Degenerate music

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Degenerate music (German: Entartete Musik) was a label applied in the 1930s by the Nazi government in Germany to certain forms of music that it considered to be harmful or decadent. The Nazi government's concern for degenerate music was a part of its larger and more well-known campaign against degenerate art ('Entartete Kunst'). In both cases, the government attempted to isolate, discredit, discourage, or ban the works.

The Nazi government considered several types of music to be degenerate, for several different reasons. Any music that was opposed to the Nazi regime by virtue of its content or the political views of its composers and performers was considered degenerate. This included works by Jewish and Jewish-origin composers (such as Felix Mendelssohn, Arnold Schoenberg, Franz Schreker, Kurt Weill, Gustav Mahler, and Berthold Goldschmidt); works that featured Jewish or African characters (such as those by Ernst Krenek); or works by composers of Marxist persuasion, eg Hanns Eisler. It also applied to artists that had shown sympathy for opponents of the Nazi Regime (such as Anton Webern, who had been a moderate supporter of Adolf Hitler but had maintained a friendship with the Jewish composer Schoenberg during his exile from Germany). Modernist music, such as works by Paul Hindemith, Alban Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern, was also considered degenerate. Modernist music was judged to be inferior to previous classical music, and it therefore offended the Nazis' sense of progress and civilization in general — and in particular their loyalty to Germany's many great classical composers. In addition, one might speculate that Modernist music's abandonment of structure and form presented a threat, albeit immaterial, to the culture of order and control that fascist regimes such as the Nazi party both developed and relied on. Finally, Jazz music was considered degenerate because of its roots in and association with the African-American culture.

From the Nazi seizure of power onward, these composers found it increasingly difficult, and often impossible, to get work or have their music performed. Many went into exile (eg Schoenberg, Weill, Hindemith, Goldschmidt); or retreated into 'internal exile' (eg Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Boris Blacher); or ended up in the concentration camps (eg Viktor Ullmann, or Erwin Schulhoff).

Some works which were later enthusiastically adopted by the Nazi regime, such as the hugely popular Carmina Burana by Carl Orff (1937), were initially described as degenerate by local music critics.

Like degenerate art, examples of degenerate music were displayed in public exhibits in Germany beginning in 1938.

From the mid-1990s the Decca Record Company released a series of recordings under the title 'Entartete Musik: music suppressed by the third reich' covering lesser-known works by several of the above-named composers.