The conjunction of music & politics is the focus of an increasing number of publications. Where to begin?

We asked the members of our study group to suggest two or more texts that have represented an important milestone in their academic research.

Each member provided a brief explanation aimed at anyone wishing to explore this subject in more detail.

Isabella Abbonizio

• Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1979.

“This foundational work remains crucial for understanding the cultural politics of representation, power, and knowledge production, offering essential theoretical tools for critically examining music’s role within colonial, imperial, and political discourses.”

• Pufleau, Luis Velasco, “Reflections on Music and Propaganda.” Contemporary Aesthetics, vol. 12, art. 7, 2014. https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/liberalarts_contempaesthetics/vol12/iss1/7

“This article provides a clear and nuanced conceptual framework for analyzing music as a medium of propaganda, addressing both historical and contemporary contexts while foregrounding the ethical and political responsibilities of musical practices.”

• Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. Translated from the French by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965. (Originally published in French as: Propagandes. Paris: Armand Collin, 1962.)

“Ellul’s classic work provides a comprehensive theory of propaganda, elucidating its mechanisms and social functions, and remains highly relevant for analyzing music as a medium of political persuasion and ideological formation.”

Marie-Hélène Benoit-Otis

• Goehr, Lydia. “Political Music and the Politics of Music.” In Mark Carroll (ed.), Music and Ideology, Farnham: Ashgate, 2012, pp. 557-570. (Originally published in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 52, no. 1, 1994, pp. 99-112.)

“A very useful philosophical reflection on what makes music political.”

• Buch, Esteban. “Mahler’s Fifth, Daniel Barenboim, and the Argentine Dictatorship: On Music, Meaning, and Politics.” The Musical Quarterly, vol. 100, no. 2, 2017, pp. 122-154.

“Proposes a novel approach to the study of music and politics: a micro-history of listening.”

• Thomas, Jonathan. “Le chant sur timbre, une ressource pour la mobilisation politique.” In Marlène Belly, Judith Le Blanc, Bertrand Porot, Alice Tacaille, and Jean Vignes (eds.), Chanter sur l’air de… Usages et pratiques des timbres du Moyen Âge à nos jours, Publications numériques du CÉRÉdI, “Actes de colloques et journées d’études,” no. 32, 2025. https://publis-shs.univ-rouen.fr/ceredi/1917.html

“A very enlightening theoretical reflection on the political dimensions of contrafact songs, based on examples from the late 18th century to the present.”

Anna Ficarella

• Mosse, George. The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich. New York: H. Fertig, 1975.

“This seminal study examines the development of political symbolism and mass rituals in Germany from the Napoleonic era to the Third Reich, showing how aesthetics, myth, and collective emotions contributed to the rise of modern nationalism. Although not focused specifically on music, the book provides an essential framework for understanding how cultural forms—including musical practices—function within mass politics and ideological mobilization. It is included for its theoretical relevance to the nexus between culture, symbolism, and political power.”

• Hilmes, Oliver. Im Fadenkreuz: Politische Gustav-Mahler-Rezeption 1919–1945. Eine Studie über den Zusammenhang von Antisemitismus und Kritik an der Moderne. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2003.

“This study analyzes the political reception of Gustav Mahler between 1919 and 1945, exploring how antisemitism and anti-modernist discourse shaped the criticism and ideological appropriation of his music. Hilmes demonstrates how aesthetic judgments became vehicles for broader political and racial agendas in the interwar and Nazi periods. The book is particularly relevant for investigating the entanglement of musical modernism, cultural identity, and political ideology.”

Francesco Finocchiaro

• Bertola, Mauro Fosco. Die List der Vergangenheit: Musikwissenschaft, Rundfunk und Deutschlandbezug in Italien, 1890–1945. Wien: Böhlau, 2014.

“Bertola examines the impact of nationalist doctrine on Italian music historiography at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His book analyses the implications of the concept of ‘nation’ in the construction of an Italian musical tradition, as opposed to the Austro-German tradition.”

• Kedourie, Elie. Nationalism. New York: Praeger, 1960.

“This is a study of nationalist political doctrine, starting from its philosophical assumptions. Kedourie analyses the implications of the nineteenth-century concept of ‘national state’ in terms of cultural policy.”

