why hartmann and ullmann?
In the study of all musical activity during the Third Reich, a number of individuals are more striking than the rest - such as Carl Orff, Werner Egk, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Paul Hindemith, and of course, Karl Hartmann and Viktor Ullmann. This project focuses on the latter two composers for several reasons. Their political stances were clearer, their allegiances never ambiguous, and they did not emigrate. They had had a decade or more of musical training and exposure to the various trends of the 20th century by the time the Nazis came to power. Moreover, the scope of their output was great, their compositional languages already mature, but still evolved further after 1933. They also had enough time to write several works of varying scales and mediums up till 1945, and consistently did so despite escalating tensions and war. Finally, the circumstances under which they wrote their works are extraordinary and demonstrate the contradictions between Nazi ideology and the practical execution of their policies. Each of these aspects will be looked at in further detail in the following sections dedicated to the two composers and a few of their works.