# Music that was politically motivated / inspired



## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

Classical music for the most part does not carry with it a political message or ideology that a composer wishes to express. In fact I recall reading something about this topic where some claimed that it lowered the standard's of a work, instead insisting that the music should not bind itself to such things. I usually read on this idea of music being simply music, but what about music that was written as a reaction to an event, or to an ideology?

What are some examples of works that were primarily fueled by historical happenings? Beethoven's Eroica symphony I can to some extent identify as being a work riddled with the politics of his time (his admiration of Napoleon, to betrayal and revoking him). There's also Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (also he despised writing it).

So far, the only piece of music that I know of that 'truly' fits this bill, is Nasser Shama's 'Hadatha fi al 'Amiriyya (It Happened at al 'Amiriyya)' which is his recollection of a U.S. Airstrike that destroyed a shelter, killing many civilians to which he witnessed. In his own words he describes this about the work:

_" I don't like to finish this evening, but I have to. ( Happened at Al-Amiriya) I wrote this piece inside Al-Amiriya shelter, after we took the children outside. statistic said there was 400 to 500 child, but I know we took over 800. unfortunately, I witnessed that crime. Inside me I look to it as the beginning of the new world collapsing. the collapse of morals, rules, and scales that control the human faith and resources. Al- Amiriya was not the only incident there were other. Part of those were because the regime (Saddam gov.) and others because enemies from out side Iraq. Perhaps because Iraq have old civilization that laid a lot of humanity, since, education, art, language, literature, and orbit since. Everything we hear about today and enjoy today it is because five civilizations lived at Mesopotamia. When the second gulf war stopped I asked Moaed Saed the manger of the Iraqi museum to open the museum and play on my Oud. The blood was not dry yet not in our vassals nether inside the soil. The museum gate was build to close with brackets. From out side looked like a wall. We brake the wall and opened the gate. I sat between two winged bulls each one of them wighted 37 tons. Behind me was the god of wisdom Nabo and on my left and right Shingles Babylonian captivity of the Jews. And all Assyrians life and all creative productions of Akkadians, Babylonians and Sumerians. And all other civilizations that been through this country like Our civilization. I played on my Oud and told the people "from here we shall begin". This is Iraq. This is the depth of Iraq. The present is not in our side. We must go out from this place to the future. We shall work for generation that will come after us. We proud that civilizations give us all this achievements, which only art archived. Americans wanted to destroyed that land that I stood on one day (the museum) when I told the Iraqis from here we shall begin. It is like they came to Iraq to tell me personally "now where you will stand", but I stand with musical Instrument that is 3500 B.C old. I don't want to say meaningless words, but with this instrument (Oud) I will expose America and Britain to the world" ﻿_






-The airstrike begins at 3:25

What works do you know of? And what is your opinion regarding music and politics or history as being 'separate entities'? Do you think a piece of music's value is diminished because its not purely 'about the music'? Is Nasser Shama's work of lesser value because of this? Will his message be lost to future generations?

Please discuss.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)




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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

What are the odds that other than Beethoven's 3rd symphony, there will be little or no abstract pieces cited... instead, it will be all music with vocals and _topical lyrics_ which are 'the politically motivated' "music."

If you exclude things like Rzewski's variations on "The people united shall never be defeated, (El pueblo, etc." i.e. a work(s) based on a song the title and lyric of which are political -- and rule out any and all directly vocal works and their lyrics -- I'd be interested to see how many works actually fit this category 

May as well get Haydn's "The workers message to their employer" symphony on the docket and out of the way:

Haydn: Symphony No. 45 in F-sharp minor


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## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

PetrB said:


> What are the odds that other than Beethoven's 3rd symphony, there will be little or no abstract pieces cited... instead, it will be all music with vocals and _topical lyrics_ which are 'the politically motivated' "music."
> 
> Rule out vocal works and lyrics... I'd be interested to see how many works actually fit this category


Did you listen to Shamma?


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima? I mean... he titled it after composing it but the final work can be interpreted as something political.

