CHAPTER 1 Starting from Scratch

Music in the Aftermath of World War II: Zhdanovshchina, Darmstadt

Chapter:

CHAPTER 1 Starting from Scratch

Source:

MUSIC IN THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

Richard Taruskin

“I can't go on. I'll go on.”

—Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953)

The Second World War ended with a bang the likes of which the world had never seen. The atomic bombs dropped by the United States Army Air Forces on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 instantly reduced them to rubble. Between them they ended some 114,000 lives in seconds. Those who justified the bombing cited the far greater number of casualties that would have inevitably followed upon an Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands; those who condemned it held that balancing military casualties against civilian ones was a barbarian calculation that wiped out the moral superiority of the Allied cause.

Citation (MLA):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 1 Starting from Scratch." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 7 Sep. 2024. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume5/actrade-9780195384857-chapter-001.xml>.

Citation (APA):

Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 1 Starting from Scratch. In Oxford University Press, Music in the Late Twentieth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 7 Sep. 2024, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume5/actrade-9780195384857-chapter-001.xml

Citation (Chicago):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 1 Starting from Scratch." In Music in the Late Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 7 Sep. 2024, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume5/actrade-9780195384857-chapter-001.xml