Böcker av Danielle Fosler-Lussier

Music Divided explores how political pressures affected musical life on both sides of the iron curtain during the early years of the cold war. In this groundbreaking study, Danielle Fosler-Lussier illuminates the pervasive political anxieties of the day through particular attention to artistic, music-theoretical, and propagandistic responses to the music of Hungary's most renowned twentieth-century composer, Bela Bartok. She shows how a tense period of political transition plagued Bartok's music and imperiled those who took a stand on its aesthetic value in the emerging socialist state. Her fascinating investigation of Bartok's reception outside of Hungary demonstrates that Western composers, too, formulated their ideas about musical style under the influence of ever-escalating cold war tensions.Music Divided surveys Bartok's role in provoking negative reactions to "e;accessible"e; music from Pierre Boulez, Hermann Scherchen, and Theodor Adorno. It considers Bartok's influence on the youthful compositions and thinking of Bruno Maderna and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and it outlines Bartok's legacy in the music of the Hungarian composers Andras Mihaly, Ferenc Szabo, and Endre Szervanszky. These details reveal the impact of local and international politics on the selection of music for concert and radio programs, on composers' choices about musical style, on government radio propaganda about music, on the development of socialist realism, and on the use of modernism as an instrument of political action.

During the Cold War, thousands of musicians from the United States traveled the world, sponsored by the U.S. State Department's Cultural Presentations program. Performances of music in many styles-classical, rock 'n' roll, folk, blues, and jazz-competed with those by traveling Soviet and mainland Chinese artists, enhancing the prestige of American culture. These concerts offered audiences around the world evidence of America's improving race relations, excellent musicianship, and generosity toward other peoples. Through personal contacts and the media, musical diplomacy also created subtle musical, social, and political relationships on a global scale. Although born of state-sponsored tours often conceived as propaganda ventures, these relationships were in themselves great diplomatic achievements and constituted the essence of America's soft power. Using archival documents and newly collected oral histories, Danielle Fosler-Lussier shows that musical diplomacy had vastly different meanings for its various participants, including government officials, musicians, concert promoters, and audiences. Through the stories of musicians from Louis Armstrong and Marian Anderson to orchestras and college choirs, Fosler-Lussier deftly explores the value and consequences of "e;musical diplomacy."e;