Ernest Chausson's Viviane, “Déwagnérisation,” and the Problem of Descriptive Music

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-74
Author(s):  
Mark Seto
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Program Music ◽  
Symphonic Poem ◽  
Ernest Chausson ◽  
Magnum Opus

Ernest Chausson made two major aesthetic decisions in the mid-1880s: he resolved to “dewagnerize” himself and declared that he would no longer write program music. These developments were coeval with Chausson's revisions of Viviane (composed 1882–83, revised 1887 and 1893), a symphonic poem that shares musical material and subject matter with the composer's magnum opus, Le Roi Arthus (1886–95). Drawing on unpublished sketches and manuscripts of Viviane, I trace how Chausson's evolving aesthetics manifested themselves in his revisions of the work. While he suppressed evidence of Wagnerian mimicry, the process of “dewagnerization” was equivocal; Viviane ultimately became more beholden to certain Wagnerian dramaturgical ideals. At the same time, Chausson brought Viviane more closely in line with sonata procedures, inviting the listener to appreciate the work on its purely sonic merits at a time when the composer was becoming less sympathetic to the idea of “descriptive music.” I conclude by discussing the connections between Viviane and Le Roi Arthus and exploring how Chausson's reuse of material from the symphonic poem sheds light on issues of influence and signification in the opera.

Smetana and Shakespeare

Musicalia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 57-80
Author(s):  
Olga Mojzísová
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Symphonic Poem ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Twelfth Night ◽  
Piano Composition

Abstract This study deals with Bedrich Smetanas encounters with the legacy of William Shakespeare. The introduction is devoted to Smetana’s participation at the celebration of Shakespeare’s 300th birthday in 1864, at which he took part in the organization and dramaturgy as a conductor and a composer. The next part deals with the possible sources of Smetana’s knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays, followed by compositions inspired by specific dramas. It describes the circumstances of the genesis of the symphonic poem Richard III and of the piano composition Macbeth and Smetana’s conception of those works’ subject matter in relation to the shift of his artistic orientation towards programme music during his stay in Sweden. Above all, on the basis of their exchanged correspondence, the study then examines the ups and downs of Smetana’s relationship with the Eliska Krásnohorská and the composer’s unfinished opera Viola based on Twelfth Night.

Bohemian Rhapsodist: Antonín Dvořák's Píseň bohatýrská and the Historiography of Czech Music

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Campo-Bowen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Program Music ◽  
Symphonic Poem ◽  
Tone Poems ◽  
Czech Music ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Discourses

Standard histories of Antonín Dvořák's life have largely ignored his output in the field of the symphonic poem, especially his final work in the genre, Píseň bohatýrská (Heroic Song). Composed in 1897 after four other tone poems explicitly based on poems by the Czech writer and ethnographer Karel Jaromír Erben, this piece features a much more abstract program and depicts the life, travails, and ultimate victory of a Slavonic bardic hero, assumed by many to be the composer himself. It premiered in late 1898 and early 1899 in Vienna and Prague, respectively, inviting mostly favorable reviews and performances in many other European cities before sliding into obscurity after the turn of the twentieth century. I situate Píseň bohatýrská in both the context of Dvořák's larger output and the critical discourses of the late nineteenth century, using it as a focal point to examine not only Dvořák's mythologized image as a composer at the fin de siècle, but the history of the symphonic poem, the politics of the Vienna-Prague critical axis, and the hardening of critical orthodoxy in the twentieth century. Through an in-depth study of Píseň bohatýrská's reception, I reveal a picture of Dvořák at once familiar and unfamiliar: as the naive, spontaneously creative absolute musician at odds, in the eyes of the critics, with the unfamiliar territory of the symphonic poem, and as a specifically Czech musician who was nevertheless placed in the same masculinized, Germanocentric composer-hero lineage of genius as Beethoven and Liszt. Nevertheless, the understanding of Dvořák as absolute Czech musician par excellence ultimately triumphed, weathering the assaults of his program music to survive into the present. This article provides a new understanding of the complexity of Dvořák's image near the end of his life, inviting a reconsideration of the composer.

