Mendelssohn’s Difference in FaithRethinking Kunstreligion in the Context of His Compositional Aesthetics

2020 ◽  
pp. 311-329
Author(s):  
Sabine Koch
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Rhetoric ◽  
True Self ◽  
Moral Consciousness ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Practical Implications

This chapter departs from confessional interpretations of Felix Mendelssohn’s musical and religious outlook, encouraged by an empathetic reading of his own statements within the context of wider philosophies of art and religion, which combined into what became known as art-religion. In Mendelssohn’s writings, Kunstreligion was both a form of religion that was associated with Friedrich Schleiermacher’s theology and a means of finding his true self as a composer, as intended by his father, Abraham. His identification with nineteenth-century sacralized aesthetics of feelings never gave way to the unworldly nostalgia that critics and scholars have so often associated negatively with aesthetic religion. For Mendelssohn, Kunstreligion had practical implications and clear boundaries. His leaning towards religious theories of art inspired him to compose musical works for the spiritual enhancement of his audiences but found its limits whenever musico-religious rhetoric ran counter to his own moral consciousness, innermost beliefs, and sense of tolerance.

Four-Hand Piano Transcription and Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Musical Reception

1999 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
The Public ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
Piano Transcriptions ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Many ◽  
Musical Reception

Throughout the nineteenth century, massive quantities of four-hand piano transcriptions were published of virtually every musical genre. Indeed, no other medium before the advent of the radio and phonograph was arguably so important for the dissemination and iterability of concert and chamber repertories. Yet such transcriptions proved to be anything but innocent vehicles of translation. Not only did these four-hand arrangements offer simplified facsimiles of most orchestral works blanched of their instrumental timbres (a result that was often compared to the many reproductive engravings and black-and-white lithographs of artworks that were churned out by publishers at the same time); such arrangements also destabilized traditional musical divisions between symphonic and chamber genres, professional and amateur music cultures, and even repertories gendered as masculine and feminine. By bringing music intended for the public sphere of the concert hall, opera house, and salon into the domestic space of the bourgeois home parlor, the four-hand transcription profoundly altered the generic identity and consequent reception of musical works.

The Social Worlds of Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Sumner Lott
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Chamber Music ◽  
Social History ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Niche Markets ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Romantic Music ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Dynamic Relationships

This book examines the music available to musical consumers in the nineteenth century, and what that music tells us about their tastes, priorities, and activities. The book's social history of chamber music performance places the works of canonic composers such as Schubert, Brahms, and Dvořák in relation to lesser-known but influential peers. The book explores the dynamic relationships among the active agents involved in the creation of Romantic music and shows how each influenced the others' choices in a rich, collaborative environment. In addition to documenting the ways companies acquired and marketed sheet music, the book reveals how the publication and performance of chamber music differed from that of ephemeral piano and song genres or more monumental orchestral and operatic works. Several distinct niche markets existed within the audience for chamber music, and composers created new musical works for their use and enjoyment. The book revises prevailing views of middle-class influence on nineteenth-century musical style and presents new methods for interpreting the meanings of musical works for musicians both past and present.

Magnified Vision, Mediated Listening and the ‘Point of Audition’ of Early Romanticism

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEIRDRE LOUGHRIDGE
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Spatial Position ◽  
Piano Concerto ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Senses

ABSTRACTEmploying the term ‘point of audition’ to describe the spatial position musical works imply for their listeners, this article examines the use of technologies for extending the senses to define new points of audition in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Popular literature on natural philosophy promoted magnifying instruments as windows onto distant or hidden realms and as tools for acquiring knowledge. On the operatic stage and in writers' metaphorical musings, kindred sensory extensions were imagined for hearing. These contexts connected (magic) mirrors and magnifying instruments to their musical analogues: muted tone and keyboard fantasizing. The development of these associations in opera and literature made it possible for instrumental music to position listeners as eavesdroppers upon unknown realms. Such a point of audition is shown to be implied by the Adagio un poco mosso of Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto. By examining material practices and discourses surrounding sensory extension, this article demonstrates the relevance of technologically mediated observation to musical culture at the turn of the nineteenth century, and its contribution to the otherworldly orientation characteristic of romantic listening.

scholarly journals Ancient Greek rhythms in Messiaen’s le sacre: Nietzsche’s legacy?

