Classical Music in the German Democratic Republic: Production and Reception ed. by Kyle Frackman and Larson Powell (review)

This volume joins an emergent body of scholarship that seeks to disrupt the reductive but enduring understanding of artistic creativity in the GDR as strictly regulated and productive only of art that acted as propaganda. Classical Music in the German Democratic Republic, however, is unique in its scope as the first English-language collection devoted solely to an exploration of art music in the GDR (and, to my knowledge, the first Anglophone collected work dealing exclusively with East German music of any kind).

In a clear and concise introduction, editors Kyle Frackman and Larson Powell set out the aim of the collection: to accord East German art music the same consideration recently enjoyed by GDR literature and film by presenting musical works—that are only beginning to be accessible to wider audiences through recordings—as complex and worthy of scholarly attention. Frackman and Powell intend for the collection to begin a (re)evaluation of the work of East German composers free from Cold War biases, one that transcends a cultural studies approach to GDR musical creativity that treats musical works primarily as exemplifications of a given society's structures and tensions. In lieu of this, they advocate for a dialectical approach that synthesizes analyses of the political and music-historical contexts of the works with considerations of their Kunstcharakter.

Though addressed in almost every essay in the volume, the musical heritage is the explicit focus of a handful of contributions. Peter Kupfer and Juliane Schicker analyze Wagner and Mahler reception, respectively, exploring the ways each composer's legacy posed a unique set of issues for GDR musicologists and politicians. Most interestingly, Schicker addresses the influence of the FRG on negotiations with Mahler's legacy, showing how reluctant East German critics were to contradict positive reviews of GDR concerts by West German journalists. Johanna Yunker's insightful essay examines Ruth Berghaus's Marxist and feminist reimagining of Mozart's Don Giovanni, exploring how Berghaus's choices recast the titular character as an antibourgeois figure instrumental in liberating the opera's women from patriarchal constraints. Martha Sprigge's excellent contribution goes behind the façade of the seemingly monolithic socialist ceremony of the state funeral to see the ambiguity inherent in the GDR's consecration of first-generation composer Hanns Eisler's life and music, and also contends with how his legacy was later reclaimed from the official government apparatus by an East German musical avant-garde.

Essays centrally concerned with cultural policy include those by Tatjana BöhmeMehner, Lars Fischer, and Golan Gur. Much has been made in previous scholarship of fluctuations in state intervention in East German musical life across time; Böhme-Mehner's essay expands our understanding by examining the fluidity of cultural policy on a geographical rather than temporal axis, convincingly demonstrating that one side effect of the GDR's highly centralized administrative structure was a greater degree of creative freedom in provincial towns. Fischer addresses cultural policy by examining GDR musicologist Georg Knepler's shifting relationship to official Marxist ideology. The greatest strength of Fischer's thoughtful examination is his subtle approach to the documentary evidence, reading Knepler's testimony both with and against the author's stated position. Gur's essay breaks with the aims set out by the editors, and he makes clear that he approaches composer Ernst Hermann Meyer's 1950 Mansfelder Oratorium with no interest in the Kunstcharakter of a piece that never transcends its status as propaganda. To my mind, Gur's greatest contribution in an insightful essay is his discussion of musical classicism in the GDR—a notion that did not signify (as it may for us) particular stylistic or formal musical traits so much as it denoted a heritage produced by a politically progressive bourgeoisie.

The remaining essays focus on new compositions in the GDR. Jessica Payette adds significantly to an underresearched area...