Tiele On Religion

Numen ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-268
Author(s):  
Arie Molendijk
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Inner Core ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
New Science ◽  
Psychological Phenomenon ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
Science Of Religion ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis essay explores C.P. Tiele's concept of religion. After a sketch of his place in early Dutch science of religion (I), an outline is given of the main theme in Tiele's discussion of religion — the relationship between outside ("dogma and ritual") and inside ("inner conviction") (II). The most voluminous part of the essay (III) elaborates on this topic by giving a detailed analysis of Tiele's Gifford Lectures. The structure of this magnum opus is unravelled, which enables one to better discern the different angels from which Tiele approached his subject matter. The metaphor of outside manifestations, which reveal the inner core, enabled him to locate religion "in the inmost depths of our souls". He claims that religion is ultimately a psychological phenomenon; its essence is "piety". We owe this insight to the new science of religion, which also shows that the religious need is the "mightiest" and most profound of all human needs.

F. Max Muller and a. B. Keith: "Twaddle", the "Stupid" Myth, and the Disease of Indology

Numen ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herman Tull
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
The West ◽  
Critical Editions ◽  
Max Müller ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
Editio Princeps ◽  
Curious Feature

AbstractDespite the recent scrutinization of the history of Indology (under the guise of its parent Orientalism), Indology in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the period when scholars in the West completed the first serious assessment of the Veda, remains largely unexplored. This period's legacy-dictionaries, critical editions, grammars, translations, and even academic chairs-remains the backbone of Vedic studies to this day. The nature of Indology during this period is reflected with special clarity in the work of F. Max Müller and A. B. Keith. Müller's editio princeps of the Rgvedasamhitā, and Keith's magnum opus, The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads, represent the beginning and end points of Indology-with its peculiar emphasis on the Vedic texts-during this period. Müller and Keith are also exemplars of what is perhaps the most curious feature of Indology in the latter half of the nineteenth century, namely, the often begrudging marriage of German and British scholarship. The discomfort that arose from this alliance was sharpened by the subject matter itself, India, into what might be termed the disease (appropriating Müller's term) of Indology. This disease, which combined alternating phases of awe and revulsion toward the Indian tradition, can be seen in the approach Indologists of the last century took to the Vedic texts; by representing the earliest portions of the Vedic tradition as belonging to their own glorified past, they separated it (and further affirmed their appropriation of it) from the later Hindu (beginning with its representation in the Brāhmana-texts) tradition-a tradition they characterized, and abandoned, as nothing more than "twaddle" and "stupid" myths.

The Use of Midrash in Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed: Decoding the Duality of the Text

AJS Review ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-60
Author(s):  
James A. Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
The People ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
Legal Constraints ◽  
Guide Of The Perplexed

In the introduction to his philosophical magnum opus, the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides provides us with a rationale for the composition of this work as well as instructions for the targeted reader on how to decipher its elusive and enigmatic style. Such devices as contradiction, diffuse and seemingly discordant treatment of subject matter, and deliberate ruses are employed to accommodate both halakhic legal constraints on the overt teaching of physics and metaphysics and the wide intellectual disparity of his potential readers. The sensitive nature of the topics to be explored demands an unorthodox pedagogy that both illuminates and conceals, allowing entrance to the qualified few while excluding those who cannot cope with the intellectual rigors involved. Rabbinic stricture prohibits revealing anything more of the Account of the Chariot (metaphysics) than chapter headings, and therefore Maimonides cautions, “my purpose is that the truths be glimpsed and then again be concealed so as not to oppose that divine purpose which has concealed from the vulgar among the people those truths requisite for His apprehension.”

Words

PMLA ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1320-1327
Author(s):  
Colbert Searles
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Assistant Professor ◽  
The Subject

THE germ of that which follows came into being many years ago in the days of my youth as a university instructor and assistant professor. It was generated by the then quite outspoken attitude of colleagues in the “exact sciences”; the sciences of which the subject-matter can be exactly weighed and measured and the force of its movements mathematically demonstrated. They assured us that the study of languages and literature had little or nothing scientific about it because: “It had no domain of concrete fact in which to work.” Ergo, the scientific spirit was theirs by a stroke of “efficacious grace” as it were. Ours was at best only a kind of “sufficient grace,” pleasant and even necessary to have, but which could, by no means ensure a reception among the elected.

Program Music

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Kregor
Keyword(s):  
Program Music
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