Hear My Desire: Rachmaninov’s Orphic Voice and Musicology’s Trouble with Eurydice

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 187-216
Author(s):  
Truman See
Keyword(s):  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Symphonic Poem ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Concert Hall ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
The Dead

Stigmatized as kitsch, the music of Rachmaninov has largely been neglected by scholars. A reassessment has been made possible by recent historiography on late imperial Russia documenting the intelligentsia’s search for a messianic musician-bard, a role that several of Rachmaninov’s pre-revolutionary works take up, but not in the terms expected of them. Heard in relation to the Orpheus myth often invoked at the time, to the contemporaneous prevalence of psychoanalysis, and to the formal affinities between early modernist orchestral music and the unconscious, the music both assumes unforeseen significance and offers the possibility of a counterstatement to current musicological concerns with embodiment and presence. Amid these debates, Rachmaninov’s symphonic poem, Isle of the Dead (1909), emerges as an unexpectedly subversive work that sounds the futility of fin-de-siècle Russian utopianism while giving voice to an alternative, anti-metaphysical ethics. Meanwhile, the music points to a clandestine violence governing much of musicology’s ongoing fascination with the “drastic.” The resulting critique leads to the proposal of a reparative musicology capable of giving a sympathetic account of the cultural work of public mourning that Rachmaninov’s music performs in the concert hall today.

FIN DE SIÈCLE, MODERNISM, MULTIPLE MODERNITIES AND DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THEM IN THE RUSSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-96
Author(s):  
VERA USTYUGOVA
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Modern Style ◽  
Western Historiography

The paper covers the discussions about the Modern Style and Modernity in the Russian historiography. The terms Modern Style, Modern Style Culture, Fin de siecle determine the turn of XIX-XX centuries, while the concept of Fin de siècle is quite popular in the Western historiography. As for the term "Belle Époque" is concerned it is less common in the Western historiography. The theory of multiple modernities raises the question of autonomy of the social institutions' evolution and the development of the cultural and symbolic area, including in the late-Imperial Russia. The combination of westernization and Empire modernization triggered different sociocultural trends: Empire construction was the primary imperative for some, while others voted for the reforms bringing together Russia and European modernity models, and the revolutionary westernization served to be the third force. It is seen to be quite reasonable to distinguish the rationalization and traditionalism in a modernized society, including in the art. Modernism which re-interprets all previous basics of the arts and has its purpose "to be" rather than "to mean" comes from philosophical, scientific, social, and political prerequisites.

scholarly journals Kryzys powieści, powieść kryzysu. Projekt wyjścia z „naturalistycznego impasu” w powieści Là-Bas Jorisa-Karla Huysmansa

1970 ◽  
pp. 231-248
Author(s):  
Karol Krzyżosiak
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Transformation ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Literary Naturalism ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Key Aspects

This article attempts to reconstruct the key aspects of the criticism of literary naturalism present in J. K. Huysmans’ 1891 novel Là-Bas. The analysis is based on the opening dialogues of the characters and the following aesthetic considerations which appear to express not only the creative and spiritual transformation of the author himself, but also the ambience of anti-positivist turn of fin de siècle which, entering modernity, tries to free itself from the reductionist frames of naturalism and reveals an increasing interest towards the unconscious.

scholarly journals The Male Dan at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

Prism ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-88
Author(s):  
Jie Guo
Keyword(s):  
Critical Role ◽  
First Century ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstract Reading the Taiwanese author Wu Jiwen's 1996 novel Fin-de-siècle Boylove Reader (Shijimo shaonian’ai duben), this essay considers the age-old figure of the male dan and the critical role it played in the emerging gay scene in the Sinophone world at the turn of the twenty-first century. Based on the Qing author Chen Sen's novel Precious Mirror for the Appreciation of Flowers (Pinhua baojian), Wu's version resorts to the figure of the male dan, often referred to as xianggong, to explore male same-sex intimacies, which were gaining increasing visibility in the 1990s Sinophone world. While scholars generally agree that the male dan in Wu's novel bears considerable resemblance to the figure of the contemporary gay man, some read the ending of Wu's novel, where the two protagonists, Mei Ziyu and Du Qinyan, part ways, as representing a compromise. I contend that this “unhappy ending” points to Wu's most radical departure from Chen's novel. The original novel's ending, where Ziyu lives happily ever after with both his wife and Qinyan, reaffirms the centrality of the “polygamous” patron-patronized relationship in the late imperial imagination of male-male relations. In contrast, the failed relationship between Ziyu and Qinyan in Wu's version points to the obsoleteness of the xiangong system, as well as the polygamous mode in the 1990s, which required new modes, categories, and symbols for the imagination of male same-sex relationships. Arguing that in this novel forces past and present, local and global converge, the author uses it to explore the larger question of how to approach the queer Sinophone.

