Pub Date : 2023-02-03DOI: 10.1017/S0269889722000229
Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze
The paper is based on a hitherto unexplored document (audiotape of an interview accompanied by a German transcript) from 1953, located in the Freud Papers at the Library of Congress. It contributes to a better understanding of the impact of Freud and of Psychoanalysis on personalities from the exact sciences, here represented by the noted applied mathematicians Richard von Mises and Hilda Geiringer from Vienna. The detailed discussion of the interview sheds some new light on the different roles of Kraus and Freud in the Vienna culture, on the Vienna Jugendkulturbewegung (youth culture movement) during WWI in which Geiringer was involved, on Freud's and Siegfried Bernfeld's standing around 1930 among German philosophers and psychologists, and on Wilhelm Fließ' theory of periodicity, which von Mises-based on his attitude as an applied mathematician-defended against superficial accusations. Finally, new biographical material is provided for von Mises and the remotely related Freud family, and for Geiringer's and von Mises' early lives. The interview, which was taken during the Cold War, also allows conclusions as to how politics influenced the memories and views of the participants. Part of the aim of the paper is historical documentation of unknown material (letters by Karl Kraus and Wolfgang Köhler, one book review by Wilhelm Ostwald, a file on R. Pfennig), including some correction of erroneous information in the literature.
{"title":"A married couple of mathematicians from Vienna remembers Sigmund Freud (1953).","authors":"Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze","doi":"10.1017/S0269889722000229","DOIUrl":"10.1017/S0269889722000229","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The paper is based on a hitherto unexplored document (audiotape of an interview accompanied by a German transcript) from 1953, located in the Freud Papers at the Library of Congress. It contributes to a better understanding of the impact of Freud and of Psychoanalysis on personalities from the exact sciences, here represented by the noted applied mathematicians Richard von Mises and Hilda Geiringer from Vienna. The detailed discussion of the interview sheds some new light on the different roles of Kraus and Freud in the Vienna culture, on the Vienna Jugendkulturbewegung (youth culture movement) during WWI in which Geiringer was involved, on Freud's and Siegfried Bernfeld's standing around 1930 among German philosophers and psychologists, and on Wilhelm Fließ' theory of periodicity, which von Mises-based on his attitude as an applied mathematician-defended against superficial accusations. Finally, new biographical material is provided for von Mises and the remotely related Freud family, and for Geiringer's and von Mises' early lives. The interview, which was taken during the Cold War, also allows conclusions as to how politics influenced the memories and views of the participants. Part of the aim of the paper is historical documentation of unknown material (letters by Karl Kraus and Wolfgang Köhler, one book review by Wilhelm Ostwald, a file on R. Pfennig), including some correction of erroneous information in the literature.</p>","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":" ","pages":"1-48"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9209588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Documenting cultural life in contemporary Australia seems a fraught and daunting task, if not for the one-sided narratives so consistently reinforced through early scholarship, then at least due to the geographical vastness and diverse population that makes generalisation so difficult. The arrival of Music City Melbourne: Urban Culture, History and Policy is thus welcomed for its resolute specificity and unique historical lens. The book narrates and delineates popular music in Melbourne from the 1950s until the mid-2000s, exploring how it has shaped, and been shaped by, cultural policy and migration. The text is a much-needed contribution to scholarship on both Australian cultural policy, which focuses predominantly on the fine arts, and Australian popular music that in general fails to account for the historical contributions made by marginalised groups. Indeed, the authors describe Music City Melbourne’s historical emphases and use of subtly critical language (most notably, their casual use of the term ‘invasion’ as opposed to ‘settlement’ of Australia) as ‘an important corrective of Anglo Saxon accounts’ of Australian history (p. 3, emphasis added). [...]
