Studying Musicians in Times of Crisis: The Case of Interwar Brussels

The interwar period (1918-1940) was a time of intense crisis for professional musicians in Belgium. After a brief period of economic improvement following World War I and the introduction of universal suffrage for men, union attempts to improve musicians’ living and working standards were eroded by new music technologies, taxes on entertainment, and rampant inflation. The death knell for thousands of musical careers, particularly in cinema orchestras, came with the nearly simultaneous arrival of sound film and the global financial crisis. During the 1930s, the Belgian government created several radio orchestras and the Orchestre national de Belgique, but these measures only benefited an elite group of Conservatory-educated musicians. Moreover, the new orchestras, while providing stable sources of income for a lucky few, had little impact against the enormous wave of unemployment that had transformed the face of the professional music community in 1929 and 1930.

This paper argues that the fate of working musicians in the city of Brussels is indicative of larger trends that impacted musicians throughout interwar Europe. Particular attention will be given to the processes by which Orchestras were eliminated from cinemas and other public places of entertainment; government measures taken in an attempt to help unemployed musicians; and a statistical analysis of those who benefitted from the creation of new government-funded orchestral positions during the 1930s. These events would forever change the vision of the future held by 20th century musicians.