Part One
In the spring of 1922, Jean Sibelius the famous composer from Finland was touring Europe. Sibelius visited the vanguards of western classical music in Berlin, Vienna, Salzburg and Paris. The zeitgeist was of big upheaval in Europe, audible in the breaking waves of western classical music, which left Sibelius not so awestruck, but deeply convinced. That European classical music would come to define types of music in the future. What Sibelius imagined was lofty yet what happened was diabolic and tremendous!  By the early 1920s, European classical music had majorly disintegrated and mutated. Each form with it's own cannon, jargon and set of patrons, speaking different languages with newly acquired identities. Sometimes, famous composers bitterly brawled and vilified each other, almost like famous rockers fought with each other in the 80s. The music of Corelli, Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven and Haydn which had symbolized European culture for more than 200 years, diverged rapidly at the beginning of 20th century, influenced by new political, cultural and historical forces. As European domination of the world was symbolized by war and imperialism, a significant part of western classical music in the 20th century would be fostered by imperial visionaries, dictators, nationalists, fascists, bolsheviks and the ruling elite.

Sibelius, like Gershwin, Stravinsky, Bernstein, Ellington and many other contemporaries, was inspired by this evolution. European classical music, that was no longer exclusive to the divine-arts and royal patronage, had transformed into a powerful language, effectively used to build national pride, shape cultural order and decorate military and political power. Hollywood, Walt Disney and the television would enable the music to reach utmost domination over decades. Music which was inspired by war and domination, was used to inspire teenage boys and young men, to enlist for the next war. Behind the staggering grandiosity of the music, there lies a fair amount of agony and tragedy as well.  Tales of persecution, rivalry, loss and exile. The virtuoso was an individual after all - fragile and often forsaken. Lets take a trip back in time, to view certain iconic classical composers caught between the popular, the political and the intellectual. Virtuosity abducted by opposing forces, war and politics - virtuosos exiled by consequence, yet against all odds, producing great works of music which set the future in motion.

Anthems for a new nation. The music of "Mother Russia". The protagonist of this story is the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Born in 1906, his adolescence was marked by the Russian revolution and victory of communism. Shostakovich's career as a composer would rise initially under party patronage. The founders of 'new Russia' elicited new symphonies and operas, with new vigor to symbolize Stalin's dream (blessed by Lenin and Marx) "In essence, Shostakovich applied new harmonic values, radically reshaping chord structures, offsetting the older cadences of Tchaikovsky and Debussy which had been the foundation of Russian opera and ballet. The Politburo fostered the new Russian composers, yet always resting upon a background of ardent nationalism and enforced pride" states Alex Ross in his book 'The Rest Is Noise'. By mid-1920s, Shostakovich was considered #1 classical composer of Russia.

By 1936 the political climate in Russia, much like the rest of Europe was in a state of disarray and anxiety. Stalin had sentenced many many writers, academics, teachers, actors, musicians and painters to labor camps in Siberia (Gulag). Those who were lucky, fled to western Europe, US, Canada and South America. In 1936 Stalin and a few senior officials went to watch the rendition of Lady Macbeth, an opera composed by Shostakovich. "The horror with which he watched as Stalin shuddered every time the brass and percussion played loudly. Halfway through the concert, Stalin and his aides left. Little did Shostakovich realize what grave consequences lay ahead." writes musicologist Lev Lebedinsky. The following week, Pravda, the regime's #1 mouthpiece smeared the composer, for the opera 'Lady Macbeth' and for collaborating with Jewish and French composers. They called it "Muddle instead of music". The following year Shostakovich and several musicians were dismissed from the National Conservatory altogether. "Hundreds of musicians were sentenced to the Gulag during 1935-39, mercilessly reduced to bonded labour, starved, often leading to death..." (The Gulag Archipelago - Alexander Solzhenitsyn 1974)

As Russia plunged into war with Nazi Germany, killing millions on both sides, Shostakovich's reputation, public appeal and income plunged. While a large majority of Russians starved and froze, Soshtakovic faced blacklisting at home, smeared as an agent of the west, and abroad as a "puppet" of Stalin. "A cheap copy of Malhar..." as German composer Richard Strauss ranted once. Musicologist André Lischke wrote ”Shostakovich lived in the hell of duality for more than 30 years. His symphonies in fact were quite opposite of how they were perceived by public. For example, his 5th symphony - the music is officially dedicated to the martyrs of the October revolution, but to the creator it speaks of ruthless violence. Expressed via catatonic instrumentation and voicing. The violence gives us the feeling of hearing someone whose skull is being crushed but has to shout: long live the Soviet Union!”. Composers like Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky and Aleksandr Raskatov fled from Russia for various reasons, consequently enriching the music and cinema of America, Canada, France and England. Labelled as virtuosos by some and traitors by others, these composers created hundreds of masterpieces for foreign sensibilities, in places very far from "Mother Russia".

