The Composer Mieczysław Weinberg and Social Realism during the Brezhnev Era

Venue: Hamburg (Germany)
Period: May 11-13, 2012

Mieczysław Weinberg fled to the Soviet Union in 1939, aged 19, as a Polish Jew. There, he was supported by colleagues such as Dmitri Shostakovich, though under Stalin, he suffered anti-Semitic repression and was placed under detention. It wasn’t until Leonid Brezhnev’s term of government that he could once again become more freely active as a composer and find his way between social realism and his own compositional creativity. The symposium at the Hamburg Institute of Musicology will focus on precisely these compositional paths in their interrelationship to the prevailing arts doctrine of the Brezhnev era. The following questions will be discussed within an interdisciplinary context:
- What influence did social realism have on music during these years, what postulates did it put forward and which ideological fluctuations was it subject to?
- How can Weinberg’s oeuvre from this era be contextualized and interpreted?

Papers will be presented by experts from musicology, art history, literary studies and history:

Entrance to the Symposium is free, registration is not necessary. Concert tickets: 5/10 €.

Musikwissenschaftliches Institut
University of Hamburg
address: Neue Rabenstr. 13
D-20354 Hamburg
tel.: 0049.040.42838.4863
fax: 0049.040.42838.5669
e-mail: musik@uni-hamburg.de