Reverie, Schmaltz, and the Modernist Imagination

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-363
Author(s):  
Alexandra Kieffer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Stephane Mallarme ◽  
Literary Style ◽  
French Music ◽  
Trace Back ◽  
Harmonic Language

Abstract In a review of 1895, Henry Gauthier-Villars described Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune as “musique de rêve,” a descriptor that has been attached to Debussy’s style ever since. Partly because of the importance of the Prélude within his compositional development, the distinctive sound of Debussy’s “dream music” has often been understood as a response to the hermetic and difficult literary style of French Symbolists, especially that of Stéphane Mallarmé. Yet Gauthier-Villars’s appellation of “musique de rêve” also invoked a specifically sonic (and largely forgotten) set of cultural reference points, an aural backdrop crucial for understanding Debussy’s early style in the 1880s and early 1890s—the widespread cultivation of the topos of reverie in French music in the final two decades of the nineteenth century. Settings of Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Mallarmé by Debussy and his young contemporaries around 1890 were infused with signifiers of dream and reverie that trace back to salon genres of the 1870s and that cross-pollinated with the harmonic language of the newly fashionable valse lente in the early 1880s. Hearing Debussy’s early works in the context of this reverie topos and its aural kinship to the popular valse lente sheds light on the extent to which the radical idiosyncrasy so vaunted by modernists was constantly evolving in tandem with—and could never truly free itself from—an aural culture defined by mass production, repetition, and cliché.

Machines, Markets, and Labor: The Carriage and Wagon Industry in Late-Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati

1977 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 308-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward P. Duggan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Manufacturing Industries ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Innovative Process ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Important Center ◽  
Fuel Costs

Students of the innovative process in American manufacturing have emphasized the scarcity of labor and the consequent need for labor-saving machines. In the late nineteenth century one of the country's largest manufacturing industries was the production of carriages, which, in its most important center, Cincinnati, was organized on a mass production basis. But Professor Duggan finds that problems of the quantity and quality of labor were secondary in carriage factories, compared to other factors such as fuel costs, factory space, and the need to stabilize the quality and price of vehicles marketed by the industry as a whole.

scholarly journals The Music of Power:

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 685-734 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Everist
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Music Drama ◽  
French Music ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Stage Music ◽  
Opera Houses

Music for the stage has always been embedded in a network of power relationships between states, impresarios, librettists, artists, entrepreneurs, and composers. This article seeks to understand and explain how these relationships functioned in the period when French music drama was subject to a system of licenses, 1806–64. At the center of the inquiry are institutional structures and their relationship to those responsible for both the creation and the cultivation of stage music in the period. They explain the context for the cultural agents and products not only of the main opera houses in nineteenth-century Paris—the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique, and the Théâtre-Italien—but also of the host of smaller, shorter-lived institutions that supported and promoted opera during the period.

Music, Bacchus, and Freedom

2018 ◽  
pp. 160-176
Author(s):  
Hedy Law
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
World View ◽  
The Body ◽  
Music Drama ◽  
French Music ◽  
Birth Of Tragedy ◽  
Symphonic Music ◽  
Freedom Of Action

Nietzsche points out in The Birth of Tragedy (1872, rev. 1886) that modern Dionysiac music began with Beethoven’s symphonic music and matured in Wagner’s music drama. Yet his account fails to explain a convention of Bacchus in pre-nineteenth-century music. This chapter provides a corrective by explaining the relationships among music, Bacchus, and freedom in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French music. With the use of Euripides’s Bacchae, the section “Bacchus and Pentheus” in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Nietzsche’s essay “The Dionysian World View,” this article relates the themes of musical deviance and political defiance, liberation and destruction, and orgy and regeneration to the ideas of positive and negative freedoms as well as freedom of action and freedom of motion. This article thus contextualizes d’Alembert’s De la liberté de la musique of 1759 by arguing that representations of Bacchus enable music and the body to construct freedom as an embodied concept.

scholarly journals About compositions for piano and orchestra by Ch.-M. Widor. Background

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 45-60
Author(s):  
O.V. Burel
Keyword(s):  
General Context ◽  
Piano Concerto ◽  
Violin Concerto ◽  
French Music ◽  
Terra Incognita ◽  
Development Section ◽  
Harmonic Language ◽  
Romantic Music ◽  
History Of ◽  
Concert Halls

