Showing papers in "Nineteenth-century music review in 2011"

Narrative Form and Mahler's Musical Thinking

Abstract: The close relationship between music and other art forms is a well-established feature of fin-de-siecle Vienna. Interdisciplinary study since the 1970s, of the relationship between literature and music, reflects among other things a recovery of nineteenth-century concerns. This article equates Mahler's development of symphonic form with a development of narrative form within his works, by linking three phases of his symphonic output with his literary interests. The first phase links the early symphonies with the early nineteenth-century author Jean Paul. His novel Titan provides the subtitle of Mahler's First Symphony, and correspondences can be discerned between the character of Albano, the hero of the novel, and Mahler at this stage of his career (1888). The opening of the Finale of the symphony shows narratological similarity to the opening of the final volume of the novel. The second phase links the middle-period instrumental symphonies with Dostoevsky, who became Mahler's greatest literary and moral hero. The Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Symphonies exhibit narrative structures different from those of the earlier symphonies; rather than ending with indivdualistic triumph, after the manner of Jean Paul, they pose the Dostoevskian question of whether some sort of redemption of their material is possible. The third phase links the late works with Mahler's contemporaries Robert Musil and Marcel Proust. In this context, the ending of Mahler's Ninth Symphony can be seen as a adaptation of musical narrativity analogous to the Modernist extension of the lengthy novels of these two authors.

Fragments of Old and New in ‘Der Abschied’

Abstract: Not the least remarkable feature of Das Lied von der Erde is its use of chromatic and pentatonic elements in a manner that renders them both distinct and yet homogenous, almost as though Mahler were anticipating Bartók in demonstrating the modernity of ancient scales when they came in collision with twentieth-century harmony. There have been several considerations of this phenomenon, none more interesting than Stephen Hefling's exploration of specific Eastern forms of pentatonicism (which again are oddly reminiscent of Bartók, at least in the analyses of Lendvai). Although he views the opening movement of Das Lied as the most fertile area for such study, ‘Der Abschied’ provides an equally compelling study in contrast and integration of ancient and modern. Partly this is a reflection of its extremely pared-down motivic material. Undoubtedly the heterophonic character of many passages also contributes to this effect. The conceptualization of the phenomenon by Adorno as a form of composed inauthenticity lays particular stress on the exotic but also stresses a curious hangover from the world of the New German School – the ‘Nature’ symphony, but bereft of all pomposity. To what extent 'Der Abschied' creates ‘Nature music’ from fragments of pentatonicism and traditional diatonicism, while stamping his own personality on the result through quite novel and seldom analyzed chromatic effects, is the subject of this article. How far his achievement was anticipated in his less illustrious predecessors and paralleled by such contemporaries as Wolf is also considered. Adorno's reading is qualified, by considering how far exoticism can be explained in terms of non-diatonic scales and how far Mahler's view of nature derives from a specifically Austrian tradition. Finally, consideration of this latter tradition is used to reconsider Mahler's role in the picture of ‘fin-de-siècle Vienna’, which in recent years has proved increasingly difficult to reconcile with Schorske's classic interpretation.

Classical Style, Childhood and Nostalgia in Mahler's Fourth Symphony

Abstract: According to the critical consensus on Gustav Mahler's Fourth Symphony, Mahler seems, through both his orchestration and musical material, to be evoking both the composers who preceded him and childhood. Many scholars have claimed to hear specific allusions in the first movement to pieces composed in a classical style, and Mahler's use of simple themes with ornamented melodies in the Fourth Symphony also seems to suggest a classical style.At the same time, however, most writers hear a disparity in the movement between Mahler's nominal late romantic compositional style and his use of simpler or more naive-sounding materials. Nostalgia – defined here as a simultaneous acknowledgment of and rebellion against the irreversibility of time – offers one way of examining Mahler's juxtaposition of traits of music from the past and present. Using nostalgia as a theoretical frame, we can examine how music might be able to suggest a relation between the past and present akin to memory.In the first movement, Mahler's late romantic treatment of ‘classical’ materials seems to depict an unsuccessful attempt to recapture an idealized past, and the fourth movement‘s depiction of heaven in childlike terms set predominantly in the style of a lullaby suggests the irretrievable – perhaps even non-existent – past in which the soothing tones of a mother's voice hold the promise of calming all worry.

