ABSTRACT
The end of World War II brought significant changes in political and social attitudes toward contemporary music. During the interwar period, Neoclassical styles had prevailed in certain non-Germanic countries, especially France and the United States, while avant-garde idioms were both restricted by international economic conditions and banned from publication and performance in Germany and Italy, being branded products of “cultural Bolshevism.” The atonal and twelve-tone serial compositions of the Vienna Schoenberg circle, virtually unknown in Germany after the advent of Hitler, were made accessible in the 1930s and 1940s through exclusive performances at the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) held in other areas of Europe.
