The Freischütz Phenomenon: Opera As Cultural Mirror PDF Download

Author: Donald G. Henderson
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1462867901
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Der Freischütz, a German opera composed by Carl Maria von Weber, premiered to great acclaim in 1821. It eventually became a “national treasure” in its homeland as well as an enduring fixture in the international repertory. Wilhelm Furtwängler, a renowned conductor of the twentieth century, proclaimed it to be an utterly unique opera and one of the greatest masterworks of world literature. The story is deeply rooted in German folklore. It involves rustic life in the forest, threatening supernatural machinations, strong communal bonds, and the triumph of love and simple faith over dark power. Der Freischütz is not a typical opera. There are two reasons for considering it to be a singular cultural phenomenon: (1) an extraordinary charisma in the Germanic sphere, and (2) a fateful vulnerability to alteration and exploitation in its long performance history, which undermined the opera’s integrity while refl ecting a wide range of ideas and attitudes in Western culture. The ultimate goal of this book is to restore the integrity of the original Freischütz and its depth of reference as well.

Author: Stephen C. Meyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190658452
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 736

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism provides a snapshot of the diverse ways in which medievalism--the retrospective immersion in the images, sounds, narratives, and ideologies of the European Middle Ages--powerfully transforms many of the varied musical traditions of the last two centuries. Thirty-three chapters from an international group of scholars explore topics ranging from the representation of the Middle Ages in nineteenth-century opera to medievalism in contemporary video game music, thereby connecting disparate musical forms across typical musicological boundaries of chronology and geography. While some chapters focus on key medievalist works such as Orff's Carmina Burana or Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, others explore medievalism in the oeuvre of a single composer (e.g. Richard Wagner or Arvo Pärt) or musical group (e.g. Led Zeppelin). The topics of the individual chapters include both well-known works such as John Boorman's film Excalibur and also less familiar examples such as Eduard Lalo's Le Roi d'Ys. The authors of the chapters approach their material from a wide array of disciplinary perspectives, including historical musicology, popular music studies, music theory, and film studies, examining the intersections of medievalism with nationalism, romanticism, ideology, nature, feminism, or spiritualism. Taken together, the contents of the Handbook develop new critical insights that venture outside traditional methodological constraints and provide a capstone and point of departure for future scholarship on music and medievalism.

Author:
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810883309
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
In Dramaturgical Leaves: Essays about Musical Works for the Stage and Queries about the Stage, Its Composers and Performers, the third volume in Janita R. Hall-Swadley’s The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt, Liszt heralds his admiration for early nineteenth-century opera and musical stage works. He honors Gluck, the musical prophet, as the cultivator of dramatic truth in the Romantic opera Orpheus, expounds on Beethoven’s harmonic inventions and innovative treatment of form in Fidelio, and argues for the latter’s incidental music to Goethe’s Egmont as the epitome of music organicism, a complete unity of words and tone. He also comments on Weber’s Euryanthe as offering the most progressive musical characterizations and declamation—even more so than his popular work Der Freischütz—and on how both works prefigure Wagner’s music dramas; awards Mendelssohn, whose genius Liszt ranks only slightly less than Beethoven’s, top honors for creating in Midsummer’s Night Dream the highest standards of music poetry; suggests how Scribe and Meyerbeer’s Robert the Devil paints a mental image of art’s eternal flames, where poet and musician share equal space in the development of music tragedy; reveals how the poetic deficiencies in the libretto to Schubert’s Alfonso and Estrella are too easily overlooked because of the music’s melodic and lyrical supremacy; and offers in contrast Auber’s Mute from Portici, a remarkable text by many historically picturesque musical motives that are universal and nationalistic at the same time. Finally Liszt offers an early gender study in music in his essay about Bellini’s Montague and Capulet (as well as its impact on nineteenth-century audiences), a look at Boieldieu’s White Lady as a sublime depiction of literary music, and Donizetti’s Favorite as colored with a special type of imagery, a laterna magica, in Liszt’s hand. The beloved soprano Pauline Viardot-Garcia receives special attention in an essay devoted entirely to her, and Liszt proffers a critique of entr’acte music as a pointless tradition that dethrones music and insults the artist and composer by making music a “palate cleanser.” This volume includes a detailed discussion about what it meant to be patronized by Liszt and how his support—financial, literary, and musical—helped shape many a music career. It also offers commentary on how gender in opera was sometimes obscured not only for dramatic interest but also as part of the process of outlining a nation’s identity,as well as a thorough study of Liszt’s concepts of Gestalt theory, the Archetype, and his musical Weltanschauung (his musical "world view"), all revealing his contribution to 19th-century music philosophy as it relates to opera. Finally, a historical review of entr’acte music is presented—how it began and how it developed—to clarify Liszt’s stance against it, making this volume a necessary read for music historians, serious musicians, and music connoisseurs alike.

Author: Francien Markx
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004309578
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
In this first monograph on E. T. A. Hoffmann and opera, Francien Markx examines Hoffmann’s writings on opera and the challenges they pose to established narratives of aesthetic autonomy, the search for a national opera, and Hoffmann’s biography. Markx discusses Hoffmann’s lifelong fascination with opera against the backdrop of eighteenth-century theater reform, the creation of national identity, contemporary performance practices and musical and aesthetic discourses as voiced by C. M. von Weber, A. W. Schlegel, Heine, and Wagner, among others. The book reconsiders the traditional view that German opera followed a deterministic trajectory toward Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk and reveals a cosmopolitan spirit in Hoffmann’s operatic vision, most notably exemplified by his controversial advocacy for Spontini in Berlin.

