The twisted muse: musicians and their music in the Third Reich

Maneuvering between these two polar opposites, this book attempts to answer some of those questions by examining serious, or “classical,” music primarily through the men and women who created it during this period. If we return for a moment to the images from Schindler’s List, it becomes obvious that aesthetics has no monopoly on morality, but yet the two are not mutually exclusive. Neither a negative nor a positive correlation exists between the two principles: egregiously fascist musicians may have made beautiful music, but they may also have played badly. Many shades of distinction existed in between.