Program

Research Programs: Summer Stipends

Period of Performance

8/1/2023 - 9/30/2023

Funding Totals

$6,000.00 (approved)
$6,000.00 (awarded)


Musical Widowhood and the Gendered Labor of Mourning in Postwar Germany

FAIN: FT-291855-23

Martha Anne Sprigge
University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA 93106-0001)

Research leading to a book about German art music after World War II, with a focus on mourning practices and the role played by composers’ spouses in posthumously organizing musical archives and establishing legacies.

This project examines how gendered mourning practices influenced the world of German art music after World War II. It focuses on musical widows: women who were married to composers and who maintained their husband’s archives after their deaths. In both East and West Germany, the status of women and national memorial culture underwent dramatic transformations after World War II. By centering the women who performed the memorial labors that forged artists’ posthumous legacies, this project reveals how longstanding cross-cultural femininized mourning customs were adapted to suit new socio-political contexts throughout the upheavals of Germany’s twentieth century. The project analyzes musical archives as sites of mourning and thereby shows that although the world of postwar German art music was dominated by men, its historiography was shaped by their wives. _Musical Widowhood_ thus offers a feminist approach to understanding the intimate ties that sustain composers’ material legacies.