"This book places the radicalisation of art music in early post-war France in its broader socio-cultural and political context. It pursues two general and intersecting lines of inquiry. The first details the stances towards musical conservatism and innovation adopted by cultural strategists representing Western and Soviet ideological interests at the onset of the Cold War. The second, which draws upon the commentaries of Theodor Adorno and Jean-Paul Sartre, recognises that the Cold War generated a. Heightened political awareness amongst French musicians at the very time when the social relevance of avant-garde music had become the subject of widespread debate. The study considers the implications of the performance at L'Oeuvre du XXe siecle, an anti-Soviet international arts festival staged in Paris in 1952, of two opposing musical types: neo-classicism represented by Stravinsky's Symphony in C, and serialism, represented by Boulez's Structures 1a."--Jacket.