Jesse Zuba
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691164472
- eISBN:
- 9781400873791
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691164472.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
“We have many poets of the First Book,” the poet and critic Louis Simpson remarked in 1957, describing a sense that the debut poetry collection not only launched the contemporary poetic career but ...
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“We have many poets of the First Book,” the poet and critic Louis Simpson remarked in 1957, describing a sense that the debut poetry collection not only launched the contemporary poetic career but also had come to define it. Surveying American poetry over the past hundred years, this book explores the emergence of the poetic debut as a unique literary production with its own tradition, conventions, and dynamic role in the literary market. Through new readings of ranging from Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore to John Ashbery and Louise Glück, the book illuminates the importance of the first book in twentieth-century American literary culture, which involved complex struggles for legitimacy on the part of poets, critics, and publishers alike. The book investigates poets' diverse responses to the question of how to launch a career in an increasingly professionalized literary scene that threatened the authenticity of the poetic calling. It shows how modernist debuts evoke markedly idiosyncratic paths, while postwar first books evoke trajectories that balance professional imperatives with traditional literary ideals. Debut titles ranging from Simpson's The Arrivistes to Ken Chen's Juvenilia stress the strikingly pervasive theme of beginning, accommodating a new demand for career development even as it distances the poets from that demand. Combining literary analysis with cultural history, this book will interest scholars and students of twentieth-century literature as well as readers and writers of poetry.Less
“We have many poets of the First Book,” the poet and critic Louis Simpson remarked in 1957, describing a sense that the debut poetry collection not only launched the contemporary poetic career but also had come to define it. Surveying American poetry over the past hundred years, this book explores the emergence of the poetic debut as a unique literary production with its own tradition, conventions, and dynamic role in the literary market. Through new readings of ranging from Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore to John Ashbery and Louise Glück, the book illuminates the importance of the first book in twentieth-century American literary culture, which involved complex struggles for legitimacy on the part of poets, critics, and publishers alike. The book investigates poets' diverse responses to the question of how to launch a career in an increasingly professionalized literary scene that threatened the authenticity of the poetic calling. It shows how modernist debuts evoke markedly idiosyncratic paths, while postwar first books evoke trajectories that balance professional imperatives with traditional literary ideals. Debut titles ranging from Simpson's The Arrivistes to Ken Chen's Juvenilia stress the strikingly pervasive theme of beginning, accommodating a new demand for career development even as it distances the poets from that demand. Combining literary analysis with cultural history, this book will interest scholars and students of twentieth-century literature as well as readers and writers of poetry.
Jesse Zuba
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691164472
- eISBN:
- 9781400873791
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691164472.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter turns to a poet whose work lies at the opposite end of the spectrum, in several respects, from Ashbery's. Here, the chapter focuses on first books to consider subsequent volumes from ...
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This chapter turns to a poet whose work lies at the opposite end of the spectrum, in several respects, from Ashbery's. Here, the chapter focuses on first books to consider subsequent volumes from Louise Glück's oeuvre. The differences between Ashbery and Glück are meant to stress the pervasiveness of the fascination with the vocational trajectory that they share: the same conflicted embrace of career is as legible in the serene disorders of Some Trees as it is in the fierce analyses of Firstborn and throughout the seven collections Glück published leading up to Vita Nova. The logic of Glück's career, the chapter argues, illustrates the double bind of literary professionalism with radical severity.Less
This chapter turns to a poet whose work lies at the opposite end of the spectrum, in several respects, from Ashbery's. Here, the chapter focuses on first books to consider subsequent volumes from Louise Glück's oeuvre. The differences between Ashbery and Glück are meant to stress the pervasiveness of the fascination with the vocational trajectory that they share: the same conflicted embrace of career is as legible in the serene disorders of Some Trees as it is in the fierce analyses of Firstborn and throughout the seven collections Glück published leading up to Vita Nova. The logic of Glück's career, the chapter argues, illustrates the double bind of literary professionalism with radical severity.
Silke Leopold
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263822
- eISBN:
- 9780191734960
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263822.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was one of many composers who, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, thought more and more about a German-language opera. The idea of a German national opera was ...
