Music Theatre

2019

CULTURAL AND ARTISTIC TRANSFERS IN THEATRE AND MUSIC: PAST, PRESENT, AND PERSPECTIVES, 2021

This study deals with benefit performances in the Municipal Theatre in Pressburg in the late nineteenth century, with their income meant for the municipal poor relief fund. The city commissioned Magistrate Councillor and municipal Officer for Care for the Poor Theodor Kumlik, the son of the conductor and founder of the Church Music Association of Saint Martin's Cathedral, composer Josef Kumlik, with organizing these performances. By staging a musical-dramatic repertoire that symbolized the culturedness of Pressburg in the eyes of its German-speaking citizens, Kumlik's son Theodor drew on the long-standing musical tradition cultivated in the city thanks to the activities of the Church Music Association. Along with the theatre director Emanuel Raul, Theodor Kumlik selected German operas which were highly popular in Pressburg, such as Zar und Zimmermann (by Albert Lortzing) or Hans Heiling (by Heinrich Marschner), for the benefit performances. Moreover, they provided an opportunity for the guest soloists from the Hofoper singing the same roles in Vienna to give stunning performances. In this way, the director secured a solid income which was, after all, one of the main goals of the benefit performances. In addition, he gained the favour of the audience and the support of the municipal representatives. Thanks to these, he led the Municipal Theatre successfully for nine seasons at a time when a battle was being fought to promote Hungarian theatre in the city.

The German Quarterly, 2018

Introduction: Music and German Culture this special issue of the German Quarterly contains nine essays by authors who responded to a call-for-papers that asked for abstracts looking at the intersections of music and German culture. in our selection-we received 32 abstracts in response to our CfP-we were particularly interested in topics and approaches that broke with established patterns of scholarship, dealt with lesser known figures, pieces, and texts, and would also be able to trigger the interest of a broad readership. Hence, we stayed away from some of the big names (Beethoven, Wagner) whose work has been covered extensively elsewhere, and for strategic reasons, we also limited our time frame to German cultural history until 1945; the period after 1945 is complex and interesting enough to deserve a project of its own. While film studies and visual studies, as part of a move towards a more "cultural" approach to German studies in general, have become more or less permanent presences in many German studies programs-and many of the midsize and larger programs employ specialists in those areas-, the same cannot, or at least not yet, be said of music, musical history, or the intersections of music and German culture more broadly. that is remarkable because what we call "German" music is quite present in concert halls and opera houses today, also in englishspeaking countries. this is a chance for us as educators to take advantage of the "live" German culture that is being performed in our vicinity, or to tap into the abundance of recordings and DVDs documenting such performances as resources for our scholarship and teaching. it also, however, points to a need: in order to explore these resources, we need to work on educating not only our students but also ourselves on how this musical material is relevant or can be made relevant in relation to the issues we discuss in our classrooms or scholarly work. Hence the topic of this special issue of the German Quarterly. 1. Research Trends-the Romantic Paradigm the relationship between music and culture has long been a topic of interest in research across the humanities. even when such relations were not explicitly addressed on a methodological level, studies on specific musical compositions, composers, genres, and in particular, traditions that rely on poetry or drama (the lied, opera), often engaged with the relations between text and music, and with extra-musical contexts.

Journal of Musicology, 2018

In 1944 with Nazi Germany just months from defeat, a curious and now little-known book was published in Regensburg: a collection of essays and biographies that strove to define the contemporary state of opera. Titled Die deutsche Oper der Gegenwart (German Opera of the Present Day), this substantial and lavishly produced volume documents the aesthetics of opera during the Third Reich through its profiles of sixty-two composers, more than 250 design drawings and photographs, prose essays on drama and staging, and an extensive works list. The National Socialist alignment of the book’s primary author (the theater historian Carl Niessen) and publishing company (Gustav Bosse Verlag) contextualizes the volume’s problematic scholarly priorities. Niessen interleaved explanations and endorsements of viable manifestations of contemporary German opera with anti-Semitic rhetoric and venomous critiques of rival aesthetic views. The book’s time-capsule version of the “state of the art” also includes evidence that contradicts postwar claims by composers, such as Winfried Zillig, who later recast themselves as persecuted modernists but whose statements within the volume demonstrate their complicity. Pamela Potter has recommended that musicologists address the longstanding historiographical problem of defining “Nazi Music” by paying detailed attention to particularities. Analyzing the form, contents, and rhetoric of a single printed object permits insights into the definition, valuation, and canonization of contemporary opera near the end of the Third Reich.

In spite of its fundamental importance for musical life, institutional music education in the 19th century has not been systematically explored, as of yet. With a study of the history of the conservatories in German-speaking countries during the 19th century, the Sophie Drinker Institut Bremen addresses this desideratum. The survey examines 17 conservatories as case-studies, employing a guide of key questions. The result will be an overview of the institutions with their different founding contexts, organizational and funding models, sponsorships and various educational concepts. This article discusses the core questions of the study and its theoretical and methodological framing. It concludes with a brief look at some specific issues, such as the social background of the students and the target groups, the focus of the education at the respective conservatories, didactic subjects, and the gender of the students.

In this dissertation, I examine the role and evolution of diegetic music as represented in the Bühnenmusik of four pivotal operas: Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (1865); Alban Berg's Wozzeck (1924) and Lulu (1935); and Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten (1965). These operas were chosen not simply for their shared Teutonic origins, but because they are important parts of an ideological and aesthetic lineage that clearly shows how the relationship between music and drama was transformed through the use of Bühnenmusik. In addition to exploring the musical materials and meanings of diegetic music within these operas, I address the challenges and peculiarities of conducting Bühnenmusik, and the role that evolving technology has played in overcoming issues of coordination between the stage and the orchestra pit.

Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679), 2012

Musicologica Austriaca, 2021

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 of this set of twelve historical performances on Adler’s epistemological perspective. Through this case study, I also aim to reassess the intersections between the history of monumental music editing and the historically informed musical practices in the context of international events at the turn of the twentieth century. This article is part of the special issue “Exploring Music Life in the Late Habsburg Monarchy and Successor States,” ed. Tatjana Marković and Fritz Trümpi (April 3, 2021).

The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture , 2019