Music Education in Nineteenth-Century Greece: Its Institutions and their Contribution to Urban Musical Life

Abstract: This article explores the music education of the Greek people in the nineteenth century, as revealed through the description of music education in Constantinople, Corfu and Athens.Before the establishment of the new state of Greece early in the nineteenth century, both Greeks and Europeans speak of ‘Greece’, referring to Greek communities beyond its borders. Music education in those communities consisted mainly of the music of the Greek Orthodox Church – applying a special notation, appropriate to its monophonic, unaccompanied chant – and Western music, and was characterized by the degree to which either culture prevailed. The antithesis of those music cultures was best represented, at least up to the 1850s, among the Greeks living in Constantinople – the seat of the Greek Orthodox Church – and Corfu of the Ionian Islands – where Italian music was assimilated. Athens was elected in 1834 as the capital of the Greek state because of its ancient monuments and did not attain the significance of a contemporary cultural centre before the 1870s. In Athens, these two musical cultures were absorbed and transformed through their confrontation and interaction. However, the new state's political orientation determined the predominance of Western music in music education in the capital.

The Breaking of the Voice

Abstract: Part I of this article explores instances in Mahler's symphonies where the composer allows the continuity of the musical voice to break and to fall temporarily into silence. It analyses these in terms of seven different categories or compositional strategies – violent strikes, abysmal silence, draining away/falling apart, drowning out, hyperintensity, fragmentation, and strained voices. Part II considers the wider context for this breaking of the voice in literary and philosophical self-critiques of language contemporary with Mahler's work, specifically Austro–German forms of Sprachkritik as in the work of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Fritz Mauthner, but also extending the parallel in less obvious directions to include Samuel Beckett. Taken together, the two parts of the article thus provide both evidence and historical context for a radical suggestion about Mahler's music, that at the heart of the symphonic is a constant threat of the aphonic – a complete loss of voice. While such moments are rare in Mahler, they might be read as extreme manifestations of the self-consciousness of language to which all his music is subject.

From Popular to Esoteric: Nikolaos Mantzaros and the Development of his Career as a Composer

Abstract: Nikolaos Halikiopoulos Mantzaros (1795–1872) was a noble from Corfu and is better known today as the composer of the Greek national anthem. However, recent research has proved his importance as a teacher and as one of the most learned composers of his generation, renowned, in Italy and France as well as Greece.The aim of this article is to present Mantzaros’ developing relationship as dilettante composer to the emerging European nineteenth-century music and aesthetics, as featured through his existing works and writings. In his early works (1815–27) Mantzaros demonstrates a remarkable creative assimilation of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century operatic idioms, whereas his aristocratic social status allowed him an eclectic relationship with music in general. From the late 1820s, Mantzaros also began setting Greek poetry to music, in this way offering a viable solution to the demand for ‘national music’.From the mid-1830s onwards, Mantzaros’ already existing interest in Romantic idealism was broadened, affecting his work and thoughts. He stopped composing opera-related works and demonstrated a dual attitude towards music. On the one hand he continued composing popular music for the needs of his social circle, but on the other he developed an esoteric creative relationship with music. The latter led him as early as the 1840s to denounce the ‘extremities of Romanticism’ and to seek the musical expression of the sublime through the creative use of ‘the noble art of counterpoint’. This way he attempted to propose a re-evaluation of nineteenth-century trends through an eclectic neoclassicism, without neglecting the importance of subjective inspiration and genius.

Harvey Sachs, The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824 (New York: Random House, 2010). 225pp. £12.99.

Abstract: the understanding of both a scholar and a performer. Less convincing are some of his speculations as to possible connections to other Western composers. Again, there is much that is very good in his discussion, but his claim, for example, of a relationship between bars 55–56 of ‘Paysage’ by Chabrier with ‘the first solo entry of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue’ needs further documentation. His connecting of the opening of Schumann’s Carnival with French overture (p. 159) also is problematic; not all dotted figures do a French overture make. If there is a causal connection between the two, it should be documented in the text. However, there are some excellent insights all through his discussion and on the whole, he does a fine job of putting the composers into historical context. Howat really shines in ‘Part 3: Fresh perspective’, and I found his analysis of the ‘Menuet’ from Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin to be especially compelling:

Programming Mahler: Meaning, Re-description, and the Post-Adornian Counterlife

Abstract: In this article Adorno’s approach to Mahler is subjected to linguistic-conceptual critique, in order to highlight its ambiguous philosophical and methodological syncretizing of discourses of epistemological commensurability and hermeneutic incommensurability. As a response to this and to Adorno’s privileging of authorial production as determinant of meaning, this study invokes Richard Rorty’s pragmatist philosophy and aspects of translation theory in order better to understand the world of post-Adornian Mahlerian meaning generated by use of the music in diverse screen works over the last half century. Examples of the ‘re-description’ of Mahler’s music resulting from such usage are discussed in relation to the tradition spawned by Visconti’s Death in Venice and in various contexts of appropriation, fragmentation and juxtaposition through which radical re-configurations of putative meaning take place.