Muzikologija ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 97-136
Author(s):  
Wai-Ling Cheong
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Textual Studies ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Classical Philology ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Paris Conservatoire ◽  
Le Sacre Du Printemps

It is little known that Nietzsche - appointed professor of classical philology at Basel University in his twenties - had postulated on the basis of rigorous textual studies that the leading classical philologists active in Central Europe in the nineteenth century, predominantly German-speaking, had gone seriously off -track by fitting Greek rhythms into measures of equal length. Unlike the philologists, influential musicologists who wrote about ancient Greek rhythms were mostly French. The Paris Conservatoire was a powerhouse of rhythmic theory, with an impressive lineage from F?tis and Gevaert through Laloy and Emmanuel to Messiaen and beyond. F?tis and Gevaert referenced their contemporary German philologists without really critiquing them. With Laloy, Emmanuel, and Messiaen, however, there was a notable change of orientation. These authors all read as if they had somehow become aware of Nietzsche?s discovery. Yet none of them make any mention of him whatsoever. In this study, a comparative analysis of their musical rendition of Greek rhythms is undertaken before focusing on Messiaen?s analytical proposal that there is an impressively long series of Greek rhythms in Stravinsky?s Le sacre du printemps. I seek to throw light on the resurgence of interest in ancient Greek rhythms in modernist musical works, and question how the convoluted reception of Nietzsche?s discovery in Parisian music circles might have sparked rhythmic innovation to new heights.

Haydn, Hoffmann, and the opera of instruments

2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 325-346
Author(s):  
Emily Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Musical Works

In 1809, E. T. A. Hoffmann declared that the symphony, in the hands of Haydn and Mozart, had become the “opera of instruments.” This view of symphony, which was echoed by other writers of the period, reflected how composers engaged with instruments through orchestration. This essay explores the use of instrumental sonority in the slow movements of Haydn’s later symphonies, in particular looking at the ways in which Haydn’s approach to the orchestra helped cultivate the notion that symphonies unfolded as dramas. This conception of the orchestra and of orchestration informed the language of musical criticism of the early nineteenth century: Hoffmann’s discussions of musical works frequently take the form of operatic plot summaries, in which individual instruments act as characters. The persistence of operatic metaphors suggests that, instead of thinking of this period as the “rise of instrumental music,” it is more accurate to understand it as the rise of the orchestra.

War on the Home Front: Battle Pieces for the Piano from the American Civil War

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH MORGAN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Musical Rhetoric ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
The Media ◽  
War News ◽  
Drawing Room ◽  
A Site

AbstractDuring the Civil War, countless musical works were written about the conflict and marketed to amateur musicians, especially women. Among them were pieces composed in response to recent conflicts, often published within days or weeks of the relevant event. Popular genres included keyboard battle pieces, which depicted some of the most pivotal battles of the war in musical rhetoric, bringing them alive in the minds and imaginations of drawing room performers and audiences.This essay is the first detailed study of American keyboard battle pieces from the Civil War. It investigates how they mirror many aspects of Civil War life, including the civilian demand for vivid war news, especially eyewitness accounts from the front, the advent of telegraphic reporting, and the fallibility of the media in reporting on the war. The pieces also reflect cultural trends of the mid-nineteenth century not related to war, particularly the popularity of theatrical melodrama on the stage and the prominence of virtuosity in piano repertoire. In investigating the performance of battle pieces as a site where women imagined and experienced the perils of war, this article contributes to scholarship that deepens our understanding of how women at home participated in mass culture.

Robert Schumann, Serious Virtuosity, and the Rhetoric of the Sublime

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-482
Author(s):  
Alexander Stefaniak
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Robert Schumann ◽  
Choral Works ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Aesthetic Values ◽  
The Way

