Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Harry White
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Discursive Space ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
Compositional Practice ◽  
The Relationship

The introduction to this book establishes the concept of liturgical and musical servitude at the imperial court in Vienna in the first half of the eighteenth century as a theory of culture that privileges music as the apotheosis of political and religious authority. It identifies Fux as the principal steward of a North Italian compositional practice adapted towards this end, and it argues that this practice draws Fux into the orbit of his near-contemporaries, Bach and Handel, both of whom depended on Italian models of musical discourse for much of their careers. The relationship between musical servitude and imaginative autonomy which thus arises throughout the book is framed within a discursive space shared by all three composers.

Topics and Formal Functions

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Caplin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Formal Context ◽  
Harmonic Content ◽  
Compositional Practice ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the relationship of the lament topic to various form-functional contexts. After explaining that this topic is inextricably linked with a schema defined essentially by its bass voice, the study considers how the intrinsically sequential harmonic content of the schema lends itself well to expressing the formal sense of “being in the middle.” It further demonstrates that the schema can also participate in creating a formal ending, a cadence, and can even be used in an initiating formal context, which may engender the perception of a “formal dissonance,” a conflict between intrinsic and contextual functionality. The pervasive descending bass line of the lament schema, while appropriate for baroque compositional practice, jars somewhat with classical practice, such that the lament topic becomes a touchstone for highlighting stylistic differences among earlier and later works within the eighteenth century.

The Emperor’s New Bookcloths: Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s Presentation Copies for the Imperial Court

Quaerendo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Carlos Spoerhase
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
The Status ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This paper explores Klopstock’s presentation copies of his drama Hermanns Schlacht in the context of his efforts to gain favor with the imperial court in Vienna. It focuses in particular on Klopstock’s attention to the materiality of the presentation copies and his strategies to adjust to court protocol. In this vein, the essay highlights his dissatisfaction with the quality of German books in general, which he felt undermined his efforts to establish himself with his patrons. At the same time, Klopstock seized on the book’s materiality as an opening to reframe the relationship of author to patron. He envisioned a new kind of relationship, which would be more reciprocal. By trying to redefine the author’s position at court, Klopstock aimed to elevate the authorial role more generally. Klopstock’s leveraging of the material book to elevate the author was part of a wider eighteenth-century debate concerning the status of authors in their relation to patrons. Klopstock aimed not only to redefine this relationship as one of equals but also to commit the emperor to provide recognition and financial support for German writers, thus securing the stature of German letters. In this context, Klopstock’s binding choices are shown to be bold moves through which he tried to break the cultural conventions attached to the medium of the presentation copy. Klopstock’s own designs of his presentation copies to the imperial court have to be seen as—ultimately failed—attempts to recalibrate cultural power structures.

The Relationship between Seeker and Spiritual Guide as portrayed in contemporary Western Sufi Autobiographies

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-332
Author(s):  
Kate Zebiri
Keyword(s):  
Life Writing ◽  
New Age ◽  
The Self ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

This article aims to explore the Shaykh-mur?d (disciple) or teacher-pupil relationship as portrayed in Western Sufi life writing in recent decades, observing elements of continuity and discontinuity with classical Sufism. Additionally, it traces the influence on the texts of certain developments in religiosity in contemporary Western societies, especially New Age understandings of religious authority. Studying these works will provide an insight into the diversity of expressions of contemporary Sufism, while shedding light on a phenomenon which seems to fly in the face of contemporary social and religious trends which deemphasize external authority and promote the authority of the self or individual autonomy.

Aesthetics/Ascetics

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Jeremy Stolow
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Orthodox Jewish ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
Prayer Books ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Jewish Intellectuals

This article focuses on the relationship of aesthetics and ascetics with regard to the publication and popular reception of Kosher By Design, a cookbook published by a major American Jewish Orthodox press, ArtScroll Publications. The article analyses the ideological, rhetorical, discursive, and iconographic modes of address embedded within this text, treating them as instances of popular religion, and also as elements of a project in and through which the Orthodox Jewish intellectuals associated with ArtScroll seek to assert new forms of religious authority, in the context of a broader culture of “kosher consumerism,” to which this text is directed. The article ends by highlighting the paradoxical character of this form of “post-scripture,” in which books like Kosher By Design, and by extension other ArtScroll texts—including their popular prayer-books—are caught between competing demands of popularity and authority, art and asceticism, and religious stringency and bourgeois living.

The Gallic Singularity and the Royal Mistress

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
Christine Adams
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Realm

The relationship of the French king and royal mistress, complementary but unequal, embodied the Gallic singularity; the royal mistress exercised a civilizing manner and the soft power of women on the king’s behalf. However, both her contemporaries and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians were uncomfortable with the mistress’s political power. Furthermore, paradoxical attitudes about French womanhood have led to analyses of her role that are often contradictory. Royal mistresses have simultaneously been celebrated for their civilizing effect in the realm of culture, chided for their frivolous expenditures on clothing and jewelry, and excoriated for their dangerous meddling in politics. Their increasing visibility in the political realm by the eighteenth century led many to blame Louis XV’s mistresses—along with Queen Marie-Antoinette, who exercised a similar influence over her husband, Louis XVI—for the degradation and eventual fall of the monarchy. This article reexamines the historiography of the royal mistress.

