Music divided : Bartâok's legacy in Cold War culture

"Music Divided" explores how political pressures affected musical life on both sides of the iron curtain during the early years of the cold war.

In this groundbreaking study, Danielle Fosler-Lussier illuminates the pervasive political anxieties of the era through particular attention to artistic, music-theoretical, and propagandistic responses to the music of Hungary's most renowned twentieth-century composer, Bela Bartok.

She shows how a tense period of political transition plagued Bartok's music and imperiled those who took a stand on its aesthetic value in the emerging socialist state.

Her fascinating investigation of Bartok's reception outside of Hungary demonstrates that Western composers, too, formulated their ideas about musical style under the influence of ever-escalating cold war tensions.