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was one of many composers who, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, thought more and more about a German-language opera. The idea of a German national opera was intensively discussed in Mannheim, and also put into practice with Ignaz Holzbauer's setting of Anton Klein's libretto Günther von Schwarzburg (1777). The idea of the national opera took hold in Europe during the nineteenth century. Is the German national opera, which composers and writers on music from Richard Wagner to Hans Pfitzner see as starting with Christoph Willibald Gluck's Iphigenie auf Tauris and Carl Maria von Weber's Freischütz, a historical reality or a historiographical construct? In order to answer this question, this chapter takes a brief look at the situation of opera around 1800, for only in Germany, and not in the other two leading opera nations, Italy and France, can a development at this time be observed in which the idea of a national opera takes shape.Less
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was one of many composers who, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, thought more and more about a German-language opera. The idea of a German national opera was intensively discussed in Mannheim, and also put into practice with Ignaz Holzbauer's setting of Anton Klein's libretto Günther von Schwarzburg (1777). The idea of the national opera took hold in Europe during the nineteenth century. Is the German national opera, which composers and writers on music from Richard Wagner to Hans Pfitzner see as starting with Christoph Willibald Gluck's Iphigenie auf Tauris and Carl Maria von Weber's Freischütz, a historical reality or a historiographical construct? In order to answer this question, this chapter takes a brief look at the situation of opera around 1800, for only in Germany, and not in the other two leading opera nations, Italy and France, can a development at this time be observed in which the idea of a national opera takes shape.
Simon Goldhill
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691149844
- eISBN:
- 9781400840076
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691149844.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter examines how Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck's opera reforms responded to Victorian culture to become the revolutionary icons his contemporaries believed them to be. Gluck was music ...
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This chapter examines how Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck's opera reforms responded to Victorian culture to become the revolutionary icons his contemporaries believed them to be. Gluck was music tutor to Marie Antoinette in Vienna and, after her marriage to Louis XVI, followed her to Paris, where he was a regular at Versailles. He died two years before the Revolution broke out. His music, according to Jean-Baptiste Leclerc, led to the shattering of the throne of France. The chapter considers formal elements of composition as well as frames of comprehension: the role of classicism in the critical understanding of theater; the role of dance in opera; the role of the chorus as a specifically classical element in modern opera. It also analyzes the differences between Vienna and Paris and London as sites for Gluck's operatic success and failure—within the incipient but self-conscious nationalism of the era.Less
This chapter examines how Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck's opera reforms responded to Victorian culture to become the revolutionary icons his contemporaries believed them to be. Gluck was music tutor to Marie Antoinette in Vienna and, after her marriage to Louis XVI, followed her to Paris, where he was a regular at Versailles. He died two years before the Revolution broke out. His music, according to Jean-Baptiste Leclerc, led to the shattering of the throne of France. The chapter considers formal elements of composition as well as frames of comprehension: the role of classicism in the critical understanding of theater; the role of dance in opera; the role of the chorus as a specifically classical element in modern opera. It also analyzes the differences between Vienna and Paris and London as sites for Gluck's operatic success and failure—within the incipient but self-conscious nationalism of the era.
Willard Spiegelman
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195368130
- eISBN:
- 9780199852192
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195368130.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter analyses American poets' new collection, Louise Glück's The Seven Ages and Jorie Graham's Never. Glück has remained faithful simultaneously to individuality and ordinary experience and ...
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This chapter analyses American poets' new collection, Louise Glück's The Seven Ages and Jorie Graham's Never. Glück has remained faithful simultaneously to individuality and ordinary experience and this double goal affects her subjects and the size of her poems. Graham has always been inclined toward the epistemological dilemmas plumbed and articulated by the English Romantics and in her new volume she revisits Wordsworthian scenes of childhood to develop her ongoing lyrical autobiography with reference to what the Romantics called spots of time.Less
This chapter analyses American poets' new collection, Louise Glück's The Seven Ages and Jorie Graham's Never. Glück has remained faithful simultaneously to individuality and ordinary experience and this double goal affects her subjects and the size of her poems. Graham has always been inclined toward the epistemological dilemmas plumbed and articulated by the English Romantics and in her new volume she revisits Wordsworthian scenes of childhood to develop her ongoing lyrical autobiography with reference to what the Romantics called spots of time.