The Musical Discourse of Servitude

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry White
Keyword(s):  
Johann Sebastian Bach ◽  
George Frideric Handel ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
Work Concept ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
Church Service ◽  
Late Works

The Musical Discourse of Servitude examines the music of Johann Joseph Fux (ca. 1660–1741) in relation to that of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. Its principal argument is that Fux’s long indenture as a composer of church music in Vienna gains in meaning (and cultural significance) when situated along an axis that runs between the liturgical servitude of writing music for the imperial court service and the autonomy of musical imagination which transpires in the late works of Bach and Handel. To this end, The Musical Discourse of Servitude constructs a typology of the late Baroque musical imagination which draws Fux, Bach, and Handel into the orbit of North Italian compositional practice. This typology depends on two primary concepts, both of which derive and dissent from Lydia Goehr’s formulation of the “work-concept” in The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works (1992), namely, the “authority concept” and a revised reading of the “work-concept” itself. Both concepts are engaged through the agency of two musical genres—the oratorio and the Mass ordinary—which Fux shared with Handel and Bach respectively. These genres functioned as conservative norms in Fux’s music (most of Fux’s working life was spent in writing for the church service), but they are very differently engaged by Bach and Handel. To establish a continuity between Fux, Bach and Handel, and between the servitude of common practice and the emerging autonomy of a work-based practice in the early eighteenth-century musical imagination are the principal objectives of this study.

The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume II

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Degree Of Acceptance ◽  
Missionary Societies ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
British State ◽  
The Relationship

This volume charts the development of protestant Dissent between the passing of the Toleration Act (1689) and the repealing of the Test and Corporation Acts (1828). The long eighteenth century was a period in which Dissenters slowly moved from a position of being a persecuted minority to achieving a degree of acceptance and, eventually, full political rights. The first part of the volume considers the history of various Dissenting traditions inside England. There are separate chapters devoted to Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers—the denominations that traced their history before this period—and also to Methodists, who emerged as one of the denominations of ‘New Dissent’ during the eighteenth century. The second part explores the ways in which these traditions developed outside England. It considers the complexities of being a Dissenter in Wales and Ireland, where the state church was Episcopalian, as well as in Scotland, where it was Presbyterian. It also looks at the development of Dissent across the Atlantic, where the relationship between Church and state was rather more loose. The third part is devoted to revivalist movements and their impact, with a particular emphasis on the importance of missionary societies for spreading protestant Christianity from the late eighteenth century onwards. The fourth part looks at Dissenters’ relationship to the British state and their involvement in campaigns to abolish the slave trade. The final part discusses how Dissenters lived: the theology they developed and their attitudes towards Scripture; the importance of both sermons and singing; their involvement in education and print culture; and the ways in which they expressed their faith materially through their buildings.

“Quelques misérables places à remplir”Locating Shaped Painting in Eighteenth-Century France

2017 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 544-571
Author(s):  
David Pullins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Visual Field ◽  
Decorative Arts ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article addresses in depth for the first time the irregularly shaped canvases known as tableaux chantournés (cut-out paintings) that were produced in vast numbers by leading academicians between the 1730s and 1750s and occupy a tenuous place between fine and applied or decorative arts. Through an examination of the term’s first uses in regard to painting and eighteenth-century critics’ responses to these works, tableaux chantournés are positioned as a means of rethinking the extraction of painting from a richer visual field and the relationship of this medium-specific agenda to the historiography of the rococo.

scholarly journals The Rejection of Constitutional Incrementalism in Nepal's Federalisation

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-540
Author(s):  
Mara Malagodi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
Contentious Issue ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Institutional Choices ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Constitution Making

The relationship between federalism and identity was the single most contentious issue in the drafting of Nepal's 2015 Constitution, and remains an embattled feature of the country's post-conflict constitutional settlement. This article explains why ‘constitutional incrementalism'—the innovative constitution-making strategy for deeply divided societies theorised by Hanna Lerner—was ultimately (and wisely) rejected in Nepal's federalisation process. Historically a unitary state since its creation in the late eighteenth century, Nepal committed itself to federal restructuring in 2007, but profound disagreements endured over the set of institutional choices concerning the features of Nepal's federal arrangements throughout the constitution-making process (2008–15). Constitutional incrementalism with its emphasis on deferral, ambiguity and contradiction was thought of in some quarters as a pragmatic and instrumental way out of Nepal's political impasse. In the end, the 2015 Constitution expressly named the provinces (even if by just using numbers) and demarcated their boundaries already at the time of its promulgation. Any changes to this framework can only take place by way of constitutional amendment. This article explains why the incrementalist approach was rejected in Nepal's federalisation process, and reflects on the conditions under which constitutional incrementalism may succeed in societies that present profound disagreements over the collective identity of the polity.

BLAINVILLE'S NEW MODE, OR HOW THE PLAGAL CADENCE CAME TO BE ‘PLAGAL’

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-90
Author(s):  
CALEB MUTCH
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Mixed Mode ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
And Function ◽  
Mode A ◽  
As If

ABSTRACTThe plagal cadence has long been a significant concept within musical discourse, but that discourse contains no convincing explanation of why the progression should be characterized as ‘plagal’. This article elucidates the meaning of the term ‘plagal cadence’ by examining its introduction into a mid-eighteenth-century Parisian debate over the nature of what would come to be called tonality instigated by Charles-Henri de Blainville's proposal of the ‘mixed mode’, a supplement to the major and minor modes. Owing to the properties of his new mode's scale, which corresponds to the Phrygian mode, Blainville identified the plagal cadence as the proper conclusion for pieces in the mixed mode. Curiously, although Blainville's work appears to contain the first published articulation of the term, he employs it as if his readers were already familiar with the ‘plagal cadence’. This article explains that oddity, finding that Blainville misread earlier accounts of plainchant as saying that plagal modes were characterized by the interval of the descending fourth. In conclusion, consideration of the controversy regarding the mixed mode and plagal cadence reveals that those historical disagreements bear striking similarities to current debates over the significance and function of the plagal cadence in theories of harmony.

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