Four-Hand Piano Transcription and Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Musical Reception

1999 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Christensen

Throughout the nineteenth century, massive quantities of four-hand piano transcriptions were published of virtually every musical genre. Indeed, no other medium before the advent of the radio and phonograph was arguably so important for the dissemination and iterability of concert and chamber repertories. Yet such transcriptions proved to be anything but innocent vehicles of translation. Not only did these four-hand arrangements offer simplified facsimiles of most orchestral works blanched of their instrumental timbres (a result that was often compared to the many reproductive engravings and black-and-white lithographs of artworks that were churned out by publishers at the same time); such arrangements also destabilized traditional musical divisions between symphonic and chamber genres, professional and amateur music cultures, and even repertories gendered as masculine and feminine. By bringing music intended for the public sphere of the concert hall, opera house, and salon into the domestic space of the bourgeois home parlor, the four-hand transcription profoundly altered the generic identity and consequent reception of musical works.

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Mulcahy

AbstractAccounts of the interface between law, gender and modernity have tended to stress the many ways in which women experienced the metropolis differently from men in the nineteenth century. Considerable attention has been paid to the notion of separate spheres and to the ways in which the public realm came to be closely associated with the masculine worlds of productive labour, politics, law and public service. Much art of the period draws our attention to the symbiotic relationship between representations of gender and prevailing notions of their place. Drawing on well known depictions of women onlookers in the trial in fine art, this essay by Linda Mulcahy explores the ways in which this genre contributed to the disciplining of women in the public sphere and encouraged them to go no further than the margins of the law court.


2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carson Seabourn Webb

AbstractToday the term “enthusiasm” signifies little more than innocuous excitement. During the Enlightenment, however, the term was abuzz with pejorative innuendos of sub-humanity, the many nuances of which were debated in the public sphere. Its significance was more sting than substance, however, and by the middle of the nineteenth century Kierkegaard could complain that the category of enthusiasm had become hopelessly unclear. Despite this, based on The Book on Adler and on three texts in which Kierkegaard uses Socrates as a prototype of enthusiasm, I argue that Kierkegaard’s concept of enthusiasm places him in the lineage of earlier Enlightenment writers, such as Lessing, Shaftesbury, and Kant, whose conceptions and critiques of enthusiasm Kierkegaard was familiar with. By putting Kierkegaard’s use of the comic in The Book on Adler into conversation with Shaftesbury’s and Kant’s comedic remedies for enthusiasm, the extent to which Kierkegaard is an inheritor of and detractor from this tradition becomes evident


2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Calhoun

In this article I ask (1) whether the ways in which the early bourgeois public sphere was structured—precisely by exclusion—are instructive for considering its later development, (2) how a consideration of the social foundations of public life calls into question abstract formulations of it as an escape from social determination into a realm of discursive reason, (3) to what extent “counterpublics” may offer useful accommodations to failures of larger public spheres without necessarily becoming completely attractive alternatives, and (4) to what extent considering the organization of the public sphere as a field might prove helpful in analyzing differentiated publics, rather than thinking of them simply as parallel but each based on discrete conditions. These considerations are informed by an account of the way that the public sphere developed as a concrete ideal and an object of struggle in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Britain.


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 106-128
Author(s):  
Ruth Hemstad

“The campaign with ink instead of blood”: Manuscripts, print and the war of opinion in the Scandinavian public sphere, 1801–1814Handwritten pamphlets circulated to a high extend as part of the war of opinion which went on in the Norwegian-Swedish borderland around 1814. This ‘campaign with ink instead of blood’, as Danish writers soon characterized this detested activity, was a vital part of the Swedish policy of conquering Norway from Denmark through the means of propaganda. This ‘secret war of opinion’, as it was described in 1803, culminated around 1814, when Sweden accomplished its long-term goal of forming a union with Norway. In this article I am concerned with the role and scope of handwritten letters, actively distributed as pamphlets as part of the Swedish monitoring activities in the borderland, especially in the period 1812 to 1813. These manuscripts were integrated parts of the manifold of publications circulating within a common, although conflict oriented Scandinavian public sphere in the making at this time. The duplication and distribution of handwritten pamphlets, and the interaction with printed material, as Danish counter pamphlets quoting and discussing these manuscripts, illustrates that manuscripts remained important at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They coexisted and interacted with printed material of different kinds, and have to be taken into consideration when studying the public sphere and the print culture in this period.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sardella

