L5: War in Music

1. Official Music
2. Popular Music
3. The World Wars
4. Great Song/ Nasty Sentiment

Lecture Notes

Music has always been used for different music during war times:
1. Diversion –like poking fun at the war, or taking your focus from the war
2. To rally people to believe and fight in the war

Composers have aligned themselves with pro or antiwar and the music is a political statement.

OFFICIAL MUSIC
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● National Anthem – is the most nationalist song
○ The French anthem was written during battle times.
○ British Anthem was written to boost morale after they had been invaded
by the Scottish.
○ Chinese was written after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
○ American anthem was written after the British bombed a port.

Composers with Classical Music

● like music for the royal fireworks was made to commemorate victory.
● Tchaikovsky 1812 was written to celebrate Russia's victory against Napolean.

STORY OF SHOSTAKOVICH
Dmitri Shostakovich tried to enlist in the army and was rejected and he was told his best help to
the country would be with his music. So he wrote the 7th symphony while under bombardment.

He was flown out of the city under special circumstances because he was that important and he
dedicated the symphony to the city of Leningrad as it was under siege.

It had massive international success and it brought emotional, social and financial traction to the
Soviet cause.

POPULAR MUSIC
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Popular music in war is seen as a way to ease the pain of war. The popular music industry sees
war as a big opportunity.

The Napoleonic war was the first opportunity of this wave. 1000s of songs were made and
promoted at this time. Many of them poked fun at the French so it was popular.

Later it got cheaper to print the songs to be performed so they became more popular.

So by the end of the 19th century, people had decided, yes war is bad but it can pay bills –
music industry wise.

WORLD WARS
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The wars took over the music industry
5% - 1914
15% - 1915
70% -1918 (35000) songs

60% of the songs were written by women. The songs were churned out factory style by pulpers
so you would write a poem, send it to a pulper and they'll make it a song with sheet music then it
can be sent to producers.

2 verses 1 chorus not much variants.

Most of the songs in WWI were bad and not worth listening to.

The covers go from embarrassing to tasteless so they were memorable. Music was made to be
played live, there were record players but they were really expensive. To buy one record player,
the same money could take you to the musical 200 times.

There were 3 million pianos in Britain at this time.

Back then popular music wasn't correlated to teens. There was only a child and adult. There
wasn't teen culture and culture, there was only culture.

Because of the types of halls , people needed to be really loud while singing so there is a lot of
loudness in the songs and there are sing along parts to increase amplification.

Each singer only got 15 minutes so people made over dramatic songs that were designed to be
gotten rid of.

WW2
Gramophones
Musicals
Record players became a bit more cheap

Radios emerged more in WWII and everyone both domestic and military people used it.

Themes were not much different from in WW1

Nazis used propaganda but their music was limited to their ideology. Germany had a lot of talent
composers and used it when soldiers came back they got free tickets to the Valgner festival

Nazis regulated music and a lot of music was banned if it was too depressing or went against
the Nazis or their actions.

Germans adopted the process of 24/7 music play in their cities.

Magnetic recording tape (ended up becoming cassettes etc).

Some music was off limit, e.g. Felix Mendelssohn was black listed because he was born a Jew
even though he had converted.

Jazz and Swing was banned and it was regarded as too black.

Nazis devoted a lot of attention to music propaganda but allies got the biggest coo because they
adopted Beethoven's number 5 for their own agenda

The first 4 notes

This came about because the British were broadcasting in 40 different languages to the
countries and Belgium listened to it and used the letter V as a symbol for resistance, then they
found the braille was … - which is the same as Beethoven's number d's first 4 notes.

This became a sign of resistance.

People say that the music made them feel:

● Could whip a whole brigade by myself
● In a German diary he wrote that the concert showed him what they're fighting for

GREAT SONG/ NASTY SENTIMENT

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Jim Hendrik – Hey Joe

Historically how people feel on the war affect how the felt on the song.
e.g. Vietnam pro war songs aren't rated but are the antiwar songs really better?
People "can't like" pro war songs if it was a bad war because that was not on the right side of
history.

The South African border war 1966-89 (referred to as SA's Vietnam) there's two ways to see it.
The government defending apartheid and SA being attacked by the Angolan army being
supported by mercenary troops from a communist regime.

The people fighting were conscripts who were just fighting because they were told to. Whether
fighting something for big or something small like their farm.

The song was saying it was a controversial thing and can we separate the warrior from the war
or are they all bound together.

Can you celebrate and honor individuals who died in a war that looks bad historically?