ABSTRACT

This chapter explores music criticism that appeared in the Nazi Swedish daily newspaper Dagsposten between 1941 and 1945, highlighting three central themes: anti-modernism, German culture as an ideal, and the representation and reception of Jewish composers and musicians with particular reference to the work of Mahler and the Finnish-born composer Moses Pergament. A number of more general articles in Dagsposten that focus on music and politics are analysed within the context of Swedish political neutrality during the war and the struggle between conflicting vested interests in the Swedish establishment either to appease or resist German influence on cultural life. A distinction is drawn between music criticism in Dagsposten and the more general cultural articles that touch upon music. The former continues an anti-modernist, national-conservative aesthetic understanding with strong roots in the 1920s Swedish musical life, focusing more on quality and craft rather than racial considerations, whereas the cultural and editorial articles with musical content contain far more extensive anti-Semitic rhetoric, along with an unequivocal appreciation of Nazi cultural policy and a desire to swing Swedish public opinion behind such a programme.