{"title":"Shane Homan, Seamus O’Hanlon, Catherine Strong and John Tebutt. Music City Melbourne: Urban Culture, History and Policy (review)","authors":"Isobel D'Cruz Barnes","doi":"10.46580/cx70617","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46580/cx70617","url":null,"abstract":"Documenting cultural life in contemporary Australia seems a fraught and daunting task, if not for the one-sided narratives so consistently reinforced through early scholarship, then at least due to the geographical vastness and diverse population that makes generalisation so difficult. The arrival of Music City Melbourne: Urban Culture, History and Policy is thus welcomed for its resolute specificity and unique historical lens. The book narrates and delineates popular music in Melbourne from the 1950s until the mid-2000s, exploring how it has shaped, and been shaped by, cultural policy and migration. The text is a much-needed contribution to scholarship on both Australian cultural policy, which focuses predominantly on the fine arts, and Australian popular music that in general fails to account for the historical contributions made by marginalised groups. Indeed, the authors describe Music City Melbourne’s historical emphases and use of subtly critical language (most notably, their casual use of the term ‘invasion’ as opposed to ‘settlement’ of Australia) as ‘an important corrective of Anglo Saxon accounts’ of Australian history (p. 3, emphasis added). [...]","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75124759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
"Devotional song in the German vernacular was a large repertory in the seventeenth century; as Robert Kendrick points out, the more than two thousand printed collections of these songs produced at this time attest to a relatively musically literate public that engaged with the repertoire. Most published devotional songs appeared in collections, usually consisting of a foreword or dedications, other poetry, and songs. The songs themselves often appeared without printed musical notation, indicating the use of contrafactum. Both men and women contributed to the German devotional song repertoire; however, there is a notable number of original song texts written by women. The 1703 publication Glauben-schallende und Himmel-steigende Herzens-Music, for example, contains 1,052 devotional songs, of which 211 have texts written by women. Women’s performance of devotional texts—whether by singing, recitation, or reading—was a practice that demonstrated their deep internalisation of the text itself whilst also providing a socially acceptable means of self-expression. This article focuses on a mid-seventeenth century manuscript songbook compiled by Duchess Sophie Elisabeth of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1613–1676). It suggests that at least three songs in the manuscript have poetry and/or music written by noblewomen other than the duchess, including Juliane of Oldenburg-Delmenhorst (1615–1691) and Maria Magdalena of Waldeck-Wildungen (1606–1671). This suggestion is based on two notable features of Sophie Elisabeth’s meticulous recording practices in ‘Patiençe veinque tout’ that are missing from the songs in question. First, the authorship of these three songs is ambiguous, whereas the text and music for all other songs in the source are either made clear by Sophie Elisabeth’s own annotations accompanying each song, or are easily traceable. Second, none of the three songs include the duchess’s monogram, a date of composition, nor any other note stating her authorship (one or more of these notations are included for the songs in ‘Patiençe veinque tout’ that are of her own creation). In investigating the provenance of these songs, this article highlights the fact that women’s original texts, which are often overlooked, form a sizeable and significant body of musical literature from the early modern period. The two complementary practices of writing and performance paint an intimate portrait of women’s confessional and personal identity and the role music played in forming this identity, while also reflecting broader cross-confessional trends towards spiritual interiority and personal piety in the seventeenth century."
" 17世纪德国方言中的祈祷歌是一个很大的剧目;正如Robert Kendrick所指出的那样，在这个时期，这些歌曲的两千多张印刷集证明了一个相对有音乐素养的公众参与了这些曲目。大多数已出版的祈祷歌曲出现在合集中，通常由前言或献词、其他诗歌和歌曲组成。歌曲本身往往没有印刷乐谱，表明使用契约。男性和女性都为德国祈祷歌曲曲目做出了贡献;然而，女性创作的原创歌曲文本数量也相当可观。例如，1703年出版的《Glauben-schallende und Himmel-steigende Herzens-Music》收录了1052首宗教歌曲，其中211首是由女性创作的。女性对虔诚文本的表演——无论是唱歌、背诵还是阅读——都是一种实践，表明了她们对文本本身的深刻内化，同时也提供了一种社会可接受的自我表达方式。这篇文章的重点是由公爵夫人苏菲·伊丽莎白的布伦瑞克- 内堡(1613-1676)编写的17世纪中期的手稿歌本。它表明，手稿中至少有三首歌曲是由公爵夫人以外的贵族女性创作的诗歌和/或音乐，包括奥尔登堡-德尔门霍斯特的朱莉安娜(1615-1691)和瓦尔德克-威尔登根的玛丽亚·玛格达莱娜(1606-1671)。这个建议是基于苏菲·伊丽莎白在“patien veinque tout”中细致的录音实践的两个显著特征，而这些特征在有问题的歌曲中是缺失的。首先，这三首歌的作者是模棱两可的，而来源中所有其他歌曲的文本和音乐要么是由索菲·伊丽莎白自己在每首歌上的注释弄清楚的，要么是很容易追踪的。其次，这三首歌都没有包含公爵夫人的字母组合、创作日期，也没有任何其他说明她的作者身份的注释(《patien e veinque tout》中包含了她自己创作的歌曲中的一个或多个注释)。在调查这些歌曲的来源时，本文强调了这样一个事实，即女性的原始文本，往往被忽视，形成了近代早期音乐文学的一个相当大的和重要的主体。写作和表演这两种互补的做法描绘了女性的忏悔和个人身份以及音乐在形成这种身份中所扮演的角色的亲密肖像，同时也反映了17世纪更广泛的跨忏悔趋势，即精神内在和个人虔诚。”