Susan C. Cook
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195365870
- eISBN:
- 9780199932054
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195365870.003.0016
- Subject:
- Music, Opera, History, Western
This chapter looks at the dialogics between opera, art song and parlor ballads, blackface minstrelsy, spirituals, and crooning in the art and identity of the early twentieth-century prima donna. ...
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This chapter looks at the dialogics between opera, art song and parlor ballads, blackface minstrelsy, spirituals, and crooning in the art and identity of the early twentieth-century prima donna. Singing mammy songs enabled Alma Gluck to comply with a pervasive American Africanism in the United States, while mitigating her alterity both as a woman of Romanian Jewish ancestry and as a professional opera singer. But it also acknowledged the intimate, symbiotic relationship between the mammy and the high-born Southern lady, which shaped ideas of female vocality, domesticity, and maternalism profoundly in the American imagination. In addition, this chapter’s discussion highlights how radically the development of commercial recording unsettled the categories of “high art” and “popular art,” and exposed perceptions of “color” and “class” in vocal performance to manipulation and renegotiation.Less
This chapter looks at the dialogics between opera, art song and parlor ballads, blackface minstrelsy, spirituals, and crooning in the art and identity of the early twentieth-century prima donna. Singing mammy songs enabled Alma Gluck to comply with a pervasive American Africanism in the United States, while mitigating her alterity both as a woman of Romanian Jewish ancestry and as a professional opera singer. But it also acknowledged the intimate, symbiotic relationship between the mammy and the high-born Southern lady, which shaped ideas of female vocality, domesticity, and maternalism profoundly in the American imagination. In addition, this chapter’s discussion highlights how radically the development of commercial recording unsettled the categories of “high art” and “popular art,” and exposed perceptions of “color” and “class” in vocal performance to manipulation and renegotiation.
Katherine Kolb
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199391950
- eISBN:
- 9780199391981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199391950.003.0018
- Subject:
- Music, Opera, History, Western
This selection contains the introductory part of a four-part essay devoted to the opera that Berlioz considered Gluck’s masterpiece (for the remainder, see the Companion Website). That he should ...
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This selection contains the introductory part of a four-part essay devoted to the opera that Berlioz considered Gluck’s masterpiece (for the remainder, see the Companion Website). That he should choose to devote two long essays to Gluck for the Gazette musicale, a progressive new journal, in its inaugural year, shows just how important Gluck remained in Berlioz’s inner pantheon, despite his disappearance from the active operatic repertoire. As related in this section, indeed, part of which will ultimately figure in the fifth chapter of his Memoirs, it was Gluck who most powerfully inspired Berlioz’s vocation as composer. Berlioz recalls here the extremes of his anti-Rossinian fanaticism during the Gluck-Rossini controvery of the 1820s. At both ends of the excerpt, he expresses some reservations about his enthusiasm, sensing that its youthful beginnings render it suspect. In later years, he will lose all compunctions about praising Gluck.Less
This selection contains the introductory part of a four-part essay devoted to the opera that Berlioz considered Gluck’s masterpiece (for the remainder, see the Companion Website). That he should choose to devote two long essays to Gluck for the Gazette musicale, a progressive new journal, in its inaugural year, shows just how important Gluck remained in Berlioz’s inner pantheon, despite his disappearance from the active operatic repertoire. As related in this section, indeed, part of which will ultimately figure in the fifth chapter of his Memoirs, it was Gluck who most powerfully inspired Berlioz’s vocation as composer. Berlioz recalls here the extremes of his anti-Rossinian fanaticism during the Gluck-Rossini controvery of the 1820s. At both ends of the excerpt, he expresses some reservations about his enthusiasm, sensing that its youthful beginnings render it suspect. In later years, he will lose all compunctions about praising Gluck.
Katherine Kolb
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199391950
- eISBN:
- 9780199391981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199391950.003.0010
- Subject:
- Music, Opera, History, Western
This biography, one of Berlioz’s first major contributions to the newly founded Gazette musicale, serves to signal his unswerving fidelity to Gluck, a lifelong spiritual father, his worship of ...
