Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits by Michael H. Kater (review)

330 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 brance. Relying mainly on materials from the archives of the Canadian Jewish Congress and B=nai Brith Canada, and on interviews with Jewish public spokespersons, Bialystok has delved into provocative territory. >Interest in the Holocaust was late in coming,= he tells us, and then proceeds, in a sensitive and contextually attuned manner, to explain how and why amnesia gave way to a memory so strong it has become a >pillar of selfidentification .= He focuses on three periods: 1945B60; 1960B73; 1973B85. In the first, >the Holocaust was a low-priority item on the [Canadian Jewish] community agenda= because, while it was recognized as monstrous, the Holocaust was viewed as a European tragedy and most Canadian Jews were breaking away from their Old World roots. Survivors, meanwhile, were reluctant to tell their story. This was to change in the second period, by which time survivors made up 15 per cent of the nation=s Jewish population. With the rise of neo-Nazism in Germany B and in Ontario, Alberta, and Manitoba B their voices began to be heard. It was the strength of this sub-community=s not-always-welcome influence that distinguished the Canadian development of Holocaust consciousness from the American instance. Whereas the Six Day War in 1967 was the catalytic moment for American Jews, Bialystok maintains that for the Canadian community concern over Israel=s security >was only one factor in a series of events.= The third period saw the institutionalization of Holocaust remembrance, brought about in part by the publication of Abella and Troper=s None Is Too Many and the Deschenes Commission=s report, and by the notoriety of the Keegstra and Zundel affairs. More generally, the pop-cultural mainstreaming of Holocaust stories like The Diary of Anne Frank also played its part in Canada as elsewhere. Like Novick, Bialystok also concludes that an identity based on >victimization= is >counterproductive.= Still, he is less polemically inclined than his American counterpart, more even-handed in his analysis. Let us hope that he, too, reaches a wide readership. (GORDON DUECK) Michael H. Kater. Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits Oxford University Press. xiv, 400. $56.00 Composers of the Nazi Era marks the end of Michael H. Kater=s three-work study of the political and artistic status of music and musicians in Nazi Germany. The first, Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (1992), offered an analysis of the status of jazz music and musicians in Nazi Germany. The second, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (1997), has established itself as one of the most comprehensive examinations of the interaction between musical and political forces in the Third Reich. In this final book, Kater offers independent studies of eight prominent composers already alluded to in his former work. Kater=s choice of Werner Egk, Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill, Karl Ama- HUMANITIES 331 deus Hartmann, Carl Orff, Hans Pfitzner, Arnold Schoenberg, and Richard Strauss was dictated both by the >relative and absolute importance= of the composers and by >the existence of a modicum of primary documents, from which biographical and musical data could be culled.= Each study puts these primary documents to extensive use, revealing an exhaustive familiarity with details of the composers= personal, political, and public interactions. Kater=s work has revealed a remarkable knowledge of the political structures and influential figures of the Third Reich. This knowledge, and Kater=s awareness of both recent and long-standing musicological and biographical treatments, have allowed him to respond convincingly to critical assumptions about his subjects with a solid presentation of documentary and critical evidence. Given the thoroughness of the research and the divergent areas of interest to which such research can lead, it is perhaps not surprising that the study suffers somewhat from a lack of argumentative direction. The preface states that the work is intended to explore the musicians= >relationship with the Nazi regime and examine the role their music played in it, if any.= It is difficult, therefore, to understand why so much attention should be paid to Schoenberg=s economic tribulations in the United States, to the various stages of his friendship with...