Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination
Politics, Identity, and the Sound of 1933

Reveals how in the culturally volatile 1930s the symphony, long associated with ideas of selfhood, was a flourishing transnational phenomenon.

Emily MacGregor (Author)

9781009172783, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 January 2023

300 pages
25 x 17.6 x 2.1 cm, 0.67 kg

The symphony has long been entangled with ideas of self and value. Though standard historical accounts suggest that composers' interest in the symphony was almost extinguished in the early 1930s, this book makes plain the genre's continued cultural dominance, and argues that the symphony can illuminate issues around space/geography, race, and postcolonialism in Germany, France, Mexico, and the United States. Focusing on a number of symphonies composed or premiered in 1933, this book recreates some of the cultural and political landscapes of an uncertain historical moment-a year when Hitler took power in Germany, and the Great Depression reached its peak in the United States. Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination asks what North American and European symphonies from the early 1930s can tell us about how people imagined selfhood during a period of international insecurity and political upheaval, of expansionist and colonial fantasies, scientised racism, and emergent fascism.

1. Between Europe and America: Kurt Weill's Symphony in a Suitcase
2. Listening for the Intimsphäre in Hans Pfitzner's Symphony in C-sharp Minor: Berlin
3. Liberalism, Race, and the American West in Roy Harris's Symphony 1933: Boston – New York
4. Aaron Copland's and Carlos Chávez's Pan American Bounding Line: New York – Mexico City
5. Arthur Honegger's 'modernised Eroica': Paris – Berlin
6. The right kind of symphonist: Florence Price and Kurt Weill New York & Chicago 1933–1934 – London, 2020.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD], 20th century & contemporary classical music [AVGC6], Music reviews & criticism [AVC]