1st Edition
Spain in Our Ears International Musical Responses in Support of the Republic during the Spanish Civil War
This book intends to reflect the variety and diversity of the musical responses that arose in favour of the Republic and against fascism during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), encompassing a wide range of music (classical music, film music, popular music), geographies (the US, the URSS, Britain, Germany) and individuals (from well-known figures such as Paul Robeson and Dimitri Shostakovich, to unknown men and women). In doing so, the book expands upon existing bibliography on the Spanish Civil War, which has enjoyed significant advances in the last fifteen years but has paid limited attention to the international dimensions of such musical activity. In particular, the six chapters of this book together bring in pioneering perspectives to the study of music and the Spanish Civil War (e.g., race issues), while at the same time calling for an increased transnational approach to the study of music and war more generally.
Spain in our Ears will be of great value to students and researchers interested in Spanish politics and history, as well as the relationship between music and politics. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of War and Cultural Studies.
Introduction — ‘Spain in our Ears: International Musical Responses in Support of the Republic during the Spanish Civil War’
Igor Contreras Zubillaga and Eva Moreda Rodríguez
1. ‘Ol’ Man River’ at the Front: Paul Robeson, Music, and Blackness in Republican Spain
Carol A. Hess
2. The Spanish War as Dress Rehearsal for Paul Robeson’s Political Song
Grant Olwage
3. Some British Musical Responses to the Spanish Civil War
Kate Bowan
4. Victoire de la vie and L’Espagne vivra by Henri Cartier-Bresson: Two Different Musical Strategies at the Service of Republican Propaganda
Jérôme Rossi
5. Transnational Networks of Communist Musical Propaganda in the Spanish Civil War
Diego Alonso
6. Shostakovich's Music for Salute, Spain! Discoveries and Perspectives
Galina Kopytova
Biography
Igor Contreras Zubillaga is Juan de la Cierva Research Fellow at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. A specialist of the relationships between music and politics in Franco and post-Franco Spain, he is the author of “Tant que les révolutions ressemblent à cela”. L’avant-garde musicale sous Franco (2021).
Eva Moreda Rodríguez is Reader in Music at the University of Glasgow, UK. She specializes in the political history of music under Franco and the early history of recording technologies, with her latest monograph being Inventing the Recording. The Phonograph and National Culture in Spain (2021).
