For most music historians, the modernism of the twentieth century was until recently the only app... more For most music historians, the modernism of the twentieth century was until recently the only appearance of the "modern" in music. The widely perceived recent decline of musical modernism makes it now possible to see the modernism of the twentieth century as a chapter in a much longer story, the story of musical modernity. The principal purpose of the present book is to encourage a debate over musical modernity; a debate that would consider the question whether, and to what extent, an examination of the history of European art music may enrich our picture of modernity and whether our understanding of music's development may be transformed by insights into the nature of modernity provided by other historical disciplines. This book had its origin in a conference that took place at the Music Department of Harvard University on November 9-11, 2001 to honor Professor Reinhold Brinkmann.
By any measure, recent decades have shed an enormous amount of new light on Richard Wagner in all... more By any measure, recent decades have shed an enormous amount of new light on Richard Wagner in all his guises-writer, composer, reigning bogeyman of German cultural politics. From Schott's complete edition of the operas to Cosima's diaries, and from Winifred Wagner's revealing on-camera interviews to the annual fracas over new Bayreuth productions, it would be hard to deny that Wagner's works, his family and his theatre continue to provoke a level of public and academic discussion hardly imaginable for almost any other composer. Certainly significant gaps remain; despite frequent complaints, we still have no complete critical edition of Wagner's writings, much less a readable translation of them into English 1. But Egon Voss's 1996 pronouncement that 'Wagner research has just begun' seems wilful at best. Diehard Wagnerians may cherish such a prospect, but are we really faced with a 'Wagner without end'? 2 In a sense, yes. As Voss argues, the continuing emergence of new documents renders 'bibliographic control' an ever-receding vision rather than a realisable goal. And although Voss is mainly concerned with philological research, his diagnosis applies more generally to the larger world of Wagnerian exegesis. The issue is not just one of gathering biographical or institutional information, analysing the operas' music or examining their engagement with culture and philosophy. Looking back on the current generation of Wagner scholarship, it is striking to note how little of it has attempted the Herculean task of bringing together these multiple lines of enquiry, or even attempting a comprehensive account of all of his operas. 3 Indeed, the most insightful studies in recent years have tended to focus on particular issues: Wagner's narrative aesthetics, the location and extent of his anti-Semitism, the idea of the leitmotif, individual sketch studies, harmonic procedures in the later works, biographies of neglected family members, and of course studies of individual operas. 4 To be sure, a 1 On the problem of Wagner's prose and its rendition into idiomatic English, see Treadwell's amusing 'Note on citations and translations', xvi-xix. 2 Egon Voss, 'Wagner und kein Ende'. Betrachtungen und Studien (Zurich, 1996), 10. 3 The most obvious exception is Carl Dahlhaus, Richard Wagner's Music Dramas, trans. Mary Whittall (Cambridge, 1979). But this short work is more a prolegomena to a new golden age of post-Lorenzian Wagnerian studies than it is its culmination. It is also almost three decades old. Hans-Joachim Bauer, Richard Wagner (Stuttgart, 1992) is conceived more as a summary and introduction to the works. Michael Tanner's Wagner (London, 1996) attempts a comprehensive view beyond a general introduction, but it reflects only a limited amount of recent work by Wagner scholars.
This article begins with a description of the essential features and current state of the social ... more This article begins with a description of the essential features and current state of the social practice called art music, concluding that as recently as the late twentieth century it was in excellent shape, as documented by a series of canonic masterpieces. I continue with an outline of the principal questions pursued by, and the current state of, music history, demonstrating that it too was flourishing in the same period, producing work of enduring worth. In conclusion, I consider the main dangers that currently threaten a successful cultivation of music history. These include our inability to notice historical developments that really matter when we are blinded by thinking in terms of group identities, and the unfortunate confluence of two recent cultural trends: the flood of ever new products of the music (or entertainment) industry, combined with our inability and unwillingness to discriminate.
This chapter clarifies the essential nature of the two fundamental poetic forms of composition — ... more This chapter clarifies the essential nature of the two fundamental poetic forms of composition — those of the narrative and the lyric — and shows how these two forms can be seen to operate not only in literature, but also in painting and music. Narrative is a kind of form in the constitution of which the essential role is played by time, that is, the temporal form; the kind of form in which the whole consists of a number of phases or parts which succeed one another in a determined order, their succession governed by the relationships of causing and resulting by necessity or probability. Lyric, by contrast, is the atemporal form, the kind of form in the constitution of which time plays no essential role, its parts, whether existing simultaneously or succeeding one another, governed by the relationship of the necessary or probable mutual implication, rather than the necessary or probable causation. The two forms are correlated with two kinds of contents: the narrative is the kind of f...
Modern European art music is a social practice with internal aims on which its claim to relative ... more Modern European art music is a social practice with internal aims on which its claim to relative autonomy rests (relative, because the contrast between autonomous and functional music, as well as the parallel contrast between art and popular music, is the contrast between ideal types). A profound transformation of these aims marks a revolution or a paradigm shift in the history of this practice. With each successive paradigm shift, the specific relation and proportion between its artistic-autonomous and popular-functional components, specifically between the idea of music as the abstract embodiment of harmony and the idea of music as the representation or mimesis of passions, changed. The formalism and abstraction that characterize the musical and artistic modernity celebrates the modern absolute freedom of a subjectivity that intends everything, but is committed to nothing. At its most radical, it faces the same loss of significance and sterility that is faced by the subjectivity i...
