Abstract
This thesis analyses the development and decline of the Neo-Classical movement of composers of functional sacred music known as the Singbewegung in Germany from the 1920s until the early postwar period using an approach informed by the field of memory studies. I explore various different iterations of the movement, in both a Catholic and an Evangelical context and in postwar East Germany, to demonstrate how the Singbewegung and the state mobilised key memory sites of the German Baroque past in an attempt to combat perceived inadequacies in the present.In particular, I seek to contribute to the growing body of scholarship which complicates the common ‘Stunde null’ (‘zero hour’) paradigm in German culture by demonstrating that, in this case in the context of sacred music, 1945 did not represent a clear break with the recent or distant German past, with many composers seeking to carry on as they had been before the Second World War.
The section of my thesis which examines these movements before the War focuses in particular on the ‘Leipziger Schule’ (‘Leipzig School’) and its members, such as Hugo Distler and Ernst Pepping, and their compositional styles, in addition to their relationship to the conflicts both within and beyond the Evangelical Church during the National-Socialist Period.
From 1945 onwards, I am interested in the attempt of composers of both the Evangelical and the Catholic Church in West-Germany, for instance Helmut Bornefeld, Siegfried Reda and Bertold Hummel, to continue composing in this tradition of functional sacred music.
With regard to East-Germany, I analyse how the inheritance of the cultural practice of sacred music from the prewar period was affected by the introduction of East-German Socialist Realism and how this was mobilised by the East-German state as a means of presenting itself as the true inheritor of the German past, with reference to the composer Rudolf Mauersberger and the Dresdner Kreuzchor.
I conclude by demonstrating the frustration and decline of the Singbewegung in West Germany during the late 1950s as a result of the increasing dominance of the avant-garde, secularisation and strong criticism from figures such as Clytus Gottwald and Theodor Adorno, among others.
| Date of Award | 1 Nov 2022 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Michael Fend (Supervisor) & Heather Wiebe (Supervisor) |