Walter Wiora

In the fourth chapter on the world age of technology and global industrial culture he describes the conquest of "new territory" and the narrowing to the limits of music since the 19th century, for example in Max Reger and Claude Debussy. He partly discovers a reversal of the laws of the first age, partly an ideologization, dehumanization and the confrontation with it. The focus here is on the intentions of Neue Musik, but includes "revolutionary" rock. Wiora approves of jazz more than a mixture of European harmonies and African rhythms and performance.

After the Second World War, he returned to the German Folk Song Archive in 1946, where he worked as an archivist and head of the music department until 1958. In 1957 he founded the Herder Research Centre for Music History, which he headed until 1962. From October 1958 he was Professor of Musicology at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel. 1962/63 he was Visiting Professor at the Columbia University. From 1964 to 1972 he worked at the University of Saarland as a musicology professor. His successor in Saarbrücken was Werner Braun.

Born in Kattowitz, Wiora received his doctorate in Freiburg with Wilibald Gurlitt and then worked as an assistant at the Deutsches Volksliedarchiv in Freiburg. He became on request of 19 May 1937 member of the Nazi Party number 4.715.785. In 1940 he wrote a contribution to folk song research in Alfred Rosenberg's magazine "Die Musik" under the title: "Die Molltonart im Volkslied der Deutschen in Polen und im polnischen Volkslied" (The minor key in the German folk song in Poland and in the Polish folk song). Wiora was habilitated in 1941 and in 1942 lecturer at the "Reichsuniversität Posen". At the same time he was a music critic for the newspaper Das Reich.

Walter Wiora (30 December 1906 – 8 February 1997) was a German musicologist and music historian.