For most music historians, the modernism of the twentieth century was until recently the only app... more For most music historians, the modernism of the twentieth century was until recently the only appearance of the "modern" in music. The widely perceived recent decline of musical modernism makes it now possible to see the modernism of the twentieth century as a chapter in a much longer story, the story of musical modernity. The principal purpose of the present book is to encourage a debate over musical modernity; a debate that would consider the question whether, and to what extent, an examination of the history of European art music may enrich our picture of modernity and whether our understanding of music's development may be transformed by insights into the nature of modernity provided by other historical disciplines. This book had its origin in a conference that took place at the Music Department of Harvard University on November 9-11, 2001 to honor Professor Reinhold Brinkmann.
By any measure, recent decades have shed an enormous amount of new light on Richard Wagner in all... more By any measure, recent decades have shed an enormous amount of new light on Richard Wagner in all his guises-writer, composer, reigning bogeyman of German cultural politics. From Schott's complete edition of the operas to Cosima's diaries, and from Winifred Wagner's revealing on-camera interviews to the annual fracas over new Bayreuth productions, it would be hard to deny that Wagner's works, his family and his theatre continue to provoke a level of public and academic discussion hardly imaginable for almost any other composer. Certainly significant gaps remain; despite frequent complaints, we still have no complete critical edition of Wagner's writings, much less a readable translation of them into English 1. But Egon Voss's 1996 pronouncement that 'Wagner research has just begun' seems wilful at best. Diehard Wagnerians may cherish such a prospect, but are we really faced with a 'Wagner without end'? 2 In a sense, yes. As Voss argues, the continuing emergence of new documents renders 'bibliographic control' an ever-receding vision rather than a realisable goal. And although Voss is mainly concerned with philological research, his diagnosis applies more generally to the larger world of Wagnerian exegesis. The issue is not just one of gathering biographical or institutional information, analysing the operas' music or examining their engagement with culture and philosophy. Looking back on the current generation of Wagner scholarship, it is striking to note how little of it has attempted the Herculean task of bringing together these multiple lines of enquiry, or even attempting a comprehensive account of all of his operas. 3 Indeed, the most insightful studies in recent years have tended to focus on particular issues: Wagner's narrative aesthetics, the location and extent of his anti-Semitism, the idea of the leitmotif, individual sketch studies, harmonic procedures in the later works, biographies of neglected family members, and of course studies of individual operas. 4 To be sure, a 1 On the problem of Wagner's prose and its rendition into idiomatic English, see Treadwell's amusing 'Note on citations and translations', xvi-xix. 2 Egon Voss, 'Wagner und kein Ende'. Betrachtungen und Studien (Zurich, 1996), 10. 3 The most obvious exception is Carl Dahlhaus, Richard Wagner's Music Dramas, trans. Mary Whittall (Cambridge, 1979). But this short work is more a prolegomena to a new golden age of post-Lorenzian Wagnerian studies than it is its culmination. It is also almost three decades old. Hans-Joachim Bauer, Richard Wagner (Stuttgart, 1992) is conceived more as a summary and introduction to the works. Michael Tanner's Wagner (London, 1996) attempts a comprehensive view beyond a general introduction, but it reflects only a limited amount of recent work by Wagner scholars.
This article begins with a description of the essential features and current state of the social ... more This article begins with a description of the essential features and current state of the social practice called art music, concluding that as recently as the late twentieth century it was in excellent shape, as documented by a series of canonic masterpieces. I continue with an outline of the principal questions pursued by, and the current state of, music history, demonstrating that it too was flourishing in the same period, producing work of enduring worth. In conclusion, I consider the main dangers that currently threaten a successful cultivation of music history. These include our inability to notice historical developments that really matter when we are blinded by thinking in terms of group identities, and the unfortunate confluence of two recent cultural trends: the flood of ever new products of the music (or entertainment) industry, combined with our inability and unwillingness to discriminate.
This chapter clarifies the essential nature of the two fundamental poetic forms of composition — ... more This chapter clarifies the essential nature of the two fundamental poetic forms of composition — those of the narrative and the lyric — and shows how these two forms can be seen to operate not only in literature, but also in painting and music. Narrative is a kind of form in the constitution of which the essential role is played by time, that is, the temporal form; the kind of form in which the whole consists of a number of phases or parts which succeed one another in a determined order, their succession governed by the relationships of causing and resulting by necessity or probability. Lyric, by contrast, is the atemporal form, the kind of form in the constitution of which time plays no essential role, its parts, whether existing simultaneously or succeeding one another, governed by the relationship of the necessary or probable mutual implication, rather than the necessary or probable causation. The two forms are correlated with two kinds of contents: the narrative is the kind of f...
Modern European art music is a social practice with internal aims on which its claim to relative ... more Modern European art music is a social practice with internal aims on which its claim to relative autonomy rests (relative, because the contrast between autonomous and functional music, as well as the parallel contrast between art and popular music, is the contrast between ideal types). A profound transformation of these aims marks a revolution or a paradigm shift in the history of this practice. With each successive paradigm shift, the specific relation and proportion between its artistic-autonomous and popular-functional components, specifically between the idea of music as the abstract embodiment of harmony and the idea of music as the representation or mimesis of passions, changed. The formalism and abstraction that characterize the musical and artistic modernity celebrates the modern absolute freedom of a subjectivity that intends everything, but is committed to nothing. At its most radical, it faces the same loss of significance and sterility that is faced by the subjectivity i...
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