You may have recognized some of the themes in the clip just played for you. Excerpted from Tchaikovsky’s iconic 1812 Overture, in just that one minute of music you first heard the French national anthem- La Marseillaise – pitted against a mixture of the Russian tsarist national anthem and an orthodox hymn, complete with the bells of Moscow ringing. Representing the final defeat of the France’s attempt at invasion, what Tchaikovsky uses is a nationalist motif, or a direct musical representation of nationalistic ideas. As you probably know from your history classes, when vehement nationalism emerges, a more authoritarian rule tends to couple it. Regimes such as the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, communist China, and many others had very propagandistic cultural products in the twentieth century. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, propaganda is “the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping (or injuring) an institution.” We have a distorted idea of the meaning of propaganda in the United States, with a very negative connotation. Under the definition just presented, propaganda could be as simple as hearing a few notes played by an organ and associating it with religion. Totalitarian states seized upon this idea, desiring ultra nationalistic sounds to create unmistakable music. Hello, my name is Gillian Diebold and today I will be discussing these regimes’ use of music, an essential aspect of culture, as a political tool so as to shape their societies into conforming to certain ideals.
Mao Zedong, political revolutionary and former chairman to the Chinese Communist Party viewed art and music as “a component of the whole revolutionary machine…a powerful weapon for uniting and educating the people…and to help the people fight with one heart and one mind” (citation here). One heart and one mind: Mao believed in the reeducation of the masses in order to have wholehearted support of the Party. He insisted that Chinese culture “should have its own form…national in form and socialist in content” (Perris). In accordance with Marxist aims, Mao aimed to control all music, coercing composers to write simpler and plainer popular works, to “pay attention to the songs of the masses” (perris). All musical works that did not fit this standard were unacceptable. Music became heavily folk influenced in order to not appear bourgeois. Musicians were instructed that they “may apply appropriate foreign principles and use foreign musical instruments. But still there must be national characteristics.” Perhaps the most famous examples of the new admissible style were the “Model Works,” or eight revolutionary operas commissioned by Jiang Qing, also known as Madame Mao. These operas were didactic, with song titles like “We Will Wipe Out the Reactionaries” often set in battlefields. Clearly they were a bit propagandistic. Ethnomusicologist Arnold Perris found that “In the People’s Republic, a musical performance is never for aesthetic or recreational experience alone; it must always demonstrate ideological value.” Recall the way churches used organ so often that over the centuries the instrument became synonymous with sacred music. Here was Mao attempting to force that same sort of association. He wanted one style of music to be played constantly, music that was brilliant and patriotic, with definite political overtones.
Under the rule of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union had twofold plans for music. Similar to China, Stalin sought to censor music in order to bring nationalism to the center of artistic life. So, part of one his plan: Oppress renowned composers like Shostakovich and Prokofiev by forcing them to turn their imaginative ballets and symphonies into scenes of the revolution, of laborers, of Soviet heroes. In January 1936 Dmitri Shostakovich was directly targeted when the Pravda (the influential newspaper of the Communist party) published two unsigned, scathing reviews of his works. Titled “A Mess Instead of Music,” then “Balletic Falsehood,” these were explicit messages from Stalin. Shostakovich had been producing what Stalin considered “formalist” music, or music paying more attention to technique and structure than to content, and therefore was unacceptably bourgeois. This was classic Stalin: a vague yet menacing decree. In many ways Shostakovich became blackballed for a while and music like Tchaikovsky’s 1812 reigned for its patriotic ideas. Stalin even went so far with his grip on music that he created a Ministry of Culture to officially regulate composers and all other artists the same year as Shostakovich’s downfall. The second part of Stalin’s plan was perhaps his most cunning move. Stalin wanted to promote the fact that all the propagandistic music he commissioned was about Russia and it’s greatness, not entirely anti-Western rhetoric. Just as Stalin had the power to ruin Shosty, he also had the power to bring him back to popularity. Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, also known as the “Leningrad Symphony” is a composition inspired by the World War Two siege of Shostakovich’s home, Leningrad, or St. Petersburg as we know it today. This was a piece “apparently about the war, depicting the life of Soviet citizens, the horrors of German invasion, and the triumphant victory to come.” (Symphony for the City of the Dead). Most importantly though, it “would remind the West that Russians were not Bolshevik barbarians” (citation). Stalin was using music to create a facade of civility even when his citizens were suffering tremendously.
Although on the extreme opposite end of the political spectrum to the communists, the Nazi Party also utilized music as a major tool for propaganda, but also as a method of removing Jews from German culture. Germany obviously has a rich history of musical success, with some of the world’s most prolific composers hailing from the nation. The Nazis feared the evolution of music, as it was trending towards leaving the grand Romantic style towards the more abstract. Hitler wanted “good German music,” even writing about his favorite composers Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner in his infamous Mein Kampf. Any music that did not fit the mold Hitler deemed suitable was considered “degenerate.” This degenerate music ranged from expressionist composers like Arnold Schoenberg, whose music is often atonal and avant garde, to classic favorites like Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler both of whom became outlawed due to their Jewish heritage. According to Nazi ideology, Jews posed a threat to prized German musical heritage. In 1933, the Reichsmusikkammer, or Reich Music Bureau, was created as a way to control what music reached the masses. It required Aryan status in order for one to find musical employment. This was the State systematically allotting artistic freedom on the basis of race. This regulation ultimately hurt Germany’s music as “commitment to Nazi ideology tended to be weighed more heavily than musical talent, allowing loyal mediocrity to be rewarded over skill” (citation here). In common totalitarian fashion, musicians were used as propaganda weapons for the Reich. New compositions “celebrated Hitler, Germany, and the glorious future of the Nazi Party” (citation). Germans recognized music as the most powerful way to seduce the masses. Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda once said “Music affects the heart and emotions more than the intellect. Where then could the heart of a nation beat stronger than in the huge masses, in which the heart of a nation has found its true home?”.
The use of musical propaganda is not limited to just these twentieth century examples which I delved into today. Even the Westboro Baptist Church and ISIS twist popular songs into ways of spreading their hateful messages. Other more recent totalitarian regimes like the Khmer Rouge exploited music to benefit their goals. Music is suggestive and emotion-laden, and it is easy to see how totalitarian states have and will continue to seize upon this idea. Thank you!