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This biography, one of Berlioz’s first major contributions to the newly founded Gazette musicale, serves to signal his unswerving fidelity to Gluck, a lifelong spiritual father, his worship of Beethoven, the main god of the new journal, notwithstanding. This first segment of the piece (it concludes in the Companion Website) features, notably, the lyrical description of an aria from one of Gluck’s early Italian-language operas and the admiring mention, despite his anti-Italian bias, of the Italian diva Mme. Pasta. Based on faulty sources, the piece bears reading not for historical specifics but for Berlioz’s image of Gluck as a man of immense talent and strong character, the latter illustrated by an incident during a performance before the Viennese court, when Gluck defied protocol to insist on repeating a ballet.Less
This biography, one of Berlioz’s first major contributions to the newly founded Gazette musicale, serves to signal his unswerving fidelity to Gluck, a lifelong spiritual father, his worship of Beethoven, the main god of the new journal, notwithstanding. This first segment of the piece (it concludes in the Companion Website) features, notably, the lyrical description of an aria from one of Gluck’s early Italian-language operas and the admiring mention, despite his anti-Italian bias, of the Italian diva Mme. Pasta. Based on faulty sources, the piece bears reading not for historical specifics but for Berlioz’s image of Gluck as a man of immense talent and strong character, the latter illustrated by an incident during a performance before the Viennese court, when Gluck defied protocol to insist on repeating a ballet.
Edith Hall
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780195392890
- eISBN:
- 9780199979257
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195392890.003.0009
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Gluck's French-language opera Iphigénie en Tauride, which premiered in Paris in 1783, has remained alive in the repertoire having been choreographed in the 20th century by both Isadora Duncan and ...
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Gluck's French-language opera Iphigénie en Tauride, which premiered in Paris in 1783, has remained alive in the repertoire having been choreographed in the 20th century by both Isadora Duncan and Pina Bausch. Gluck and his librettist Nicolas-François Guillard, who made use of an excellent stage play by Claude Guymond de la Touche (1757), effected the last stage in Gluck's transformation of opera into a medium—‘Reform Opera—in which continuous vocal and instrumental writing is synthesised with psychological register. Euripides' IT enabled Gluck to create an opera which expressed emotion continuously in music, since much of it consists of psychic exploration of subjective consciousness—nightmares, thoughts and memories—rather than action. The opera also reflects the constitutional crisis and ideological conflict of its era. Its condemnation of cruelty and tyranny is connected with the emergent sensibility of the French revolutionary movement as well as with the Enlightenment distrust of religion.Less
Gluck's French-language opera Iphigénie en Tauride, which premiered in Paris in 1783, has remained alive in the repertoire having been choreographed in the 20th century by both Isadora Duncan and Pina Bausch. Gluck and his librettist Nicolas-François Guillard, who made use of an excellent stage play by Claude Guymond de la Touche (1757), effected the last stage in Gluck's transformation of opera into a medium—‘Reform Opera—in which continuous vocal and instrumental writing is synthesised with psychological register. Euripides' IT enabled Gluck to create an opera which expressed emotion continuously in music, since much of it consists of psychic exploration of subjective consciousness—nightmares, thoughts and memories—rather than action. The opera also reflects the constitutional crisis and ideological conflict of its era. Its condemnation of cruelty and tyranny is connected with the emergent sensibility of the French revolutionary movement as well as with the Enlightenment distrust of religion.
Alexander Rehding
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195385380
- eISBN:
- 9780199852499
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195385380.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Although both Wagner and Gluck are two prominent operatic reformers who contributed between the eighteenth century and the nineteenth century, Franz Brendel and probably a number of other observers ...