Daniel Halaban

• Adorno, Theodor W. “On the Social Situation of Music.” Translated by Wesley Blomster. Telos, no. 35, Spring 1978, pp. 128-164. (Originally published as “Über die gesellschaftliche Lage der Musik.” Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, 1997, pp. 729–777.)

“Although dated as Adorno might be, I believe this text to be very important for the discussion because a) it establish clear criteria for aesthetic judgment of music, built on political grounds – that, of course, have the traces of 19th century musical metaphysics –; b) it plants some seeds to listen beyond the division of high and low; c) shows explicitly how Adorno’s concern with music goes way beyond the contraposition between Schoenberg and Stravinsky, by giving way to other kinds of expressions, mainly musical surrealism, that must be heard in a completely different way as the organicist tradition, that still weighs upon us, has taught us.”

• Agamben, Giorgio. “The Supreme Music: Music and Politics.” In What Is Philosophy? Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020, pp. 97-108.

“Although this article ends up claiming that the ‘supreme music’ is philosophy, I believe it to be very interesting in the way it mediates one of music philosophy’s main topics (i.e. its relationship with language) with a political perspective, allowing to re-read some other important texts such as Adorno’s ‘Fragment on music and language’ or Nancy’s ‘Listening’… and even Carolyn Abbate’s discussion of Drastic and Gnostic music.”

Konstantin Hirschmann

• Feldman, Martha. Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007.

“A methodologically and theoretically compelling study of seventeenth-century court opera, although the application of its theoretical framework to specific case studies is somewhat less convincing.”

• Kolesch, Doris. Theater der Emotionen: Ästhetik und Politik zur Zeit Ludwigs XIV. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2006.

“In the first – and most successful – part of the book, Kolesch reveals successfully the cultural production of emotions as an instrument of power.”

Magdalini Kalopona

• Custodis, Michael. Music and Resistance: Cultural Defense During the German Occupation of Norway 1940–45. Münster: Waxmann Verlag, 2021.

“According to the description given in the publication’s back cover (Custodis 2021), “Based on extensive research in public archives and private collections, this book examines music in concentration camps in Norway and the fate of Jewish musicians, and portrays choirs, military ensembles, orchestral, and church music in Norway.” This publication explores “the role of music during the German occupation of Norway (1940–45) and demonstrates that it constitutes an exceptional case of cultural opposition under dictatorship.” Overall, the methodology and conclusions presented in this study make it a model that can be applied to similar cases.”

• Romero, Brenda M., Susan M. Asai, David A. McDonald, Andrew G. Snyder, and Katelyn E. Best, eds. At the Crossroads of Music and Social Justice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2023.

“This edited volume is particularly relevant for its focus on music as a site of social justice, foregrounding the political dimensions of musical practice across different contexts. Its combination of theoretical frameworks and case studies makes it a useful reference for examining the role of music in processes of resistance, representation, and cultural negotiation.”

Carolin Krahn

• Potter, Pamela M. Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler’s Reich. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998.

“Somewhat of a ‘classic’ at this point, which still bears huge relevance even almost 30 years after being published, since it highlights both agency and responsibility of scholars when investigating music, thereby reminding us in a thoughtful, yet drastic way that the relationship of ‘music and politics’ cannot be investigated critically without shedding critical light on the very discipline of musicology, its methodologies and their historical groundings.”

• Reichard, Tobias. Musik für die „Achse“: Deutsch-italienische Musikbeziehungen unter Hitler und Mussolini bis 1943. Münster and New York: Waxmann, 2020.

“Very thoughtful, thoroughly researched book with a transnational scope focusing on the entanglement of both National Socialism and Fascism with musical life during the 1930s and 1940s, depicting the sometimes banal, sometimes subtle process of ‘politicizing music’; the book investigates how totalitarian regimes managed to instrumentalize musical culture first in Germany and later in Italy on a broad scale, thereby not least overshadowing Jewish musical life in Europe and beyond in the most drastic ways.”

Stefano Lombardi Vallauri

• Marcuse, Herbert. Art and Liberation. Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, vol. 4, edited by Douglas Kellner. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.

