Music in the Margin of Indifference

2021 ◽  
pp. 129-146
Author(s):  
Bettina Varwig
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
The Church ◽  
Modern Status

This chapter considers the role of a specific Lutheran idea of freedom in the emancipation of sacred music from liturgy during the early modern period. It proposes that the Lutheran appropriation of the classical notion of ‘adiaphora’, as a stance of indifference towards practices and objects not essential for salvation, opened up a quasi-autonomous space for musical elaboration, within which music could gradually acquire its modern status as a self-sufficient artistic practice. The eighteenth-century tradition of Passion performances in Protestant Germany offers a rich test case for this process of ecclesiastical divestment, in particular J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion of 1727, which made claims for music that clearly outstripped its functional remit, and Carl Heinrich Graun’s immensely popular setting of Karl Wilhelm Ramler’s Der Tod Jesu of 1755, which consolidated the genre’s move from the liturgy to the concert hall. Yet this migration outside the church walls by no means provides straightforward confirmation of a standard secularization narrative of Western modernity. Rather, in absorbing and retaining crucial aspects of sacrality, these musical repertories and practices reveal the rootedness of the modern aesthetic sphere in that Lutheran margin of indifference.

A Key Institution for Writing the Economic and Political History of Ottoman Muslims in the Early Modern Period

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Spyropoulos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political History ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Communities

Abstract This articles main argument is that in the course of the eighteenth century, the Janissary corps evolved into a powerful platform for the exchange of people, goods, and ideas between different localities covering a vast geographical area. By elaborating on this idea this paper maintains that the Janissaries should be treated as a key institutionfor the examination of Muslim economic and political history in the Ottoman periphery.We claim thatthe studyof their networkshas the potential to drastically redefine our current perception of the sociopolitical and financial role of Muslims in the early modern Ottoman Empire.Such a research can help us create a more balanced and less Eurocentric picture of the trading operations of Muslims in the regionand better understandthe dissemination of ideas and political movements between a number of Muslim communities where the Janissaries had a strong presence.Аннотация Главныи тезис статьи то, что на протяжении XVIII века, корпус янычар эволюционировал в мощную платформу перемещения людеи, товаров и идеи между различными регионами обширного географического пространства. Обосновывая эту идею, автор статьи подчеркивает, что янычары как институт являются своеобразным ключом к исследованию экономическои и политическои истории исламских общин на периферии Османскои империи. На взгляд автора, исследование этих сетеи взаимодеиствия позволяет радикально пересмотреть нынешнее восприятие социополитическои и финансовои роли мусульман в Османскои империи раннего Нового времени. Подобные исследования дают возможность выработать более сбалансированную и менее евроцентричную картину мусульманских торговых операции в регионе, и лучше понять распространение идеи и политических движении среди различных исламских общин в тех регионах, где присутствие янычар было значимым.

scholarly journals THE STATE AND THE CHURCH IN RUSSIA IN THE EARLY NEW AGE: CUSTOM AND LAW

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 993-997
Author(s):  
Sergey N. Borisov ◽  
Tamara I. Lipich ◽  
Nataliy W. Loginova ◽  
Vitaly V. Penskoy ◽  
Vasiliy V. Lipich
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
New Age ◽  
The State ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
The Church

Purpose: The article is devoted to the analysis of the peculiarities of the system of relations that were formed between the Orthodox Church and the authority of the Russian state in the early modern period. Methodology: The authors, based on the most recent research approaches of the characteristics of early modern states, use a number of examples to show the significant role of the church and its hierarchy which had both an effect on the secular authority actions, limited its power and represented the political role of the Russian state and society. Result: The authors point out to the informality, unfounded in any formal legislative acts. This informality allowed the church to respond flexibly to the demands of the moment, but at the same time weakened its position. The authors also point out that that being the only independent Orthodox Church; the Russian church imposed certain limitations on its actions as an independent force of the supreme power, which later served as one of the factors that caused the subordination of the church to the state and its transformation into integral element of the machinery of government. Applications: This research can be used for universities, teachers, and students. Novelty/Originality: In this research, the model of the State and the Church in Russia in the Early New Age: Custom and Law is presented in a comprehensive and complete manner.

Füchsische Poetologie. Zur Spiegelfiktion im Reynke de Vos (1498)

POETICA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 193-218
Author(s):  
Hannah Rieger
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Ancient Rhetoric ◽  
Wooden Frame ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Middle Low German ◽  
Specific Material

Abstract The Middle Low German Beast Epic Reynke de Vos (1498) is about two legal proceedings against the fox Reynke, who is charged by the other animals with the tricks he played on them. When he is sentenced to death, Reynke defends himself by delivering speeches that are constructed as described in ancient rhetoric. Part of those speeches is Reynke’s lie about his treasure, which he would give to the lion if he pardoned him. Reynke describes three pieces of jewellery as part of this made-up possession, one of which is a mirror. When Reynke describes it, he also tells Aesopic fables that are carved into its wooden frame. His fictional artefact, especially the interplay of its specific material and the content of the fables told, has a poetological level. In his description, Reynke hybridizes the political discourse of the early modern period, in which the virtue of prudentia becomes more and more important, with the rhetorical competence to deliver speeches and tell fables. In his fiction of the mirror he draws up a poetological draft that combines the role of a rhetor in court with his well-known properties of being clever and cunning. By describing the artefact, Reynke shows how to use rhetorical strategies, especially to tell fables, as an instrument to gain acceptance and to acquire political influence.

