Aesthetic conservatism and politics in German-language music criticism, 1900-1945

Time and again studies of German-language music criticism at the fin de siècle, but also during the Weimar Republic, the First Austrian Republic and both World Wars, have shown that politics influenced critics or that critics wished to influence politics. And yet the mechanism in place differed vastly in the respective historical contexts, often in unexpected ways. Critical discourse did not necessarily reflect either the political view of the author or the political milieu of the performance and review. This chapter focuses on the clash between rhetoric and politics, not to diminish the significance of ideology in the interpretation of critical discourse, but to understand the more complex ways that music critics both responded to political pressure and pursued their own ideological course.