fascist music Pasolini described Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana as “typical fascist music” when...
Pasolini described Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana as “typical fascist music” when confronted about its use in Salò. I’ve thought about that quote for seriously decades, and keep coming back to this question of, what is fascist music? First, does it exist? And if so, does it result from [composer] intention? Or regime co-option? Orff? Strauss? Beethoven? Prokofiev? Shostakovich? Bruce Springsteen?
Górecki was never super forthcoming about the “meanings” behind his music, even if the music seemed incredibly programmatic (he resisted even saying that the Third Symphony was *about* the Holocaust, even though the soprano sings text found on the wall of a concentration camp). But I tend to think that so much (I hesitate to say “all”) of his most powerful music seems to be *about* fascism. Ever since I first started working on the Concerto, I’ve felt that the two movements represent two visions, two perspectives, of fascism. The first being a picture of the unrelenting agony of the oppressed. And the second being the demented, utopian, circus-like village-square ideal created by a regime. To quote Russia’s foreign minister yesterday: “better than super!” I’ve made all sorts of colorful analogies to illustrate this (last week in rehearsal I called it, “outside trump rally/inside trump rally,” other times I’ve called it smiling till your teeth break) but I keep coming back to this idea of a fascistic dualism. And the sound of protest. And the sound of fear.
Don’t know where I’m going with this. It’s hard to practice these days. Come to our concert.