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Although both Wagner and Gluck are two prominent operatic reformers who contributed between the eighteenth century and the nineteenth century, Franz Brendel and probably a number of other observers perceived how the first encounter of these two was not without certain conflicts. Wagner, although he was well-aware of how Gluck was a significant figure in the music scene and how his contributions cannot be undermined, was able to make relatively harsh comments because of his disappointment in Gluck’s works. Wagner, however, felt the need to appreciate Gluck’s works although he could not reconcile the progressive spirit of the works. This chapter shows how Wagner could not accept how Gluck was considered a “classic,” and that he had to deal with this situation by modifying the link between music history and tradition in performances.Less
Although both Wagner and Gluck are two prominent operatic reformers who contributed between the eighteenth century and the nineteenth century, Franz Brendel and probably a number of other observers perceived how the first encounter of these two was not without certain conflicts. Wagner, although he was well-aware of how Gluck was a significant figure in the music scene and how his contributions cannot be undermined, was able to make relatively harsh comments because of his disappointment in Gluck’s works. Wagner, however, felt the need to appreciate Gluck’s works although he could not reconcile the progressive spirit of the works. This chapter shows how Wagner could not accept how Gluck was considered a “classic,” and that he had to deal with this situation by modifying the link between music history and tradition in performances.
Katherine Kolb
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199391950
- eISBN:
- 9780199391981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199391950.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, Opera, History, Western
In this early letter to the editor, Berlioz pretends ignorance about “dilettantes,” and simulates a conversation with an expert who fills him in. Dilettantes, we learn, patronize the Théâtre-Italien ...
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In this early letter to the editor, Berlioz pretends ignorance about “dilettantes,” and simulates a conversation with an expert who fills him in. Dilettantes, we learn, patronize the Théâtre-Italien and admire its singing style to the exclusion of any other. They swoon over vocal embellishments, while disdaining the more austere style prevalent at the Opéra and volubly criticizing its singers. In their view, Mme. Branchu, the greatest singer of Berlioz’s pantheon, “screams” as Hypermnestre (in Salieri’s Les Danaïdes), and the tenor Dérivis “thrashes about” as Orestes (in Gluck’s Iphigénie)—they lack decorum, and neglect to ornament their parts. With one such criticism, Berlioz does not disagree: the Opéra orchestra sometimes does drown out the singers, he admits, but the fault often lies with the composer, not the orchestra. By implication, he applauds Opéra singers for identifying with their parts and adapting themselves to different characters, rather than maintaining the same style for all.Less
In this early letter to the editor, Berlioz pretends ignorance about “dilettantes,” and simulates a conversation with an expert who fills him in. Dilettantes, we learn, patronize the Théâtre-Italien and admire its singing style to the exclusion of any other. They swoon over vocal embellishments, while disdaining the more austere style prevalent at the Opéra and volubly criticizing its singers. In their view, Mme. Branchu, the greatest singer of Berlioz’s pantheon, “screams” as Hypermnestre (in Salieri’s Les Danaïdes), and the tenor Dérivis “thrashes about” as Orestes (in Gluck’s Iphigénie)—they lack decorum, and neglect to ornament their parts. With one such criticism, Berlioz does not disagree: the Opéra orchestra sometimes does drown out the singers, he admits, but the fault often lies with the composer, not the orchestra. By implication, he applauds Opéra singers for identifying with their parts and adapting themselves to different characters, rather than maintaining the same style for all.
Katherine Kolb
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199391950
- eISBN:
- 9780199391981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199391950.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Opera, History, Western
In an apt preface to his critical career, Berlioz offers here a brief description of the music critic’s task. Equipped with literary talent and musical expertise, he declares, the critic should ...
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In an apt preface to his critical career, Berlioz offers here a brief description of the music critic’s task. Equipped with literary talent and musical expertise, he declares, the critic should analyze works in light of their guiding principles—rather than carp about minor matters in dilettante fashion, as in a recent journalistic skirmish apropos of engravers’ errors and echoes of popular tunes in Gluck’s Armide. Young though he is, Berlioz already exhibits the requisite skills, and with remarkable assurance for one so young, he turns them brazenly against the Parisian critical establishment, in particular the eminent Castil-Blaze, who signed as “XXX,” and whose post at the Journal des débats Berlioz would inherit ten years later.Less
In an apt preface to his critical career, Berlioz offers here a brief description of the music critic’s task. Equipped with literary talent and musical expertise, he declares, the critic should analyze works in light of their guiding principles—rather than carp about minor matters in dilettante fashion, as in a recent journalistic skirmish apropos of engravers’ errors and echoes of popular tunes in Gluck’s Armide. Young though he is, Berlioz already exhibits the requisite skills, and with remarkable assurance for one so young, he turns them brazenly against the Parisian critical establishment, in particular the eminent Castil-Blaze, who signed as “XXX,” and whose post at the Journal des débats Berlioz would inherit ten years later.
