The Devil's Music Master: The Controversial Life And Career Of Wilhelm Furtwängler
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket - cloth/board in good condition
Pages: Good
Few figures in twentieth-century music history provoke as much fascination and moral unease as Wilhelm Furtwängler, the brilliant German conductor who chose to remain in Nazi Germany while the world burned around him. Sam H. Shirakawa's meticulously researched biography chronicles the life of a man widely regarded as one of the greatest orchestral conductors of the modern era — a titan of the Berlin Philharmonic whose interpretations of Beethoven and Brahms were considered transcendent — yet whose wartime decisions cast a long, unresolved shadow over his extraordinary legacy. The central tension is electric: did Furtwängler collaborate with the Nazi regime, or did he use his privileged position to protect Jewish musicians and resist cultural totalitarianism from within? Shirakawa constructs his argument with the precision of a prosecutor and the empathy of a humanist, drawing on extensive archival research, interviews, and previously classified documents to present one of music biography's most morally complex portraits. The Devil's Music Master sits at the intersection of art, politics, and ethics, raising timeless questions about the responsibilities of genius in the face of evil. The book stands as essential reading not only for classical music enthusiasts but for anyone wrestling with the enduring question of how great artists navigate — and are judged by — history's darkest chapters. Whether Furtwängler was complicit or courageous, Shirakawa refuses to let the reader look away.
Author: Sam H. Shirakawa
Format: Hardback
Published: 1992, Oxford University Press
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket - cloth/board in good condition
Pages: Good
Few figures in twentieth-century music history provoke as much fascination and moral unease as Wilhelm Furtwängler, the brilliant German conductor who chose to remain in Nazi Germany while the world burned around him. Sam H. Shirakawa's meticulously researched biography chronicles the life of a man widely regarded as one of the greatest orchestral conductors of the modern era — a titan of the Berlin Philharmonic whose interpretations of Beethoven and Brahms were considered transcendent — yet whose wartime decisions cast a long, unresolved shadow over his extraordinary legacy. The central tension is electric: did Furtwängler collaborate with the Nazi regime, or did he use his privileged position to protect Jewish musicians and resist cultural totalitarianism from within? Shirakawa constructs his argument with the precision of a prosecutor and the empathy of a humanist, drawing on extensive archival research, interviews, and previously classified documents to present one of music biography's most morally complex portraits. The Devil's Music Master sits at the intersection of art, politics, and ethics, raising timeless questions about the responsibilities of genius in the face of evil. The book stands as essential reading not only for classical music enthusiasts but for anyone wrestling with the enduring question of how great artists navigate — and are judged by — history's darkest chapters. Whether Furtwängler was complicit or courageous, Shirakawa refuses to let the reader look away.