Throughout history and across the globe, governments have taken a strong hand in censoring music. Whether in the interests of "safeguarding" the moral and religious values of their citizens or of promoting their own political goals, the character and severity of actions taken to suppress and
control music that has been categorized as unacceptable, immoral, or as the Nazi's termed the music of Jewish and modernist composers, "degenerate," ranges from economic sanctions to forced immigration, imprisonment, and death. Yet in almost all cases composers found methods to counter this
suppression and to let their voices be heard, even through the very music they were often forced to compose for the oppressing parties.
In this first major collection of its kind, thirty contributors tackle centuries of music censorship across the globe from the medieval era to the
modern day. Case studies address a number of instances both well- and lesser-known, including the tumultuous history of Wagner and Israel, rap music in the United States, silencing of women composers, and music in post-revolutionary Iran. Sections are organized by nature of censorship - religious,
racial, and sexual - and type of government enforcement - democratic, totalitarian, and transitional. Focusing on individual composers and artists as well as eras within single countries, this Handbook champions the efficacy of music as an agent of collective power and resilience.
Introduction, Patricia Hall
I. Censorship and Religion
1. In the Quest of Gallican Remnants in Gregorian Manuscripts, Luisa Nardini
2. The English Kyrie Eleison, Alejandro Planchart
3. Government Controls and the Music Printing Industry in the Elizabethan Era, Jeremy L.
Smith
4. The Sound of Indigenous Ancestors: Music, Corporality, and Memory in the Jesuit Missions of Colonial South America, Guillermo Wilde
5."We Should Not Sing of Heaven and Angels": Performing Western Sacred Music in Soviet Russia, 1917-67, Pauline Fairclough
6. A Strident
Silencing The Ban on Richard Wagner in Israel, Na'ama Sheffi
II. Censorship During the Enlightenment
7. Harpocrate at Work: How the God of Silence Protected Eighteenth-Century French Iconoclasts, Hedy Law
8. Sex, Politics, and Censorship in Mozart's Don Giovanni / Don Juan, Martin
Nedbal
9. The Depoliticized Drama: Mozart's Figaro and the Depths of Enlightenment, Laurenz Lütteken
10. The Curious Incident of Fidelio and the Censors, Robin Wallace
III. Censorship in Transitional Governments
11. "Years in Prison": Giuseppe Verdi and Censorship in Pre-Unification
Italy, Francesco Izzo
12. Micronarratives of music and (self)censorship in the Former Yugoslavia, Ana Hofmann
13. Popular Music as a Barometer of Political Change: Evidence from Taiwan, Nancy Guy
14. Music, Power and Censorship in Vietnam since 1954, Barley Norton
IV. Censorship in
Totalitarian States
15. Miguel Ángel Estrella (Classical) Music for the People, Dictatorship, and Memory, Carol Hess
16. A Case Study of Brazilian Popular Music (MPW) and Censorship: Ivan Lins' Music During Dictatorship in Brazil, Thais Lima Nicodemo
17. Alban Berg's "Guilt" by
Association, Patricia Hall
18. Slow Dissolves, Full Stops, and Interruptions: Terezin, Censorship, and the Summer of 1944, Michael Beckerman
19. Selling Schnittke:Late Soviet Censorship and the Cold War Marketplace, Peter J. Schmelz
20. Curb that Enticing Tone Music Censorship in the
PRC, Hon-Lun Yang
V. Censorship in Democracies
21. From Premiere to Present: Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock and American Culture, David Paul
22. Pete Seeger's Project, Dick Flacks
23. Government Censorship and Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait during the Second Red Scare,
Jennifer DeLapp
24. "A Day in the Life": The Beatles and the BBC, May 1967, Gordon Thompson
VI. Censoring Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation
25. Composing in Black and White: Code-Switching in the Songs of Sam Lucas, Sandra Graham
26. Exploring Transitions in Popular Music:
Censorship from Apartheid to Post-Apartheid South Africa, Michael Drewett
27. Rap Music and Rap Artists Revisited: How Race Matters in the Perception of Rap Music, Travis L. Dixon
28. Deaths and Silences: Coding and Defiance in Music about AIDS, Paul Attinello
29. Teaching Silence in
the Twenty-First Century: Where are the Missing Women Composers?, Roxanne Prevost and Kimberly Francis
30. Veiled Voices: Music and Censorship in Post-Revolutionary Iran, Ameneh Youssefzadeh
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Patricia Hall is Professor and Chair of Music Theory at the University of Michigan. Her publications include A View of Berg's Lulu Through the Autograph Sources (University of California Press, 1997) and Berg's Wozzeck (OUP, 2011).
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