Author: Margaret Ross Griffel
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442247975
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 1046

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Book Description
With nearly three thousand new entries, the revised edition of Operas in German: A Dictionary is the most current encyclopedic treatment of operas written specifically to a German text from the seventeenth century through 2016. Musicologist Margaret Ross Griffel details the operas’ composers, scores, librettos, first performances, and bibliographic sources. Four appendixes then list composers, librettists, authors whose works inspired or were adapted for the opera librettos, and a chronological listing of the entries in the A–Z section. The bibliography details other dictionaries and encyclopedias, performance studies, collections of plot summaries, general studies on operas, sources on locales where opera premieres took place, works on the history of operas in German, and selective volumes on individual opera composers, librettists, producers, directors, and designers. Finally, two indexes list the main characters in each opera and the names of singers, conductors, producers, composers, directors, choreographers, and arrangers. The revised edition of Operas in German provides opera historians, musicologists, performers, and opera lovers with an invaluable resource for continued study and enjoyment. As the most current encyclopedic collection of German opera from the seventeenth century through the twenty-first, Operas in German is an invaluable resource for opera historians, musicologists, performers, and opera lovers.

Author: Kasper Bastiaan van Kooten
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004245383
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This book shows nineteenth-century German opera’s entanglement with national identity formation, adding a significant perspective to discussions about Wagner’s relation to German nationalism by interpreting his esthetic endeavors as a continuation of previous campaigns for the genre’s emancipation.

Author: Graham Jefcoate
Publisher: Georg Olms Verlag
ISBN: 348715840X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
In den Jahren nach den Napoleonischen Kriegen gewann der in Bremen geborene John Henry Bohte (1784–1824) als Buchverkäufer und Verleger mit einem in London angesiedelten Import/Export-Geschäft und einer Präsenz in Leipzig schnell an Ansehen. Anfang 1813 eröffnete Bohte als noch Zwanzigjähriger seinen Laden in der York Street, Covent Garden. Er spezialisierte sich auf den Import deutscher Bücher und deutscher Ausgaben der griechischen und römischen Klassiker, vereinigte sein Einzelhandelsgeschäft aber schnell mit der „Deutschen Lesebibliothek“. Anfang 1820 wurde er als „Ausländischer Buchhändler seiner Majestät, dem König“ mit einem „Royal Warrant“, dem Hoflieferantenstatus, ausgezeichnet. Das Portfolio der Produkte und Dienstleistungen von Bohtes Geschäft umfasste nicht nur den Import deutscher Bücher, sondern auch ein ambitioniertes Verlagsprogramm für die Bereiche der deutschen und englischen Literatur, der klassischen Philologie und Naturgeschichte. Bohtes regelmäßige und lange Reisen nach Deutschland zur Leipziger Buchmesse reflektierten seine Ambition, zudem einer der Hauptexporteure englischer Bücher für den Kontinent zu werden. In den Worten eines anonymen Rezensenten wurde Bohte als „der temperamentvollste und nützlichste Buchverkäufer“ betrachtet. Trotz seines frühen Todes im Alter von 40 Jahren in London im Jahr 1824 hinterließ er wichtige Nachlässe sowohl in London als auch in Leipzig. In seiner Biografie von J. H. Bohte, "An Ocean of Literature", nutzt Graham Jefcoate eine umfangreiche Auswahl von Materialien aus Sammlungen in Großbritannien, Deutschland und weiteren Ländern, um die Rolle des Buchhandels im Laufe des deutsch-britischen Austauschs des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts zu veranschaulichen. ****** In the years following the Napoleonic Wars, the Bremen-born John Henry Bohte (1784-1824) quite rapidly acquired a reputation as a bookseller and publisher, with an import/export business based in London and also a presence in Leipzig. Bohte opened his shop in York Street, Covent Garden, in early 1813, while still in his twenties. He specialised in importing German books and German editions of the Greek and Roman classics, but soon combined his retail business with a German circulating library, the “Deutsche Lesebibliothek”. In early 1820, he was awarded a Royal Warrant as “Foreign Bookseller to His Majesty the King”. The portfolio of products and services offered by Bohte’s business included not just the importation of German books, but also an ambitious publishing programme in the fields of German and English literature, classical philology and natural history. Bohte’s regular and prolonged trips to Germany to attend the Leipzig Easter Book Fairs reflected his ambition to become a major exporter of English books to the continent too. In the words of one anonymous reviewer, Bohte was considered “a most spirited and most useful bookseller”. Although he died suddenly in London in 1824, aged only forty, he left an important legacy in both London and Leipzig. In his biography of J. H. Bohte, An Ocean of Literature, Graham Jefcoate has used a wide range of materials from collections in Britain, Germany and elsewhere to illuminate the role of the book trade in the process of Anglo-German exchange in the early nineteenth century.

Author: Helen M. Greenwald
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0195335538
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 1217

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Book Description
Fifty of the world's most respected scholars cast opera as a fluid entity that continuously reinvents itself in a reflection of its patrons, audience, and creators.

Author: Deirdre Loughridge
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022633709X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Introduction : audiovisual histories -- From mimesis to prosthesis -- Opera as peepshow -- Shadow media -- Haydn's Creation as moving image -- Beethoven's phantasmagoria -- Conclusion : audiovisual returns

Author: Edward Olleson
Publisher: Oriel
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
"This book is for all lovers of music who seek to understand the historical context in which music was composed and how it developed through the ages. It is not a history but a collection of essays by leading musical scholars from many countries which has been scrupulously compiled and edited by Dr. Edward Olleson of the Faculty of Music at Oxford."--Publisher's description.