Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4084-8046
Date Available
5-15-2027
Year of Publication
2025
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College
Fine Arts
Department/School/Program
Musicology
Faculty
Diana Hallman
Faculty
Ben Arnold
Faculty
Jonathan Glixon
Abstract
During the summer of 1940, Nazi military forces invaded France, occupied the northern half of the country, and took more than 1.5 million French soldiers prisoner. Men of various civilian backgrounds found themselves forced into captivity together, imprisoned in prisoner of war (POW) camps across Germany and its occupied territories. Despite the suffering French prisoners endured, POW camps boasted rich intellectual, spiritual, and artistic life. Music played a central role; camp ensembles performed at formal concerts, themed revues, theater productions, and religious services. Furthermore, prisoners organized music classes and conferences, and composers among them created new works.
This dissertation emphasizes music composed in captivity, highlighting the myriad purposes these works served: boosting morale, concealing resistance messages, aiding in worship, and expressing emotions. In addition, many prisoner-composers returned their scores to France via mail or their repatriated comrades and had their works performed in occupied Paris. Often performed with some level of intervention from the so-called Vichy government that oversaw unoccupied France, “prisoner concerts” became associated with Vichy rhetoric in the press. Thus, compositions that fulfilled so many different needs in the POW camps became extensions of the propagandistic messages of Vichy government and its Nazi collaborators.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2025.87
Recommended Citation
Zrull, Mary Margaret, "IN THE CAMPS AND IN THE CONCERT HALLS: THE FUNCTIONS AND MEANINGS OF MUSIC BY FRENCH PRISONERS OF WAR DURING WORLD WAR II" (2025). Theses and Dissertations--Music. 269.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/music_etds/269