Eric Downing
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501715907
- eISBN:
- 9781501715938
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501715907.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter focuses on divination in Walter Benjamin’s work, against the background of modernism’s self-imposed rejection of futurity and engagement with ‘primal history’, and the rise of fascism, ...
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This chapter focuses on divination in Walter Benjamin’s work, against the background of modernism’s self-imposed rejection of futurity and engagement with ‘primal history’, and the rise of fascism, commodity culture, and “Lebensphilosophie” or vitalism. It explores his writings on fate, graphology, gambling, childhood, language theory, his doctrine of the similar and the mimetic faculty, foregrounding his Neoplatonist investments, interests in magic, and take on the nineteenth century. Overall, the chapter considers the relations between Benjamin’s model of reading, especially magic reading, and the idea of happiness or “Glück.”Less
This chapter focuses on divination in Walter Benjamin’s work, against the background of modernism’s self-imposed rejection of futurity and engagement with ‘primal history’, and the rise of fascism, commodity culture, and “Lebensphilosophie” or vitalism. It explores his writings on fate, graphology, gambling, childhood, language theory, his doctrine of the similar and the mimetic faculty, foregrounding his Neoplatonist investments, interests in magic, and take on the nineteenth century. Overall, the chapter considers the relations between Benjamin’s model of reading, especially magic reading, and the idea of happiness or “Glück.”
Olivia Bloechl
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226522753
- eISBN:
- 9780226522890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226522890.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter discusses scenes of supernatural punishment that foreground the dramatic power of the eighteenth-century opera orchestra. It argues that instrumental music increasingly represented the ...
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This chapter discusses scenes of supernatural punishment that foreground the dramatic power of the eighteenth-century opera orchestra. It argues that instrumental music increasingly represented the powers of condemnation and punishment in the theater, thanks to the expansion of the orchestra's theatrical role. It demonstrates how composers' use of the terrifying topic (sometimes called the "Sturm und Drang") allowed them to communicate judicial authority and violence in new ways, overshadowing the earlier practice of personifying these forces in judicial figures. The author finds that the "tormenting orchestra" depersonalized penal authority at the same time as operas placed greater emphasis on criminal subjectivity and interiority. The chapter discusses penal scenes in operas by Campra (Idomenée), Rameau (Hippolyte et Aricie, Les Boréades), Gluck (Iphigénie en Tauride), and Sacchini (Oedipe à Colonne), as well as their contemporaries. Examining changes in the orchestra's dramatic function, the chapter concludes that in later operas the orchestra came to be a key element in scenes exploring a recognizably modern tragic-heroic model of bad conscience.Less
This chapter discusses scenes of supernatural punishment that foreground the dramatic power of the eighteenth-century opera orchestra. It argues that instrumental music increasingly represented the powers of condemnation and punishment in the theater, thanks to the expansion of the orchestra's theatrical role. It demonstrates how composers' use of the terrifying topic (sometimes called the "Sturm und Drang") allowed them to communicate judicial authority and violence in new ways, overshadowing the earlier practice of personifying these forces in judicial figures. The author finds that the "tormenting orchestra" depersonalized penal authority at the same time as operas placed greater emphasis on criminal subjectivity and interiority. The chapter discusses penal scenes in operas by Campra (Idomenée), Rameau (Hippolyte et Aricie, Les Boréades), Gluck (Iphigénie en Tauride), and Sacchini (Oedipe à Colonne), as well as their contemporaries. Examining changes in the orchestra's dramatic function, the chapter concludes that in later operas the orchestra came to be a key element in scenes exploring a recognizably modern tragic-heroic model of bad conscience.
William Kinderman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780195366921
- eISBN:
- 9780199344864
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195366921.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition, History, Western
The genesis of Wagner’s Parsifal drama has deep roots, as is shown by its affinities with his first opera Die Feen, based on Gozzi’s play La donna serpente. Other sources of inspiration included an ...