“In my view, Marcuse’s writings (not only those included in this anthology) are crucial for understanding the thinking of the 1950s-1970s on the relationship between art and politics; moreover, Marcuse often speaks specifically about music, yet this aspect of his thought has been largely overlooked by musicology.”

• Tajfel, Henri. Human Groups and Social Categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

“In my view, reflection on the relationship between music and politics would benefit greatly from a deeper awareness of the reasons why human groups come into conflict, which are essentially identity-based. This volume is a classic of social psychology and laid the foundations for research on the formation of group identities.”

Alan Maddox

• Rasch, Rudolf, ed. Music and Power in the Baroque Era. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018.

“This volume brings together some important recent thinking on power in relation to European art music the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Many chapters focus on opera and its patronage as a manifestation of power both in the self-fashioning of authoritarian rulers and in the relationships the between employed musicians and their patrons. Reinhard Strohm’s lead chapter, in particular, problematizes some approaches which, he argues, over-simplify what were complex and multilayered agendas.”

• Cowart, Georgia. The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV and the Politics of Spectacle. Chicago, Ill.; Bristol: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

“One of the courts at which the arts were most ostentatiously employed in the projection of royal power was Versailles under Louis XIV. Cowart argues, however, that the arts of spectacle also opened the opportunity for subversive satire to undermine the rhetoric of sovereign authority.”

Katarzyna Naliwajek

• Naliwajek, Katarzyna. Sounds of Apocalypse: Music in Poland under German Occupation. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2022.

“This book explains the role of musical propaganda and describes different abuses of music during WWII on the territories of Nazi-occupied Poland. It addresses the topic of music and politics from historical, philosophical, musicological and other points of view. The quality of the research is recognized by reviewers and prestigious prize it received in 2025.”

• Naliwajek, Katarzyna. “Weaponized Songs: Pro-Putin and Other Totalitarian Musical Propaganda.” Musicology Today, vol. 21, no. 1, 2024, pp. 12–19. https://doi.org/10.2478/muso-2024-0003

“This article is an essay in comparative studies of musical propaganda, explaining the uses of music by totalitarian regimes of the 20th century and asking questions about the modes of propaganda distribution in the present world.”

Nikos Ordoulidis

• Bohlman, Philip. The Music of European Nationalism: Cultural Identity and Modern History. Santa Barbara and Denver, Colorado: ABC-CLIO, 2004.
• Mıhçı, Cüneyt Ersin. Forging National Music on Both Sides of the Aegean in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Heidelberg: Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, 2025.

“The first book is one of the major works of the musicologist Bohlman, who raised early on the issue of musical nationalism in Europe and shed light on many of its aspects, contributing to the understanding of an exceptionally complex phenomenon.
The second book is among the more recent works that place at the centre the political and ideological relations between Greece and Turkey, as articulated through the musical nationalism observed in both contexts.”

Qinyu Yu

• Mittler, Barbara. Dangerous Tunes: The Politics of Chinese Music in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China since 1949. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1997.

“This book offers a pioneering comparative study of Chinese New Music across Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China after 1949. It is particularly valuable for showing how political circumstances, cultural identities, and debates over indigenous musical traditions shaped musical composition and evaluation in different Chinese societies. Its comparative perspective expands the study of music and politics beyond a single nation-state or political system.”

• Hung, Chang-Tai. “The Politics of Songs: Myths and Symbols in the Chinese Communist War Music, 1937–1949.” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 30, no. 4, 1996, pp. 901–929. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X00016838.

“This article demonstrates how wartime songs functioned not merely as artistic works but also as vehicles of political symbolism, collective identity, and mass mobilization. By examining Chinese Communist war music from 1937 to 1949, Hung shows how songs translated political ideas into memorable and widely shared musical forms. It provides a concise and historically grounded model for studying the political work performed by music.”

Diana Brenscheidt genannt Jost

• Attali, Jacques. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.

“In my opinion, Attali’s book is still one of the foundational texts on the relationship between music, power, economics, and politics and continues to inspire current research. It’s interesting for its claim that music reflects and anticipates social and political change.”

• Robinson, Dylan. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020.

“I recommend this book because it examines how musical practices, listening habits, cultural power, and Indigenous sovereignty are interconnected, making music a site where political authority and cultural values are negotiated.”