Albrecht Betz: Hanns Eisler, Political Musician (1976/1982)

Eisler’s role in German music is similar to that of Brecht in German literature and the two men worked together for nearly thirty years. Together with Webern and Berg, Eisler is considered one of the three great pupils of Schoenberg. Albrecht Betz divides Eisler’s life and music into four periods. The early formative period as student of Schoenberg includes compositions written in Vienna up to 1925. From 1926 to 1933, the second period, Eisler lived in Berlin and made his greatest impact with his political vocal music. The third phase of Eisler’s life, fifteen years of exile, was spent principally in the USA, and the fourth (from 1948) in East Germany. The author shows how Eisler is distinguished from other great twentieth-century composers in his belief that music had a social function, and how he liberated modern music from what he and others felt was its isolation. Originally published in German in 1976, this English edition is illustrated with music examples and includes a complete list of works, and a bibliography which has been adapted for the English-speaking reader.

Originally published in German as Hanns Eisler, Musik einer Zeit, die sich eben bildet by Edition text und kritik GmbH, Munich 1976
Translated by Bill Hopkins
Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1982
ISBN 0521240220, 9780521240222
326 pages

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Edward Larkey (ed.): A Sound Legacy? Music and Politics in East Germany (2000)

Collection of papers from a one-day workshop organized by Edward Larkey under the title “A Sound Legacy? Music and Politics in East Germany” at AICGS on December 3, 1999.

The volume brings together practitioners as well as music historians in an effort to reflect upon the development of music culture in preunification East Germany, and to provide a background perspective for aspects of music culture in the postunification period.

Published by American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2000
Harry & Helen Gray Humanities Program Series, Volume 8
ISBN 0-941441-53-9
74 pages

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Nils L. Wallin, Björn Merker, Steven Brown (eds.): The Origins of Music (1999)

What biological and cognitive forces have shaped humankind’s musical behavior and the rich global repertoire of musical structures? What is music for, and why does every human culture have it? What are the universal features of music and musical behavior across cultures? In this groundbreaking book, musicologists, biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, ethologists, and linguists come together for the first time to examine these and related issues. The book can be viewed as representing the birth of evolutionary biomusicology—the study of which will contribute greatly to our understanding of the evolutionary precursors of human music, the evolution of the hominid vocal tract, localization of brain function, the structure of acoustic-communication signals, symbolic gesture, emotional manipulation through sound, self-expression, creativity, the human affinity for the spiritual, and the human attachment to music itself.

Contributors: Simha Arom, Derek Bickerton, Steven Brown, Ellen Dissanayake, Dean Falk, David W. Frayer, Walter Freeman, Thomas Geissmann, Marc D. Hauser, Michel Imberty, Harry Jerison, Drago Kunej, François-Bernard Mâche, Peter Marler, Björn Merker, Geoffrey Miller, Jean Molino, Bruno Nettl, Chris Nicolay, Katharine Payne, Bruce Richman, Peter J. B. Slater, Peter Todd, Sandra Trehub, Ivan Turk, Maria Ujhelyi, Nils L. Wallin, Carol Whaling.

Publisher MIT Press, 2001
Bradford Books series
ISBN 0262731436, 9780262731430
512 pages

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