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The genesis of Wagner’s Parsifal drama has deep roots, as is shown by its affinities with his first opera Die Feen, based on Gozzi’s play La donna serpente. Other sources of inspiration included an 1838 treatise by C.T.L. Lucas, and Gluck’s Armide. Wagner’s Lohengrin offered a springboard for Parsifal, and the composer weighed the possibility of introducing Parzival into the last act of Tristan und Isolde. By the time of his first prose draft in 1865, Kundry had become a complex compound being with certain sphinx-like traits, but only in the last stages of devising the text did Wagner settle on the names of some major characters.Less
The genesis of Wagner’s Parsifal drama has deep roots, as is shown by its affinities with his first opera Die Feen, based on Gozzi’s play La donna serpente. Other sources of inspiration included an 1838 treatise by C.T.L. Lucas, and Gluck’s Armide. Wagner’s Lohengrin offered a springboard for Parsifal, and the composer weighed the possibility of introducing Parzival into the last act of Tristan und Isolde. By the time of his first prose draft in 1865, Kundry had become a complex compound being with certain sphinx-like traits, but only in the last stages of devising the text did Wagner settle on the names of some major characters.
Richard Kramer
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226377896
- eISBN:
- 9780226384085
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226384085.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Philosophy of Music
This chapter examines the works of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock that were set to music by Bach and Gluck. In particular, Bach's setting of Lyda and Gluck's settings of Der Jüngling and Die frü hen ...
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This chapter examines the works of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock that were set to music by Bach and Gluck. In particular, Bach's setting of Lyda and Gluck's settings of Der Jüngling and Die frü hen Gräber. These settings were published in Poetische Blumenlese of 1775, edited by Johann Heinrich Voss. In a letter dated 30 March 1774 to his colleagues Voss reports from Hamburg on a visit to Klopstock: “Afterward we spoke about the rhythm and the music of prosody. Gluck's Willkommen [o silberne Mond] and the Schlachtgesang pleased him thoroughly. The others, such as das deutsche Mädchen, less so, and yet more than Bach's composition. Bach is otherwise said to speak with esteem of Gluck”.Less
This chapter examines the works of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock that were set to music by Bach and Gluck. In particular, Bach's setting of Lyda and Gluck's settings of Der Jüngling and Die frü hen Gräber. These settings were published in Poetische Blumenlese of 1775, edited by Johann Heinrich Voss. In a letter dated 30 March 1774 to his colleagues Voss reports from Hamburg on a visit to Klopstock: “Afterward we spoke about the rhythm and the music of prosody. Gluck's Willkommen [o silberne Mond] and the Schlachtgesang pleased him thoroughly. The others, such as das deutsche Mädchen, less so, and yet more than Bach's composition. Bach is otherwise said to speak with esteem of Gluck”.
Richard Kramer
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226377896
- eISBN:
- 9780226384085
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226384085.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, Philosophy of Music
This chapter analyzes Gluck's opera Iphigénie en Tauride (1779). The discussion includes one of the signal moments in the opera, where Iphigénie comes into view just as Oreste utters the horrific ...
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This chapter analyzes Gluck's opera Iphigénie en Tauride (1779). The discussion includes one of the signal moments in the opera, where Iphigénie comes into view just as Oreste utters the horrific words that awaken him from his dream. The awakening is captured in an extreme diminished seventh, echoed in Iphigénie's chilling response to what she has witnessed. The music captures that disquieting moment at which one awakens from a dream, that instant in which the dream image is at once transfigured into the waking present. It is at this cathartic moment that Iphigénie and Oreste set eyes on each other for the first time in the opera. The process of recognition begins here, intuitively and through the recesses of the subconscious.Less
This chapter analyzes Gluck's opera Iphigénie en Tauride (1779). The discussion includes one of the signal moments in the opera, where Iphigénie comes into view just as Oreste utters the horrific words that awaken him from his dream. The awakening is captured in an extreme diminished seventh, echoed in Iphigénie's chilling response to what she has witnessed. The music captures that disquieting moment at which one awakens from a dream, that instant in which the dream image is at once transfigured into the waking present. It is at this cathartic moment that Iphigénie and Oreste set eyes on each other for the first time in the opera. The process of recognition begins here, intuitively and through the recesses of the subconscious.
Vincent Giroud
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300117653
- eISBN:
- 9780300168211
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300117653.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter examines the history of French opera from the time of Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck up to the French Revolution. It discusses the emergence of the so-called ballet d'action to ...