{"title":"Noblewomen’s Devotional Song Practice in ‘Patiençe veinque tout’ (1647–1655), a German Manuscript from the Mid-seventeenth Century","authors":"Hannah Spracklan-Holl","doi":"10.46580/cx78832","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46580/cx78832","url":null,"abstract":"\"Devotional song in the German vernacular was a large repertory in the seventeenth century; as Robert Kendrick points out, the more than two thousand printed collections of these songs produced at this time attest to a relatively musically literate public that engaged with the repertoire. Most published devotional songs appeared in collections, usually consisting of a foreword or dedications, other poetry, and songs. The songs themselves often appeared without printed musical notation, indicating the use of contrafactum. Both men and women contributed to the German devotional song repertoire; however, there is a notable number of original song texts written by women. The 1703 publication Glauben-schallende und Himmel-steigende Herzens-Music, for example, contains 1,052 devotional songs, of which 211 have texts written by women. Women’s performance of devotional texts—whether by singing, recitation, or reading—was a practice that demonstrated their deep internalisation of the text itself whilst also providing a socially acceptable means of self-expression. This article focuses on a mid-seventeenth century manuscript songbook compiled by Duchess Sophie Elisabeth of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1613–1676). It suggests that at least three songs in the manuscript have poetry and/or music written by noblewomen other than the duchess, including Juliane of Oldenburg-Delmenhorst (1615–1691) and Maria Magdalena of Waldeck-Wildungen (1606–1671). This suggestion is based on two notable features of Sophie Elisabeth’s meticulous recording practices in ‘Patiençe veinque tout’ that are missing from the songs in question. First, the authorship of these three songs is ambiguous, whereas the text and music for all other songs in the source are either made clear by Sophie Elisabeth’s own annotations accompanying each song, or are easily traceable. Second, none of the three songs include the duchess’s monogram, a date of composition, nor any other note stating her authorship (one or more of these notations are included for the songs in ‘Patiençe veinque tout’ that are of her own creation). In investigating the provenance of these songs, this article highlights the fact that women’s original texts, which are often overlooked, form a sizeable and significant body of musical literature from the early modern period. The two complementary practices of writing and performance paint an intimate portrait of women’s confessional and personal identity and the role music played in forming this identity, while also reflecting broader cross-confessional trends towards spiritual interiority and personal piety in the seventeenth century.\"","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85263365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joseph Straus’s The Art of Post-Tonal Analysis is the apotheosis of his decades-long work in post-tonal theory, and serves as an apt analytical companion to his seminal textbook, Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory (4th ed. 2016). Straus displays his mastery of post-tonal analytical artistry throughout. The monograph consists of thirty-three graphic music analyses intuitively laid out, with a pioneering use of colour for further clarity, and complete with a slick video version of each analysis on the companion website. The aim of each analysis is to uncover the structure and form of the music, with an emphasis on pitch organisation, whilst remaining largely free from overarching contextual or theoretical arguments. […]
{"title":"Joseph N. Straus. The Art of Post-Tonal Analysis: Thirty-Three Graphic Music Analyses (review)","authors":"Aidan McGartland","doi":"10.46580/cx29461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46580/cx29461","url":null,"abstract":"Joseph Straus’s The Art of Post-Tonal Analysis is the apotheosis of his decades-long work in post-tonal theory, and serves as an apt analytical companion to his seminal textbook, Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory (4th ed. 2016). Straus displays his mastery of post-tonal analytical artistry throughout. The monograph consists of thirty-three graphic music analyses intuitively laid out, with a pioneering use of colour for further clarity, and complete with a slick video version of each analysis on the companion website. The aim of each analysis is to uncover the structure and form of the music, with an emphasis on pitch organisation, whilst remaining largely free from overarching contextual or theoretical arguments. […]","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87835078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The career of pianist and composer Michael Kieran Harvey is notable for its diversity and wide repertoire. In addition to his more than fifty solo CDs recorded on various labels, Harvey is particularly known for his promotion of contemporary music; he has premiered many new Australian and international concertos, and more than three hundred solo Australian keyboard works, many of which are dedicated to him. […]