Ch.-M. Widor (1844–1937) inscribed his name in the history of French music primarily as an author of organ works (10 Organ Symphonies, 1872–1900, in particular). But other genre branches of his creativity (symphonic, chamber-instrumental, chamber-vocal, operatic, choral) remains less famous for wide public. This quite vast layer is mostly not studied in musical science. However, at the recent time the interest is somewhat growing both among musicologists (A. Thomson, E. Krivitskaya, M. R. Bundy), and among the performers, which confi rms the relevance of this article. The objectives of this study are to consider compositions by Ch.-M. Widor (Piano Concerto No.1, Fantasy, Piano Concerto No.2) both in terms of features of individual creator style and context of concert branch history in France. Information about works is supplemented by the analysis of the basic musical text parameters. Ch.-M. Widor graduated the Brussels Conservatory, where he was studied from 1859 to 1863 – in classes of organ (J.-N. Lemmens) and composition (F.-J. Fetis). At 1860s, the young man was visiting Paris. Soon he was acquainted with C. Saint-Saens, which infl uenced Ch.-M. Widor not only in terms of his executive career turn, but also was etalon of instrumental writing. It seems that the writing of instrumental Concertos for violin (ор. 26, 1877), cello (ор. 41, 1877), and piano (ор. 39, 1876) in many ways is owed by C.Saint-Saens and the impulse to French music of the 1870s given by him. Piano Concerto No.1 f-moll by Ch.-M.Widor was well appreciated by the contemporaries of the composer. In fi rst movement (Allegro con fuoco) the active narrative is combining with predominantly lyrical mood. It passes in constant pulsation without any whimsical tempo deviations, as well as without cadenza using. Contemplative and philosophical meditations are concentrated at the second movement (Andante religioso). The exposition of ideas is embodied in oppositions of characters, concentrated and depth in front of light and joyous. By the way, a little similar can be found in Andante sostenuto quasi adagio of Piano Concerto No.1 (published in 1875) by C. Saint-Saens. The cycle is crowned with a lively scherzo fi nal with elegant dotted rhythm using. On the whole we can say that the Piano Сoncerto No.1 by Ch.-M. Widor purposefully continues the traditions of C. Saint-Saens. This is noticeable in the clarity of the structure, emphatic melody, and also in some specifi c features – the avoidance of long-term solo cadenzas and the absence of expanded orchestra tutti’s, as well as the laconicism of development section at the fi rst movement. Echoes of F. Liszt and C. Franck can be heard in Fantasy As-dur op. 62 for piano and orchestra (1889, dedicated to I. Philipp). Ch.-M. Widor shows interest in this genre type as many other French authors at 1880–1890s. In work there are many counterpoint and variation elements, which is due to author’s mastery of organ-polifonic writing. In our opinion, eclectic combinations of the main subject in the spirit of F. Liszt – R. Wagner with oriental saucy theme at the end of composition are quite in the style of C. Saint-Saens. Piano Concerto No.2 c-moll (1905) is standing out with its clear attachment to the late-romantic line. It is somewhat out of the general context of genre existence in France, especially when comparing with signifi cantly more traditional Piano Concertos by B. Godard (No.2, 1894), C. Saint-Saens (No.5, 1896), T. Dubois (No.2, 1897), A. Gedalge (1899), J. Massenet (1902). This manifests itself in appeal to fateful gloomy spirit, abundance of dark paints in the sound, the complication of the tonal-harmonic language, increased expressivity, psychologization. Here are found more fi ne-tooth application of timbre orchestral potential (in comparison with the Piano Concerto No.1), as well as increasing of orchestra importance upon the whole. This is paradoxical, but its performing tradition has developed not in the best way, so that nowadays this remarkable work is very rarely heard at concert halls. In our time, the author’s creativity is a real terra incognita that encompasses a lot of hidden masterpieces. Results of the research bring to light that examined works by composer are outstanding illustrations of French romantic music. Ch.-M. Widor is an example of original talent that continues the late Romanticism line in France at the end of 19th and fi rst third of the 20th century, together with other authors – L. Vierne, V. d’Indy, A. Magnard, F. Schmitt. His works for piano and orchestra quite deserve to become on a par with recognized masterpieces, included in the concert repertoire of pianists and orchestras by different countries of the world. The perspectives of the further research are defi ned in more detailed analytical labors, including the extension of analysis over Violin Concerto op. 26 and Cello Concerto op. 41 by author. The learning of these works will allow to complement the history of the concert genre of French Romanticism with new details, that will enable to see the evidence of succession and the vitality of traditions.

