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.

The Earliness of Mahler’s Late Romanticism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Summerfield
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Friedrich Schlegel ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Organic Fragment ◽  
The Way

The music of late Mahler recurrently features an elision of the traditional deceptive and perfect cadence progressions into a V–VI–I progression: a ‘deceptive perfect cadence.’ The way this progression is used in Mahler’s music can be related to Mahler’s descriptions of how musical works should be constructed, particularly his insistence on development, evolution, and the avoidance of clearly delineated boundaries. Schoenberg’s description of the use of the deceptive cadence to introduce a digression provides the basis for an alternative to descriptions of Mahler’s musical techniques, particularly those relating to closure or cadential practice, which concentrate on modernistic juxtapositions or the subversion of classical techniques. Instead, I will show how Mahler’s ‘digressive’ musical language relates to nineteenth-century conceptions of the organic fragment which reach back to the aesthetics of early romantics such as Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel.

Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Prevailing View ◽  
The Way

At a time when the Union between Scotland and England is once again under the spotlight, Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland examines the way in which Scotland’s national heroes were once remembered as champions of both Scottish and British patriotism. Whereas 19th-century Scotland is popularly depicted as a mire of sentimental Jacobitism and kow-towing unionism, this book shows how Scotland’s national heroes were once the embodiment of a consistent, expressive and robust view of Scottish nationality. Whether celebrating the legacy of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, the reformer John Knox, the Covenanters, 19th-century Scots rooted their national heroes in a Presbyterian and unionist view of Scotland’s past. Examined through the prism of commemoration, this book uncovers collective memories of Scotland’s past entirely opposed to 21st-century assumptions of medieval proto-nationalism and Calvinist misery. Detailed studies of 19th-century commemoration of Scotland’s national heroes Uncovers an all but forgotten interpretation of these ‘great Scots’ Shines a new light on the mindset of nineteenth-century Scottish national identity as being comfortably Scottish and British Overturns the prevailing view of Victorian Scottishness as parochial, sentimental tartanry

Pater's Parerga: Framing the Imaginary Portraits

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-135
Author(s):  
Giles Whiteley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Liminal Space ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Similar Operation ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Relationship

Walter Pater's late-nineteenth-century literary genre of the imaginary portrait has received relatively little critical attention. Conceived of as something of a continuum between his role as an art critic and his fictional pursuits, this essay probes the liminal space of the imaginary portraits, focusing on the role of the parergon, or frame, in his portraits. Guided by Pater's reading of Kant, who distinguishes between the work (ergon) and that which lies outside of the work (the parergon), between inside and outside, and contextualised alongside the analysis of Derrida, who shows how such distinctions have always already deconstructed themselves, I demonstrate a similar operation at work in the portraits. By closely analysing the parerga of two of Pater's portraits, ‘Duke Carl of Rosenmold’ (1887) and ‘Apollo in Picardy’ (1893), focusing on his partial quotation of Goethe in the former, and his playful autocitation and impersonation of Heine in the latter, I argue that Pater's parerga seek to destabilise the relationship between text and context so that the parerga do not lie outside the text but are implicated throughout in their reading, changing the portraits constitutively. As such, the formal structure of the parergon in Pater's portraits is also a theoretical fulcrum in his aesthetic criticism and marks that space where the limits of, and distinctions between, art and life become blurred.

A Distinction No Longer of Use: Evolutionary Discourse and the Disappearance of the Trope/Figure Binarism

1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley Sharon-Zisser
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Common Part ◽  
The Way

Abstract: The concem with progress and utility is shared by nineteenth-century scientists, philosophers, and rhetoricians, leading to significant correspondences among their discourses. This concern is manifest, for example, in the way in which several rhetorical treatises of the nineteenth century regard the distinction between a figure and a trope, which had been a common part of rhetorical theory since the time of Quintilian, as useless and anachronistic. By examining three nineteenth-century articulations of the justifications for erasing the trope/figure distinction from the cultural repertoire, this essay reveals structural and semantic parallels between these rhetorical treatises and the discourses of evolution and utilitarianism. Thus, the essay locates the source of the synonymity which the terms “trope” and “figure” have acquired in contemporary critical metalanguage in Victorian ideologies of progress and of the unprofitability and consequent discardability of the ancient.