‘Striptease’ as Ideology

2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Steven Huebner
Keyword(s):  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Symphonic Poem ◽  
Ground Plan ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Variation Sets ◽  
Structural Levels ◽  
Insight Into

Vincent d'Indy's Istar (1897), a set of variations for orchestra, commands attention for its unusual ground plan: the variations proceed from complex textures to simple ones. Analysis reveals how certain melodic and harmonic details unfold at larger structural levels. Istar's symmetries and organic construction are set in the context not only of previous variation sets but also of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, a symphonic poem of similar dimensions that was premiered shortly before d'Indy composed his piece. Resemblances between the two works suggest that d'Indy may have intended Istar as a response to Debussy. Juxtaposition of Debussy and d'Indy provides insight into the different connotations of modernity at the fin de siècle. Istar's programme and compositional strategies reflect d'Indy's firm historicism and commitment to tradition. Yet the work was received as experimental and daring in its day. In its materials Istar paradoxically illustrates a ‘backward progression’: its stylistic allusions move backward in time, yet the tonal direction aims forward towards the concluding tonic. Such idiosyncrasies provide insight into d'Indy's aesthetics and ideology, which sought to conflate commitment to progress with adherence to Faith.

Liberal Reason and the Culture of the Sommerfrische

2007 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
Deborah R. Coen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
General Public ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
History Of

Fin-de-siècle Vienna continues to supply historians and the general public alike with a paradigm of the modernist subversion of rationality. From the birth of the unconscious, to the artistic expression of feral sexuality, to the surge of populist politics, Vienna 1900 stands as the turning point when a nineteenth-century ideal of rationality gave way to a twentieth-century fascination with subjectivity. In fact, we know little as yet about what rationality really meant to those to whom we attribute its undoing. Allan Janik writes that today the “‘big’ questions about Viennese culture” center on “just how ‘rational’ developments there have been,” and to answer these questions, Janik argues, we need research on the history of natural science in Austria. Indeed, as Steven Beller notes, the topic of science has been “strangely absent” from the animated discussions of fin-de-siècle Vienna over the past three decades.

Beauty Raises the Dead: Literature and Loss in the Fin de Siecle

2004 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Carol Siegel ◽  
Robert Ziegler ◽  
Darryl Hattenhauer
Keyword(s):  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
The Dead

Beauty Raises the Dead. Literature and Loss in the Fin de Siècle

2001 ◽  
Vol 92 (4) ◽  
pp. 514-517
Author(s):  
Brian O’Keeffe
Keyword(s):  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
The Dead

Prostitutes, Trauma, and (Auto-)Biographical Narratives: Revisiting Brahms at the Fin de Siècle

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-248
Author(s):  
Laurie McManus
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Johannes Brahms ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Childhood Experience ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Fin De Siècle

Unlike Wagner, Mahler, or Schoenberg, Johannes Brahms is often absent from discussions of Viennese fin-de-siècle psychological theories and their intersections with musical culture. The privileged context depicting an aging Brahms resistant to new trends in politics and the arts discourages the notion that he would have known and been influenced by any such developments in the developing field of psychology or psychological arts. As a case study exploring Brahms’s potential engagement in these areas, this article reexamines the contested “legend” of Brahms playing piano in dive bars as an adolescent, not to determine its veracity, but in part to reveal how this motif functions in two different narrative models of Brahms biographies to about 1933. In the first model, the composer emerges spotless from the trials of a low-income childhood; in the second, however, he remains scarred by the unhealthy sexual climate of the bars. I argue that cultural-intellectual contexts in fin-de-siècle Vienna influenced Brahms’s attempts to shape his biographical narratives and that both models could have originated with Brahms himself. From Paolo Mantegazza’s sexology treatises to Hermann Bahr’s scandalous plays, the Viennese reading public was confronted with both scientific and literary material that conflated psychology, sexuality, and personal identity, while other artists such as Max Klinger sought to explore the unconscious motivations behind behaviors. In this context, we may reevaluate anecdotal evidence in which Brahms accords his adult problems to a traumatic childhood experience of playing piano in dangerous establishments: it suggests that Brahms could have taken part in fin-de-siècle trends of self-analysis and psychologized autobiography.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document