for whom the ride was often painfully bumpy. I cannot even begin to respond in words to the exceptional support, care and love he has shown me in return. ! 4 A!note!on!the!text,!images!and!musical!examples! ! ! Please note that all images and musical examples referred to in the body of this text are to be found in the appendix: Images and musical examples Non-English language sources are generally cited within the main body of the text in English translation. Where it has seemed warranted, by virtue of the significance or linguistic complexity of the citation, the original text is given in the footnotes. All translations are the author’s own unless otherwise stated. In certain cases original dates of authorship or publication are given within square brackets in the in-text citations where such dates seem relevant to tracing the course of a particular history. Various abbreviated or short-hand terms are used throughout the text that are too familiar to warrant scholarly explication, notably: Nazi, short for National Socialist, pertaining to the Nationalsozialistische deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP); the Third Reich (or sometimes just ‘the Reich’); Weimar, meaning the Weimar Republic; and Propaganda Ministry for the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda. Several key words from the Nazi lexicon are also used without translation. ‘People’, ‘community’ and ‘leader’, simply cannot capture the ways Volk, Gemeinschaft and Führer have been inscribed by history. I use the word ‘Auschwitz’ as a metonym for the atrocities wreaked by Nazism. This usage is explained in the first footnote to the Introduction. ! ! ! ! The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. 5 Introduction! This thesis explores the meeting of music and politics in 1930s Germany. It traces the implications of that meeting and how the histories of music making that have followed have been shaped through them. It is thus also about the fate of music in modernity – as well as the fate of modernity in music. National Socialist