El sonido de la RepúblicaLa política musical en España entre 1931 y 1939

Abstract

The Second Republic (1931-1939) was the first Spanish political regime to dictate specific regulations for the development of music. The analysis of this music policy, which we have often reduced to the famous decree of 21 July 1931 creating the Junta Nacional de Música, has historiographically resulted in an adverse judgment. Its contribution is rejected for not having managed to implement its primarily conceived program. However, as this thesis demonstrates, it is an assessment that has not taken into account the political and ideological context and which, moreover, has not dissociated itself from the propagandistic discourse that the right-wing parties began promoting after the 1933 elections and the rebels encouraged during the Civil War. To this end, the study is divided into two parts: The first, named “The negotiation of musicpolicy,” is devoted to analyzing how such a policy was conceived, which agents contributed to this end, and how its precepts were accepted or contested in the different stages of the Republican period. The second part is focused on the music. It addresses how all these regulations were implemented in two specific musical activities: lyric theatre and orchestral music. Methodologically, this thesis is framed within the field of cultural studies, with interdisciplinarity as one of its main features. In its development, we contemplate the contributions of other disciplines, such as sociology or psychology. However, two approaches prevail: the study of cultural identity, based both on the assumptions of Stuart Hall and the Trenewal of the discipline with the studies of Clifford Geertz; and the concepts of public policyanalysis that have been systematized in Spain by José Subirats. Thus, as our main contribution, we propose the incorporation of the discourse on music during the Second Republic into the paradigms that explain the period from the perspective of frustration, insofar as it was the usurpation of the legality in force that prevented the musical project from continuing, and not some alleged errors that we have not continuously assessed with equanimity.