"Entartete Musik" - Meisterwerke einer verlorenen Epoche

"I have at last learned the lesson that has been forced upon me during this year, and I shall not ever forget it. It is that I am not a German, not a European, indeed perhaps scarcely a human being (at least the Europeans prefer the worst of their race to me) but I am a Jew."--Arnold Schoenberg

After the horrors of World War I, most Europeans expressed their sense of freedom by embracing the roaring twenties. An open-minded lifestyle was emerging from the nightlife of jazz clubs and cabarets. Berlin was at the heart of the bold and innovative music trends of the 1920s and 1930s. Musicians experimented with their art by pushing away from accepted musical forms and finding new ones.

While many Europeans were celebrating new-found freedom in the arts, Germany was already beginning to fall under the shadow of the swastika. For almost 100 years, an atmosphere of antisemitism had been growing in Europe. Richard Wagner, the well-known composer, had spoken publicly against the Jewish people in his booklet, "Das Judenthum in der Musik" (Judaism in Music). The Nazi Party played upon these historic prejudices in their rise to power.

Nineteenth-century psychologists introduced the term degenerate or entartete to describe any deviance or clinical mental illness. Later a broader definition was applied to include scientific literature (medical, biology and anthropology). By 1933 Hitler's Third Reich referred to the mentally ill, communists, Gypsies, homosexuals and Jews as subspecies of the human race. The words "Jewish," "Degenerate," and "Bolshevik" were commonly used to describe any art or music not acceptable to the Third Reich. The Nazi propaganda poster at left is a crude exaggeration of the original poster for the opera Jonny spielt auf. This grotesque figure became the Nazi symbol for all they considered "degenerate" in the arts. Hitler envisioned the day when German culture would be free of "morbid excrescencies of insane and degenerate men."

After the race laws of 1933, the Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Music Chamber) required a registry of all German musicians. As a result, hundreds of talented composers had their work deliberately suppressed and careers ended simply because their race or style of music offended the Third Reich. By 1938, examples of degenerate music were on display at the Entarte Musik Exhibit for the public to view. Famous works by Mendelssohn, Mahler, and Schoenberg were used as examples of unacceptable music. A generation of incredibly innovative and promising musicians was virtually excluded from its place in music history.

From the mid-1990s the Decca Record Company released a series of recordings under the title "`Entartete Musik´: music suppressed by the third reich" covering works by several of the excluded and suppressed artists. Here´s a two CD set giving a good summary of this series.

Tracklist:
Disc 1
1.Ich bin ein Vamp!
2.Wir wollen alle Kinder sein
3.An den kleinen Radioapparat
4.Der Kirschdieb
5.Panzerschlacht
6.Vom Sprengen des Gartens
7.Tante Sues Geschichten - Zwischenspiel 4
8.Das Mäuschen
9.Der Garten
10.Finale: Die Furcht
11.Das waren Kriege (1. Bild)
12.Schau, die Wolken (3. Bild)
13.Komm Tod, du unser werter Gast (4. Bild)
14.Pane, prinásejí tezk² prípad! (1. Szene)
15.Casta diva (3. Bild)
16.VII. Molto Adagio äußerst langsam und seelenvoll "Friede, mein Herz"
17.Vorspiel (DRITTER AKT)
18.Liebwerte Freunde (Vorspiel und Prolog)
19.Ich ging zu ihm (ZWEITER AKT)
20.Einleitung (Teil 1)
21.Oh, das ist mein Jonny! (Teil 1)
22.So hat uns Jonny aufgespielt zum Tanz (Teil 2)
23.Charleston, Charleston tanzt die Welt
24.Ein kleiner Slowfox mit Mary

Disc 2
1.Shimmy
2.Die Marionetten
3.Erster Akt
4.Ouvertüre
5.Commedy Of Errors - Ouverture
6.Vorspiel (DRITTER AKT)
7.3. Gigue
8.Zwischenspiel
9.3. Alla singaresca - Tempo 1 Allegro molto
10.3. Largo e misterioso - Der Mond und ich
11.II. Lento
12.Intermezzo: Totentanz (2. Bild)
13.Blues
14.Marsch

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"Entartete Musik" - Meisterwerke einer verlorenen Epoche

(256 kbps, cover art included)