Ephemera

2020 ◽  
pp. 168-188
Author(s):  
Catherine Massip
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Short Life ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Major Medium

Among the documents which give access to musical life and its various events, ephemera occupy a special field. The word (ephemeron singular; ephemera plural) covers several kinds of written or printed documents largely scattered but being produced for a short life and not subject to be handled and stored in a permanent way. “Those papers of the day” as defined in eighteenth century were produced on a large scale in the nineteenth century when newspapers became the major medium for publicity. The main purpose of these documents was primarily information and publicity. This chapter argues how ephemera may be read not as mere sidelines to culture but as central documents pertaining to the wide and complex intellectual issues in music.

Open Elites: Recruitment to the French Noblesse and the English Aristocracy in the Eighteenth Century

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael W. McCahill
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Past ◽  
Closed Group ◽  
Large Scale Land ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Almost All ◽  
New Recruits ◽  
Landed Elite

Over the past fifteen years historians of Britain have debated the degree to which the nation's aristocracy was open to newcomers. First, W. D. Rubinstein suggested that the new rich of the nineteenth century broke with the pattern of centuries and refrained from large-scale land purchases, in part because the established aristocracy had assumed a more “caste-like” mentality that held outsiders at bay. Then in 1984 two important works extended the challenge to earlier centuries. John Cannon demonstrated that throughout the eighteenth century recruits to the peerage were chosen from among the upper reaches of the landed aristocracy, a fact that suggested to him that the British nobility was a closed group, more closed than its continental counterparts. More significantly, Lawrence and Jeanne Stone completed an immense study of the elite of three counties over a 340-year period; they concluded that the proportion of newcomers was small and that new recruits were drawn mainly from groups already affiliated with the aristocracy. It was not businessmen but small gentry, office holders, and members of the professions who dominated the ranks of newcomers to their county elites.Other leading students of the British aristocracy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have taken exception to the claims of these iconoclasts. Sir John Habakkuk concluded in his Ford Lectures that “there was no weakening among new men in the eighteenth century of the desire to acquire landed estates. Almost all the wealthiest (or their descendants in the next generation) joined the landed elite….” In greater detail F. M. L. Thompson called into question Rubinstein's findings by challenging the usefulness of his probate data and by showing that millionaire Victorian businessmen or their direct heirs made substantial land purchases.

Searching for the Plot: Charles-Valentin Alkan's Souvenirs: Trois morceaux dans le genre pathétique, Op. 15

2007 ◽  
Vol 132 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-114
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Waeber
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Piano Etudes

In the early nineteenth century, the piano étude was conceived as an outgrowth of the eighteenth-century exercice, perpetuating the idea of mechanical virtuosity devoid of any poetic meaning; but it was also shaped by the Romantic pièce de caractère. Drawing upon the context of Parisian musical life in the 1830s (notably the reception of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony), this article discusses Charles-Valentin Alkan's piano études Souvenirs: Trois morceaux dans le genre pathétique, op. 15 (Paris, 1837). This work shows how virtuoso idiomatic figures can act as genre markers, thereby allowing the encoding of a specific extramusical meaning. It further addresses the issue of the privileged understanding between the composer and his performer that goes back to eighteenth-century tradition.

Authority and Rebellion in Victorian Autobiography

1978 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Krenis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Generational Conflict ◽  
Childhood Experience ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Family ◽  
Father And Son

It has been a literary (if not strictly historical) commonplace that the later nineteenth century was a time of pervasive rebellion of sons against fathers. For example, Butler's The Way of All Flesh and Gosse's Father and Son are texts often cited as indicative of a broader social phenomenon. “As Irish life runs to secret societies,” observed V. S. Pritchett, “so English life seems to run naturally to parricide movements. We are a nation of father haters.” Yet father-hating did not become conspicuous until the Victorian period, when, in contrast to the reputed submissiveness of the eighteenth-century son, a “growing self-consciousness by the son of his role as liberator” surfaced in fictional and biographical writing. Whether such a rebellion actually took place on any large scale is impossible to determine. Few men record such things, and when they do their real feelings tend to remain concealed or not fully understood. The premise of this study, based on selected examples of autobiography, is that the peculiar desperation of many Victorians to buttress eroding forms of traditional patriarchal authority had its first and perhaps most crucial effects within the family itself, intensifying ordinary generational conflict and its usual quota of rebellion, guilt, and neurosis. Amidst the conventional catalogues of accomplishment, there is a striking pattern of childhood experience within the family that incubated some version of future rebellion and profoundly affected the writers' emotional lives.Open warfare between generations is uncommon; most often rebellion instead employs a disguised language and context for its articulation.

