«This volume epitomizes Jost Hermand's inimitable talent of synthesizing wide-ranging disciplines in an accessible and compelling style, bringing to life the experiences of musicians and their public in the context of their own times. These essays also give us a glimpse into how his own life experiences created the hunger for culture that defined his long and illustrious career.» (Pamela M. Potter, Professor of German and Musicology, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Contents: Early Signs of Pietism in Protestant Church Music: Dieterich Buxtehude's Evening Concerts in Lübeck (1667-1705) - More than Protestant Orthodoxy? Johann Sebastian Bach's Church Cantatas (1713-1728) - Allons enfants de la musique: The Impact of the French Revolution on German Music (1789-1809) - «Moving Ahead» Even in «Desolate Times»: Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 111 (1822) - Hope and Disillusionment: Franz Schubert's 600 Art Songs (1813-1828) - A Checkered Past: The History of the German National Anthem (1842 to the Present) - Richard Wagner's Last Cause: The Vegetarian Gospel of His Parsifal (1882) - From the Shtetl to Wunsiedel: Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1 (1889) - The Two Revolutions against Older Forms of Bourgeois Music: Expressionism and Materialist Aesthetics (1910-1933) - Deepest Misery - Highest Art: Alban Berg's Wozzeck (1925) - Conformism or Refusal? Paul Hindemith's Mathis the Painter (1935) - More than an Aberration? Hanns Eisler's Fourteen Ways to Describe the Rain (1941) - The Hidden Meaning: Richard Strauss's Metamorphoses for 23 Solo String Players (1945) - The Supposedly Apolitical «Modernism» in the Serious Music of the Early Federal Republic of Germany: Karlheinz Stockhausen's Groups for 3 Orchestras (1958) - Avant- Garde, Modern, Postmodern: The Music that (Almost) Nobody Wants to Hear Any Longer.