Proof Through the Night: Music and the Great War Hardcover - 2002

First line

In 1912 the future Nobel laureate Romain Rolland finished his grand novel, Jean Christophe, with a vivid premonition of war, yet the first en of his wartime journal, dated 31 July 1914, suggests that he was almost incredulous that it had arrived.

From the rear cover

"The cover of Glenn Watkins' book "Proof through the Night: Music and the Great War shows an astonishing Stravinsky manuscript of an innocent march ambushed by the composer's own Futurist-inspired paintings of exploding cannons - a perfect symbol for the book's ground-breaking, earthshaking account of the varied and surprising roles that music played during the First World War. The first musician ever to speak to the international conference of World War I scholars at the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Peronne, France, Glenn Watkins once again leads the way in interdisciplinary cultural studies, weaving together the music, art, and socio-political histories of the early 20th century into a truly meaningful picture of the human condition in a time of international crisis. Glenn Watkins' lectures on Music and the Great War, given at New York's Lincoln Center in preparation for this volume, gave fair warning of an imminent attack on the idea of history as battle maneuvers without considering vital questions of culture. Only a lifetime of intellectual passion and rigorous, relentless scholarship could produce such a book."--Bruce Adolphe, composer and lecturer, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

"Music and History intersect magnificently in the scholarship of Glenn Watkins. Politics, nationalism, combat, technology, art, literature and, above all, the sounds - beautiful and horrible - that charged wartime life and accompanied mass death. All these, and more, suffuse the vast symphony of war that Professor Watkins presents so clearly and analyzes so convincingly. Proof Through the Night is a master's work of interdisciplinary, yet disciplined, writing about music."--David B.Dennis, author of "Beethoven in German Politics, 1870-1989

"Glenn Watkins's new book is a synthesis of biographical, music-analytical, literary, political, and historical information about European and American music between 1914 and 1918. He combines extremely diverse materials into a single story, by turns fascinating, entertaining, and sad . The book will be a rich source of information and judgments about music and culture in general at a crucial moment of modern history."--John Spitzer, Peabody Conservatory, Johns Hopkins University