Transnational Networks of Communist Musical Propaganda in the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

A unique figure within Spanish music circles of the 1930s, the Berlin-born Jewish musicologist Otto Mayer-Serra was a central figure in a transnational network of communist musicians actively engaging with musical propaganda in support of the Republic during the Spanish civil war. Hanns Eisler, Ernst H. Meyer, Ernst Busch, Grigori Schneerson, Ferencz Szabó and several members of the Union of Soviet Composers belonged to this network. The article’s first section examines Mayer-Serra’s attempts to introduce in Spain a number of propagandistic musical practices that had been central in the communist splinter group of the German Workers’ Music Movement before 1933. In the second section I discuss Mayer-Serra’s intensive promotion in wartime Spain of the genre of overtly propagandistic ‘battle songs’ composed by members of this network. These practices and repertoires are also studied as part of the powerful movement of Catalan nationalism in 1930s Spain.