Bartók, Communist Propaganda, and the Ban on Musical Works under Rákosi (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The regime of Hungarian Communist leader Mátyás Rákosi (1948-1956) has drawn scrutiny and ultimately denunciation from nearly all sectors of academic research. In music, the ban on works viewed by the Communist Party as socially, politically, or morally transgressive has been taken as incontrovertible historical fact and an indictment of the party’s politico-aesthetic program. The most egregious example cited of this practice was the case of The Miraculous Mandarin by Hungary’s preeminent musical ambassador Béla Bartók. Historians point to Géza Losonczy’s 1950 article “The Opera House Belongs to the People!” published in the party’s paper Szabad Nép as launching a campaign against Bartók and signaling the freeze of Hungary’s music culture, one that would take a revolution to thaw.
But closer examination complicates this account as well as the accepted notions of unbridled political terror and authoritarian artistic suppression. In this paper, I examine the shortcomings of the totalitarian narrative built up around the era’s musical politics through analysis of Losonczy’s article and the artistic policies it advances. I also draw from and contribute to the substantial literature on Bartók’s pantomime to argue that there was some validity to the Communists’ objections to the work. This study thus advocates for a nuanced historical inquiry that problematizes some of the calcified Cold War conceptions that have erected (often artificial) binaries—such as art/propaganda, freeze/thaw, freedom/oppression, sanctioned/banned—that serve to delimit and police the discursive field of this charged period in Hungary’s history.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Zachary Milliman is a PhD candidate in musicology at McGill University with a dissertation focusing on Hungarian opera and socialism. Zachary received his BM from Brigham Young University, his MM from the University of Utah and was Fulbright researcher at the Hungarian Musicological Institute. His research has been featured at annual meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and many others, and has published with the journal of the International Allegiance for Women in Music. He currently resides with his husband, artist Matt Klinn in Anchorage, Alaska and lectures at the University of Alaska.