Playful, but Bestially Earnest : Sports, Physical Education and Czech Music of the Interwar Era
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | In 1938, T. W. Adorno likened the modern popular music (as well as the industrialized classical music) to sports, considering both of these phenomena as symptomatic manifestations of dehumanizing modernity, characterized by “strict distinguishing from the play” and “bestial earnestness”. The interwar music – although it sometimes did not manage to avoid the bestial earnestness, in spite of its explicit playfulness – was not afraid of sport and jazz at all; on the contrary, it accepted both phenomena as important inspirational impulses or even related types of cultural production. My paper deals with “sport compositions” (Bateman), ergo musical reflections and representations of sports and physical education, in Czech interwar music , encompassing both high and low (functional, especially with Sokol movement linked) music . Also, I compare “sport music ” with other types of “civilistic” musical production, i. e. with other musical representations of various phenomena of the technical modernity. |
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