{"title":"Not Just Wallpaper: An Interview with Michael Kieran Harvey","authors":"I. Parsons","doi":"10.46580/cx58054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46580/cx58054","url":null,"abstract":"The career of pianist and composer Michael Kieran Harvey is notable for its diversity and wide repertoire. In addition to his more than fifty solo CDs recorded on various labels, Harvey is particularly known for his promotion of contemporary music; he has premiered many new Australian and international concertos, and more than three hundred solo Australian keyboard works, many of which are dedicated to him. […]","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":"19 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72460830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Percy Grainger (1882–1961) is frequently remembered as a virtuoso pianist, a collector of folk songs, and an idiosyncratic composer. Yet in addition to his other activities, he also designed and built numerous sound-producing machines. These experimental machines enabled Grainger to begin realising the experimental music he envisioned, that is, sounds freed from traditional rhythms and pitches. Grainger initially tried to create the new sounds he imagined with known instruments such as the theremin, but eventually began modifying instruments to create his own sound machines, such as the microtonal ‘butterfly’ piano. Grainger’s main collaborator, Burnett Cross (1914–1996), a high school science teacher with a background in both physics and music, helped to make those dreams a reality. Cross contributed technical expertise as the two worked together to bring Grainger’s ideas to life. Cross began working with Grainger in 1944 and became gradually more involved throughout the 1950s. By the late 1950s, Cross took the lead, especially with the electronic machine models. […]
{"title":"Teresa Balough and Kay Dreyfus, eds. Distant Dreams: The Correspondence of Percy Grainger and Burnett Cross 1946–60 (review)","authors":"Erinn Knyt","doi":"10.46580/cx34958","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46580/cx34958","url":null,"abstract":"Percy Grainger (1882–1961) is frequently remembered as a virtuoso pianist, a collector of folk songs, and an idiosyncratic composer. Yet in addition to his other activities, he also designed and built numerous sound-producing machines. These experimental machines enabled Grainger to begin realising the experimental music he envisioned, that is, sounds freed from traditional rhythms and pitches. Grainger initially tried to create the new sounds he imagined with known instruments such as the theremin, but eventually began modifying instruments to create his own sound machines, such as the microtonal ‘butterfly’ piano. Grainger’s main collaborator, Burnett Cross (1914–1996), a high school science teacher with a background in both physics and music, helped to make those dreams a reality. Cross contributed technical expertise as the two worked together to bring Grainger’s ideas to life. Cross began working with Grainger in 1944 and became gradually more involved throughout the 1950s. By the late 1950s, Cross took the lead, especially with the electronic machine models. […]","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":"124 3-4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72477952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Renaissance vocal music has an editorial problem. Performers and editors of pre-Baroque repertoire are unable simply to realise the music on the page but instead must decide whether the notation means what it says it means: manuscripts require interpretation. This obligation arises from the widely accepted idea that the surviving compositions were not chromatically precise and that certain types of inflection—what today we would call accidentals—were omitted in writing but applied in performance. There are several well-known ‘rules’ that govern the creation of these inflections,1 but this is where the consensus ends. Every scholar’s particular application of these rules is slightly different, and consequently, no two recordingsof a Josquin mass or a Mouton motet sound identical. As Peter Urquhart observes in his weighty contribution to the topic, even the term used to describe these problems, musica ficta, is ambiguous. […]
{"title":"Peter Urquhart. Sound and Sense in Franco-Flemish Music of the Renaissance: Sharps, Flats and the Problem of Musica Ficta (review)","authors":"T. Daly","doi":"10.46580/cx57008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46580/cx57008","url":null,"abstract":"Renaissance vocal music has an editorial problem. Performers and editors of pre-Baroque repertoire are unable simply to realise the music on the page but instead must decide whether the notation means what it says it means: manuscripts require interpretation. This obligation arises from the widely accepted idea that the surviving compositions were not chromatically precise and that certain types of inflection—what today we would call accidentals—were omitted in writing but applied in performance. There are several well-known ‘rules’ that govern the creation of these inflections,1 but this is where the consensus ends. Every scholar’s particular application of these rules is slightly different, and consequently, no two recordingsof a Josquin mass or a Mouton motet sound identical. As Peter Urquhart observes in his weighty contribution to the topic, even the term used to describe these problems, musica ficta, is ambiguous. […]","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90798202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The 2022 World Fair (aka ‘Expo’) held in Dubai has recently drawn to a close. The next Expo will be hosted by Buenos Aires in 2023; the one after that will be staged in Osaka in 2025. These Expos are all linked to the first Expo of them all: the Great Exhibition staged in London in 1851. To be sure, the term ‘great’ is an understatement. The 1851 event, and those that followed it, were—and remain—colossal undertakings. They take years of planning, attract millions of visitors, and serve a variety of cultural and political purposes. These Expos are built and designed to ‘dazzle’—a word that Sarah Kirby uses in her book to describe the at times overwhelming effect of Expos on the senses (p. 52). […]