World domination by the degenerates! (of the highest order) Scholars have argued endlessly as to why the music of Wagner, Bruckner and Malhar became emblematic to Nazi pride and German nationalism. Why Hitler insisted on playing Wagner symphonies at political rallies (before ranting about a new world order) and Malhar etudes at party dinners (while planning the ethnic cleansing of Europe)? Regardless, the Nazis needed contemporary composers, who could revive the epochs of Wagner, Malhar, Weber, Beethoven and Bach. In 1933 Joseph Goebels founded the Reichsmusikkammer, effectively giving rise to a gaint propaganda machine to mass produce German classical music and entertainment shows. The Reichsmusikkammer's agenda also included the extermination of "degenerate music" i.e. jazz, gypsy, soul, atonal, Romanian, Slav, Russian and Serbian folk music etc etc.  Call it the birth of mainstream censorship and entertainment at the same time. To mix the baroque, classical and romantic eras would prove to be a stiffing objective, as much as finding the "Aryan composer" with utmost talent to fulfill the role. Richard Strauss would find himself placed at the center of the objective.

By the time Richard Strauss took charge of Reichsmusikkammer, eminent German composers such as Schoenberg, Hindemith, and Erich Korngold had fled to America. "Strauss was 58 and already famous in America and England, and for this reason he was initially hesitant to embrace the Nazi party and lead the Reichmusikkamer. Admired by Hitler and loathed by Goebels at the same time - around 1933 he was mortified in a way. Still he hammered away three symphonies, several operas and a revision of Beethoven's 5th, over the next five years" writes Alex Ross (The Rest Is Noise). Strauss composed the "Olympische Hymne" for the 1935 Berlin Olympics. Strauss's sound and Hitler's voice embroiled as a radio-wave would become the first ever human broadcast to reach outer space. As well known artists and peers exited Germany in the coming years, Strauss remained at the center of Reich Music. The fabrication of Nazi approved German classical music heralded the incoming 'Blitzkrieg'. Strauss knew that he too was vulnerable, just like several other German artists with Jewish blood relations.

Strauss maintained two separate lives or two faces to be precise. One for Reich Music and the Nazis and the other for those he trusted deeply. In a letter to close friend Stefan Zweig (Austrian Poet) in 1939 he wrote "I consider Goebbels a Jew-baiting disgrace to German honor, he is a false leader —the basest weapon of untalented, lazy mediocrity who is against higher intelligence and greater talent. The music has suffered tremendously..." Unfortunately the letter was intercepted by the Gestapo. Stefan Zweig managed to escape, ending up in Brazil. Goebel's wrote in his dairy "Unfortunately we still need him, but one day we shall have our own music and then we shall have no further need of this decadent neurotic jew lover..." Music for War. Strange or idiotic as it sounds today, back then lives were at stake because of beliefs and secret letters.  

Early 1941 Europe detonated into all out war. Enough was been written and yet the music did not stop. Strauss kept busy while the bombs never stopped falling allover Europe, composing five new operas for Reich Music Radio. The following year Strauss moved to occupied Vienna where he remained under Gestapo surveillance. In 1942, Strauss's daughter-in law Alice Neumann was sentenced to a concentration camp. He could do nothing given his immense status to save the Jewish members of his family. Holocaust history notes that thousands of artists and musicians escaped, but thousands more were exterminated in Germany, Hungary, Serbia, Austria, France, Poland and Italy. By late 1944 more than twenty relatives of Strauss had been exterminated in various concentration camps. In 1945, three weeks after the fall of Berlin, Strauss composed "Metamorphosen" inspired by a poem of Goethe, marking the end of a terrible tragic era. In September 1945 American soldiers apprehended Strauss, but eventually hung a "Keep Off" sign outside his house, when they realised that Strauss was an iconic composer, famous in America. The lines between resistance, collaboration and passivity blur completely, when we read the story of Richard Strauss. September 1949, Strauss died in the village of Garmisch (near Munich) absolved of any Nazi affiliations.

Next Month in Part Two, we take a journey into the music and lives of Schoenberg, Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók. The not-so-jubilant lives of four pioneer composers and how their music, set the foundation's of Hollywood's sound. Four iconic composers who escaped their homeland, to find new vistas while remaining deeply rooted to their native legacy.