From Popular to Esoteric: Nikolaos Mantzaros and the Development of his Career as a Composer

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kostas Kardamis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Status ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
National Anthem ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Viable Solution ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The One

Nikolaos Halikiopoulos Mantzaros (1795–1872) was a noble from Corfu and is better known today as the composer of the Greek national anthem. However, recent research has proved his importance as a teacher and as one of the most learned composers of his generation, renowned, in Italy and France as well as Greece.The aim of this article is to present Mantzaros’ developing relationship as dilettante composer to the emerging European nineteenth-century music and aesthetics, as featured through his existing works and writings. In his early works (1815–27) Mantzaros demonstrates a remarkable creative assimilation of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century operatic idioms, whereas his aristocratic social status allowed him an eclectic relationship with music in general. From the late 1820s, Mantzaros also began setting Greek poetry to music, in this way offering a viable solution to the demand for ‘national music’.From the mid-1830s onwards, Mantzaros’ already existing interest in Romantic idealism was broadened, affecting his work and thoughts. He stopped composing opera-related works and demonstrated a dual attitude towards music. On the one hand he continued composing popular music for the needs of his social circle, but on the other he developed an esoteric creative relationship with music. The latter led him as early as the 1840s to denounce the ‘extremities of Romanticism’ and to seek the musical expression of the sublime through the creative use of ‘the noble art of counterpoint’. This way he attempted to propose a re-evaluation of nineteenth-century trends through an eclectic neoclassicism, without neglecting the importance of subjective inspiration and genius.

scholarly journals The Politics of Time

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theo Jung
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Language Use ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

This article traces the uses of zeitgeist in early nineteenth-century European political discourse. To explain the concept's explosive takeoff in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, two perspectives are combined. On the one hand, the concept is shown to be a key element in the new, “temporalized” discourses of cultural reflection emerging during this time. On the other, its pragmatic value as a linguistic tool in concrete political constellations is outlined on the basis of case studies from French, British, and German political discourse. Developing this two-sided perspective, the article sheds light on an important aspect of early nineteenth-century political discourse while also pointing to some general considerations concerning the relationship between the semantic and pragmatic analysis of historical language use.

Historical Research and Cultural History in Nineteenth-Century Austria: The Archivist Joseph Chmel (1798–1858)

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 115-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Ottner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The Other ◽  
Academic World ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Cultural Science ◽  
The One

During the nineteenth century, history developed into an independent discipline with important cultural and intellectual functions in both the academic world, as well as in society at large. Specific circumstances contributed to the rise in importance of this discipline: On the one hand, the emergence of an educated bourgeoisie and rising nationalist movements influenced the study of history; whereas on the other hand, public demands for assurances of continuity, as well as conservative efforts for restoration, also played an important role in history's growth in importance. Historicism, which began to establish itself in late-eighteenth-century Germany, had its forerunners in research approaches that grew out of the late Enlightenment. Concepts of cultural science [Kulturwissenschaft] developed by scholars of the late Enlightenment paved the way for the rise of the historical discipline during the first half of the nineteenth century.

L'ENFANT ET LE TYRAN:“LA MARSEILLAISE” AND THE BIRTH OF MELODRAMA

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-57
Author(s):  
Jennifer Wise
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Anthem ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

Whether through its association with 1789 or 1830, with the German labor movement of the nineteenth century, or the fight against fascism in the twentieth, the stirring sound of the national anthem of France is familiar to us all.1(And film buffs everywhere have a powerful image of this last association thanks to the unforgettable depiction of the song inCasablanca.) Less well known is that this famous song, though feared during the 1790s as the terrorist “chant” of the guillotine,2also provided René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt with the ingredients, and a ready-made dramaturgical recipe, for inventing a new theatrical genre.3With its simple division of the world into vulnerable, imperiledenfantson the one hand, and powerful, plottingtyranson the other, and its demand that the latter be killed, “La Marseillaise” may well have helped to stoke the fire of the Terror and certainly helped legitimize its violence. But in terms of its plot, characters, and politicomoral thought, even in terms of its diction and spectacle,4“La Marseillaise” also laid down the dramaturgical rules for playwriting in revolutionary Paris, showing the father of melodrama how to make for the happiness of theenfants de la patrie—those in the audience and those on the stage.

Beyond control: Orientalist tensions and the history of the “upas tree” myth

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-189
Author(s):  
Tim Hannigan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Surrounding Atmosphere ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The “upas tree” is one of the most enduring European myths about Southeast Asia. Accounts of a tree so toxic that it renders the surrounding atmosphere deadly can first be identified in fourteenth-century journey narratives covering what is now Indonesia. But while most other such apocrypha vanished from later European accounts of the region, the upas myth remained prominent and in fact became progressively more elaborate and fantastical, culminating in a notorious hoax: the 1783 account of J. N. Foersch. This article examines the history of the development of the upas myth, and considers the divergent responses to Foersch’s hoax amongst scientists and colonial administrators on the one hand, and poets, playwrights, and artists on the other. In this it reveals a significant tension within the emerging “Orientalist” discourse about Southeast Asia in the early nineteenth century.

“Supreme Nation”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. P. Lai
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
World Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Reconstruction Process ◽  
Model Image ◽  
The One ◽  
Different Cultures

This chapter explores how Karl F. A. Gützlaff, a leading Protestant missionary to China in the early nineteenth century, consciously created an idealistic image of Great Britain in his novels Shifei lüelun (1835) and Dayingguo tongzhi (1834). Through intentional reinterpretations of two sharply different cultures, Gützlaff challenged the Sinocentric world order on the one hand and presented Britain as the “Supreme Nation” on the other. Moreover, the author reveals that Gützlaff’s narrative of the model image of Britain involved conscious appropriation of certain popular Chinese terms and thinking. The Anglo-Chinese intercourse therefore exhibited a complex destruction–reconstruction process, in which the two-way flow of words and ideas gave shape to one imagined in-between reality.

