Socialist Laments

Antifascist and socialist monuments pervaded the landscape of the former German Democratic Republic (1949-89), presenting a distorted vision of the national past. Official commemorative culture in East Germany celebrated a selective set of political heroes, seeming to leave no public space for mourning those who were excluded from the country's founding myths. Socialist Laments: Musical Mourning in the German Democratic Republic examines the role of music in this nation's memorial culture, demonstrating how music facilitated the expressions of loss within spaces of commemoration for East German citizens. Music performed during state-sponsored memorial rituals no doubt bolstered official narratives of the German past. But it simultaneously provided an outlet for mourning in highly politicized environment. The book presents both a history and theory of musical mourning in East Germany. Using a site-specific approach to analysis, author Martha Sprigge demonstrates how the multiple semantic networks opened up by these musical works facilitated many memorial associations without necessitating the overt articulation of a mourned subject. Throughout the country's forty-year existence, music offered East German citizens an audible outlet for working through traumatic losses-both collective and individual-that was distinct from other artistic expressive possibilities. The book reveals the ways that East Germany's extensive commemorative repertoire helped composers, performers, and audiences navigate between the inevitable need to mourn on the one hand, and the seeming impossibilities of mourning on the other.

The Ruin -- The Socialists' Cemetery -- The Church -- Concentration Camp Memorials -- The Artists' Cemetery.

As one of the most significant and widely performed composers of the nineteenth century, Brahms continues to command our attention. Rethinking Brahms counterbalances prevailing scholarly assumptions that position him as a conservative composer (whether musically or politically) with a wide-ranging exploration and re-evaluation of his significance today. Drawing on German- and English-language scholarship, it deploys original approaches to his music and pursues innovative methodologies to interrogate the historical, cultural, and artistic contexts of his creativity. Empowered by recent theoretical work on form and tonality, it offers fresh analytical insights into his music, including a number of corpus studies that interrogate the relationships between Brahms and other composers, past and present. The book brings into sharp focus the productive tension that exists between the perceived fixedness of musical texts and the ephemerality of performance by considering how historical and modern performers shape established understandings of Brahms and his music. Rethinking Brahms invites the reader to hear familiar pieces anew as they are refracted through historical, artistic, and philosophical prisms. Bringing us up to the present day, it also gives sustained attention to the resounding impact of Brahms's compositions on new music by exploring works by recent composers who have engaged deeply with his oeuvre. Combining awareness of overarching contexts with perceptive insights into Brahms's music, this book enlivens our understanding of Brahms, providing a dynamic, multifaceted, complex, and invigoratingly fresh portrait of the composer.

In his 1970 introduction to Lament for a Nation, Professor George Grant modestly expressed doubt whether his study had an enduring importance beyond the particular circumstances occasioning its appearance.

What is happening to our country? This question is heard more and more frequently these days as Americans worry about the unrelenting attacks by so-called progressives on the foundation, core values, and history of our nation. Nobody is more concerned than those Americans who volunteered to serve in uniform and willingly put their lives on the line to protect the United States and all it represents. Based on interviews by the authors, this book explains why many of our American heroes believed in and loved our nation enough to go into harm’s way to defend it, and why so many of them now question if America is still the country they fought for. More importantly, it asks—is America still worth fighting for?

A Ukrainian writer barely on the wagon trades his health and sanity for the sake of his work when he makes a Faustian pact A man tries to hold his family together as they watch their precious country being overtaken in a brutal military invasion An upstart reporter from India gets too close to his beat and is quickly swallowed by his notoriety Within the short stories of We Are the New Auroras: The Story Collection, you'll encounter characters who are battered, bruised, and haunted by unfulfilled promises of their past. Solitary vagabonds, spies, rapscallion mercenaries, and ordinary men and women who find themselves and their families torn apart by war and Communism-all yearn for a new beginning. From the wintry climates of the Czech Republic, Poland, and Canada, to the sultriness of Gibraltar, Liberia, and South Africa, these stories take you around the globe as they highlight the ravages of international conflict, civil war, poverty, and conflict diamonds. Witty, touching, and, at times, horrifying, the stories in We Are the New Auroras speak of the dichotomy of the human condition, where pain lives next door to humor, and loneliness walks hand-in-hand with hope.