Order and Disorder in Colonial South India

1989 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene F. Irschick
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
South India ◽  
Control Strategies ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Order And Disorder ◽  
Political Security ◽  
The One

Recently, we have come to see that the perceptions which we had of the decay and destruction of India in the eighteenth century were more than anything else a product of British writing which sought consciously or unconsciously to magnify and color the changes which took place in the eighteenth century to enhance the magnitude of their own ‘achievements’ from then onwards. ‘achievements’ from then onwards. Secondly, we have come to see the interaction of British desires for political security on the one hand and a steady income from land and other taxes as producing a situation first of depression in the first half of the nineteenth century and later of gradual underdevelopment at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth. It is therefore possible now to understand the unwillingness of the British administration in India to engage in any large-scale developmental activity which would upset the political balance which the British had established early in their relationship with landed and mercantile groups in the area. In this essay, I should like to address the connection between British support for landed groups in the agrarian area outside of Madras on the one hand and the colonial ‘discovery’ and reinforcement of traditions on the other, to understand both the nature of colonial control strategies and the genesis of Indian revivalism.

CATHERINE THE GREAT AND THE ROLE OF CELEBRATORY MUSIC AT THE COURT OF ANHALT-ZERBST

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
BARBARA M. REUL
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Compositional Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Town

As Empress of Russia, Catherine the Great (1729–1796) shaped not only history in general but also, as a member of its princely family, the history of Anhalt-Zerbst. Drawing upon little known eighteenth-century manuscripts housed at the Landeshauptarchiv of Saxony-Anhalt in Dessau and the Francisceumsbibliothek in Zerbst, this study assesses the impact of Catherine’s marriage in 1745 to Grand Duke Peter of Russia (1728–1762) on musical life at the court of Anhalt-Zerbst during and after the thirty-six-year tenure of Kapellmeister Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688–1758). First the role of music at the court prior to 1745 will be considered – specifically the ‘Concert-Stube’, an inventory of the Hofkapelle’s musical library prepared according to Fasch’s specifications in March 1743. The second section of this article focuses on the celebrations held at the court in 1745 on the occasion of Catherine the Great’s wedding. The Hofkapelle premiered a large-scale serenata by Fasch, the music to which has been lost. However, an examination of the extant libretto and of other music by Fasch that was performed at the court during the 1740s sheds light on the musical forces he would have employed and the compositional approach he might have taken. The Hofkapelle also performed a secular wedding cantata for bass solo and instruments by an anonymous composer as part of a spectacular fireworks display in three acts, the ‘Anhalt-Zerbstisches Freuden-Feuer’ (Fire of Joy), chronicled by Zerbst headmaster Johann Hoxa. Finally, it is possible to reconstruct a performance schedule of sacred music premiered in honour of Catherine the Great from 1746 to 1773. Despite Fasch’s death in 1758 and the Seven Years War, which led to the town of Zerbst being occupied by 16,000 Prussian soldiers for three years until 1761, new music was commissioned by the court from Fasch’s successor Johann Georg Röllig (1710–1790), Catherine the Great’s keyboard instructor at the court of Anhalt-Zerbst. He not only provided occasional compositions to commemorate her birthday and accession to the Russian throne but also composed a new cycle of Sunday cantatas to reflect the changing artistic priorities and practices of the Hofkapelle in the early 1760s.

The Kevserî Mecmûası Unveiled: Exploring an Eighteenth-Century Collection of Ottoman Music

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-225
Author(s):  
MEHMET UĞUR EKINCI
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Performance Practice ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Compositional Style ◽  
Scale Transformation ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Large Collection ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
New Evidence

AbstractThe Kevserî Mecmûası is an eighteenth-century Turkish manuscript, which includes, in addition to a variety of music-related contents, a fairly large collection of notations. Given the scarcity of notational sources, it offers invaluable material for understanding the performance practice and compositional style of Ottoman music before the nineteenth century. Having studied a hitherto unknown microfilm copy of this manuscript, the original of which has remained up to now in a private library and closed to our access, the author aims in this article to introduce this source and discuss its potential contribution to the knowledge of Ottoman music. The article is organised roughly in two parts. First, it will present briefly the contents of the manuscript, integrating new evidence and clues about its date, author and purpose into existing knowledge. Second, it will focus on the collection of notations in the manuscript, and by comparing it with the earlier collections will argue that, contrary to the prevailing views expressed in the literature, no large-scale transformation in the style of Ottoman music took place in the early eighteenth century.