Ч. АЙТМАТОВДУН «ТООЛОР КУЛАГАНДА» РОМАНЫНДАГЫ ПЕЙЗАЖДЫК СҮРӨТТӨӨЛӨР

2020 ◽  
pp. 92-94
Author(s):  
Н. Алтыкеева ◽  
Б. Ниясалиева
Keyword(s):  
Full Moon ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Additional Tool ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Aesthetic Values

Аннотация. Макалада романдын мазмунунан орун алган пейзаждык сүрөттөөлөр талкууланат. Пейзаждык сүрөттөөлөр чыгарманын көркөмдүүлүгүн, эстетикалык баалуулугун арттыруу менен катар эле каармандардын образын тереңден ачып берүүдө, окуялардын өнүгүп-өсүшү жана алдыда боло турган окуялар тууралуу окурманга маалымат берүүдө кошумча каражат катары колдонулат. Жазуучу романда пейзаждык сүрөттөөлөрдү өтө кылдат колдонгону байкалат. Алсак, тоо адамдагы улуулук жана бийиктикти айгинелейт, толукшуган ай жан- дүйнөнүн бөксөрбөй толуп турушун көрсөтөт, ачык асмандын алай-дүлөй түшкөн көрүнүшкө айланышы - каармандын ички сезими, уйгу-туйгу ойлонуусу, жан дүйнөсүнүн бурганак болушун ачып көрсөтүүдө маанилүү болсо, чабалекейлердин тынымсыз учуп чабалакташы, жан алакетке түшүп чыйпылдашы – алдыда боло турган кырсыктуу окуя тууралуу кабар берсе, согуштун апааты жашыл шибердин, бак-дарактардын күлгө айланышы, чымчык-куштардын күздү күтпөй кайдадыр учуп кетип жатышы менен түшүндүрүлөт. Tүйүндүү сөздөр: пейзаж. роман, идея, легенда, эпилог, каарман, негизги окуялар. Аннотация. В статье дается пейзажное описание. Пейзажное описание используется в произведении как дополнительное средство эстетических ценностей и помогает раскрыть образы героев, и действия произведения. Писатель в романе тонко использует пейзажное описание. Например горы возвышенное и самое ценное в человеке, а полная луна – счастливое душевное состояние человека, а превращение безоблачного неба в бущующий вид – указывает, как неспокойно в душе главного героя, его беспокойные мысли, как бушует его внутренний мир, а ласточки неспокойно летающие, предвещают несчастье, птицы улетающие раньше времени, превращение зелёной травы, деревьев в пепел предвещают ужасы войны. Ключевые слова: пейзаж. роман, идея, легенда, эпилог, герой, главное событие Annotation. The article discusses the landscape description. The landscape description is used in the work as an additional tool for aesthetic values and helps to reveal the images of heroes, and in the development of the action of the work/ The writer in the novel subtly uses the landscape description. The mountains are the sublime and the most valuable in a person, and the full moon is a happy state of mind of a person, and the transformation of a cloudless sky into a raging view indicates how restless the soul of the protagonist is, his restless thoughts. How his inner world is raging, and the swallows are restlessly flying, foreshadow the misfortune, the birds flying away ahead of time, the transformation of green grass, trees in the forehead the horrors of war. This article describes the idea of the story "Do not kill" which is given instead of the epilogue in the novel "When the mountains fall" which was written by Ch.Aitmatov. It considers the role of a story that calls to live in peace and to end wars that are occurring in the world. Keywords: Landscapе, novel, idea, legend, epilogue, hero, main event.

The Well-Mannered Auditor

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Deaville
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
The Self ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Drawing Room ◽  
The Way

The chapter explores the way English-language etiquette books from the nineteenth century prescribe accepted behavior for upwardly mobile members of the bourgeoisie. This advice extended to social events known today as “salons” that were conducted in the domestic drawing room or parlor, where guests would perform musical selections for the enjoyment of other guests. The audience for such informal music making was expected to listen attentively, in keeping with the (self-) disciplining of the bourgeois body that such regulations represented in the nineteenth century. Yet even as the modern world became noisier and aurally more confusing, so, too, did contemporary social events, which led authors to become stricter in their disciplining of the audience at these drawing room performances. Nevertheless, hosts and guests could not avoid the growing “crisis of attention” pervading this mode of entertainment, which would lead to the modern habit of inattentive listening.