Or what about the Dr. Atomic Symphony? It's drawn from the opera, but... it counts as a political purely instrumental work!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Igneous01 said:


> Did you listen to Shamma?


Yes, this folk tradition has a similarity of aesthetic to many non-western folk traditions, i.e. music depicting nature, and some events, those non-natural events often with very specific and literal 'musical depictions.' Since I'm not a fan of this most literal sort of 'musical narration,' I can not say I was impressed or moved.

I think you have to _know of the event named in the title / associated with the piece_ for it to have the desired effect, and that leads me back to the inherent 'weakness' of this sort of musical depiction: one needs to know the extra-musical reference, or it is 'just notes.'


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Works that Coopers lists as "political" from Beethoven's middle period are the Eroica, Egmont, and Fidelio. Of course the spirit of these works infuses much of his music of the time.

From 1813 to 1815, around the time of Napoleon's first defeat and the Congress of Vienna, Beethoven wrote several more overtly political works. These include Wellington's Victory, the cantata The Glorious Moment, and individual pieces for several large-scale group-written patriotic works. Most are forgotten, or nearly so.


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## Guest (Aug 24, 2014)

PetrB said:


> What are the odds that other than Beethoven's 3rd symphony, there will be little or no abstract pieces cited... instead, it will be all music with vocals and _topical lyrics_ which are 'the politically motivated' "music."


Well, I suppose you could say very loosely that some composers' entire bodies of works are somewhat politically inspired. Perhaps Nono? idk...


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## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

PetrB said:


> Yes, this folk tradition has a similarity of aesthetic to many non-western folk traditions, i.e. music depicting nature, and some events, those non-natural events often with very specific and literal 'musical depictions.' Since I'm not a fan of this most literal sort of 'musical narration,' I can not say I was impressed or moved.
> 
> I think you have to _know of the event named in the title / associated with the piece_ for it to have the desired effect, and that leads me back to the inherent 'weakness' of this sort of musical depiction: one needs to know the extra-musical reference, or it is 'just notes.'


I cannot disagree more with you. I do not hear this 'weakness' in his work. Even though I was never there, and never experienced war personally, that doesn't mean I cannot identify and be profoundly moved by this music. It would be insulting to call this 'just notes'. Perhaps I am more familiar in this territory of music and this may explain why I am 'moved' by this music.


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## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima? I mean... he titled it after composing it but the final work can be interpreted as something political.
> 
> Or what about the Dr. Atomic Symphony? It's drawn from the opera, but... it counts as a political purely instrumental work!


I recall reading there was some debate surrounding the reasons why/how Penderecki titled the work, and that it may have not been intentional. Although I'm not too sure on this front. Never heard of Dr. Atomic Symphony...


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)




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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Igneous1, I remember well the event that Shamma is commemorating. It was widely reported here in the US. The government claimed that its information was that the underground shelter was being used as a hardened command and control facility. I suspect this was true. Otherwise, why bomb it? All that buys the US is a lot of dead civilians and some truly horrible PR.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

arcaneholocaust said:


> Well, I suppose you could say very loosely that some composers' entire bodies of works are somewhat politically inspired. Perhaps Nono? idk...


Shostakovitch's symphonies! Or at least some of them.

Yeah Petr... there are some instrumental political pieces that are quite famous and good... but not sure what point you wanted to make though. An instrumental piece _can_ create an atmosphere that is a response to political history.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Igneous01 said:


> I cannot disagree more with you. I do not hear this 'weakness' in his work. Even though I was never there, and never experienced war personally, that doesn't mean I cannot identify and be profoundly moved by this music. It would be insulting to call this 'just notes'. Perhaps I am more familiar in this territory of music and this may explain why I am 'moved' by this music.


