The Most Expressionist of All the Arts: Programs, Politics, and Performance in Critical Discourse about Music and Expressionism, c. 1918-1923
Clare Carrasco, B.M., M.M.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis/Dissertation (Online)
- Publication:
- [Denton, Texas] : University of North Texas, 2016
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- Summary:
- Abstract: This dissertation investigates how German-language critics articulated and publicly negotiated ideas about music and expressionism in the first five years after World War I. A close reading of largely unexplored primary sources reveals that "musical expressionism" was originally conceived as an intrinsically musical matter rather than as a stylistic analog to expressionism in other art forms, and thus as especially relevant to purely instrumental rather than vocal and stage genres. By focusing on critical reception of an unlikely group of instrumental chamber works, I elucidate how the acts of performing, listening to, and evaluating "expressionist" music were enmeshed in the complexities of a politicized public concert life in the immediate postwar period. The opening chapters establish broad music-aesthetic and sociopolitical contexts for critics' postwar discussions of "musical expressionism." After the first, introductory chapter, Chapter 2 traces how art and literary critics came to position music as the most expressionist of the arts based on nineteenth-century ideas about the apparently unique ontology of music. Chapter 3 considers how this conception of expressionism led progressive-minded music critics to interpret expressionist music as the next step in the historical development of absolute music. These critics strategically—and controversially—portrayed Schoenberg's "atonal" polyphony as a legitimate revival of "linear" polyphony in fugues by Bach and late Beethoven. Chapter 4 then situates critical debates about the musical and cultural value of expressionism within broader struggles to construct narratives that would explain Germany's traumatic defeat in the Great War and abrupt restructuring as a fragile democratic republic. Against this backdrop, the later chapters explore critics' responses to public performances of specific "expressionist" chamber works. Chapter 5 traces reactions to a provocative performance of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony, op. 9 (1906) at the Berlin Volksbühne in February 1920. Chapter 6 examines the interplay of musical-aesthetic and sociopolitical issues in critical reception of several postwar concerts that juxtaposed Schoenberg's "expressionist" Chamber Symphony with Franz Schreker's "impressionist" Chamber Symphony (1916). Chapter 7 considers how critics situated performances of Alexander Zemlinsky's Second String Quartet, op. 15 (1916) in relation to ideas about "expressionism" in music. Finally, Chapter 8 considers critical reception of performances of Béla Bartók's Second String Quartet, op. 17 (1917) in the context of two concert series sponsored by "expressionist" journals: the Anbruch-Abende in Vienna (1918) and the Melos-Abende in Berlin (1922 and 1923). Each of these final chapters uses contemporary criticism as a vehicle for a close reading of the relevant musical work, resulting in a portrait of "expressionist" music that is both contextually and musically nuanced.
- Table of Contents:
- Introduction : Music and expressionism in critical discourse
- Music as the most expressionist of all the arts
- Expressionist music as absolute music : music critics and the creation of a history for musical expressionism
- Conquest, destruction, and "linear politics": politicized metaphors in music criticism of the early Weimar Republic
- Die Kunst dem Volke? Critical responses to Schoenberg's "expressionist" chamber symphony at the Berlin Volksbühne
- The unlike pair : impressionism and expressionism in critical reception of Schoenberg and Schreker's chamber symphonies
- Zemlinsky the expressionist? The second string quartet, op. 15
- Another expressionism : Bartók's Second string quartet, op. 17 in the Anbruch and Melos concert series
- Conclusion
- Appendix A : Political slant of newspapers in Berlin and Vienna
- Appendix B : Editorial slant of major music journals
- Appendix C : Formal outline: Schreker's Chamber symphony
- Appendix D : Formal outline: Schoenberg's Chamber symphony, op. 9
- Appendix E : Berg's Thementafel for Schoenberg's op. 9
- Appendix F : Formal outline: Zemlinsky's String quartet no. 2, op. 15.
- Author/Creator:
- Carrasco, Clare , author
- Contributors:
- Notley, Margaret Anne , major professor
- Languages:
- English
- Language Notes:
- Item content: English
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- Genres:
- Dissertation Notes:
- Ph. D. ― University of North Texas, 2016.
- General Notes:
- DIscipline: Musicology.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 349-384).
Description based on: Online resource; title from PDF title page (UNT Digital Library, viewed March 24, 2020). - Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (xi, 384 pages) : illustrations, music.
- Digital Characteristics:
- text file
- Call Numbers:
- Electronic Dissertation
- OCLC Numbers:
- 1269303880