Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora: New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism, 23 (New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism, Series Number 23)

EAN: 9781107003002
Published 13/09/2012
Language: English

The German-Jewish émigré composer Stefan Wolpe was a vital figure in the history of modernism, with affiliations ranging from the Bauhaus, Berlin agitprop and the kibbutz movement to bebop, Abstract Expressionism and Black Mountain College. This is the first full-length study of this often overlooked composer, launched from the standpoint of the mass migrations that have defined recent times. Drawing on over 2000 pages of unpublished documents, Cohen explores how avant-garde communities across three continents adapted to situations of extreme cultural and physical dislocation. A conjurer of unexpected cultural connections, Wolpe serves as an entry-point to the utopian art worlds of Weimar-era Germany, pacifist movements in 1930s Palestine and vibrant art and music scenes in early Cold War America. The book takes advantage of Wolpe's role as a mediator, bringing together perspectives from music scholarship, art history, comparative literature, postcolonial studies and recent theories of cosmopolitanism and diaspora.

Introduction
1. Wolpe's self-revelatory poetics and critical reflections, circa 1951
2. Weimar-era montage and avant-garde community
3. 'Amalgamated' musics and national visions in 1930s Palestine
4. The mid-century poetics and politics of experimental community
Epilogue
the witnessing memory
Select bibliography.