British music-theatre works of the 1960s and early 1970s largely avoided direct engagement with contemporary political topics. Intriguing in this light is Michael Hall’s recent proposition that Brecht’s music theatre set the terms for younger British composers’ experiments with the genre. Brecht proved a complicated model, however, because of composers’ anxieties about music’s capability to convey sociopolitical messages, and their reluctance to accord popular music a progressive function. The entanglement of Vietnam War activism and rock music forms the backdrop for analyses of two works that do address Vietnam directly: Anthony Gilbert’s The Scene-Machine and George Newson’s Arena (both 1971) – both of which also pass pointed comment on different popular-music traditions. Both works highlight the difficulty in emulating Brecht’s model in an era when the concept of ‘the political’ was being significantly redefined, and the cultural gap between activist cadres and the wider population was unprecedentedly visible.

中文翻译：

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越战时期英国音乐剧中的政治与流行

1960 年代和 1970 年代初期的英国音乐剧作品在很大程度上避免直接涉及当代政治话题。迈克尔·霍尔最近提出的这一观点很有趣，即布莱希特的音乐剧为年轻的英国作曲家对该流派的实验设定了条件。然而，布莱希特证明了一个复杂的模型，因为作曲家对音乐传达社会政治信息的能力感到焦虑，并且他们不愿赋予流行音乐一种进步的功能。越南战争激进主义和摇滚音乐的纠缠构成了分析两部直接针对越南的作品的背景：安东尼吉尔伯特的场景机器和乔治纽森的竞技场（均为 1971 年）——两者都对不同的流行音乐传统进行了尖锐的评论。这两部作品都强调了在“政治”概念被显着重新定义、激进干部与广大民众之间的文化差距空前明显的时代，模仿布莱希特模式的难度。