Articles by tag "19th century"
A. W. Ambros and F. P. G. Laurencin: Two Antiformalistic Views on the Viennese Musical Life of the 1870s?
In the 1870s, both August Wilhelm Ambros and Ferdinand Peter Graf Laurencin worked as reviewers of music in Vienna: Ambros had regularly been writing for the Wiener Zeitung since 1872, and Laurencin was, among other things, a Viennese correspondent for the newly established music journal Dalibor in Prague. The reviews...
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Hanslick, Kant, and the Origins of Vom Musikalisch-Schönen
Recent scholarship on musical aesthetics, notably in analytical philosophy of music, commonly identifies the main ideas of Eduard Hanslick’s Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (“On the Musically Beautiful”, 1854) with Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft (“Critique of the Power of Judgment”, 1790), due to an ostensibly equivalent concept of ‘strict’ aesthetic formalism. Hanslick’s aesthetics...
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Eduard Hanslick’s Vom Musikalisch-Schönen: Text, Contexts, and their Developmental Dimensions; towards a Dynamic View of Hanslick’s Aesthetics
This article deals with Eduard Hanslick’s aesthetic classic Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (“On the Musically Beautiful”), or VMS, regarding both the text itself and its most important contexts. We first give an overview of the history of relevant scholarship and relevant research perspectives and then sketch what we believe are the main...
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Heinrich Schenker’s Identities as a German and a Jew
During his lifetime the music theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935) was confronted with a variety of different cultures. After attending a Polish school in the eastern province of Galicia, he moved to Vienna, where he faced a cultural environment dominated by Catholicism, opening up for him, as a Jew, different options...
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From Historical Concerts to Monumental Editions: The Early Music Revivals at the Viennese International Exhibition of Music and Theater (1892)
This article investigates the genesis, programming patterns, and transnational impact of the series of early music concerts (Historische Concerte) performed on the occasion of the Viennese International Exhibition of Music and Theater of 1892. Guido Adler was the co-organizer of those concerts, and this article will focus on the impact...
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The Construction of Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century Serbia: The Case of the Musician Josif Schlesinger
This article explores the status of Josif Schlesinger (1794–1870), the first Serbian composer and professional musician in the court of Prince Miloš Obrenović (1780–1860), in the complex process of constructing Jewish identity in the web of Jewish legislation at the crossroads of the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. Schlesinger was singled...
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The Institutionalization of the Choral Movement in Nineteenth-Century Hungary
Male choirs established in a number of European countries following the German model transcended the framework of simple, self-organized singing in a relatively short period of time and grew into serious musical institutions. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the choral movement began to develop in Hungary as well,...
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Celebrating the Habsburgs in the Hungarian National Theater, 1837–67
The musical theater had a central intermediary role in the propagation of national consciousness throughout East-Central Europe in the nineteenth century, and so too in Hungary. The Pesti Magyar Színház (Pest Hungarian Theater) (which was renamed after 1840 to Magyar Nemzeti Színház [Hungarian National Theater]) had an identical repertoire to...
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“The Hand that Writes”: The Scriptorial Unfinishedness of the First Movement of Mahler’s Tenth
Since Theodor W. Adorno’s essay “Roman” (“Novel”), in his book Mahler: Eine Musikalische Physiognomik (Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy), it has become commonplace for scholars to study the narrativity of Gustav Mahler’s music. However, insufficient attention has been given to the analysis of narrativity within the compositional process, in light of...
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“The Foremost and Unrivalled Music Engraving Business in Austro-Hungary”: Josef Eberle (1845–1921), Printer, Publisher, and Manufacturer of Manuscript Paper
By the 1870s music printing and publishing in Austro-Hungary was under considerable competitive pressure from major firms based in Leipzig and elsewhere in Germany. Using more recent printing techniques (most notably printing from engraved plates by transfer lithography) and often a more integrated system of production, firms such as Breitkopf...
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Demythologizing the Genesis of the Hungarian National Anthem
Hungary’s state anthem is the musical setting of Ferenc Kölcsey’s 1823 poem Hymnus …, composed by Ferenc Erkel for a competition announced by the National Theater of Pest in 1844. With Erkel’s award-winning melody, the already well-known poem soon became a national prayer, sung throughout the country. Based on recently...
