Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | N | Notes

Proof Through the Night: Music and the Great War.

Article Excerpt
By Glenn Watkins. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. [xvi, 598 p. ISBN 0-520-23158-9. $49.95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index, compact disc.

Composers, soldiers, politicians, citizens, and musicians left ample proof through the night of their patriotism and fervor in the First World War. Glenn Watkins has provided the most detailed study of the subject from a musical perspective yet to appear, and he has not confined himself to purely musical issues, for he confidently deals with racial, social, political, and other matters, which will surely enrich scholarship of the First World War when that scholarship's vision strays away from the recounting of battles and confronts the impact of war on society and culture.

That culture is not an elitist concept (or is not a rarefied thing at one or two removes from the general populace) is most powerfully conveyed by one of the many revealing illustrations that appear in Watkins's book. Few parts of the book are more shocking than the chapters devoted to America. The combination of self-righteousness, xenophobia, racism, and pure distilled hatred make some European responses to war seem almost meek in comparison. Bearing in mind that America only joined the Allies in April 1917, and its principal experience of the war had been the admittedly provocative activities of German submarines, there had to be a long and carefully sustained promotion of war as the only viable way forward. One example of this was H. R. Hoops's propaganda poster of 1916 entitled "Destroy This Mad Brute." A hideous gorilla wearing a spiked boche helmet with its back to the ruined cathedral at Rheims (one assumes) and other scenes of devastation looks straight at the observer, mouth wide open, slaver oozing out. In its left arm it grasps a bare-breasted maiden who covers her face in distress (the film King Kong owed a great deal to this poster) and in its right hand it bears a club. The words at the bottom of the poster are straightforward: "America Enlist," but the writing on the club is arresting: it bears the one word "Kultur" (fig. 29, p. 248). This was not simply a battle for territory but a confrontation of Germany's cultural dominance and the aspirations of other countries. European culture needed to renew itself and there were many artists, at least in the early part of the war, keen to justify war, including the Italian Futurists, who called war "the world's only hygiene," and Marcel Duchamp who declared, "We need the great enema in Europe. And, if it's gonna be war, then if we need war, we need war" (p. 14).

Proof Through the Night does not pretend to be, neither should it be, a systematic study of the effect of war...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!