Music of Nazi Propaganda: A Pedagogical Analysis of Musical Applications for Influential Power

Although the Nazi party in Germany used music to promote their propaganda, the social impact of music’s ability to influence a society’s perceptions can be examined. With the intent of improving music pedagogy, the purpose of this research was to examine how the Nazi party used music as a tool to promote their propaganda. The particular problems of this study were to: (1) analyze how music can emotionally impact people in order to influence perceptions; (2) examine how timbre is used impact an audience emotionally; and (3) construct a lesson plan with the objective of exploring how music influences perceptions. Music possesses the ability to impact perceptions because humans relate more to a combination of visual words and music than words alone. Researchers have proven that there is a correlation between timbre and the interpreted mood of the audience. In order to teach students how music can influence perceptions, a lesson plan was constructed to experiment and understand the influential power of music. The past use of music must be understood in order to understand the influential power of music in present day