In several essays from the first half of the nineteenth century, Robert Schumann and other music critics used the rhetoric of the sublime when describing select, unconventionally intense virtuosic showpieces and performances, evoking this category’s associations with overpowering, even fearsome experiences and heroic human qualities. These writings formed one strand of a larger discourse in which musicians and critics attempted to describe and identify instances of virtuosity that supposedly rejected superficiality and aimed at serious aesthetic values: in the nineteenth-century imagination, the sublime abnegated mere sensuous pleasure; inspired a mixture of attraction, admiration, and trepidation; and implied both masculinity and intellectual cultivation. It offered a framework for self-consciously elevating virtuosity rooted in the sheer intensity and, in some cases, perceived inaccessibility of particular works and performances. Schumann extended the mantle of sublimity to Liszt during the virtuoso’s 1840 Leipzig and Dresden concerts. Critics described three of Schumann’s own 1830s piano showpieces using the rhetoric of the sublime, comparing the finale of the Concert sans orchestre, Op. 14, to violent forces of nature to illustrate the way its virtuosic passagework disrupts and engulfs lyrical themes within an anomalous formal structure. They also linked the Toccata, Op. 7, and Etudes symphoniques, Op. 13, to Beethoven, hinting at the ways in which Schumann alluded to or modeled these showpieces on Beethoven symphonies. These episodes in Schumann’s career broaden our understanding of the contexts in which nineteenth-century writers on music evoked the sublime, showing how they described this quality not only in symphonies and large choral works but also in solo performances and showpieces. They illuminate the politics of the sublime, revealing its significance for nineteenth-century thinking about the cultural prestige that particular musical works and performances could attain.

Reimagining local studies in Devon

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (8/9) ◽  
pp. 703-711
Author(s):  
Ian Maxted
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Library Funding ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect that government austerity policies has had on local studies in Devon and suggest a possible alternative means of maintaining local studies’ collections. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents an historical survey of local studies provision in the county since the nineteenth century and outlines the present local studies’ landscape. Findings The findings show that local studies’ provision has been severely affected by eight years of progressive cuts to public library funding and that present publications, both printed and digital, are no longer being adequately recorded. Practical implications This paper suggests that in Devon, the museum sector may be a more appropriate home for local studies’ library provision than are archive services. Social implications Volunteers in libraries, museums and archives across Devon will be involved in maintaining a union catalogue and a bibliography of local publications. Originality/value While this is a suggested solution for Devon, it may not be applicable in regions with different traditions of heritage provision.

Resurrecting the Law: State Formation and Legal Debates in Nineteenth-Century Greece

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 629-657
Author(s):  
Evdoxios Doxiadis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Practical Significance ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Appeals Court ◽  
Practical Implications

This paper discusses the legal debates of nineteenth-century Greece and the attempts to produce a legal framework following the establishment of the modern Greek state. These debates had both a practical significance since such a framework was essential for the creation of a modern state, and an ideological one since the chosen framework would be a statement about how the new state perceived itself, its history, and its place in Europe. These questions were particularly relevant in the case of civil law as Greek legal scholars contemplated whether to accept the use of customary law, or to reject it, and if so what laws should replace it. In this paper, I examine this debate within the context of European legal developments and the process of codification undertaken throughout Europe from the late eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries, as well as the ideological and practical implications of the debate. I argue that, despite the belief that the efforts of Greek legal scholars led to the elimination of the use of customary law from the Greek judicial system, my research in the archival material of the Appeals Court of Athens indicates that customary law was still dominant a generation after the establishment of the modern Greek state. I conclude that a re-examination of the role and practices of the Greek courts in the nineteenth century is much needed as their flexibility thirty years after the creation of the Greek state is closer to the legal pluralism of the courts of the Ottoman period than to the model advocated by the contemporary legal scholars who demanded a ‘modern’ judicial system to assist the renaissance of the Greek nation.

scholarly journals The Felix Meritis Concert Programs Database, 1832–1888: From Archival Ephemera to Searchable Performance Data

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-78
Author(s):  
Mascha van Nieuwkerk ◽  
Harm Nijboer ◽  
Ivan Kisjes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Performance Data ◽  
Concert Hall ◽  
Concert Programming ◽  
Item Level ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Concert Programs

Abstract The Felix Meritis Concert Programs Database 1832–1888 (fmcp Database) provides a full digitisation of the concert programs collection of the most long-standing Dutch concert hall in the nineteenth century: Felix Meritis. Formerly hidden in boxes with archival ephemera, the content of this collection is now unlocked by manually entering the program details into a searchable dataset. The programs give an extremely rich account of a local concert practice, the performed repertoire, and the musicians involved. However, archiving concert programs at item-level presents a challenge: due to inconsistencies in and incompleteness of work descriptions it is often hard to identify and categorize the musical works performed. For the fmcp database, the authors have developed a possible solution to this problem; a strategy for structuring and categorizing concert programming data that aims to include incomplete work descriptions and reflect genre categorizations used in local concert practice. In this paper, the authors will present this categorization method and discuss the attributes and the basic structure of the fmcp database.

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