Abstracts: 

Florian Scheding: Hungarian Voices in London: Migrant Cabaret and Political Activism in WWII Britain 

The European fascisms of the 1920s and 1930s created huge refugee numbers. In their new locations, migrants established networks of communication and creativity. In Britain, Austrian, Czech, German and Hungarian communities founded organisations that staged hundreds of events. Among the diverse artistic creativities, musical theatre and cabaret stand out. At the height of WWII, refugee cabarets offered not only entertainment and escapism but also a means for marginalized communities to make their political voices heard and circumvent restrictions imposed by the British government on migrant participation in public political discourse.  

The transient and often improvised nature of cabaret makes it challenging to research. But materials do exist, such British Secret Service surveillance reports, compiled as a result of the Churchill government’s paranoia and xenophobia. These materials reveal the intersections between migrant creativity, government censorship, and political resistance, providing a rich tapestry of cultural expression that has been largely overlooked in existing scholarship. 

While referencing key cabaret venues such as the Austrian Laterndl and the German Four and Twenty Black Sheep, I will focus on the Hungarian cabaret Podium, which staged at least four programmes in London during WWII. Two programmes, A Palágyi Pékek (The Bakers of Palágy, 1942) and Balaton (1944) were titled ‘operettas’ by composer, Matyas Seiber, and writer, György Mikes. Both were hugely popular at the time, drawing audiences totalling thousands. Podium events served as a space for community building, political engagement, and cultural exchange. At the same time, they exemplify the diverse political views within the Hungarian refugee community and the ways in which performances navigated and bridged these divisions. 

My paper thus sheds light on the overlooked role of migrant musical theatre in Britain during the mid-20th century, offering new perspectives on migration, political activism, and the politics of belonging. I underscore the importance of refugee voices in shaping cultural and political discourse in times of upheaval, challenging traditional notions of national identity and inclusion and situating musical theatre as a transnational genre. 

 

Mariia Romanets: Cultural and Political Dynamics in Ukrainian Displaced Persons Camps after WWII 

The Second World War triggered an unprecedented movement of populations, with displacement being a significant part of this vast upheaval. The term “displaced person” referred to civilians found outside their countries of origin at the end of hostilities. Immediately after the war, there were approximately 11 million displaced persons in Europe, the majority – more than 8 million – located in Germany. The intense repatriation campaign of spring and summer 1945 significantly reduced their numbers; however, by the end of September 1945, according to official statistics, about 1.2 million “non-repatriable” displaced persons – mainly Eastern Europeans – yet remained in Germany, unwilling or unable to return home. They stayed there for several years until opportunities to emigrate further west opened up in 1948, leading to the gradual emptying of the DP camps. 

Ukrainians were one of the largest groups among the “non-repatriable” displaced persons, numbering about 200,000 individuals according to official statistics. This was a complex community: older émigrés, laborers, prisoners of war, and above all, recent refugees who had fled their homes alongside the retreating German army. Regardless of where, when, or how Ukrainians left Ukraine, they all shared the same nationality and were united by their anti-communist stance. Although the circumstances that pushed Ukrainians from their homes are taken into account in my research, the question of what exactly displaced Ukrainians were liberated from is not the central focus of my inquiry. Instead, my paper sheds light on the overlooked reality of the conditions which they were liberated into, how – and especially by whom – this liberation was instrumentalized, and what it ultimately signified. 

The camp years marked a pivotal moment when Ukrainians from across the entire territory were, for the first time, compelled to confront their divergent historical experiences through coexistence – first shaped by division between the Russian and Habsburg Empires, and later between the Soviet Union and the Second Polish Republic. To address the issue of cultural resilience in exile within the culturally diverse Ukrainians, I explore the microhistories of academically trained Ukrainian composers, with the broader aim of reconstructing their musical output during the DP years. My research offers new perspectives on Ukrainian post-war displacement by examining some of its most pressing and complex aspects, focusing on art music within the often ambiguous interplay of politics, identity, and cultural citizenship. I argue that focusing on individual migrant voices, rather than generalized notions of national identity, provides a more accurate and essential perspective for shaping discourse on Ukrainian culture in exile. 

 

Guido Heldt: Music and War in The Lord of the Rings 

  

This paper is based on one written for the conference Military Music in Media Contexts at the Centre for Military Music of the Bundeswehr (the German armed forces), 8th-9th September in Bonn/Germany. 

War is ubiquitous in The Lord of the Rings, as is music. The paper asks how the two come together, chiefly in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, but (if time allows) also with sidelong glances at other films and TV productions set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional universe. 

That universe develops what one might call a ‘synthetic myth’. Sewn together from countless allusions to human history, myths, legends, languages, beliefs etc., part of its effect lies in the balance it keeps between unfolding a world of its own and one that we recognise in numerous details (a relationship turned on its head with the implication that the legends and stories we know are echoes of the distant past of Middle Earth). How is that synthetic nature realised in the music, and more specifically – given the topic of the conference the paper was written for – in music happening in the context of war? What echoes and allusions to musics we know are brought into play, and how are they used to appear fictionally authentic (if they do)? 

The second question the paper asks is one almost always relevant in film and television music: what is the relationship between diegetic and nondiegetic music? How do the horns and drums of war we encounter in the storyworld relate to the underscore, to the musical fabric underpinning the telling of the tale, and to what purposes are they put there? 

 

 

Biogs: 

Florian Scheding is Associate Professor in Music and Migration at the University of Bristol. He has published widely on migratory musics, ranging across functional, popular, and art musics. His first book, Music and Displacement: Diasporas, Mobilities and Dislocations in Europe and Beyond, was named Outstanding Publication of the Year by Choice Magazine. His second book, Musical Journeys: Performing Migration in 20th-century Music, received the Royal Musical Association/Cambridge University Press Monograph Prize 2020. 

 

Mariia Romanets is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Bristol. Her PhD, earned in 2020, was dedicated to the Phenomenon of Self-Borrowing in Music of the 20th 

Century. She has published on self-quotation and on the émigré Ukrainian composer Stephanie Turkevych. Currently she is engaged in a major research project on Ukrainian composers in Displaced Persons camps after the Second World War, examining issues of memory and history, diaspora, cultural identity and their impact on musical styles and composer biographies. 

 

Guido Heldt is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Bristol. He has worked on English art music in the early 20th century, but primarily on screen media music, with publications on film music and narrative theory, composer biopics, German musical films and other topics. He is currently working on music and film comedy, on musical episodes in TV series, and on amateur YouTube videos relating to the Disney Princess franchise and related films. 

Florian Scheding

Mariia Romanets

Still from Lord of the Rings