Nineteenth-Century Music

The Petite Récréation - Quatorze Airs Français, Italiens, Russe, Etc., Variés pour Flûte seule par Drouet

by Tom Moore

Time and the Keyboard Fugue

by Keith Chapin

“Time and the Keyboard Fugue.” 19th-Century Music 34, no. 2 (2010), 186-207

Throughout the history of Western music, musicians have almost invariably discussed the keyboard fugue and other... more Throughout the history of Western music, musicians have almost invariably discussed the keyboard fugue and other extreme forms of polyphony as signs of something that transcends human subjectivity. Despite the persistence of this critical topos, musicians shifted their approach to it around the beginning of the nineteenth century. The shift involved both a change in the technique of counterpoint and a change in the way counterpoint was interpreted. Composers sought to invest the fugue with a new dramatic and teleological thrust suitable to modern times, and critically minded musicians changed their interpretive method so as to emphasize the passage of time. Whereas musicians of the early eighteenth century read counterpoint and the fugue allegorically and annulled time through the conceptual precision of the allegorical image, musicians of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries read the fugue symbolically and worked time into their interpretive process. In both eras, the practice of interpretation coincided with and affected the reading of the genre's temporality.

Sublime Experience and Ironic Action: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Use of Music for Life

by Keith Chapin

“Sublime Experience and Ironic Action: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Use of Music for Life.” In Musical Meaning and Human Values, ed. Keith Chapin and Lawrence Kramer. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009. 32-58.

Examines E.T.A. Hoffmann’s late writings and activities as a judge and writer of fiction to throw light on Hoffmann’s... more Examines E.T.A. Hoffmann’s late writings and activities as a judge and writer of fiction to throw light on Hoffmann’s music aesthetics and politics. It focuses on his actions and writings related to his work at the Prussian High Court during the years 1814-1822 and details Hoffmann’s attempts to resist various attacks on individual rights. It then interprets Hoffmann’s Romantic views on music and his Liberal writings as a judge, as well as Hoffmann’s tendency to distinguish between moods of enthusiasm and skepticism, as two sides of coin stamped by early 19th-c. theories of irony. Hoffmann adapted the dialectic of self-creation and self-destruction sketched by Friedrich Schlegel in his fragments on irony. As a musician and music critic, Hoffmann was a Romantic. He treated ecstatic moods as a sign of an individual’s participation in the Chain of Being and the sublime experience of music as a way briefly to sense wholeness. As a judge, Hoffmann was a Liberal. He insisted upon the individual’s free will and acted upon bitter, skeptical moods to criticize society and its ostensible delusions. Music thus provided the sublime moments of transcendence that energized his skeptical and critical political activities as a judge.

Bawdy Songbooks of the Romantic Period, 4 vols.

by Patrick Spedding

Co-edited with Paul Watt; published September 2011 by Pickering & Chatto.

One of the popular metropolitan pastimes of the nineteenth century was the singing of ribald songs. These songs,... more One of the popular metropolitan pastimes of the nineteenth century was the singing of ribald songs. These songs, forced off the streets by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, were sung by professional actors and singers in theatres, music halls, gardens and other public venues. But they were also sung by amateurs in cider and coal-hole cellars, coffee-houses and gentlemen’s clubs. Because almost no songbooks survive from the first half of the nineteenth century, this species of popular entertainment has, until recently, been almost completely overlooked in favour of the rural and street ballads which were collected by respectable gentlemen-scholars.

“Grand Opera Before Wagner”

by Gabriela Cruz

Journal of the American Liszt Association 57 (2006), 35-38.

Stabat mater dolorosa (Erik Drake)

by Mattias Lundberg

Performance edition. (Stockholm : Gehrman, 2009).

Alban Berg, Richard Wagner, and Leitmotivs of Symmetry

by Nicholas Baragwanath

Anna Bahr-Mildenburg, gesture, and the Bayreuth style

by Nicholas Baragwanath

Wagner: Beyond Good and Evil. By John Deathridge.

by Nicholas Baragwanath

Lovelorn Lamentation or Histrionic Historicism? Reconsidering Allusion and Extramusical Meaning in the 1854 Version of Brahms's B-Major Trio

by Jacquelyn Sholes

19th-Century Music 34/1 (Summer 2010): 61-86.

Although it has long been accepted that the 1854 version of Brahms's B-major piano trio contains references to... more Although it has long been accepted that the 1854 version of Brahms's B-major piano trio contains references to Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte and Schubert's Schwanengesang, it has escaped notice until now that the piece also alludes, clearly and in a structurally significant manner, to Domenico Scarlatti's Sonata in C major, K.159. Strong musical evidence for this additional allusion is corroborated by Brahms's long-term, multifaceted engagement with Scarlatti's music as demonstrated by his correspondence, music library, performance repertoire, theoretical studies, and other compositions. The revisions Brahms made to the trio in 1889 are also highly suggestive: for the first time, the three theme groups replaced by altogether new material can be understood to correspond precisely to those containing the clearest allusions to the music of other composers. Identification of the Scarlatti reference necessitates reevaluation of the oft-proposed idea that the trio's song references function as a lament for Brahms's own “distant beloved', Clara Schumann. The reference to Scarlatti, while potentially supportive of such a program, also suggests an alternative interpretation: perhaps the trio's allusions are best understood within the context of the young composer's struggle to reconcile his relationship to his predecessors in the heady period surrounding the publication of Schumann's Neue Bahnen. If the original trio represents an elegy for the musical past, rather than—or even in addition to—a lament for Clara, then the 1889 revisions, not to be understood simply as Brahms's attempt to expunge an embarrassing confession of love, must be considered in terms of the historical perspective of the mature composer.