Brahms: Sonatas nos.1 & 2, Scherzo op. 4; Alexander Melnikov, pf

Abstract: On the cover of a new compact disc from Harmonia Mundi, three names are listed: that of the composer, Johannes Brahms, that of the pianist, Alexander Melnikov, and that of the maker of the instrument used, Bösendorfer (along with the year 1875). The identification of the performer’s instrument of choice for this particular CD is an informative and bold statement. While it is not rare in the string world to highlight the instrument’s maker and year in programme notes or in personal biographies of performers, to do the same in the piano world is uncommon. Pianists may identify themselves with a specific maker (e.g. ‘Steinway Artist’ or ‘Yamaha Artist’), but to identify a specific instrument, as here, is unusual and worthy of note. The message is that Melnikov believes the instrument to be as significant as the repertoire performed. The result is a perspective that both addresses historically-informed performance practices and helps to distinguish, in the current market, what might otherwise be seen as yet another recording of Brahms’s piano music. On the matter of historical performance practices, Melnikov’s decision to record with a nineteenth-century Viennese piano is based on curiosity rather than creed. Melnikov’s liner notes make reference to research on both the performance styles and the pianos of Brahms’s period. These two areas of research have been fascinatingly rich and complex. Michael Musgrave has surveyed and analyzed numerous sound recordings from Brahms’s circle, including one by Brahms himself, and many by those who knew or had played for him.1 Musgrave concludes that there is no definitive performance style; instead, he describes the single commonality among the recordings as each having its own ‘individuality’ and ‘charm’.2 With respect to the pianos of Brahms and of Brahms’s period, conclusions about the composer’s preferences are equally hard to draw. In 2009, George S. Bozarth and Stephen H. Brady wrote a detailed and illuminating article showing that the rapid and dramatic development of the instrument during Brahms’s lifetime, and the variety of pianos he encountered as composer and pianist, do not suggest an ideal

Clementi: Piano Sonatas vol. 1 opp. 1, 2, 7, 8 and WO13; Piano Sonatas vol. 2 opp. 9, 10, 11 no. 1 and op. 12; Piano Sonatas vol. 3 opp. 13, 20, WO3, 23 and op. 24. Howard Shelley pf

Abstract: insight into the constructional details of each work. There can be no doubt that Danny Driver has the requisite technical ability to present these sonatas and, more than that, he gives us a carefully controlled and expressive interpretation of each work – finding the nuances of colour and harmony and using them to illuminate the music. His dedication to these sonatas is highly commendable and will, I’m sure, assist in the much needed reinstatement of Bowen as a composer to be again taken seriously. The recording quality is excellent, as one has come to expect from Hyperion and gives the performances great depth and clarity. Although there are undoubtedly flavours of Rachmaninoff, Chopin and other foreign composers, it is important to remember that Bowen was also a champion of English music andwould devote whole concerts to native works. A 1922 recital included works by Felix Swinstead, Paul Corder, Arnold Bax and John Ireland, as well as other contemporaries. Perhaps, if it is necessary to find influences, we should also consider the huge amount of diversity there was in the native music being written at the beginning of the twentieth century, particularly piano music. Hopefully, these recordings will provide encouragement for further exploration and a well-overdue reassessment of much neglected, but worthy, music.

Music in the Imaginary Worlds of the Greek Nation: Greek Art Music during the Nineteenth-Century's fin de siécle (1880s–1910s)

Abstract: This essay analyzes ways in which music becomes attached to the growing demand for national culture by the Greek middle class since the last decades of the nineteenth century.In modern Greece of that period, the predominant notions of ‘historic continuity’ and ‘Hellenism’, or ‘Greekness’, interpret Greek history as an uninterrupted evolution from the classical past to Byzantium. In terms of music, continuity was believed to be found from ancient Greek music to Byzantine hymns and folk songs. This theory, supported by important scholars and composers both in Greece and abroad, placed tradition in a privileged position both in composition and reception of music; composers incorporated rhythms, scales and the character of Greek folk songs and Byzantine hymns in their works and the middle-class audience was eager to accept folkloristic styles and the embodiment of tradition in art music because they reflected the notion of ‘national’. Musically, the theory of ‘historic continuity’ was strengthened by the links between German romanticism and attitudes to ancient culture. Moreover, German models, or the organic romantic perception of music, influenced representatives of the so-called National School of Music; the consequence was a growing alienation from Italian music in terms of offering aesthetic standards to composition and reception.