Maxim Berezovsky C-dur symphony in a context of new biographical scenario of artist’s life-creativity

2018 ◽  
pp. 13-25
Author(s):  
Olha Shumilina
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Spiritual Direction ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis ◽  
Mental Modeling ◽  
Independent Work

Relevance of the study. The article studies recently found symphony of the prominent Ukrainian composer of the second half of the eighteenth century Maxim Berezovsky. He is widely known now as the author of cyclic spiritual concerts written for the Orthodox worship, and is practically unknown as a musician instrumentalist associated with the imperial theater and the court musical life. The work of M. Berezovsky as a secular musician determined the creative interest in composing instrumental music intended for secular chamber and orchestral music. Main objective of the article is a clarification of M.Berezovsky symphony as one of secular field artworks in the light of new summaries about artist’s life-creativity. Methodology. Taking into account peculiarities of the material and the analytical approach to its study, the methods of theoretical research have been chosen(abstraction, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, mental modeling, ascension from abstract to concrete, etc.). Conclusions. As a result of a study the symphony analysis in a context of new authentic statements about M.Berezovsky’s life-creativity. It was stated that this artwork was written not accidentally and detects absolute awareness of the artist in all composer’s niceties – how to build a topic and build a homophonic construction based on it, in a technique of orchestral construction, form creations of that time and etc. From the beginning of his creative career, M. Berezovsky was well aware of the possibilities of the orchestra as a performer, attached to the Italian opera and instrumental music. Symphony enriches our imagination about the works of M. Berezovsky in the field of secular instrumental and operatic music and extends the range of works of the artist beyond the spiritual direction. Some signs indicate that the Symphony was not an independent work, but an overture to the opera Demofont.

Maxim Berezovsky C-dur symphony in a context of new biographical scenario of artist’s life-creativity

2018 ◽  
pp. 13-25
Author(s):  
Olha Shumilina
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Spiritual Direction ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis ◽  
Mental Modeling ◽  
Independent Work

Relevance of the study. The article studies recently found symphony of the prominent Ukrainian composer of the second half of the eighteenth century Maxim Berezovsky. He is widely known now as the author of cyclic spiritual concerts written for the Orthodox worship, and is practically unknown as a musician instrumentalist associated with the imperial theater and the court musical life. The work of M. Berezovsky as a secular musician determined the creative interest in composing instrumental music intended for secular chamber and orchestral music. Main objective of the article is a clarification of M.Berezovsky symphony as one of secular field artworks in the light of new summaries about artist’s life-creativity. Methodology. Taking into account peculiarities of the material and the analytical approach to its study, the methods of theoretical research have been chosen(abstraction, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, mental modeling, ascension from abstract to concrete, etc.). Conclusions. As a result of a study the symphony analysis in a context of new authentic statements about M.Berezovsky’s life-creativity. It was stated that this artwork was written not accidentally and detects absolute awareness of the artist in all composer’s niceties – how to build a topic and build a homophonic construction based on it, in a technique of orchestral construction, form creations of that time and etc. From the beginning of his creative career, M. Berezovsky was well aware of the possibilities of the orchestra as a performer, attached to the Italian opera and instrumental music. Symphony enriches our imagination about the works of M. Berezovsky in the field of secular instrumental and operatic music and extends the range of works of the artist beyond the spiritual direction. Some signs indicate that the Symphony was not an independent work, but an overture to the opera Demofont.

The Age of Autonomy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Winter
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Disparities ◽  
Local Autonomy ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Southern Turkey ◽  
Leadership Structure ◽  
Landed Gentry ◽  
Tribal Leadership

This chapter follows the rise to power of the Shamsins, the Bayt al-Shillif, and associated ʻAlawi families as Ottoman tax concessionaries. It shows that their position of local autonomy, rather than having evolved out of some domestic or “tribal” leadership structure, resulted from a paradigm shift in Ottoman provincial administration as well as from a very favorable economic context, in particular the development of commercial tobacco farming in the northern highlands around Latakia. If the eighteenth century witnessed the emergence of a veritable Ottoman–ʻAlawi landed gentry, it also saw increasing social disparities lead to large-scale emigration away from the highlands toward the coastal and inland plains as well as toward the Hatay district of what is today southern Turkey.

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