Singing Schubert, Performing Race: Black Concert Singers and the German Lied in Interwar Central Europe Event

In this presentation, Kira Thurman examines Austrian and German reception of African American singers Marian Anderson and Roland Hayes who performed German Lieder in the 1920s and 1930s. Audiences were shocked: how had they managed to sing like Germans?

Kira Thurman earned her Ph.D. in history from the University of Rochester in 2013, where she also pursued a minor field in musicology through the Eastman School of Music. Her research, which has appeared in German Studies Review, the Journal of World History, Opera Quarterly, and the Journal of the American Musicological Society (JAMS), focuses on the relationship between race, music, and national identity in Central Europe. Currently she is IFK_Research Fellow.