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This chapter examines the history of French opera from the time of Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck up to the French Revolution. It discusses the emergence of the so-called ballet d'action to reform to a style popularized by Gluck and describes some of the first ballets d'action, including Maximilien Gardel's La chercheuse d'esprit and Bercher Dauberval's Le déserteur. The chapter also describes the works of the three major opéra-comique composers who dominated the period: François-André Philidor, Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, and André-Modeste Grétry.Less
This chapter examines the history of French opera from the time of Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck up to the French Revolution. It discusses the emergence of the so-called ballet d'action to reform to a style popularized by Gluck and describes some of the first ballets d'action, including Maximilien Gardel's La chercheuse d'esprit and Bercher Dauberval's Le déserteur. The chapter also describes the works of the three major opéra-comique composers who dominated the period: François-André Philidor, Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, and André-Modeste Grétry.
Martha Feldman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780520279490
- eISBN:
- 9780520962033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520279490.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
As the eighteenth century wore on and absolutism crumbled, the bourgeois was consolidating its fear of the castrato, whom it denatured in sharpened critiques. Castrati were ever more ...
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As the eighteenth century wore on and absolutism crumbled, the bourgeois was consolidating its fear of the castrato, whom it denatured in sharpened critiques. Castrati were ever more incomprehensible, indeed anathema to Europe’s new self-conception. The singing of castrati adapted via two modes: an Orphic and sensible voice, epitomized by Gluck’s Orpheus (as cultivated by Guadagni, Millico, and Pacchierotti) and defined by Susan Burney’s journals in England, and a virtuosic one as perfected by Marchesi.Less
As the eighteenth century wore on and absolutism crumbled, the bourgeois was consolidating its fear of the castrato, whom it denatured in sharpened critiques. Castrati were ever more incomprehensible, indeed anathema to Europe’s new self-conception. The singing of castrati adapted via two modes: an Orphic and sensible voice, epitomized by Gluck’s Orpheus (as cultivated by Guadagni, Millico, and Pacchierotti) and defined by Susan Burney’s journals in England, and a virtuosic one as perfected by Marchesi.
Larry Wolff
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780804795777
- eISBN:
- 9780804799652
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804795777.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter focuses on the 1760s and 1770s, especially in the Habsburg monarchy, as Gluck and Haydn began to compose comic operas on Turkish themes making use of Janissary percussion and alla turca ...
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This chapter focuses on the 1760s and 1770s, especially in the Habsburg monarchy, as Gluck and Haydn began to compose comic operas on Turkish themes making use of Janissary percussion and alla turca style. Cultural interest in the Ottomans was conditioned by the presence of Ottoman envoys in Vienna in the age of Maria Theresa and, especially, by the international circumstances of the Russian-Turkish war of 1768 to 1774. Gluck’s and Haydn’s French and Italian versions of the same subject, Les Pèlerins de la Mecque and L’incontro improvviso, are discussed with reference to the comical figure of the Kalender. Haydn’s comic opera Lo speziale, performed at Esterháza in 1768, is considered in relation to operatic Turkish travesty and disguise. The news of the ongoing war between the Turks and Russians created a climate encouraging for comic operas about Turks, including works by Niccolò Jommelli and Georg Joseph Vogler.Less
This chapter focuses on the 1760s and 1770s, especially in the Habsburg monarchy, as Gluck and Haydn began to compose comic operas on Turkish themes making use of Janissary percussion and alla turca style. Cultural interest in the Ottomans was conditioned by the presence of Ottoman envoys in Vienna in the age of Maria Theresa and, especially, by the international circumstances of the Russian-Turkish war of 1768 to 1774. Gluck’s and Haydn’s French and Italian versions of the same subject, Les Pèlerins de la Mecque and L’incontro improvviso, are discussed with reference to the comical figure of the Kalender. Haydn’s comic opera Lo speziale, performed at Esterháza in 1768, is considered in relation to operatic Turkish travesty and disguise. The news of the ongoing war between the Turks and Russians created a climate encouraging for comic operas about Turks, including works by Niccolò Jommelli and Georg Joseph Vogler.
