Narratives of Identity in Alban Berg's 'Lulu'

Narratives of Identity in Alban Berg's 'Lulu' PDF Author: Silvio J. dos Santos
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1580464831
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book explores the crossroads between autobiographical narratives and musical composition in Alban Berg's Lulu, unveiling aspects of encoded social customs, gender identity, and personal experiences within musical structures. Exploring the crossroads between autobiographical narrative and musical composition, this book examines Berg's transformation of Frank Wedekind's Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora -- the plays used in the formationof the libretto for Lulu -- according to notions of gender identity, social customs, and the aesthetics of modernity in the Vienna of the 1920s and 1930s. While Berg modernized several aspects of the plays and incorporatedserial techniques of composition from Arnold Schoenberg, he never let go of the idealistic Wagnerian perspectives of his youth. In fact, he went as far as reconfiguring aspects of Richard Wagner's life as an ideal identity to beplayed out in the compositional process. In composing the opera, Berg also reflected on the most important cultural figures in fin-de-siècle Vienna that affected his worldview, including Karl Kraus, Emil Lucka, Otto Weininger, andothers. Combining analysis of Berg's correspondence, numerous sketches for Lulu, and the finished work with interpretive models drawn from cultural studies and philosophy, this book elucidates the ways in which Berg grappled at the end of his life with his self-image as an "incorrigible romantic," and explains aspects of his musical language that have been considered strange or anomalous in Berg scholarship. Silvio J. dos Santos isassistant professor of musicology at the University of Florida.

Narratives of Identity in Alban Berg's 'Lulu'

Narratives of Identity in Alban Berg's 'Lulu' PDF Author: Silvio J. dos Santos
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1580464831
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores the crossroads between autobiographical narratives and musical composition in Alban Berg's Lulu, unveiling aspects of encoded social customs, gender identity, and personal experiences within musical structures. Exploring the crossroads between autobiographical narrative and musical composition, this book examines Berg's transformation of Frank Wedekind's Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora -- the plays used in the formationof the libretto for Lulu -- according to notions of gender identity, social customs, and the aesthetics of modernity in the Vienna of the 1920s and 1930s. While Berg modernized several aspects of the plays and incorporatedserial techniques of composition from Arnold Schoenberg, he never let go of the idealistic Wagnerian perspectives of his youth. In fact, he went as far as reconfiguring aspects of Richard Wagner's life as an ideal identity to beplayed out in the compositional process. In composing the opera, Berg also reflected on the most important cultural figures in fin-de-siècle Vienna that affected his worldview, including Karl Kraus, Emil Lucka, Otto Weininger, andothers. Combining analysis of Berg's correspondence, numerous sketches for Lulu, and the finished work with interpretive models drawn from cultural studies and philosophy, this book elucidates the ways in which Berg grappled at the end of his life with his self-image as an "incorrigible romantic," and explains aspects of his musical language that have been considered strange or anomalous in Berg scholarship. Silvio J. dos Santos isassistant professor of musicology at the University of Florida.

Art of Suppression

Art of Suppression PDF Author: Pamela M. Potter
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520957962
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
One thinks of the arts in Nazi Germany as struggling in an oppressive system, yet evidence has repeatedly shown that conditions were far more favourable than we assume. Potter conducts a historiography of Nazi arts, examining writings from the last seven decades to demonstrate how historical, moral, and intellectual conditions have sustained a distorted characterization of cultural life in the Third Reich. Showing how past research has revealed the decentralized nature of Nazi arts policies, Potter argues that the insulation of academic disciplines allowed outdated presumptions about Nazi micromanagement of the arts to persist.

Between Opera and Cinema

Between Opera and Cinema PDF Author: Jeongwon Joe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136534075
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Leading scholars of opera and film explore the many ways these two seemingly unrelated genres have come together from the silent-film era to today.

Ernst Krenek and the Politics of Musical Style

Ernst Krenek and the Politics of Musical Style PDF Author: Peter Tregear
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810882639
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
Ernst Krenek has been described as a “one-man history of twentieth-century music.” His vast compositional output encompasses many of its extremes and expresses many of its contradictions. Few have attempted, however, to contextualize Krenek’s compositional output because our understanding of classical music in the first half of the twentieth century still largely remains focused on the music of a few canonical figures. Responding to renewed interest from performers in Krenek’s work, particularly his operas, Peter Tregear’s Ernst Krenek and the Politics of Musical Style addresses this gap in the scholarly literature and makes an important contribution to our comprehension of the ways in which his music reflected and informed broader social and political debates in Austria and Germany at the time. Focusing on Krenek’s compositional path from the eclectic musical language of Jonny spielt auf to the austere twelve-tone technique of Karl V, Tregear provides an historical and critical context to this most historically significant period of Krenek’s creative life. His study also enriches our understanding of many of Krenek’s contemporaries, such as Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg. This book should interest students, scholars and practitioners with an interest in modern opera, and contemporary classical music as well as early-20th-century German history more generally.