Brahms Serenades Revisited

by Jacquelyn Sholes

[Review of Johannes Brahms, Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke,
Ser. 5, Bd. 1: Serenaden]. Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 67/1 (Sept. 2010): 180-83.

Preface to reissue of 1880 Breitkopf & Härtel edition of Hans von Bronsart's Frühlings-Fantasie, op. 11

by Jacquelyn Sholes

Repertoire and Opera Explorer Study Scores, 1147. München: Musikproduktion Höflich, 2011.

Review: Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Briefe. Band 18: Briefe des Jahres 1866.

by Hannu Salmi

published in Fontes Artis Musicae 58 (2) 2011: 201-204.

Adolphe Sax's Bigger Brasses

by Eugenia Mitroulia

Published in the International Tuba and Euphonium Association Journal, Volume 38 Number 3 (Spring 2011).

Assisa a’ piè d’un salice. La Desdemona di Rossini secondo Giuditta, Maria ed altre attrici del Théâtre-Italien

by Céline Frigau

in Pietro Mioli (éd.), Malibran. Storia e leggenda, actes du colloque de l’Accademia Filarmonica, 30-31 mai 2008, Bologne, Pàtron editore, 2010

Écriture, édition, traductions à lire et à chanter : les activités multiples de Manfredo Maggioni, staff librettist à Londres

by Céline Frigau

in Françoise Decroisette (dir.), Le livret d’opéra, œuvre littéraire ?, Saint-Denis, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, coll. « Théâtres du monde », 2011

Maria Malibran

by Céline Frigau

in Beatrice Alfonzetti (dir.), Vite. Verso l’Unità, Roma, Donzelli, 2011

Sans être italienne ni prendre part aux luttes du Risorgimento, la Malibran est devenue l’une des grandes figures de... more Sans être italienne ni prendre part aux luttes du Risorgimento, la Malibran est devenue l’une des grandes figures de l’Unité italienne. Méta-hagiographie plus que nouvelle hagiographie de l’actrice, cette réflexion croisée sur la réception française et italienne en souligne les enjeux esthétiques, culturels et socio-politiques.

When Functions Collide: Aspects of Plural Function in Chromatic Music

by Kevin Swinden

“The Musical Audubon: Ornithology and Nationalism in the Symphonies of Anthony Philip Heinrich.”

by William Gibbons

Journal of the Society for American Music 3/4 (2009): 465-91.

The composer Anthony Philip Heinrich's two symphonies on avian themes -- The Ornithological Combat of Kings (1847,... more The composer Anthony Philip Heinrich's two symphonies on avian themes -- The Ornithological Combat of Kings (1847, rev. 1856) and The Columbiad, or, The Migration of the American Wild Passenger Pigeons (1857–58) -- have not been generally considered among his nationalistic works. Placing these works into historical context, however, makes the nationalism of their programmatic content clear. These symphonies reveal surprising connections in the U.S. consciousness between birds and national identity in the 19th-c. Through the examination of this music in the contexts of naturalist writers such as Alexander von Humboldt, Alexander Wilson, and John James Audubon, the last of whom was a close friend of Heinrich's, the extent to which Heinrich’s music tapped into the popularity of ornithology in the U.S. is demonstrated.

Transformational Analysis and the Representation of Genius in Film Music

by Frank Lehman

Forthcoming, Music Theory Spectrum 34/2-35/1

Neo-Riemannian theory offers an auspicious toolkit for analyzing film music—a repertoire in which dramatic exigency... more Neo-Riemannian theory offers an auspicious toolkit for analyzing film music—a repertoire in which dramatic exigency takes precedence over functional tonal logic. Its ability to model harmonic progressions as dynamic and contextually-determined, particularly with association-laden chromatic motions, suits it eminently to Hollywood scoring practice. This transformational approach is tested on James Horner’s music for the film A Beautiful Mind. In this score, Horner illustrates the mental life of the mathematician John Nash with wildly chromatic but firmly triadic music. A group generated by the operators L, R, and S provides the transformational fount for a “Genius complex” that represents intense intellection. Three cues from A Beautiful Mind are analyzed; collectively, their tonal spaces reveal a distinctly transformational contribution to narrative and characterization. These readings further evince a tension between the logical teleology of sequential patterning with the radically contingent, even game-like quality of Horner’s triadic manipulations.

keywords: film music, transformation theory, neo-Riemannian analysis, network, James Horner, A Beautiful Mind, narrative, tonal space, breakthrough