Talk:Arnold Schering

[Untitled]

I found an interesting entry in the booklet accompanying the recording: Eisler - Deutsche Sinfonie, op.50 - an Anti Fascist Cantata London #D 111796 Recorded in Leipzig, May 1995.

This recording is part of a series of recordings of "Entartete Musik" - supposedly 'degenerate' music suppressed by the the Third Reich. The accompanying booklet contains a rambling history of the politics, philosophy, and art of the era. Notes are credited to "Thomas Phleps" (sic) and translated into English in 1995. Quoting:

"The fact that the brown-shirted masters of the so-called Third Reich were redefining musical traditions in terms of their own elite class, with the hollow grandiosity of their cultural and political ideals abusing even the symphonic genre, may have played a considerable part in inspiring the composition of the "German Symphony." Additional factors were a renewed interest in symphonic writing at that time, allied to the hijacking of the classical repertoire for the purposes of 'national edification' -- a tendency symbolized in 1934 by the respected musicologist Arnold Schering's image of Beethoven's Fifth knocking ominously at the bloodstained door of lance-corporal Schicklgruber and his self-styled master race."

It appears that Arnold Schering may have made a politically risky artistic statement. There is also an indication that he was respected as a musicologist. My knowledge of the history is much too limited for me to be able to expand upon this interesting finding - but it seems like a vector that may be worthwhile. I invite someone to illuminate the history surrounding this incident in Arnold Schering's life.