Hitler’s musical 'Tabula Rasa' - Restitution - Restoration

The works that constitute the submission of this PhD are broken down into the recording series for London/Decca: “Entartete Musik” and the book FORBIDDEN MUSIC – THE JEWISH COMPOSERS BANNED BY THE NAZIS (henceforth: Forbidden Music). Adjacent and central as a means of research was a period of eight years spent as Music Curator at Vienna’s Jewish Museum from 2002–10.
This essay begins with an introduction in which I lay out the unique ground covered by both the recording series and Forbidden Music. This is followed by Part I: an exposition of the methodology behind both the recording series and the book. Part II of the thesis offers subjective reflections on the historic and cultural environment that motivated both the book and the recordings, while Part III constitutes a series of reflections on my recovery of music lost or suppressed after 1933; a recovery that started over a quarter of a century ago and continues to raise issues that demand attention. All three sections address the means by which restitution of the musical legacy lost after 1933 may be conceived, mapped out and implemented by musicians and scholars; they may hopefully provide a reference for the restitution of interrupted and truncated cultural narratives in the future.