Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Modern Western childhood is built on contradiction. On the one hand, it is always in the process of disappearing. It is framed as a state of constant change, with children moving through various “phases” that will eventually be outgrown. Therefore, childhood always points toward a stable adulthood as its defining, and inevitable, end point, as change has no meaning unless it is contrasted with stability. Childhood, then, is understood simultaneously as timeless, eternal stasis and real, impermanent, future-oriented change. The concern in this chapter is with Kurt Schwaen (1909–2007), a composer whose approach to these temporal contradictions is not to resolve them but to abandon childhood’s timelessness in favor of its futurity. The best-known composer of children’s music in the German Democratic Republic (the GDR, or East Germany, 1949–1990), Schwaen wrote ten children’s operas in the period 1955–1980, in addition to many well-received children’s songs. These operas embrace the future. Their plots revolve around themes of transformation—with pithy choruses exhorting children to welcome novelty instead of staying comfortable in familiar habits. Schwaen averred that his children’s operas, particularly those written from the 1950s through the 1970s, all function as Lehrstücke: pedagogical theater that aims to instruct—in other words, change—the performers themselves, rather than the audience.</jats:p>