Jann Pasler, Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). xxii+794 pp. $60.00.

Abstract: following Nägeli, achieves a ‘higher artistic whole’, and perhaps some of its meaning remains ineffable. In the polyrhythm of text, voice, and piano each part can be appreciated in its own right; some elements of the text or music remain expressive within their respective domains without crossing over to another. This assumption is made explicit in Malin’s epilogue, ‘Song Analysis and Musical Pleasure’, when he, citing poet and critic John Ciardi, distinguishes between the ultimate unknowableness of exactly ‘what’ a poem or song means and the understandability and pleasure in discovery of just ‘how’ it means it.14

The Birth of Music Criticism in Greece: The Case of the Historian Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos

Abstract: The birth of music criticism in Greece is connected with the creation of the Greek state and the consequent reception of opera in Athens, its capital. In the newly formed Greek society, opera was not only considered as a cultural fact, but also as the principal symbol of the European lifestyle, which stood as a model for the new citizens of the European community. The young Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos, before becoming the principal founder of the Greek nationalist historiography, published a number of music reviews on the opera performances in Athens in 1840, eager to contribute to the musical cultivation of his compatriots. According to his opinion, opera, thanks to its aesthetic quality, but mainly because of its universal influence (which goes beyond nations and classes) was the appropriate means to ‘mould’ the musical taste of the Greek nation. Paparrigopoulos’ insistence on Italian opera as the vehicle which could introduce the Greeks to the musical profile of European civilization is significant for his ideas on the cultural identity of his nation. In these early writings of the future historian we can distinguish the main topics of his later theory.

Roy Howat, The Art of French Piano Music: Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, Chabrier (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2009). xvi+400pp. $45.00.

Abstract: and the fledgling discipline of harmonic analysis in the nineteenth century, with no significant omissions and only a few minor ones. There is no separate chapter on cadences, which are treated in Chapter 4 along with other harmonic progressions, harmonic function theory (Funktionstheorie), and scale-degree theory (Stufentheorie). In the opening chapter on chord identification, André’s system of geometric symbols for chord labelling is described (pp. 22–3), but unfortunately no visual example is provided. A strange omission from the bibliography is Damschroder’s own earlier and more detailed version of the last section of Chapter 3, ‘Schubert, Chromaticism, and the Ascending 5-6 Sequence’.5 The use of dashes versus hyphens to distinguish between horizontal and vertical collections of notes is too visually subtle, especially since much of the commentary regarding examples from primary sources is set in small type. Moreover, the beginning of Chapter 1, which immediately follows the explanation of symbols, uses three vertically stacked small capital letters to represent harmonic triads, which is both inconsistent and awkward on the page. As noted, however, the above caveats are fairly trivial. Thinking About Harmony is a useful resource that provides a clear understanding of the origins of many of the theoretical systems and analytical conventions now taken for granted. In addition, through the breadth of writers and perspectives it represents, the book demonstrates that our current systems of harmonic analysis are not necessary or essential, but represent only a few of multiple possible viewpoints. Damschroder has continued this project with similar studies focused on the music of particular composers: Harmony in Schubert (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Harmony in Haydn and Mozart (in preparation), and promised future volumes on Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann and Brahms and Liszt and Wagner. Teachers and scholars of analysis and the history of theory will surely find these to be likewise helpful and worthwhile contributions to the field.

R. Larry Todd, Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). xviii +426 pp. £30.00

Abstract: (p. 434). Perhaps we might also consider the collected works of Fehn, Hallmark, Seelig, and Thym in similar terms, as a ‘terrain’ upon which we might explore the theory and practice of lieder analysis. At a time when fewer avenues of inquiry were available, these four scholars led to new and creative ways of thinking about texts and their varied settings in song. And despite their traditional structuralist approach, their work reflects in greater and lesser degrees the nascent beginnings of a changing aesthetic in lieder analysis: these models offer us a standard by which we can nowmeasure our own efforts and explore the connective links between their work and ours. For this we owe them a debt of gratitude.