Theory and Practice in Late Nineteenth-Century Violin Performance

On 10th April 1902 a sometime landscape artist and self-educated musical antiquarian took his seat in the Drill Hall at Kendal in Westmorland. Frank Kidson, an acknowledged authority on the subject, had been invited there to judge the first ever Folk-Song Competition. In introducing his guest the general adjudicator ‘could only say Mr Kidson was a walking encyclopoedia on these things’.The perceived need for a characteristically English art music bestowed considerable significance on folk-song, for both theory and practice in continental Europe suggested that such material comprised the essential ingredient of any such national music. To contextualise the importance of Kidson's task this article begins by briefly examining the condition of music in England in the late nineteenth century before considering the requirements to be made of this as yet largely untapped national resource.

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The Symbolist aesthetic and the impact of occult and esoteric ideologies on modern art

Approaching Religion ◽

10.30664/ar.66685 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 31-47

Author(s):

Marja Lahelma

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Fairy Tales ◽

Theory And Practice ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

The World ◽

Aesthetic Attitude ◽

Value Judgements ◽

Late Nineteenth ◽

Increasing Demand ◽

The Impact

Within the past couple of decades, art-historical scholarship has developed a more acute awareness of the need to reassess and re-evaluate its dominant narratives. It has become apparent that the value judgements that have guided modernist historiography can no longer be taken for granted, and there has been an ever-increasing demand for more diverse perspectives. One central issue which has gradually surfaced into broader consciousness, is the impact of occult and esoteric ideas on artistic theories and practices since the late nineteenth century. This article looks into the background of this phenomenon, locating a point of culmination in the new Symbolist direction of art that emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century. The aim is to demonstrate that central Symbolist principles, such as inwardness, intuition, and dematerialisation are linked with popular esoteric beliefs, and that the late nineteenth-century aesthetic theorisations of these issues have had significant effects on later artistic developments. The artists of this new movement were no longer satisfied with the old ‘window on the world’ paradigm. Instead of copying a tangible reality as it appeared to their eyes, they turned inward, towards the world of dreams, fantasies and nightmares, visions and hallucinations, ancient myths and fairy tales. But they were not merely looking for new kinds of subject matter in order to ‘shock the bourgeoisie’. The innovative aesthetic attitude that they developed in both theory and practice rested on a philosophical foundation that was deeply rooted in occult and esoteric ideologies and their quest for new directions and forms of expression in art was paralleled by an intensive religious searching.

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