Questioning territories and identities in the precolonial (nineteenth-century) Lake Kivu region

Africa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-515
Author(s):  
Gillian Mathys
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Lake Kivu ◽  
Territorial Claims ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

AbstractThroughout Africa, contemporary boundaries are deemed ‘artificial’ because they were external impositions breaking apart supposedly homogeneous ethnic units. This article argues that the problem with the colonial borders was not only that they arbitrarily dissected African societies with European interests in mind, but also that they profoundly changed the way in which territoriality and authority functioned in this region, and therefore they affected identity. The presumption that territories could be constructed in which ‘culture’ and ‘political power’ neatly coincided was influenced by European ideas about space and identity, and privileged the perceptions and territorial claims of those ruling the most powerful centres in the nineteenth century. Thus, this article questions assumptions that continue to influence contemporary views of the Lake Kivu region. It shows that local understandings of the relationship between space and identity differed fundamentally from state-centred perspectives, whether in precolonial centralized states or colonial states.

Is God Really in History?

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-390
Author(s):  
Frederick Sontag
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
As If ◽  
The Way

For some time it seemed as if Christianity itself required us to say that ‘God is in history’. Of course, even to speak of ‘history’ is to reveal a bias for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century forms of thought. But the justification for talking about the Christian God in this way is the doctrine of the incarnation. The centre of the Christian claim is that Jesus is God's representation in history, although we need not go all the way to a full trinitarian interpretation of the relationship between God and Jesus. Thus, the issue is not so much whether God can appear or has appeared within, or entered into, human life as it is a question of what categories we use to represent this. To what degree is God related to the sphere of human events? Whatever our answer, we need periodically to re-examine the way we speak about God to be sure the forms we use have not become misleading.

Anna Karenina: The Dialectic of Prophecy

PMLA ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-282
Author(s):  
David H. Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moby Dick ◽  
Anna Karenina ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Way

One of the most impressive features of Anna Karenina is the way in which Tolstoy draws the reader's imagination beyond the literal level of the narrative into generalizations that seem mythical in a manner difficult to articulate. With Dostoevsky or Melville, one sees immediately a propensity for exploiting the symbolic value of things. With Tolstoy, things try, as it were, to resist conversion: they strive to maintain their “thingness” as empirical entities. A character in Dostoevsky is usually only half man; the other half is Christ or Satan. Moby Dick is obviously only half whale; the other half is Evil or some principle of Nature. But Anna Karenina is emphatically Anna Karenina. Like almost all of Tolstoy's characters, she has a proficiency in the husbandry of identity; she jealously hoards her own unique reality, so that it becomes difficult to say of her that she is a “type” of nineteenth-century Russian lady or a “symbol” of modern woman or an “archetypical” Eve or Lilith.

What the Climber Saw: Strauss's Alpensinfonie and the Romantic Tradition of Nature Representation

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
David Larkin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Tone Poem ◽  
Peak Response ◽  
Landscape Features ◽  
Musical Compositions ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Romantic Era ◽  
The Relationship

Initially criticized for its naïve representation of landscape features, Strauss's Alpensinfonie (1915) has in recent years been reinterpreted by scholars as a deliberate challenge to metaphysics, a late outgrowth of the composer's fascination with Nietzsche. As a consequence, the relationship between Strauss's tone poem and earlier artworks remains underexplored. Strauss in fact relied heavily on long-established tropes of representing mountain scenes, and when this work is situated against a backdrop of similarly themed Romantic paintings, literature, travelogues and musical compositions, many points of resemblance emerge. In this article, I focus on how human responses to mountains are portrayed within artworks. Romantic-era reactions were by no means univocal: mountains elicited overtly religious exhalations, atheistic refutations of all supernatural connections, pantheistic nature-worship, and also artworks which engaged with nature purely in an immanent fashion. Strauss uses a range of strategies to distinguish the climber from the changing scenery he traverses. The ascent in the first half of Eine Alpensinfonie focuses on a virtuoso rendition of landscape in sound, interleaved with suggestions as to the emotional reactions of the protagonist. This immanent perspective on nature would accord well with Strauss's declared atheism. In the climber's response to the sublime experience of the peak, however, I argue that there are marked similarities to the pantheistic divinization of nature such as was espoused by the likes of Goethe, whom Strauss admired enormously. And while Strauss's was an avowedly godless perspective, I will argue in the final section of the article that he casts the climber's post-peak response to the sublime encounter in a parareligious light that again has romantic precedents. There are intimations of romantic transcendence in the latter part of the work, even if these evaporate as the tone poem, and the entire nineteenth-century German instrumental tradition it concludes, fades away into silence.

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