Music and society since 1815

by Henry Raynor

213 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

I initially came across this book while researching censorship of the arts in Germany and across Europe during the nineteenth century. I had hoped that it might yield some information on political restrictions placed on musical works during this time, though, much like the majority of other works on the subject, the conclusions it draws on the legal impact of state censorship are vague and lack specificity with regard to actual, material consequences. The book, while ominously warning against the oppression of artists during this era, cites almost no specific examples of repression beyond the well documented case of Schubert. Considered within the context of more recent historical scholarship on the topic of artistic censorship, specifically in Germany, the impact of state repression appears to have been overstated. The state simply did not have the resources to examine every piece of work promulgated in the public sphere, not to mention the fact that the censors themselves were often aesthetically and politically sympathetic to the works they were intended to prohibit, which leads me to conclude that the negative impact of censorship was more imagined than real. In general, this piece presents a fairly conventional account of the nineteenth century European socio-political landscape, characterizing it as a time of revolution and reaction.