Proof through the Night: Music and the Great War

Carols floating across no-man’s-land on Christmas Eve 1914; solemn choruses, marches and popular songs responding to the call of propaganda ministries and war charities; opera, keyboard suites, ragtime and concertos for the left hand - all provided testimony to the unique power of music to chronicle World War I and to memorialize its battles and fallen heroes in the first post-Armistice decade. In this work, Glenn Watkins investigates these variable roles of music primarily from the angle of the Entente nations’ perceived threat of German hegemony in matters of intellectual and artistic accomplishment - a principal concern not only for Europe but also for the United States, whose late entrance into the fray prompted a renewed interest in defining America as an emergent world power as well as a fledgling musical culture. He shows that each nation gave proof through the night - ringing evidence during the dark hours of the war - not only of its nationalist resolve in the singing of national airs but also of its power to recall home and hearth on distant battlefields and to reflect upon loss long after the guns had been silenced.