Medievalism and Nationalism in German Opera

Medievalism and Nationalism in German Opera PDF Author: Michael S. Richardson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135180636X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Medievalism, or the reception or interpretation of the Middle Ages, was a prominent aesthetic for German opera composers in the first half of the nineteenth century. A healthy competition to establish a Germanic operatic repertory arose at this time, and fascination with medieval times served a critical role in shaping the desire for a unified national and cultural identity. Using operas by Weber, Schubert, Marshner, Wagner, and Schumann as case studies, Richardson investigates what historical information was available to German composers in their recreations of medieval music, and whether or not such information had any demonstrable effect on their compositions. The significant role that nationalism played in the choice of medieval subject matter for opera is also examined, along with how audiences and critics responded to the medieval milieu of these works. In this book, readers will gain a clear understanding of the rise of German opera in the early nineteenth century and the cultural and historical context in which this occurred. This book will also provide insight on the reception of medieval history and medieval music in nineteenth-century Germany, and will demonstrate how medievalism and nationalism were mutually reinforcing phenomena at this time and place in history.

Medievalism and Nationalism in German Opera

Medievalism and Nationalism in German Opera PDF Author: Michael S. Richardson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135180636X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Get Book Here

Book Description
Medievalism, or the reception or interpretation of the Middle Ages, was a prominent aesthetic for German opera composers in the first half of the nineteenth century. A healthy competition to establish a Germanic operatic repertory arose at this time, and fascination with medieval times served a critical role in shaping the desire for a unified national and cultural identity. Using operas by Weber, Schubert, Marshner, Wagner, and Schumann as case studies, Richardson investigates what historical information was available to German composers in their recreations of medieval music, and whether or not such information had any demonstrable effect on their compositions. The significant role that nationalism played in the choice of medieval subject matter for opera is also examined, along with how audiences and critics responded to the medieval milieu of these works. In this book, readers will gain a clear understanding of the rise of German opera in the early nineteenth century and the cultural and historical context in which this occurred. This book will also provide insight on the reception of medieval history and medieval music in nineteenth-century Germany, and will demonstrate how medievalism and nationalism were mutually reinforcing phenomena at this time and place in history.

The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism

The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism PDF Author: Stephen C. Meyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190658460
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 844

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism provides a snapshot of the diverse ways in which medievalism--the retrospective immersion in the images, sounds, narratives, and ideologies of the European Middle Ages--powerfully transforms many of the varied musical traditions of the last two centuries. Thirty-three chapters from an international group of scholars explore topics ranging from the representation of the Middle Ages in nineteenth-century opera to medievalism in contemporary video game music, thereby connecting disparate musical forms across typical musicological boundaries of chronology and geography. While some chapters focus on key medievalist works such as Orff's Carmina Burana or Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, others explore medievalism in the oeuvre of a single composer (e.g. Richard Wagner or Arvo Pärt) or musical group (e.g. Led Zeppelin). The topics of the individual chapters include both well-known works such as John Boorman's film Excalibur and also less familiar examples such as Eduard Lalo's Le Roi d'Ys. The authors of the chapters approach their material from a wide array of disciplinary perspectives, including historical musicology, popular music studies, music theory, and film studies, examining the intersections of medievalism with nationalism, romanticism, ideology, nature, feminism, or spiritualism. Taken together, the contents of the Handbook develop new critical insights that venture outside traditional methodological constraints and provide a capstone and point of departure for future scholarship on music and medievalism.

The Freischütz Phenomenon: Opera As Cultural Mirror

The Freischütz Phenomenon: Opera As Cultural Mirror PDF Author: Donald G. Henderson
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1462867901
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Der Freischütz, a German opera composed by Carl Maria von Weber, premiered to great acclaim in 1821. It eventually became a “national treasure” in its homeland as well as an enduring fixture in the international repertory. Wilhelm Furtwängler, a renowned conductor of the twentieth century, proclaimed it to be an utterly unique opera and one of the greatest masterworks of world literature. The story is deeply rooted in German folklore. It involves rustic life in the forest, threatening supernatural machinations, strong communal bonds, and the triumph of love and simple faith over dark power. Der Freischütz is not a typical opera. There are two reasons for considering it to be a singular cultural phenomenon: (1) an extraordinary charisma in the Germanic sphere, and (2) a fateful vulnerability to alteration and exploitation in its long performance history, which undermined the opera’s integrity while refl ecting a wide range of ideas and attitudes in Western culture. The ultimate goal of this book is to restore the integrity of the original Freischütz and its depth of reference as well.

Correspondences

Correspondences PDF Author: T. A. Shippey
Publisher: DS Brewer
ISBN: 9781843840633
Category : Art, Medieval
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description


The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism

The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism PDF Author: Stephen C. Meyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190658452
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 736

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism provides a snapshot of the diverse ways in which medievalism--the retrospective immersion in the images, sounds, narratives, and ideologies of the European Middle Ages--powerfully transforms many of the varied musical traditions of the last two centuries. Thirty-three chapters from an international group of scholars explore topics ranging from the representation of the Middle Ages in nineteenth-century opera to medievalism in contemporary video game music, thereby connecting disparate musical forms across typical musicological boundaries of chronology and geography. While some chapters focus on key medievalist works such as Orff's Carmina Burana or Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, others explore medievalism in the oeuvre of a single composer (e.g. Richard Wagner or Arvo Pärt) or musical group (e.g. Led Zeppelin). The topics of the individual chapters include both well-known works such as John Boorman's film Excalibur and also less familiar examples such as Eduard Lalo's Le Roi d'Ys. The authors of the chapters approach their material from a wide array of disciplinary perspectives, including historical musicology, popular music studies, music theory, and film studies, examining the intersections of medievalism with nationalism, romanticism, ideology, nature, feminism, or spiritualism. Taken together, the contents of the Handbook develop new critical insights that venture outside traditional methodological constraints and provide a capstone and point of departure for future scholarship on music and medievalism.

