Erik Levi, Reader in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London, and author of Music in the Third Reich (1994) presents a more narrowly focused account of the same period in his Mozart and the Nazis: How the Third Reich Abused a Cultural Icon. The choice of Mozart for a study of this kind, as opposed to Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, or Wagner, for example, is an interesting one, predicated on several factors. Perhaps most central and essential is the question of how we are to place Mozart in terms of nationally defined musical practices. More so than the other luminaries within the Austro-German tradition, Mozart is generally understood today as a composer whose absorption of French, Italian, and German practices was basic and essential for forging his own musical language. Seen in this light, characterizing Mozart simply as an Austrian composer, by default of his birthplace, or as a German composer, by default of his language, is wholly inadequate for understanding the remarkable synthesis of musical ideas that comprises the fabric of his works. Understanding Mozart as transcending national boundaries, both cultural and political, was already prevalent in a wide range of scholarship in the early decades of the twentieth century and must have been self-evident to Mozart's contemporaries as well.

Alfred Einstein, the scholar who did foundational work on revising and augmenting the Köchel catalogue of Mozart's works, is perhaps the most conspicuous example of this scholarly perspective. Like a number of other leading musicologists of his generation, Einstein was Jewish. The Nazis, not without distorting the documentary evidence, portrayed Mozart otherwise. In some accounts, Mozart is a German patriot through and through, in danger of being sullied, for example, by association with the libretti of Lorenzo Da Ponte, a Jew, but overcoming that association through the power of his music. In other accounts, the absorption of pan-European elements is recognized, but the music remains quintessentially German, even volkstümlich, tied to the German Volk and spirit at its heart's core. For these reasons, Mozart, if he could be painted with a Nazi brush and cleansed of associations with Jews, Masons, and other polluting elements, could serve the purposes of the Third Reich in ways that Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, or Wagner could not.

1941 marked the sesquicentennial anniversary of Mozart's death (1755–91), an event highly politicized and conspicuously celebrated in Nazi Germany, Austria, and the occupied territories during that horrific period. Levi exhaustively documents the Nazification of the Salzburg Festival and other major festivals and radio broadcasts devoted to the Mozart year.

The embarrassment of Da Ponte's libretti for three of Mozart's most celebrated operas, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte, and the association of Die Zauberflöte with Masonic ritual, had to be overcome. In the case of the Da Ponte libretti, the problem for Nazis was compounded in that the standard German translation in the early twentieth century was Hermann Levi's—a German Jew translating an Italian Jew would not do. Erik Levi's account of the scramble to provide a suitable Aryan translation is fascinating, as three competing translations vied to become the one officially sanctioned. The ultimate winner was Georg Schünemann whose 1941 editions of the Mozart-Da Ponte operas carried the imprimatur of Joseph Goebbels and Ministry of Propaganda (237). In a revealing chart (83), Eric Levi compares the three Nazi-inspired translations of “Voi, che sapete,” Cherubino's second act arietta, with the “Jewish-German” translation of Hermann Levi. While the other two Nazi-era translations are quite different from Levi's, Schünemann's German, most ironically, parallels Levi's almost word for word. The Schünemann editions of the Mozart-Da Ponte operas remain popularly available today under the imprint of Dover Publications, Inc., New York. As Erik Levi points out, the underwriting by Goebbels is omitted in the Dover Edition.

Levi does what he sets out to do admirably, exhaustively covering the Mozart phenomenon during the Third Reich. Two questions that might have nicely framed the book remain beyond Levi's purview. The first is the more general and far-ranging question about the use and abuse of music for political ends, its history, and its ethical and aesthetic dimensions. Second, the book does not do justice, and perhaps cannot do justice, to the question of “Why Mozart?” The qualities intrinsic to Mozart's music that made it so beloved of both of the friends and enemies of the Third Reich elude this study. Perhaps they must.