In 1798, William Curtis published the sixth and last volume of Flora Londinensis, a beautifully coloured catalogue of over 400 plants that grew in London and in its nearby fields. Less than 300 copies were sold, and while the book was considered scientifically important, it was a financial failure (Field 106). Firstly, Flora Londinensis was prohibitively expensive because of its coloured plates, and secondly, the many illustrations of wild grasses and common plants included in the book failed to interest an audience outside of a small group of medical doctors and aristocratic hobby-botanists. The project, however, was not a complete failure for Curtis. While publishing Flora Londinensis, Curtis launched a considerably more successful, similarly formatted periodical for a slightly broader audience called Botanical Magazine. Botanical Magazine featured coloured plates of newly discovered exotic plants that satisfied the tastes of the public. It was published in thin issues containing only three plates each, and at a price of one shilling per monthly issue, Botanical Magazine was affordable enough for more readers to justify paying for the magazine’s exciting, colourfully illustrated content.


Author(s):  
Bongani C Ndhlovu

This chapter analyses the influence of the state in shaping museum narratives, especially in a liberated society such as South Africa. It argues that while the notion of social cohesion and nation building is an ideal that many South African museums should strive for, the technocratisation of museum processes has to a degree led to a disregard of the public sphere as a space of open engagement. Secondly, the chapter also looks at the net-effect of museums professionals and boards in the development of their narrative. It argues that due to the nature of their expertise and interests, and the focus on their areas of specialisation, museums may hardly claim to be representative of the many voices they ought to represent. As such, the chapter explores contestations in museum spaces. It partly does so by exploring the notion “free-spokenness” and its limits in museum spaces. To amplify its argument, the chapter uses some exhibitions that generated critical engagements from Iziko Museums of South Africa.


Author(s):  
Zachery A. Fry

The introduction offers context for the experiences of Union soldiers by examining mid-nineteenth century political culture. During the war itself, officers and men engaged in a spirited and highly publicized debate over the meaning of loyalty. Republicans came to identify true loyalty as obedience to the wartime measures of the Lincoln administration and vigorous engagement in the public sphere, while Democrats proclaimed loyalty to the Constitution and the cultural norms of an anti-partisan military.


2021 ◽  
pp. 145-161
Author(s):  
Paula Castro ◽  
Sonia Brondi ◽  
Alberta Contarello

This chapter discusses how social psychology can offer theoretical contributions for a better understanding of the relations between the institutional and public spheres and how this may impact change in ecological matters. First, it introduces the difference between natural and agreed—or chosen—limits to human action and draws on Sophocles’s Antigone to illustrate this and discuss how legitimacy has roots in the many heterogeneous values of the public sphere/consensual universe, while legality arises from the institutional/reified sphere. Recalling some empirical research in the area of social studies of sustainability, it then shows how a social representations perspective can help us understand the dynamic and interdependent relations between the institutional or reified sphere and the consensual or common sense universe—and their implications for social change and continuity.


Author(s):  
Mary s. Trent

Grown men do not play with paper dolls; or, at least, they are not supposed to. Nevertheless, self-taught Chicago artist Henry Darger (1892–1973) worked over many decades to create an elaborate fictional world. This chapter examines a series of collage-paintings that Darger like created at mid-century to consider the significance of paper dolls to his art. It argues that domestic space and girlish crafts offered Darger opportunities for creative expression that were otherwise inaccessible to him in the public sphere due to his designation as a sexually degenerate man. In the privacy of his apartment, away from society’s judgments, Darger offered an alternative to the restrictive sexual norms of his time by celebrating ambiguously gendered children.


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