Free Trade before Liberalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Tazzara
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Free Trade Zone ◽  
Central Mediterranean ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Institutional Variation ◽  
Intellectual Legacy

Chapter 8 situates Livorno amidst a larger picture of competition in the central Mediterranean. It analyzes the spread of free ports by considering the two axes along which Italian ports liberalized during the early modern period: hospitality toward merchants and openness toward goods. Despite much institutional variation, a maritime free trade zone was in existence by the mid-eighteenth century. The intellectual legacy of free ports such as Livorno was nonetheless ambivalent. Though some Enlightenment thinkers used free ports to formulate general theories of free trade, others believed they promoted the subjection of state policy to foreign merchants.

‘And all my children?’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Scott
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Life Stage ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Life Stages ◽  
Cultural Imagination ◽  
Modern Period

Beginning with an exploration of the role of the child in the cultural imagination, Chapter 1 establishes the formative and revealing ways in which societies identify themselves in relation to how they treat their children. Focusing on Shakespeare and the early modern period, Chapter 1 sets out to determine the emotional, symbolic, and political registers through which children are depicted and discussed. Attending to the different life stages and representations of the child on stage, this chapter sets out the terms of the book’s enquiry: what role do children play in Shakespeare’s plays; how do we recognize them as such—age, status, parental dynamic—and what are the effects of their presence? This chapter focuses on how the early moderns understood the child, as a symbolic figure, a life stage, a form of obligation, a profound bond, and an image of servitude.

Baroque Opera

2018 ◽  
pp. 369-385
Author(s):  
Downing A. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Social World ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Nested Structures ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
Baroque Opera

The fundamental assumption of commentators from the early modern period is that tasteful music functions simultaneously to express sentiment and to move listener-spectators. The three core elements of the baroque operatic spectacle—poetry, music, and dance—are defined by their ability to express and convey passion. Commentators point to the particular ability of musical language—and its combination with poetry and movement—to represent that which is out of reach of spoken language, or below the threshold of linguistic representation. Although both dramma per musica and the tragédie en musique arose and were fundamentally grounded in monarchical cultural worlds, both also endured successfully as public art forms. Aesthetically, baroque opera exhibits and revels in nested structures, manifested in plays within plays and in references that place the operatic moment within a social world outside the opera. Opera left this aesthetic behind as it moved into the second half of the eighteenth century, influenced by the views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the works of Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck among others.

scholarly journals Ancient Pneumatics Transformed during the Early Modern Period

Nuncius ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Valleriani
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Exact Role ◽  
Ancient Technology ◽  
Ancient Science ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Natural Philosophers

The paper aims to show how sixteenth century hydraulic and pneumatic engineers appropriated ancient science and technology – codified in the text of Hero of Alexandria’s Pneumatics – to enter into scientific discourse, for instance, with natural philosophers. They drew on the logical structure, content and narrative style passed down from antiquity to generate and codify their own theoretical approach and to document their new technological achievements. They did so by using the form of commented and enlarged editions, just as Aristotelian natural philosophers had been doing for centuries. The argument aims to detail the exact role of ancient science and the process of transformation it underwent during the early modern period. In particular, it aims to show how pneumatic engineers first tested the ancient technology codified by Hero while carrying out their own practical activities. Once these tests were successfully concluded, in the spirit of early modern humanism they finally presented these activities as being associated with the work of their discipline’s most authoritative author, Hero of Alexandria, whose technology was tested during the construction of the hydraulic and pneumatic system of the garden of Pratolino.

A Note on the Shipbuilding in Bengal in the Late Eighteenth Century

Itinerario ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 167-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bhaswati Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Direct Evidence ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Eastern Coast ◽  
Shipbuilding Industry ◽  
The North ◽  
Indian Ocean Trade ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean

Both overseas trade and shipbuilding in India are of great antiquity. But even for the early modern period, maritime commerce is relatively better documented than the shipbuilding industry. When the Portuguese and later the North Europeans entered the intra-Asian trade, many of the ships they employed in order to supplement their shipping in Asia were obtained from the Indian dockyards. Detailed evidence with regard to shipbuilding, however, is very rare. It has been pointed out that the Portuguese in the sixteenth century were more particular than their North-European counter-parts in the following centuries in providing information on seafaring and shipbuilding. Shipbuilding on the west coast has been discussed more than that on the eastern coast of India, particularly the coast of Bengal. Though Bengal had a long tradition of shipbuilding, direct evidence of shipbuilding in the region is rare. Many changes were brought about in the history of India and the Indian Ocean trade of the eighteenth century, especially after the 1750s. When the English became the largest carriers of Bengal's trade with other parts of Asia, this had an impact on the shipbuilding in Bengal. It was in their interest that the British in Bengal had their ships built in that province.

The will to give: charitable bequests, inter vivos gifts and community building in the Dutch Republic, c. 1600–1800

2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELISE VAN NEDERVEEN MEERKERK
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Charitable Giving ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
The Will ◽  
Charitable Bequests

ABSTRACTThis article explores the role of different social groups in early modern Dutch towns in organising and financing poor relief. Examining both the income structure of Dutch urban poor relief organisations and voluntary donations and bequests by citizens reveals what motivations lay behind their involvement, and how and why these changed over time. In the seventeenth century, ‘middle groups’ donated more often and higher mean amounts, reflecting their efforts to contribute to urban community building. In the eighteenth century, the elite became relatively more involved in charitable giving. Also, the urge to give to one's own religious group seems to have increased in this period.

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