H. Kater M.H. The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich

New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. — 344 p. OCR, with bookmarks.From goodreads.com: Is music removed from politics? To what ends, beneficent or malevolent, can music and musicians be put? In short, when human rights are grossly abused and politics turned to fascist demagoguery, can art and artists be innocent?
These questions and their implications are explored in Michael Kater's broad survey of musicians and the music they composed and performed during the Third Reich. Great and small--from Valentin Grimm, a struggling clarinetist, to Richard Strauss, renowned composer--are examined by Kater, sometimes in intimate detail, and the lives and decisions of Nazi Germany's professional musicians are laid out before the reader.
Kater tackles the issue of whether the Nazi regime, because it held music in crassly utilitarian regard, acted on musicians in such a way as to consolidate or atomize the profession. Kater's examination of the value of music for the regime and the degree to which the regime attained a positive propaganda and palliative effect through the manner in which it manipulated its musicians, and by extension, German music, is of importance for understanding culture in totalitarian systems.
This work, with its emphasis on the social and political nature of music and the political attitude of musicians during the Nazi regime, will be the first of its kind. It will be of interest to scholars and general readers eager to understand Nazi Germany, to music lovers, and to anyone interested in the interchange of music and politics, culture and ideology.See for a comprehensive review of Alan E. Steinweis, University of Nebraska - Lincoln:
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1082&context=historyfacpubThe complete first section of the first chapter (Music, Economics, and Political Opportunism, 7 pages) can be found here:
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/kater-muse.html?oref=slogin (login is not necessary).Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
National Socialism, the Third Reich, and the Music Scene
Music, Economics, and Political Opportunism
Nazi Agencies of Music Administration
Nazi Musical Careers
Musical Professionalism and Political Compromise
Hitler's Bias: Knappertsbusch and His Nemesis Krauss
Political Allegiance and Career Enhancement
Persecuted and Exiled Jewish and Anti-nazi Musicians
Nazi Anti-Semitic Policy in the Music Sector
Jewish Musicians under Nazi Rule
Jewish Flight and Exile
Exiled Non-Jewish Musicians
Music in the Institutions
Family, School, and Hitler Youth
The Academies and the Protestant Church
Dissonance and Deviance
The Nazi Struggle for Modernity in Music
The Ambiguities of Dissidence: Orff, Wagner-Régeny, and Furtwängler
Balancing Acts: Strauss and Pfitzner
Forms of Resistance
Notes
Index