Post-Truth Media – Post-Truth Music

Historically, there are cultural precedents that are worth considering. Nobody disputes this and though it’s perhaps too easy to carry on raising the spectre of Hitler, what I find interesting at this Trump/Brexit… Continue reading

From Utopia

As I move my office from my home in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire to the belle-etage of the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, I find myself bereft of files, books… Continue reading

Brexit, Trump and Godwin’s Law

A blog such as “Forbidden Music”, dealing with history, music and freedom of expression cannot allow the election of Donald Trump in the wake of Brexit to pass without reflection. There are already… Continue reading

Heinsheimer’s Hidden History

Since posting this article on Heinsheimer, Univeral Edition has now published his history of their publishing house since its founding in 1901 to the death of Emil Hertzka and Austria’s annexation in 1938.… Continue reading

Female composers: “Degenerate”, “Deviant” or Deliberately Downgraded?

This week saw the opening of an exhibition on women composers in Vienna. It follows a run of performances Of Baruchs Schweigen – or Baruch’s Silence, by the composer Ella Milch-Scheriff with a… Continue reading

Popular Music in Exile

  I wrote a catalogue chapter on the persecution of popular music during the Nazi years for the exhibition Stars of David, which ran at Vienna’s Jewish Museum in 2015. Obviously, in a… Continue reading

Rhymes and Repetitions of History’s Rondos

“History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme” – a quote apocryphally attributed to Mark Twain. So what does this historic meter reflecting events start to show us? It’s thrown up many… Continue reading

Fremde Erde– Prescience as Opera

On April 22nd, I gave a lecture at Royal Holloway London University, on Karol Rathaus’s opera Fremde Erde – Alien Soil. I’ve now adapted it for inclusion on this blog. Much of the… Continue reading

‘Alien Soil’ and the Slow Death of Karol Rathaus

Born in Ternopol in 1895 as an Austrian who spoke Polish at home, educated in German, he spoke and wrote the language better than native speakers, as did his fellow Ukrainian/Austrian Poles and… Continue reading

exil.arte Center

There are many reasons why it has taken me some time to write on this blog. There is a new posting on the way, but in the meantime, an important event needs announcing… Continue reading