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Music aesthetics in late eighteenth-century Germany has always been problematic because there was no aesthetic theory to evaluate the enormous amount of high-quality instrumental music produced by composers like Haydn and Mozart. This book derives a practical aesthetic for German instrumental music during the late eighteenth century from a previously neglected source, reviews of printed instrumental works. At a time when the theory of mimesis dominated aesthetic thought, leaving sonatas and symphonies at the very bottom of the aesthetic hierarchy, a group of reviewers were quietly setting about the task of evaluating instrumental music on its own terms. The reviews document an intersection with trends in literature and philosophy, and reveal interest in criteria like genius, the expressive power of music, and the necessity of unity, several decades earlier than has previously been supposed.
In late eighteenth-century Vienna and the surrounding Habsburg territories, over 50 minor-key symphonies by at least 11 composers were written. These include some of the best-known works of the symphonic repertoire, such as Haydn's 'Farewell' Symphony and Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550. The driving energy, intense pathos and restlessness of these compositions demand close attention and participation from the listener, and pose urgent questions about meaning and interpretation. In response to these questions, The Viennese Minor-Key Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Mozart combines historical perspectives with recent developments in music analysis to shed new light on this distinctive part of the repertoire. Through an intertextual, analytical approach, author Matthew Riley treats the minor-key symphony as a subgenre of several strands, reconstructing the compositional world it occupied. His work enables signals to be understood, puts characteristic strategies in clear relief, and ultimately reveals the significance this music held for both composers and listeners of the time. Riley gives us a fresh picture of the familiar masterpieces of Haydn and Mozart, while also focusing on lesser known composers.
Whilst E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) is most widely known as the author of fantastic tales, he was also prolific as a music critic, productive as a composer, and active as a conductor. This book examines Hoffmann's aesthetic thought within the broader context of the history of ideas of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, and explores the relationship between his musical aesthetics and compositional practice. The first three chapters consider his ideas about creativity and aesthetic appreciation in relation to the thought of other German romantic theorists, discussing the central tenets of his musical aesthetic - the idea of a 'religion of art', of the composer as a 'genius', and the listener as a 'passive genius'. In particular the relationship between the multifaceted thought of Hoffmann and Friedrich Schleiermacher is explored, providing some insight into the way in which diverse intellectual traditions converged in early-nineteenth-century Germany. In the second half of the book, Hoffmann's dialectical view of music history and his conception of romantic opera are discussed in relation to his activities as a composer, with reference to his instrumental music and his two mature, large-scale operas, Aurora and Undine. The author also addresses broader issues pertaining to the ideological and historical significance of Hoffmann's musical and literary oeuvre.
The Enlightenment saw a critical engagement with the ancient idea that music carries certain powers - it heals and pacifies, civilizes and educates. Yet this interest in musical utility seems to conflict with larger notions of aesthetic autonomy that emerged at the same time. In Enlightenment Orpheus, Vanessa Agnew examines this apparent conflict, and provocatively questions the notion of an aesthetic-philosophical break between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Agnew persuasively connects the English traveler and music scholar Charles Burney with the ancient myth of Orpheus. She uses Burney as a guide through wide-ranging discussions of eighteenth-century musical travel, views on music's curative powers, interest in non-European music, and concerns about cultural identity. Arguing that what people said about music was central to some of the great Enlightenment debates surrounding such issues as human agency, cultural difference, and national identity, Agnew adds a new dimension to postcolonial studies, which has typically emphasized the literary and visual at the expense of the aural. She also demonstrates that these discussions must be viewed in context at the era's broad and well-entrenched transnational network, and emphasizes the importance of travel literature in generating knowledge at the time.A new and radically interdisciplinary approach to the question of the power of music - its aesthetic and historical interpretations and political uses - Enlightenment Orpheus will appeal to students and scholars in historical musicology, ethnomusicology, German studies, eighteenth-century history, and comparative studies.
This Companion provides an accessible and up-to-date introduction to the musical work and cultural world of Joseph Haydn. Readers will gain an understanding of the changing social, cultural, and political spheres in which Haydn studied, worked, and nurtured his creative talent. Distinguished contributors provide chapters on Haydn and his contemporaries, his working environments in Eisenstadt and Eszterháza, and humor and exoticism in Haydn's oeuvre. Chapters on the reception of his music explore keyboard performance practices, Haydn's posthumous reputation, sound recordings and images of his symphonies. The book also surveys the major genres in which Haydn wrote, including symphonies, string quartets, keyboard sonatas and trios, sacred music, miscellaneous vocal genres, and operas composed for Eszterháza and London.
Since antiquity, philosophers and engineers have tried to take life’s measure by reproducing it. Aiming to reenact Creation, at least in part, these experimenters have hoped to understand the links between body and spirit, matter and mind, mechanism and consciousness. Genesis Redux examines moments from this centuries-long experimental tradition: efforts to simulate life in machinery, to synthesize life out of material parts, and to understand living beings by comparison with inanimate mechanisms. Jessica Riskin collects seventeen essays from distinguished scholars in several fields. These studies offer an unexpected and far-reaching result: attempts to create artificial life have rarely been driven by an impulse to reduce life and mind to machinery. On the contrary, designers of synthetic creatures have generally assumed a role for something nonmechanical. The history of artificial life is thus also a history of theories of soul and intellect. Taking a historical approach to a modern quandary, Genesis Redux is essential reading for historians and philosophers of science and technology, scientists and engineers working in artificial life and intelligence, and anyone engaged in evaluating these world-changing projects.
A new wave of scholarship inspired by the ways the writers and musicians of the long nineteenth century themselves approached the relationship between music and words.
Felix Mendelssohn has long been viewed as one of the most historically minded composers in western music. This book explores the conceptions of time, memory and history found in his instrumental compositions, presenting an intriguing new perspective on his ever-popular music. Focusing on Mendelssohn's innovative development of cyclic form, Taylor investigates how the composer was influenced by the aesthetic and philosophical movements of the period. This is of key importance not only for reconsideration of Mendelssohn's work and its position in nineteenth-century culture, but also more generally concerning the relationship between music, time and subjectivity. One of very few detailed accounts of Mendelssohn's music, the study presents a new and provocative reading of the meaning of the composer's work by connecting it to wider cultural and philosophical ideas.