Sounds of Survival : Polish Music and the Holocaust.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pierce, J. Mackenzie.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jews--Poland--Music--20th century--History and criticism.

Jews.

Music--Poland--20th century--History and criticism.

Music.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Poland.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

Antisemitism--Poland--History--20th century.

Antisemitism.

Socialism and music--Poland--History--20th century.

Socialism and music.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (376 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2025.

Summary:

Sounds of Survival tells a story of unexpected musical continuity across some of the twentieth century's most cataclysmic events. It examines an integrated Polish and Polish Jewish musical community as its members contended with antisemitism in the 1930s, attempted to survive the Nazi occupation, and established a renewed musical culture amid the ashes of World War II and the Holocaust. Reconstructing these musicians' lives from the 1920s into the 1950s, J. Mackenzie Pierce argues that despite nearly unimaginable violence, many Polish musicians treated the war as a time of reinvention and cultural preservation. Their faith that music was a source of cultural continuity, however, also marginalized experiences of wartime loss, especially those of Jewish victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Sounds of Survival not only reveals that the Holocaust was a central event within modern Polish musical culture; it also shows why its musical aftermath has been difficult to hear.

Contents:

Introduction. Imagining cultural continuity in the Polish bloodlands

Part I. The Interwar Years. Musical belonging and its limits ; A civil society for music

Part II. World War II and the Holocaust. The nation is now a matter of life and death ; We cannot imagine life without music ; We must restructure the musicians into Soviet thinking

Part III. The Aftermath. Synthesizing socialism ; The aesthetics of loss ; Conclusion. a generation in the shadow of the Cold War

Appendix 1. Cast of characters

Appendix 2. Key institutions.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780520405936

0520405935

OCLC:

1511109454