Music and War in Europe from French Revolution to World War I

The purpose of this paper 1 is to explore two broad problems: first, what role did music and musicians play in warfare in France during the Renaissance period and, second, can we get any idea of the sound of battle from the extensive musical depiction of war during the period.

SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture, 2019

This is an entry published in the SAGE Encyclopedia of Music and Culture, edited by Janet Sturman, and addresses the following topics: commemorating war through music, wartime music culture, music as a weapon of war and violence, and negotiating peace and healing through music .

The full programme for a two-day conference held at the University of York, UK, on February 27 and 28, 2015. Assembled, edited, and produced by Naomi Taylor; William Brooks, artistic director.

This conference in Athens in November 2018. My presentation : "How useful were wartime songs, and to whom?"

This dissertation aims to draw a comprehensive picture regarding music's relation to the concepts of warfare and peace by offering several historical events as examples in broadly chronological order under three main questions. While the first part of this dissertation focuses on music's contribution to warfare, the second chapter suggests an opposite perspective by offering Benjamin Britten's War Requiem as a corroborating case study to the argument. By not straying from the pacifist ideology behind War Requiem, in the final chapter, it has been discussed whether the music for peace is possible by giving more current examples, such as the current war in Ukraine in 2022. One of the main significances of this study is to offer a relatively comprehensive literary analysis regarding the relationship between music and warfare rather than focusing on only a few events like many of the other academic studies have been done concerning the relations between music with politics so far.

SAGE Encyclopedia of Music, 2019

Itinerario 41, 2017

The article assesses the role of the military in the global dissemination and exchange of music in the long nineteenth century. It shows that, first, Western military music and its instrumentation were influenced by cross-cultural encounters, primarily with the Ottoman Empire. Second, I argue that educational professionalization and instrumental standardization were important vehicles for the global rise of the military band beyond its original purpose. Third, tracing the transnational careers of some German military musicians will make evident that competition with respect to national prestige, rising imperialism, and the increasing commercialization of musical life were crucial features of the spread of military musicians all over the world, making them cultural brokers not only of military music.

1997

What did popular song mean to people across the world during the First World War? For the first time, song repertoires and musical industries from countries on both sides in the Great War as well as from neutral countries are analysed in one exciting volume. Experts from around the world, and with very different approaches, bring to life the entertainment of a century ago, to show the role it played in the lives of our ancestors. The reader will meet with the penniless lyricist, the theatre chain owner, the cross-dressing singer, fado composer, stage Scotsman or rhyming soldier, whether they come from Serbia, Britain, the USA, Germany, France, Portugal or elsewhere, in this fascinating exploration of showbiz before the generalization of the gramophone. Singing was a vector for patriotic support for the war, and sometimes for anti-war activism, but it was much more than that, and expressed and constructed debates, anxieties, social identities and changes in gender roles. This work, accompanied by many links to online recordings, will allow the reader to glimpse the complex role of popular song in people’s lives in a period of total war.

BRILL eBooks, 2023

The soldier, the soldier / is the loveliest man in the country. That's why the girls are such fans / of the dear, dear military man'. This was the refrain of the most popular song in the patriotic folk play Immer feste druff ('Let Him Have It!'), written by Berlin theatre director Hermann Haller together with Willi Wolf and first performed on stage in October 1914 at the theatre on Nollendorfplatz; music was by Walter Kollo. With no less than 100 performances by the end of 1914 and a total of over 800 by the time of the armistice four years later, this mixture of farce, revue and operetta was one of the most successful theatrical pieces in Berlin during the war. Immer feste druff-the phrase was coined by Crown Prince Wilhelm in connection with the Zabern affair1owed its unprecedented success, first, to its patriotic sentiments paired with harmless, easily understandable humour. This mix was extremely attractive to a wide audience during wartime. Second, comedians Karl Geßner and Claire Waldoff, who played leading roles and sang the song together, contributed significantly to the play's popularity. After its première in Berlin, Immer feste druff was also very well received in other cities in the empire. Thanks to the new gramophone technology, the song 'The Loveliest Man in the Country' became extremely popular in the trenches and field hospitals, attaining a firm place in the soundscape of the First World War.2 The success story of Immer feste druff makes it clear that musical life by no means came to a standstill due to the war, but for the most part continued, not only at home but at the front as well. In view of the flood of new publications triggered by the centenary of the First World War, however, it is surprising that-when it comes to connections between war and musical production or reception-musical life during the war is still scrutinized and analysed 1 The arbitrary actions of the Prussian armed forces against the population of Zabern in Alsace, which caused outrage throughout the Reich at the turn of 1913-14 and damaged the reputation of Emperor Wilhelm II, went down in history as the 'Zabern Affair'. See