Overview

Antifascist and socialist monuments pervaded the landscape of the former German Democratic Republic (1949-89), presenting a distorted vision of the national past. Official commemorative culture in East Germany celebrated a selective set of political heroes, seeming to leave no public space for mourning those who were excluded from the country's founding myths. Socialist Laments: Musical Mourning in the German Democratic Republic examines the role of music in this nation's memorial culture, demonstrating how music facilitated the expressions of loss within spaces of commemoration for East German citizens. Music performed during state-sponsored memorial rituals no doubt bolstered official narratives of the German past. But it simultaneously provided an outlet for mourning in highly politicized environment. The book presents both a history and theory of musical mourning in East Germany. Using a site-specific approach to analysis, author Martha Sprigge demonstrates how the multiple semantic networks opened up by these musical works facilitated many memorial associations without necessitating the overt articulation of a mourned subject. Throughout the country's forty-year existence, music offered East German citizens an audible outlet for working through traumatic losses-both collective and individual-that was distinct from other artistic expressive possibilities. The book reveals the ways that East Germany's extensive commemorative repertoire helped composers, performers, and audiences navigate between the inevitable need to mourn on the one hand, and the seeming impossibilities of mourning on the other.

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9780197546321

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"""Sprigge's inventive study invites us to hear a sonic history of East Germany through its threnody culture, debunking tenacious Cold War shibboleths along the way. Socialist Laments is a vital contribution to German Studies, Trauma Studies, and Musicology."" -- Joy Calico, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Musicology, Professor of German Studies, Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University ""How do Marxists mourn? In her moving, deeply researched study of commemoration in the former East Germany, Martha Sprigge answers this question through music--music that was composed, performed, and heard in postwar ruins, churches, former concentration camps, and cemeteries. In these places of authorized mourning, East Germans were able come to terms with their losses in the service of Hitler's war without repudiating the official memory regime of their new socialist state. A tour-de-force of musical, political, and emotional analysis, illuminating an essential aspect of both postwar Germanies."" -- Celia Applegate, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of History and Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, Vanderbilt University"

Sprigge's inventive study invites us to hear a sonic history of East Germany through its threnody culture, debunking tenacious Cold War shibboleths along the way. Socialist Laments is a vital contribution to German Studies, Trauma Studies, and Musicology. -- Joy Calico, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Musicology, Professor of German Studies, Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University How do Marxists mourn? In her moving, deeply researched study of commemoration in the former East Germany, Martha Sprigge answers this question through music--music that was composed, performed, and heard in postwar ruins, churches, former concentration camps, and cemeteries. In these places of authorized mourning, East Germans were able come to terms with their losses in the service of Hitler's war without repudiating the official memory regime of their new socialist state. A tour-de-force of musical, political, and emotional analysis, illuminating an essential aspect of both postwar Germanies. -- Celia Applegate, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of History and Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, Vanderbilt University

Sprigge's inventive study invites us to hear a sonic history of East Germany through its threnody culture, debunking tenacious Cold War shibboleths along the way. Socialist Laments is a vital contribution to German Studies, Trauma Studies, and Musicology. * Joy Calico, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Musicology, Professor of German Studies, Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University * How do Marxists mourn? In her moving, deeply researched study of commemoration in the former East Germany, Martha Sprigge answers this question through music * music that was composed, performed, and heard in postwar ruins, churches, former concentration camps, and cemeteries. In these places of authorized mourning, East Germans were able come to terms with their losses in the service of Hitler's war without repudiating the official memory regime of their new socialist state. A tour-de-force of musical, political, and emotional analysis, illuminating an essential aspect of both postwar Germanies. *

Author Information

Martha Sprigge is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of California - Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on musical expressions of mourning, grief, and remembrance in Germany after World War II. Her essays on musical commemorative practices in East Germany appear in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, the journal Twentieth-Century Music, as well as in recent edited volumes on German music and culture.

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