MUS 218 Music and Politics: From the French Revolution to Communism
This course explores the direct relationship between significant historical events and their effects on musical creation. The analysis of specific works will offer the opportunity to understand the direct impact politics has on art. Important events throughout the 19th and the 20th century will be presented through the impact they had in music history.
A special section is dedicated to censorship and discrimination focusing on music written
and performed under totalitarian rule. From the Entartete Musik (degenerate music),
discriminated against by the Nazis, to John Adams’ opera Nixon in China, which marked the end of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the course investigates the way in which music was able to follow its own creative path.