Chapter 10: Zero Hour
Part of the Rest Is Noise Audio Guide
A card signed by Richard Strauss for Private Russell Campitelli of the U.S. Army on June 23, 1945.
Note: The first page number is for the hardback edition, the second number is for the paperback.
The Information Control Division of the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS), oversaw German music in the American zone during the Allied occupation of Germany from 1945 to 1949. In music, as in other cultural areas, ICD instituted procedures of denazification and encouraged progressive, cosmopolitan personalities and trends. The division also promoted American composers and musicians; Leonard Bernstein made a notable visit in 1948, and wrote back home that the Germans' "'master-race' claim" in music had been "exploded" by his success. Music Control Instruction No. 1, from the files of OMGUS at the National Archives and Records Administration (see p. 348 / p. 378 of The Rest Is Noise), states that "German musical life should be influenced by positive rather than by negative means." (Click to enlarge.)
Col. Ralph Burns, of the Cultural Affairs Branch of OMGUS, notes differing reactions to the Yale Glee Club and the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music (pp. 351-52 / p. 382):
Benjamin Britten's setting of John Donne's sonnet "Death Be Not Proud," written in August 1945 in the wake of a visit to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (pp. 344-45 / p. 375):
Peter Pears and Britten, Decca 417428.
Via Napster, "Im Abendrot," from Strauss's Four Last Songs (p. 354 / p. 385), with Jessye Norman singing and Kurt Masur conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra: 
