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Composing The Party Line: Music And Politics In Early Cold War Poland And East Germany, David G. Tompkins

Purdue University Press Books

This book examines the exercise of power in the Stalinist music world as well as the ways in which composers and ordinary people responded to it. It presents a comparative inquiry into the relationship between music and politics in the German Democratic Republic and Poland from the aftermath of World War II through Stalin’s death in 1953, concluding with the slow process of de-Stalinization in the mid- to late-1950s. The author explores how the Communist parties in both countries expressed their attitudes to music of all kinds, and how composers, performers, and audiences cooperated with, resisted, and negotiated these suggestions …