Between cosmopolitanism and nationhood: Italian opera in the early nineteenth century

Modern Italy ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlotta Sorba
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Context ◽  
Delicate Balance ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The One ◽  
Opera Production ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Romantic Narratives

The revival of interest in music evident in recent historiography has led to an investigation of the specifically transnational nature of musical languages and practices. This article explores the possibility of re-reading in a transnational perspective the classical theme of the relationship between the Risorgimento and opera. It focuses on two different points of view: on the one hand, the construction of the librettos as a delicate balance between European romantic narratives and dramatic themes evoking nationalistic sentiments; on the other, the fact that ideas and practices of the theatre as a vehicle of political mobilisation developed in a broad international context where Mazzini and many other nationalists found inspiration in multinational political experiences and discourses. The article concludes by saying that the meanings of terms such as cosmopolitanism and nationalism need to be carefully weighed when we look at nineteenth-century opera production. Only in the closing decades of the century did genuine competition between national traditions arise, which led in Italy to a veritable ‘obsession’ with ‘Italianness’ in music.

scholarly journals Domesticating the Child: Maternal Responses to Hereditary Discourse in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Pellerito
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Biological Traits ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Alternate Version ◽  
The One ◽  
Maternal Responses ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Erasmus Darwin

This article examines the early nineteenth century connections between human, animal and plant by placing Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden (1791) and The Temple of Nature (1803) in conversation with Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). I argue that the Romantic versions of heredity described in Darwin’s poetry tended to reinscribe traditional gender roles. Brontë’s Tenant, on the other hand, revises earlier notions of heredity and motherhood via Helen Huntingdon, the wife of an alcoholic who tries to prevent her son from activating his genetic taint. By reconfiguring the supposedly natural connections between patriarchal inheritance of the land on the one hand and biological traits on the other, and by reclaiming and reinscribing popular metaphors of breeding, Anne Brontë’s female protagonist creates and attempts to implement a maternalist version of heredity while remaining entrenched within the nineteenth-century cult of motherhood. Whereas the Romantic and romanticized poetry of Erasmus Darwin and his contemporaries’ approach to natural history bestowed human characteristics on plants in order to make their reproduction more comprehensible, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall does the opposite. Without a satisfactory framework in place to express the anxieties surrounding human heredity, Brontë turns the tables on the metaphor and applies the language of breeding and agriculture to a human child. In doing so, she creates an alternate version of heredity based on maternal strength and power rather than one predicated upon patriarchal structures of kinship and economic inheritance.

‘Every expression is watched’: Mind, medical expertise and display in the nineteenth-century English courtroom

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 891-918
Author(s):  
John Carson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Professional Knowledge ◽  
The Other ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Medical Expertise ◽  
Legal Proceeding ◽  
Scientific Experts ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
The One

The growing presence of medical experts in the English courtroom during the early nineteenth century presented new challenges with regard to how those experts would exert their authority in an adversarial setting. This article examines the ways in which mental science practitioners responded when confronted with the need to testify as to the soundness or unsoundness of mind of an individual in the context of a legal proceeding. It argues that they often engaged in ‘a double act of self-fashioning’. On the one hand, they attempted to fashion their personae into representations of truth-telling beings; on the other hand, they sought to present testimony in such a way that the judge or jury could diagnose the individual’s alleged soundness or unsoundness of mind for themselves, and they sought to do this without leaving any trace of their own efforts. The procedures and presumptions of the English courtroom thus created an epistemic space in which physicians (and other scientific experts) were frequently presented with the puzzle of how to translate determinations arrived at on the basis of often recondite professional knowledge and years of experience into manifestations that could be made visible to a lay audience. Moreover, they had to do this in a setting in which every significant claim was likely to be disputed by adversary counsel and rival experts.

Suffering in Art

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ritchie Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Words And Images ◽  
The Relationship

Ritchie Robertson situates Lessing’s text within debates over the proper depiction of extreme suffering in art, focusing on Goethe’s essay on the Laocoon group (1798), as well as other late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century works on the representation of pain. The issue of suffering in art was of utmost significance to Goethe’s ideology of the classical, Robertson explains; more than that, the themes introduced in Lessing’s essay—above all, its concerns with how suffering can be depicted in words and images—proved pivotal within Goethe’s prescriptions about the relationship between idealism and individuality (or ‘the characteristic’) in art. As part of a larger campaign against what he called ‘naturalism’ in art, Goethe argued that the ancients did not share the false notion that art must imitate nature. For Goethe, responding to Lessing, the power of the Laocoon group lay precisely in its depiction of bodily suffering as something not just beautiful, but also anmutig (‘sensuously pleasing’).

The Politics of Chiefs and Commoners before the 1830s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raevin Jimenez
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
State Level ◽  
Temporal Context ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
African History ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Level Analysis

The field of pre-1830 South African history has been subject to periodic interrogations into conventional narratives, sources, and methods. The so-called mfecane debates of the 1980s and 1990s marked a radical departure from characterizations of warfare in the interior, generally regarded in earlier decades as stemming solely or mostly from the Zulu king Shaka. Efforts to reframe violence led to more thorough considerations of political elites and statecraft from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century but also contributed to new approaches to ethnicity, dependency, and to some extent gender. A new wave of historiographical critique in the 2010s shows the work of revision to be ongoing. The article considers the debates around the wars of the late precolonial period, including unresolved strands of inquiry, and argues for a move away from state-level analysis toward social histories of women and non-elites. Though it focuses on the 1760s through the 1830s, the article also presents examples highlighting the importance of recovering deeper temporal context for the South African interior.

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