Into the Groove

Into the Groove PDF Author: Andrew Wright Hurley
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1571139184
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
A new and wide-ranging view of the confluence, since the 1990s, of the fields of contemporary literature and popular music in Germany.

Reading Mahler

Reading Mahler PDF Author: Carl Niekerk
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 1571134670
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Examines literary, philosophical, and cultural influences on Mahler's thought and work from the standpoint of the composer's position in German-Jewish culture.

The Cambridge Companion to the Lied

The Cambridge Companion to the Lied PDF Author: James Parsons
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139826514
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 543

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Book Description
Beginning several generations before Schubert, the Lied first appears as domestic entertainment. In the century that follows it becomes one of the primary modes of music-making. By the time German song comes to its presumed conclusion with Richard Strauss's 1948 Vier letzte Lieder, this rich repertoire has moved beyond the home and keyboard accompaniment to the symphony hall. This is a 2004 introductory chronicle of this fascinating genre. In essays by eminent scholars, this Companion places the Lied in its full context - at once musical, literary, and cultural - with chapters devoted to focal composers as well as important issues, such as the way in which the Lied influenced other musical genres, its use as a musical commodity, and issues of performance. The volume is framed by a detailed chronology of German music and poetry from the late 1730s to the present and also contains a comprehensive bibliography.

The Composer As Intellectual

The Composer As Intellectual PDF Author: Jane F. Fulcher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195346580
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
In The Composer as Intellectual, musicologist Jane Fulcher reveals the extent to which leading French composers between the World Wars were not only aware of but also engaged intellectually and creatively with the central political and ideological issues of the period. Employing recent sociological and historical insights, she demonstrates the extent to which composers, particularly those in Paris since the Dreyfus Affair, considered themselves and were considered to be intellectuals, and interacted closely with intellectuals in other fields. Their consciousness raised by the First World War and the xenophobic nationalism of official culture, some joined parties or movements, allying themselves with and propagating different sets of cultural and political-social goals. Fulcher shows how these composers furthered their ideals through the specific language and means of their art, rejecting the dominant cultural exclusions or constraints of conservative postwar institutions and creatively translating their cultural values into terms of form and style. This was not only the case with Debussy in wartime, but with Ravel in the twenties, when he became a socialist and unequivocally refused to espouse a narrow, exclusionary nationalism. It was also the case with the group called "Les Six," who responded culturally in the twenties and then politically in the thirties, when most of them supported the programs of the Popular Front. Others could not be enthusiastic about the latter and, largely excluded from official culture, sought out more compatible movements or returned to the Catholic Church. Like many French Catholics, they faced the crisis of Catholicism in the thirties when the church not only supported Franco, but Mussolini's imperialistic aggression in Ethiopia. While Poulenc embraced traditional Catholicism, Messiaen turned to more progressive Catholic movements that embraced modern art and insisted that religion must cross national and racial boundaries. Fulcher demonstrates how closely music had become a field of clashing ideologies in this period. She shows also how certain French composers responded, and how their responses influenced specific aspects of their professional and stylistic development. She thus argues that, from this perspective, we can not only better understand specific aspects of the stylistic evolution of these composers, but also perceive the role that their art played in the ideological battles and in heightening cultural-political awareness of their time.

Masculinity in Opera

Masculinity in Opera PDF Author: Philip Purvis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136182152
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
This book addresses the ways in which masculinity is negotiated, constructed, represented, and problematized within operatic music and practice. Although the consideration of masculine ontology and epistemology has pervaded cultural and sociological studies since the late 1980s, and masculinity has been the focus of recent if sporadic musicological discussion, the relationship between masculinity and opera has so far escaped detailed critical scrutiny. Operating from a position of sympathy with feminist and queer approaches and the phallocentric tendencies they identify, this study offers a unique perspective on the cultural relativism of opera by focusing on the male operatic subject. Anchored by musical analysis or close readings of musical discourse, the contributions take an interdisciplinary approach by also engaging with theatre, popular music, and cultural musicology scholarship. The various musical, theoretical, and socio-political trajectories of the essays are historically dispersed from seventeenth to twentieth- first-century operatic works and practices, visiting masculinity and the operatic voice, the complication or refusal of essentialist notions of masculinity, and the operatic representation of the ‘crisis’ of masculinity. This volume will not only enliven the study of masculinity in opera, but be an appealing contribution to music scholars interested in gender, history, and new musicology.

Comparative Criticism: Volume 20, Philosophical Dialogues

Comparative Criticism: Volume 20, Philosophical Dialogues PDF Author: E. S. Shaffer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521622417
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Comparative Criticism is an annual journal of comparative literature and cultural studies that has gained an international reputation since its inception in 1979. It contains major articles on literary theory and criticism; on a wide range of comparative topics; and on interdisciplinary debates. It includes translations of literary, scholarly and critical works; substantial reviews of important books in the field; and bibliographies on specialist themes for the year, on individual writers, and on comparative literary studies in Britain and Ireland.