8.17. Musical Resonances of Conflicting Memories

The construction of a Concert Hall intended mainly for presentations of symphonic music, was part of a series of projects promoted by the Wagnerian Association of Buenos Aires, which included, among others, the National Conservatory of Music, a National Symphony Orchestra and a Musical Library. A synergy of forces deployed since the 1920s through the initiative of Wagnerian amateurs made possible the design and construction of a symphony hall with capacity for 1,000 people. However, the crisis of the 1930s greatly influenced its short life, which lasted from 1929 to 1931, when the concert hall had to close due to lack of budget. Buenos Aires had to wait almost a century to once again have a hall of the magnitude that Wagnerians longed for: "La Ballena Azul", a symphonic music hall with capacity for 1,750 spectators, officially inaugurated in 2015, within the “Centro Cultural Bicentenario”, later renamed according to later political forces. This presentation addresses the question of how the oblivion and political uses of cultural and musical heritage relate to the lack of continuity in the implementation of cultural policies aimed at supporting musical activity. Regarding the processes of musical construction of social memory across generations, more research is also needed to analyse how Wagnerism and innovative methods of musical teaching went from being a “strong memory” to a “weak memory” throughout the 20th century. Furthermore, it was well after the end of World War II that Wagner's art began to be seen as part of the legacy of Nazism and not as a “victim” of it (Ross, 2021, pp. 633-666). Therefore, it will be interesting to discover if a “weak memory” of this Wagnerism characteristic of the first half of the 20th century would have had any relationship with these forgotten heritages.

Across German speaking Europe during the Third Reich, Nazi cultural policy banned the performance of music by Gustav Mahler, along with that of other Jewish born composers. Fast forward eight decades and today, in Austria in particular, Mahler’s art stands as a source of patriotic pride and a key site of Austrian cultural patrimony. This paper will examine this transformation of attitudes — from suppression to celebration — tracing the role of figures such as Leonard Bernstein in facilitating the return of Mahler’s music to postwar Austrian cultural memory across the 1970s and 1980s. Underpinned by oral history research, I will also narrate the postwar rediscovery of the mountain-ringed composing cabins in which Mahler wrote almost all of his music. Previously forgotten structures in a state of ruination, they are today reconstructed sites of pilgrimage for Mahler lovers from around the world. I will argue that Austria’s postwar embrace of Mahler’s music served the cultural needs of Austrian society by, on one level, allowing for a kind of cultural Vergangenheitsbewältigung — a working through of the past — across decades when such a process of reckoning was largely delayed or blocked in political spheres, thanks in part to the national myth of Austria as the “first victim” of the Nazi regime. At the same time, the return of Mahler’s music also allowed other listeners to indulge in imagined continuities with prewar Austrian life, a fantasy of connection to a gemütlich world unaffected by the profound ruptures of an unassimilated, unexpiated wartime past. In exploring this terrain, this paper makes the case for the importance of classical music as an under appreciated lieu de mémoire, one that proved especially relevant in central European countries where this art form plays an outsized role in the formation and maintenance of national identity.

Public commemorative projects have long been inflected by the conviction that memory prevents recurrence, and that to “never forget” is to embrace specific historical lessons. These lessons and their imperatives align easily with post war democratic principles of tolerance, equal protection, and freedoms of speech, religion, and press. Decades later, the “victory” of the U.S. and its allies over the Soviet Union was grandly declared the “end of history” (Fukuyama 1989), seen as the culmination and termination of a long dialectical process. The post Cold War period nonetheless generated a “time consciousness” aimed at “taking responsibility for the past” (Huyssen 2011), and saw a surfeit of commemorative projects, further inflated in the U.S. by the memorial culture of 9/11. In the face of commemorative excess, it is forgetting, rather than remembering, that might seem aspirational, suggesting a utopian future where the historical lessons now so anxiously guarded no longer require the same vigilance. Yet in 2025, history is being rapidly repurposed in the United States: unwritten and rewritten, stripped from public sites, and suppressed when it runs afoul of the current regime’s ahistorical revisionism. With these new “ends of history”—where history is both terminated and repurposed toward authoritarian goals—the assumption that public memorials will speak to future audiences can no longer be taken for granted. In this talk, I suggest that musical memorials can make a significant intervention into these conditions. The idea of the musical "work" is usually a monumental one, implying fixity and perpetuity (Goehr 1992). Drawing from recent memorial music that responds to anti Black violence, I argue that the liveness and ephemerality of performance turns the monumental memorial work into a flexible, repeatable memorial act. As an act, music can move quickly among audiences and can, with new urgency, eschew the potential burdens of memorial permanence.

In 2025, Poland marks the 45th anniversary of the signing of the August Agreements, an event that initiated the rise of Solidarity and ultimately contributed to the country’s democratic transformation. In 2023, this period was revisited in the musical 1989, staged at the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Kraków and the Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre. Inspired by Broadway’s Hamilton, the musical attempts to create a new, positive myth of Solidarity. The creators depart from the traditional, textbook narrative of Poland’s political changes, offering a fresh perspective on the past that also addresses contemporary and future challenges. They intertwine grand ideals with the everyday experiences of people who lived through that era, particularly women, whose contributions are often overlooked in dominant narratives. In doing so, they build a bridge between the Solidarity generation and millennials. This approach aligns with the concept of histotainment, which integrates historical content with market dynamics and entertainment typical of postmodern, media saturated societies. In a memory culture dominated by media and commercialization, the past is increasingly experienced through sensory and emotional engagement. This affects historical consciousness and the interpretation of history, updating and reinterpreting it for contemporary audiences. Analyzing this musical’s narrative allows for several research questions: Which historical figures and themes are emphasized by the creators? How is historical material selected - what is highlighted, and what is marginalized or omitted? How do the creators engage with national myths and previous representations of history in popular culture do they reinforce, reinterpret, or create new ones? In what ways do their narrative strategies contribute to the 'modernization of the past' and the transformation of how popular culture addresses history and memory today? Through this perspective, the musical 1989 exemplifies how historical events can be reimagined to resonate with contemporary audiences, combining education, emotion, and entertainment.