If you heard this piece, _and heard it without any knowledge that it was written to depict / commemorate a specific event, no knowledge of the event itself or its details,_ I think you might have a different opinion, and be less startled by what I said. It would sound then like a piece with a section that sounded like it was imitative of air-raid sirens, etc. You would not know, where, why, the number of dead, whether they were children, etc... _all of which when known before listening to the piece will highly color the listener's perception and mood._

If all of that unknown, it is just a piece with notes, and you would probably get that it is a narrative meant to depict something, "a war incident," but nothing more. I.e. _your emotional response to the piece would be greatly lessened in not knowing the specific extra-musical content / attachments._


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## Igneous01 (Jan 27, 2011)

PetrB said:


> If you heard this piece, _and heard it without any knowledge that it was written to depict / commemorate a specific event, no knowledge of the event itself or its details,_ I think you might have a different opinion, and be less startled by what I said. It would sound then like a piece with a section that sounded like it was imitative of air-raid sirens, etc. You would not know, where, why, the number of dead, whether they were children, etc... _all of which when known before listening to the piece will highly color the listener's perception and mood._ All of that unknown, it is just a piece with notes, and you would probably get that it is a narrative meant to depict something, "a war incident," but nothing more.


That was how I first listened to it - I knew absolutely nothing about the backdrop or context of the piece, but I was moved regardless. After I researched the background behind this work, the overall effect was heightened that much more. Is this a bad thing? I don't really think so, I actually appreciate that it was more than just music. In a way it unites music with reality, rather than music simply being 'in its own isolated place, as if in a vacuum of reality'.



KenOC said:


> Igneous1, I remember well the event that Shamma is commemorating. It was widely reported here in the US. The government claimed that its information was that the underground shelter was being used as a hardened command and control facility. I suspect this was true. Otherwise, why bomb it? All that buys the US is a lot of dead civilians and some truly horrible PR.


I don't really want to get into this kind of debate, since I am very much an outsider on this topic. But I still wonder: even if it was a command and control facility, and the US clearly had the means to properly recon and survey the area, why still bomb it? Surely they must have known that hundreds of children and civilians would perish? Perhaps they made a mistake and bombed it by accident; however, collateral damage is still death and destruction. Just because there was no intention to kill civilians, this doesn't somehow excuse the act.

In a way I feel this line of thinking is hypocritical; an inability to tolerate violence directed towards civilians, but collateral damage is 'just an accident'. Note I'm not particularly directing this at you KenOC, it is just how I've heard some people describe their feelings about war ('I hate terrorists, but a mis-guided bomb blowing up an apartment building is 'just an accident'').


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

They went through all that trouble creating the Politics sub-forum, this thread really should go there.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Igneous1, here's the Wiki page on the bombing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

BTW Adams's _Nixon in China _was political in a strange sort of way, and _Klinghoffer _much more so. Because of the sensitivities, the Met cancelled international simulcasts of this year's performance, arousing considerable controversy.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Without developing a thesis on the topic, I would suggest (and it's my first inclination) that much music is politically motivated or inspired. I would think of a couple of Mozart operas right off the bat: _Figaro_, perhaps, or _The Magic Flute_. Doesn't Bach have a few secular cantatas with political agendas? And what about the various commissions composers have received from political leaders. How much flute music, say, was written for Frederick the Great? Is that political motivation?

Of course, a book or several could be written about Soviet composers and political agendas in music. Did some toe the line while others overtly rebelled? Did some others surreptitiously rebel? I think immediately of Shostakovich's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, but could easily expand this to a couple others, including the Thirteenth and Fourteenth.

So many of the 20th century's "war symphonies" are politically motivated, I suspect. I cannot listen to Vaughan Williams's Fifth without thinking that he writes that to bolster public support of British war efforts. In that stunning _Romanza_ movement, I always hear a call to the English folk that "this is what we stand to lose, this beauty, this land, this heritage" if we lose this war against the Germans. The symphony itself is dedicated to Sibelius. Isn't that composer's _Finlandia _a political statement?

Auden's "Age of Anxiety" won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1948. It inspired a symphony by composer Leonard Bernstein, who wrote at a politically anxious time in U.S. History, the McCarthy era, which inspired works from many American artists.

In the present day, I note quite a few works motivated by the events of 9-11. Surely one will find political overtones in many of these.