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From Historical Concerts to Monumental Editions: The Early Music Revivals at the Viennese International Exhibition of Music and Theater (1892)
This article investigates the genesis, programming patterns, and transnational impact of the series of early music concerts (Historische Concerte) performed on the occasion of the Viennese International Exhibition of Music and Theater of 1892. Guido Adler was the co-organizer of those concerts, and this article will focus on the impact...
read more
Celebrating the Habsburgs in the Hungarian National Theater, 1837–67
The musical theater had a central intermediary role in the propagation of national consciousness throughout East-Central Europe in the nineteenth century, and so too in Hungary. The Pesti Magyar Színház (Pest Hungarian Theater), which was renamed after 1840 to Magyar Nemzeti Színház (Hungarian National Theater), had an identical repertoire to...
read more
Demythologizing the Genesis of the Hungarian National Anthem
Hungary’s state anthem is the musical setting of Ferenc Kölcsey’s 1823 poem Hymnus …, composed by Ferenc Erkel for a competition announced by the National Theater of Pest in 1844. With Erkel’s award-winning melody, the already well-known poem soon became a national prayer, sung throughout the country. Based on recently...
read more
The Institutionalization of the Choral Movement in Nineteenth-Century Hungary
Male choirs established in a number of European countries following the German model transcended the framework of simple, self-organized singing in a relatively short period of time and grew into serious musical institutions. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the choral movement began to develop in Hungary as well,...
read more
The Construction of Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century Serbia: The Case of the Musician Josif Schlesinger
This article explores the status of Josif Schlesinger (1794–1870), the first Serbian composer and professional musician in the court of Prince Miloš Obrenović (1780–1860), in the complex process of constructing Jewish identity in the web of Jewish legislation at the crossroads of the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. Schlesinger was singled...
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In Search of a Lost Composition by Beethoven: The Equale in A-LId-49
It is well known that in 1812 Ludwig van Beethoven composed the Three Equali for Four Trombones (WoO 30) for the Linz Cathedral Kapellmeister Franz Xaver Glöggl. A letter from Glöggl to Robert Schumann, however, suggests that the composer originally composed four pieces. An examination of the autograph score of...
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Viennese Style in Viennese Waltzes: An Empirical Study of Timing in the Recordings of The Blue Danube
It is widely assumed that Viennese orchestras, especially the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (VPO), possess distinctive qualities in their performance of Viennese waltzes. This article sets out to provide empirical evidence of this hypothesis. Focusing on the parameter of timing, it analyzes the rhythm and tempo in 34 recordings of Johann...
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Carlo Ferdinando Lickl: The Life of a Nineteenth-Century Triestine Composer; a Case Study on Music History Construction in a Border Region of the Habsburg Empire
Focusing on Carlo Ferdinando Lickl (1803–64), a Viennese-born composer who shaped the musical life of Trieste as a pianist, educator, and composer from the 1830s until his death, this article develops four distinct perspectives on his life, each developed on a different model of historical construction. Comparing two national perspectives,...
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Spatializing Music Histor(iograph)y: Exhibiting Guido Adler’s Musico-Historical Model at the International Exhibition of Music and Drama, Vienna 1892
The International Exhibition of Music and Drama, Vienna 1892 was the only World’s Fair that was dedicated to exhibiting the development of music and drama history. The event’s conception follows the typical framework of nineteenth-century International Exhibitions. However, to a certain extent, Vienna 1892 was unique because of its attempt...
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František Palacký’s (Musical) Life with the “Aristocrats”: Private and Semi-Private Musical Sociability in Prague during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century
Drawing on private and public sources surrounding Countess Elise von Schlik (1792–1855) and František Palacký (1798–1876), this article explores music-cultural connections between the nobility and intellectually engaged middle class in Prague during the 1830s and 1840s. A consideration of them both together in one study sheds light on cross-societal links...
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“This the Czechs Can Teach Us”: National Conflict, Transnational Opera, and Imperial Politics at the 1892 International Exhibition of Music and Drama
This article explores how national conflicts were defined, negotiated, and resolved (or not) during the 1892 Vienna International Exhibition of Music and Drama. Through a combination of archival research and reception history, I analyze the various approaches to the organization of the exhibition, which institutionalized political formations in the structure...
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Spatializing Music Histor(iograph)y: Exhibiting Guido Adler’s Musico-Historical Model at the International Exhibition of Music and Drama, Vienna 1892
The International Exhibition of Music and Drama, Vienna 1892 was the only World’s Fair that was dedicated to exhibiting the development of music and drama history. The event’s conception follows the typical framework of nineteenth-century International Exhibitions. However, to a certain extent, Vienna 1892 was unique because of its attempt...
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Sonic Affinity and Aesthetic Metamorphosis: The Nineteenth Century as a Turning Point in the History of Musical Thought
The theory of sonic affinity posits that the action of soundscapes perceived since the formation of the ear in the prenatal period models the human musical brain, generating aesthetic profiles in mimetic processes integrated within evolutionary logic. Applied to the field of historical musicology, this allows the interpretation of the...
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