Storymaps

A collage of two images, on the left, an artistic drawing of a man with black hair and glasses, wearing a teal coat, writing on paper, and a historical map of where this person lived, on the right.
This section of our online resource presents interactive storymaps about the mobile lives of émigré musicians from Nazi-Europe in Britain. They were created by Michael Holden (Royal Holloway) and the team of the AHRC project ‘Music, Migration and Mobility’.

Please click on the drop-down sections below and click the links to explore our large collection of interactive story maps, each grouped together by theme.

These stories have been made to share interdisciplinary research undertaken as a collaboration between the ÃÛÑ¿TV, the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway University of London and the research initiative Musik und Migration at the University of Salzburg, Austria. Hosted on the ArcGIS platform, they can be accessed and embedded individually as well as through the RCM website.

Composers, Performers, and Institutions: Tracing the movements of mobile musicians

Here you will find a collection of storymaps that tell the mobile stories of musicians who fled Nazism for Britain, as well as the institutions within which they worked.

Mátyás Seiber: Global movement and hybrid styles

This series of storymaps explores the highly mobile life of the composer and educator Mátyás Seiber (1905—1960). It follows him from his early years in fractious post-First World War Hungary, through to his prolific, diverse musical output in Britain.

Eric Sanders: A map of musical memory, from Vienna to London

This collection of storymaps presents the memories of Eric Sanders (1919—2021), a writer, teacher, musician, political activist, and former soldier who escaped Vienna for Britain at the time of the Nazi takeover in 1938.

 

Glyndebourne: An international experiment in opera

These storymaps explore the mobilities of émigré musicians connected at the foundation of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. The conductor Fritz Busch, opera director Carl Ebert and manager Rudolf Bing were some of the many émigré musicians who contributed to the success of this innovative opera company with a firmly international outlook.

Internment: Musical creativity in confinement

This collection of storymaps focuses on the internment of émigré and refugee musicians from Germany and Austria by the British state in 1940-41. This unfortunate episode brought much hardship, but the shared experience of internment also forged lasting friendships and led to many musical activities.

Amadeus Quartet: Forty years of global movement

Includes a map which explores the global touring reach of the famous Amadeus Quartet, as well a series of maps which explores in detail the group’s connection to the Fifth String Quartet by Joseph Horovitz, a fellow Austrian émigré and former RCM professor.

Internment comics by Giada Peterle

These storymaps present the work of Dr. Giada Peterle, who collaborated with the Music, Migration, and Mobility team on a series of comics that explore the experiences of Second World War internees in Britain. Her work was inspired by Music Behind Barbed Wire, the diary of the composer Hans Gál, and What a Life! – a musical revue produced in internment.

Disclaimer: All images used on this site in connection with the 'Singing a Song in a Foreign Land' project are used in good faith. We have made every effort to ascertain copyright permissions for historical images and this information has been included where known. Please contact Norbert Meyn: norbert.meyn@rcm.ac.uk if you believe an image has been used incorrectly.