In essence, I subscribe to the belief that political events have inspired many a composer, both overtly and in subtle ways. I look forward to reading further contributions to this thread.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Examples of abstract works that can be related to political content:

Delalande: Symphonies pour les Soupers du Roy
Franz Neubauer: Coburg´s Victory over the Turks, Symphony
Sibelius: Finlandia
Smetana: Ma Vlast
Janacek: Sonata for piano I.X.1905, Street Scene
Shostakovich: Symphonies 7 and 12
Martinu: Memorial to Lidice
Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man
Copland: Lincoln Portrait
Husa: Music for Prague 1968

Examples of vocal works:

Gossec: lots of works celebrating the French Revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François-Joseph_Gossec
Schulhoff: Oratorio, The Communist Manifesto (1932) 



Mosolov: Anti-Religious Symphony (1931)
Prokofiev: Ode to Stalin
Shostakovich: Symphonies 2 & 3
Shostakovich: Rayok
Shostakovich: The Song of the Forest
Shebalin: Lenin, Dramatic Symphony
Schedrin: Lenin in the People´s Heart
Eisler: Deutsche Sinfonie ( a good work)
Schnittke: Hiroshima
Blitzstein: Airborne Symphony http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Airborne_Symphony


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Luigi Nono's Intolleranza 1960 seems like one of the most explicitly politically motivated of all classical works, and Nono returned to socialist themes throughout his career.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

French-Swedish Composer André Chini wrote a very gripping violin concerto protesting the French Atom-bomb testing on the Mururoa atoll in the pacific..






/ptr


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Copland's A Lincoln Portrait.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Igneous01 said:


> That was how I first listened to it - I knew absolutely nothing about the backdrop or context of the piece, but I was moved regardless. After I researched the background behind this work, the overall effect was heightened that much more. Is this a bad thing?


Not at all. I am but an advocate of knowing exactly _what_ is working your emotions, and _why... because all art is calculated, one way or another, to manipulate the viewer / listener in to some sort of personal reaction_ -- some pieces much more specific in their intent than others.

My personal preference is for music which works on you -- however it can -- without any extra-musical dependencies attached to it. That is the most 'absolute' (abstract) sort of music. I happen to consider that when music is dependent upon extra-musical references, it is no longer 'just about the music.' My strongest interest where music is concerned is in those works which are 'just about the music' and what it can convey, completely on its own.

There are pieces where it is clear to many a listener that they are being manipulated. Though the moment you sign up to listen to a piece you are subscribing to be manipulated, i.e. moved in some way or another, there are those who do not at all care for those pieces where it is plainly evident one's emotions are being jerked about, _i.e. when the mechanics of the manipulation are_, as some perceive, _too obvious._ [I place this piece you've posted in the obviously manipulative category, with all its built-in near automatic emotions and sympathies -- this is the sort of thing I consider a total cheap shot.] This comes up with Puccini operas a lot, a pretty strong split between those who find it overtly manipulative and those who don't.

Personally, my credo is if the music can not work on you all of itself, then it is less a matter of its being music and more a matter of music + extra-musical attachments, that latter combination is far less interesting to me, rather like paintings with words in the image... those don't interest me much either, because for me, the artist has failed to move me through image alone.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

hpowders said:


> Copland's A Lincoln Portrait.


Along with just about every national anthem in existence....

Yes, propaganda is political


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## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

I think it should sound a bit like this:


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## Guest (Aug 25, 2014)

Another piece that was politically motivated is Beethoven's "Glorious Moment" 
http://www.naxos.com/feature/Beethovens_Glorious_Moment.asp


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## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Adams's _Nixon in China _was political in a strange sort of way


I'm not sure I agree.

Given how large a target the main characters presented for political commentary, the libretto seemed to focus most of what little criticism it permitted itself on the auxiliary characters of Kissinger and Madame Mao.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

The Political Implications of Abstraction and Modernism In the late 1930's, many distinguished composers arrived in America from war-torn Europe, to escape the censorship and suppression of their art. This large influx of composers is what established serialism in America.

Ernst Krenek, one of those disenfranchised composers, said that one reason he was attracted to serialism was that it seemed antithetical to Nazism, and became an expression of his protest.

