The Italian Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini has recently announced its newest book publication, entitled Protest Music in the Twentieth Century. The volume comprises a number of essays on protest music and on dissident composers and musicians throughout the twentieth century. The general focus of the publication is the numerous forms and shapes through which opinions of dissent may be expressed in music. Articles by scholars of different nationalities approach this phenomenon from a broad range of perspectives, drawing in historical, sociological, philosophical and historiographical contexts.

Amongst the contributing scholars is a chapter by myself on Mauricio Kagel’s 1979 radio play Der Tribun. In this chapter, I aim to determine the different ways in which Kagel uses radio transmission as a means of socio-political critique. By analysing the radio play as an acoustic art form (thereby focusing on structure, sonic events and textual content) and linking it to both Kagel’s compositional aesthetics and the German tradition of the Neues Hörspiel, I attempt to demonstrate the various levels at which the artist destabilises the media of language and radio.

‘Protest Music in the Twentieth Century’ is edited by Robertio Illiano and is now available as part of the Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini’s book series ‘Musical Treatises’. The volume contains contributions by (in alphabetical order): Marie Bennett, John Cox, Christine Dysers, Marita Fornaro Bordolli, Mara Favoretto, Germán Gan Quesada, James Garratt, Stefano Gavagnin, Andrew S. Kohler, Russ Manitt, Henrik Marstal, Upa Mesbahian, Santiago Niño Morales, James O’Leary, Roger W. H. Savage, Giuseppe Sergi, Tatevik Shakhkulyan, Kara Stewart Meredith, Joe Stroud, David Thurmaier, Jessica Winterson.

Christine Dysers, First Year Music PhD Student