Musical Memorializations of War and Resistance in Comparative Perspective: Slovenia and Germany

The project explores how music has been used in the memorialization of anti-Nazi and antifascist resistance during WWII in Slovenia and Germany after 1991. The project foregrounds music as a distinctive medium for reinterpreting and reviving the past, with specific reference to the politics of memory of WWII. Music and its role in memory making has only recently received scholarly attention in musicology and memory studies, and remains a largely uncharted territory for critical analysis. This project aims to fill this gap and highlight that music provides unique opportunities for the exploration of memory practices in all their complexities. The project addresses the interplay of national and transnational memoryscapes, with a view to promoting shared pan-European perspectives. Special attention is devoted to the novel musical resources and collective sensibilities mobilized in the process. In this light, the project compares societies with different experiences during WWII, and with dissimilar public memory discourses after 1989. In both countries the interpretations of historic antifascist resistance have been substantially reconfigured in the context of the end of socialism. The project sets out to investigate the continuing significance of memorializing practices by focusing on grassroots music making.