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The Practice and Politics of Children’s Music Education in the German Democratic Republic, 1949-1976 By Anicia Chung Timberlake A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Music in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Richard Taruskin, Chair Professor Mary Ann Smart Professor Nicholas Mathew Professor Martin Jay Spring 2015 Abstract The Practice and Politics of Children’s Music Education in the German Democratic Republic, 1949-1976 by Anicia Chung Timberlake Doctor of Philosophy in Music University of California, Berkeley Professor Richard Taruskin, Chair This dissertation examines the politics of children’s music education in the first decades of the German Democratic Republic. The East German state famously attempted to co-opt music education for propagandistic purposes by mandating songs with patriotic texts. However, as I show, most pedagogues believed that these songs were worthless as political education: children, they argued, learned not through the logic of texts, but through the immediacy of their bodies and their emotions. These educators believed music to be an especially effective site for children’s political education, as music played to children’s strongest suit: their unconscious minds and their emotions. Many pedagogues, composers, and musicologists thus adapted Weimar-era methods that used mostly non-texted music to instill what they held to be socialist values of collectivism, diligence, open-mindedness, and critical thought. I trace the fates of four of these pedagogical practices—solfège, the Orff Schulwerk, lessons in listening, and newly-composed “Brechtian” children’s operas—demonstrating how educators sought to graft the new demands of the socialist society onto inherited German musical and pedagogical traditions.
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