It is well known that totalitarian governments hate and suppress serialism and 'modern' abstract art. That's because abstraction (Schoenberg was an Expressionist) reflects the inner experience of the artist, and thus does not reflect the outward reality of whatever social, political, and ideological environment it springs from, except in cases where it is sarcastic and critical of such milieus, as with George Grosz' cartoon-like art.

Thus, abstraction itself is in inherent opposition to outward powers which might try to control it. It is the hermetic, monk-like, academically-entrenched expression of the individual, in the absence of any ideological purpose. It is inherently apolitical, in that it celebrates the individual.

Serialism arose in contrast to *tonality, which had been the official language of music for centuries, representing through its notation and scores the aspirations and concerns of an elite ruling class, evolving out of Church power, then kings, royalty and an emerging bourgeois class.* Haydn and Mozart wrote their _divertissiments_ for the amusement of royal families who funded them. The music embodies the progressive and elitist aims of this ruling class, and tonality was the sensual, resonant language which was used to convey this. Thus, I see tonality, regardless of its intent, as being an implicit embodiment of politics, and the power-class.

As Nationalism began to reach its peak in the nineteenth century, with Wagner, Strauss, Brahms, and others, *Arnold Schoenberg *yearned to be a part of this, and moved to Vienna, where he struggled to become a part of the great Viennese tradition in music. As *Mahler* before him found out, this was not to be; this was an elitist, exclusionary club which was almost impossible to gain membership in, despite the great works which arose out of this attempt: Mahler's symphonies, his _Song of the Earth_, Schoenberg's _Pelleas_ and _Transfigured Night_, and his _Gurrelieder.

_Although many here might disagree, I feel that Schoenberg adopted his 12-tone system out of *more *than reasons arising out of musical concerns; meaning the chromaticism which had emerged, and which had resulted in an unstable and insecure musical syntax, on the verge of developing itself into chromatic chaos, an environment which he sought to bring order to. He also said at one time that he wanted serialism to 'reassert German musical hegemony,' which is ironic, as he was forced to leave Germany as World War II broke out.

No, I think Schoenberg had seen what happened to Mahler, and grew somewhat bitter; and he retreated into Expressionism and his 12-tone method, which served his individual artistic vision, and only paid lip-service, by continued use of familiar forms like waltzes and traditional forms, to the Germanic tradition which had molded him. Go with what you know.

This withdrawal into the 'abstraction' of serial music allowed Schoenberg to create a music which supported and expressed no outward ideology or nationalistic tradition, but only the inner experience of its creator. *Serialism became its own ideology.*

The repercussions of WWII resonated well into the 1950s, when a new generation emerged and expanded on the methods and aesthetic of Schoenberg and Webern. The bombast of nationalism had almost destroyed Europe, and these new composers were disillusioned with all such notions of nationalism and state power; and the spectre of the hydrogen bomb still loomed. Thus serialism was the perfect vehicle; it had no traditional baggage of nationalism and was subject to no ideology other than its own.

Thus, although Schoenberg and the serial composers who followed acted out of artist concerns, with no *overt *political considerations or motivations other than general post WWII trauma, their retreat into the inner realm of abstraction, and into a receding, hermetic world of self-generating forms free of tradition, had political implications all the same, because of the inherent inner, individualistic nature of abstraction freed from tradition and nationalism.​


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

William Schuman's Symphony #4-a war symphony from the 1940's-full of patriotic feeling-intended to support the cause.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Thus, although Schoenberg and the serial composers who followed acted out of artist concerns, with no *overt *political considerations or motivations other than general post WWII trauma, their retreat into the inner realm of abstraction, and into a receding, hermetic world of self-generating forms free of tradition, had political implications all the same, because of the inherent inner, individualistic nature of abstraction freed from tradition and nationalism.
> [/INDENT]


A very distressing implication of the politics of abstraction in music, of course, emerged later when serialist and avant-garde composers in Stalinist Russia faced political persecution. If it wasn't music "for the people" (whatever that means) or was "formalist" (whatever that means) it was felt to be against the interest of the state.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I don't know if this was already mentioned but Adam's opera Nixon in China would certainly belong.


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