On Style in Victorian Fiction

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Literary Style ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
Prose Style ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Many

Some writers of the Victorian period, as well as more recent critics, have argued that the prose style of Victorian fiction aims to efface itself or that an absence of style may in itself represent the nineteenth-century ideal. This collection provides a major assessment of style in Victorian fiction and demonstrates that style - the language, techniques and artistry of prose - is inseparable from meaning and that it is through the many resources of style that the full compass of meaning makes itself known. Leading scholars in the field present an engaging assessment of major Victorian novelists, illustrating how productive and illuminating close attention to literary style can be. Collectively, they build a fresh and nuanced understanding of how style functioned in the literature of the nineteenth century, and propose that the fiction of this era demands we think about what style does, as much as what style is.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-206
Author(s):  
Gabriela A. Frei
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Maritime Law ◽  
State Practice ◽  
Sea Power

Custom, state practice, and codification provided important reference points for the legal framework governing international relations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Conclusion explores the shifts from custom to codification in international maritime law. It also outlines how Great Britain used international maritime law as an instrument in foreign policy to protect its economic and strategic interests as a sea power. This last chapter then discusses how international maritime law in turn affected visions of future warfare. Great Britain’s neutrality policy, and in particular the Foreign Enlistment Act, shaped the country’s state practice in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the conclusion discusses the importance of state practice in foreign policy at the time.

“The Frog’s Courtship” and Other Sources

Sweet Thing ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 79-134
Author(s):  
Nicholas Stoia
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Harmonic Language ◽  
Major Branch ◽  
Textual Content

The stanzaic form of “The Frog’s Courtship” represents a second major branch in the lineage of the “Sweet Thing” scheme. Chapter 2 concerns its progress from Elizabethan England all the way to late nineteenth-century ragtime and early twentieth-century blues and country music. The stanzaic form appears in the United States by the early nineteenth century and then largely disappears from print until reemerging in several songs collected by folklorists in the early twentieth century, demonstrating its strong endurance in oral tradition. More often than “Captain Kidd,” this second stanzaic form appears in extensively abbreviated versions, reflecting its oral mode of transmission, which allows for more flexibility in length of bars. In early ragtime, the form unites with the harmonic language of contemporaneous popular music and acquires melodic and textual content that subsequently imbues early blues and country music as pervasive elements of the twentieth-century “Sweet Thing” scheme.

Epistolary Liveness: Narrative Presence and the Victorian Actress in Letters

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Eriks Cline
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
General Tendency ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Literary Style ◽  
Nineteenth Century Novels ◽  
Print Market

In an influential essay on the place of autobiography in theatre history, Thomas Postlewait puts Fanny Kemble's memoirs at the crux of a historiographical problem. The literary sensibility of Kemble's work appears to Postlewait an instance of both the theatrical memoir's cultural richness and its limitations as biographical evidence: although Kemble's “epistolary mode of self-representation” gives her autobiography Records of a Girlhood “a documentary quality,” for example, even her “earliest letters reveal a calculated literary style” that signals her awareness of the “traits and conventions” of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels. In her consciousness of narrative trends, Kemble stands out as a particularly clear example of a general tendency in theatrical autobiographies of the period. As the nineteenth century's booming print market expanded the audience for stories about theatregoing, it also drew readers who were increasingly familiar with novelistic experiments in plotting, characterization, and point of view. This shared audience encouraged an exchange of discursive conventions across fictional and historical narratives, which makes memoirs a compelling but complicated source of historical data about nineteenth-century theatre. Indeed, the two-way influence between genres is so strong that Postlewait argues scholars “need to ask to what extent these autobiographies exist not only as historical records but as epistolary fictions.”

Mass Production Conquers the Pool: Firm Organization and the Nature of Competition in the Nineteenth Century

1995 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Levenstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Firm Organization ◽  
Chemical Company ◽  
Production Processes ◽  
Length Relationship ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Small Producers

This article uses the records of the Dow Chemical Company to analyze the role of distributors in facilitating collusion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It compares collusion in three closely related markets: salt, bromine, and bleach. Where national distributors with well-established reputations had facilitated the entry of small producers into integrated markets, distributors could also facilitate collusion. Mass-producing entrants, like Dow, joined collusive distribution arrangements while improving their innovative production processes. In the longer run, they integrated forward to escape the output restrictions and arms-length relationship with customers imposed by collusive agreements.

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