The Idea Of Nationalism

The Idea Of Nationalism PDF Author: Hans Kohn
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412837294
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 794

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Book Description
In this sixtieth anniversary edition of The Idea of Nationalism, Craig Calhoun probes the work of Hans Kohn and the world that first brought prominence to this unparalleled defense of the national ideal in the modern West. At its publication, Saturday Review called it "an enduring and definitive treatise.... [Kohn] has written a book which is less a history of nationalism than it is a history of Western civilization from the standpoint of the national idea." This edition includes an extensive new introduction by Craig Calhoun, which in itself is a substantial contribution to the history of ideas. The Idea of Nationalism comprehensively analyzes the rise of nationalism, the idea's content, and its worldwide implications from the days of Hebrew and Greek antiquity to the eve of the French Revolution. As Calhoun explains, Kohn was particularly qualified to undertake this study. He grew up in Prague, the vigorous heart of Czech nationalism, participated in the Zionist student movement, studied the question of nationality in multinational cultures, spent the World War One years in Asian Russia, and later traveled extensively in the Near East studying the nationalist movements of western and southern Asia. The work itself is the product of Kohn's later years at Harvard University. In The Idea of Nationalism, Kohn presents the single most influential articulation of the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism. This has shaped nearly all ensuing research and public discussion and deeply informed parallel oppositions of early and late, Western and Eastern varieties of nationalism. Kohn also argues that the age of nationalism represents the first period of universal history. Civilizations and continents are brought into ever closer contact; popular participation in politics is enormously increased; and the secular state is ever more significant. The Idea of Nationalism is important both in itself and because it so deeply shaped all the work that followed it. After sixty years his interpretations and analyses remain acute and instructive.

Germany

Germany PDF Author: Marshall Dill
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472071012
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
A dominantly political and social approach to Germany's history through the centuries from its pre-Christian era to today.

Wagner

Wagner PDF Author: Paul Lawrence Rose
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300067453
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
It has long been acknowledged that Richard Wagner was a virulent antisemite, yet the composer has also been characterized as an idealistic revolutionary, and historians have puzzled over the paradox of these conflicting elements in his character. In this fascinating book, Paul Lawrence Rose argues that Wagner did not suddenly change from a progressive revolutionary into a reactionary racist; for him, as for many other Germans, the idea of revolution always contained a racial and antisemtic core. Rose approaches Wagner on varying levels so as to see him as he really was: he places Wagner within the context of mid-nineteenth-century German revolutionary culture; he studies the composer's whole range of theoretical and artistic works, tracing his career and the evolution of his thought; and he considers Wagner's personality and his personal relationships (especially with those Jews who considered themselves his friends). Rose demonstrates that Wagner's conversion to antisemitism dates not from 1850--the year in which his infamous essay Judaism in Music was published--but from his conflict with the Jewish composer Giacomo Meyerbeer three years earlier over the Berlin production of Rienze. This affects our understanding of the genesis of the Ring operas. In addition, Rose offers fresh and stimulating interpretations of Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger, and Parsifal, based on an analysis of their revolutionary and antisemitic elements.

History in Mighty Sounds

History in Mighty Sounds PDF Author: Barbara Eichner
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 1843837544
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
An indispensable study of nineteenth-century German music, history and nationalism. Music played a central role in the self-conception of middle-class Germans between the March Revolution of 1848 and the First World War. Although German music was widely held to be 'universal' and thus apolitical, it participated- like the other arts - in the historicist project of shaping the nation's future by calling on the national heritage. Compositions based on - often heavily mythologised - historical events and heroes, such as the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest or the medieval Emperor Barbarossa, invited individual as well as collective identification and brought alive a past that compared favourably with contemporary conditions. History in Mighty Sounds mapsout a varied picture of these 'invented traditions' and the manifold ideas of 'Germanness' to which they gave rise, exemplified through works by familiar composers like Max Bruch or Carl Reinecke as well as their nowadays little-known contemporaries. The whole gamut of musical genres, ranging from pre- and post-Wagnerian opera to popular choruses to symphonic poems, contributes to a novel view of the many ways in which national identities were constructed, shaped and celebrated in and through music. How did artists adapt historical or literary sources to their purpose, how did they negotiate the precarious balance of aesthetic autonomy and political relevance, and how did notions of gender, landscape and religion influence artistic choices? All musical works are placed within their broader historical and biographical contexts, with frequent nods to other arts and popular culture. History in Mighty Sounds will be indispensable reading for anyone interested in nineteenth-century German music, history and nationalism. Barbara Eichner is Senior Lecturer in Musicology at Oxford Brookes University.

Carl Maria Von Weber and the Search for a German Opera

Carl Maria Von Weber and the Search for a German Opera PDF Author: Stephen C. Meyer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780253101334
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Stephen C. Meyer details the intricate relationship between the operas Der Freischütz and Euryanthe, and the contemporary discourse about the 'Germany of the imagination' and the new nation itself. In doing so, he presents excerpts from a wide range of philosophical, political, and musical writings, many of which are little known and otherwise unavailable in English. Individual chapters trace the multidimensional concept of German and 'foreign' opera through the 19th century.