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SUMMARY:Beyond socialist realism: political aesthetics in the German Democ
 ratic Republic - Dr Golan Gur (Newton International Fellow of the British 
 Academy\; University of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20141112T170000Z
DTEND:20141112T180000Z
UID:TALK55466@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:39522
DESCRIPTION:The German Democratic Republic gave rise to a distinctive Marx
 ist outlook on musical culture and aesthetics. Precisely at the same time 
 that Western European and American post-war avant-garde composers wrote th
 e most complex and opaque scores in the history of music\, leading GDR com
 posers and theorists insisted that a truly progressive art must preserve i
 ts ties to realism in order to be widely understood. To be sure\, the atte
 mpt to create art and music along Marxist socialist lines began well befor
 e the establishment of the GDR\; yet the defeat of Germany in World War II
  created new conditions for its undertaking. The talk presents my current 
 research on the interrelations between political culture and musical think
 ing in the Soviet satellite country of East Germany. The aim of the study 
 is twofold: to explore the connection between GDR music aesthetics and Mar
 xist art theory\, starting with the founders of Marxism\, and\, second\, t
 o put forward a critical investigation of the East German vision of cultur
 al progress as a distinct paradigm of musical modernism. Striking a balanc
 e between the history of music aesthetics and the history of musical insti
 tutions and politics\, my discussion concentrates on three major GDR music
 ians and musical thinkers\, namely Hanns Eisler\, Ernst Hermann Meyer and 
 Georg Knepler. Each of them is treated paradigmatically as representative 
 of a different but overlapping aspect and period in the history of East Ge
 rman musical culture.
LOCATION:Recital Room\, Faculty of Music
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