Western Europe, 1945–70

Andrew Clements

pp. 257-288

in: Modern times, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1993

Abstract

The end of World War II in 1945 left not only the economy and fabric of Europe in ruins but its cultural life fragmented and inchoate. Of the composers who had represented the varied strands of modernism between the two world wars only one, Anton Webern, lived out the upheavals in his native country, Austria. Alban Berg had died in 1935, and in the years preceding the war the rest of the vanguard had joined the cultural diaspora in the New World. Schoenberg and Stravinsky had become part of the burgeoning community of expatriate artists on the west coast of the USA: Stravinsky lived in Hollywood, working as a freelance composer (and relishing some short-lived flirtations with the film industry) and Schoenberg held a professorship in composition at the University of California at Los Angeles. Bartok was living in New York (where he was to die in September 1945), Hindemith was teaching at Yale University, and Weill was busily adapting his language and dramatic skills to the musical theatre of Broadway. After Webern was shot accidentally in Mittersill, Austria, also in September 1945, none of the pioneers of modernism was left in Europe; the postwar reconstruction of musical culture fell to a new generation of composers and theorists.

Cited authors

Webern Anton

Berg Alban