In the excerpt from “Speech on Culture,” Hitler notes that it is “totally impossible to express a worldview or intellectual matters musically” (185). Further, he draws a division between intellectual understanding and musical genius, affirming that great music is the product of deep emotion and feeling, rather than mental labor. Goebbels also affirms that the musician’s adherence to easily digestible melodies rather than experimental sound demonstrates a true understanding of music’s essence rather than a preoccupation with “program” or “theory” (183). The focus on music as emotive rather than overtly political or intellectual struck me as odd, given musicologists project to canonize composers as the true embodiments of German culture. Why might National Socialism be interested in giving Germany an artistic tradition rather than an intellectual one? What do we make of Goebbels’ framing of the musician as an emotional idol, “graciously creating” for the masses (184)? I suppose I’m curious about what kinds of anxieties provoked the rejection of music as political, despite mobilizing certain kinds of music for an overtly political purpose.

On an unrelated note, I was curious about the distaste for minor keys during the search for a German musical canon (Potter mentions this on page 216). Given that much of Jewish music is composed in minor, I wonder if this rejection in favor of the major key was a result of anti-Semitism.