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Автор Алекс Росс
This is a chapter from Alex Ross’s groundbreaking history of 20th century classical music,
It is released as a special stand-alone ebook to celebrate a year-long festival at the Southbank Centre, inspired by the book. The festival consists of a series of themed concerts. Read this chapter if you’re attending concerts in the episode
Post-War World: Making a Break with the Past
Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker, is the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Belmont Prize in Germany and a MacArthur Fellowship. The Rest is Noise was his first book and garnered huge critical acclaim and a number of awards, including the Guardian First Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of
ZERO HOUR
The U. S. Army and German Music, 1945–1949
From
Contents
On April 30, 1945, the day of Hitler’s suicide, “zero hour” in modern German history, the 103rd Infantry and Tenth Armored divisions of the U. S. Army took possession of the Alpine resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, which the war had hardly touched. Two hundred Allied bombers had been poised to lay waste to the town and its environs, but the strike was called off at the behest of a surrendering German officer.
Early in the morning a security detachment turned in to the driveway of a Garmisch villa, intending to use it as a command post. When the senior officer, Lieutenant Milton Weiss, went inside the house, an old man came downstairs to meet him. “I am Richard Strauss,” he said, “the composer of
At 11:00 a. m. on the same day, a squad of jeeps came up the drive, these led by Major John Kramers, of the 103rd Infantry Division’s military-government branch. Kramers told the family that they had fifteen minutes to evacuate. Strauss walked out to the major’s jeep, holding documents that declared him to be an honorary citizen of Morgantown, West Virginia, together with part of the manuscript of
In the days that followed, Strauss posed for photographs, played the