{"title":"Sarah Kirby. Exhibitions, Music and the British Empire (review)","authors":"Paul Watt","doi":"10.46580/cx49792","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46580/cx49792","url":null,"abstract":"The 2022 World Fair (aka ‘Expo’) held in Dubai has recently drawn to a close. The next Expo will be hosted by Buenos Aires in 2023; the one after that will be staged in Osaka in 2025. These Expos are all linked to the first Expo of them all: the Great Exhibition staged in London in 1851. To be sure, the term ‘great’ is an understatement. The 1851 event, and those that followed it, were—and remain—colossal undertakings. They take years of planning, attract millions of visitors, and serve a variety of cultural and political purposes. These Expos are built and designed to ‘dazzle’—a word that Sarah Kirby uses in her book to describe the at times overwhelming effect of Expos on the senses (p. 52). […]","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":"115 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79509257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the last decade or so there has been an increase in musicological studies on the liminal space between art music and popular styles. A foremost scholar in this field (if it can be called that) is Benjamin Piekut, who wrote his first book, Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-Garde and its Limits (University of California Press, 2011) as a series of interrelated case studies. For his second book, Piekut focuses instead on a single band, Henry Cow, who sit neatly in the twilight zone between high and low art. Appropriately, this book is equally accessible to general readers and critically minded musicologists alike: its highly readable narrative avoids jargon and unnecessary citation. Divided into eight chapters (plus an introduction and afterword), Henry Cow traces the band’s story from its genesis in 1968 to its dissolution ten years later. […]
{"title":"Benjamin Piekut. Henry Cow: The World Is a Problem and George Henderson. Blind Joe Death’s America: John Fahey, the Blues, and Writing White Discontent (review)","authors":"Maurice Windleburn","doi":"10.46580/cx47064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46580/cx47064","url":null,"abstract":"In the last decade or so there has been an increase in musicological studies on the liminal space between art music and popular styles. A foremost scholar in this field (if it can be called that) is Benjamin Piekut, who wrote his first book, Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-Garde and its Limits (University of California Press, 2011) as a series of interrelated case studies. For his second book, Piekut focuses instead on a single band, Henry Cow, who sit neatly in the twilight zone between high and low art. Appropriately, this book is equally accessible to general readers and critically minded musicologists alike: its highly readable narrative avoids jargon and unnecessary citation. Divided into eight chapters (plus an introduction and afterword), Henry Cow traces the band’s story from its genesis in 1968 to its dissolution ten years later. […]","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89396289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Written to mark the centenary of Brahms’s birth in 1933, Robert Haven Schauffler’s The Unknown Brahms (1933) was received rapturously by many American critics as a work which had humanised Brahms to a public that had perceived the composer as mysterious, contradictory, and unrelatable. Today, however, Schauffler’s book is regarded as a readable but unreliable work of popular psychology based not on serious research, but hearsay and rumour. Given its faults, why was The Unknown Brahms met with such acclaim by American critics? This article analyses the book’s early reception to explain its public success. Interpreting a range of reviews published in large-circulation newspapers, I situate The Unknown Brahms’s reception within the discursive context of the middlebrow, to which musicologists have devoted increasing attention in recent years. I also point to the prominence of popular psychology in interwar American society and its importance to a new paradigm of humanistic biography. I argue principally that The Unknown Brahms engrossed middlebrow readers and critics because it was an effective work of music appreciation which allowed lay listeners to engage empathetically with Brahms’s music. By contributing a new case study of Brahms’s American reception, the article broadens understandings of Brahms’s cultural status in the twentieth century.
{"title":"‘The Vibrant, Passionate Human Soul He Was’: Robert Haven Schauffler’s The Unknown Brahms (1933) and the American Middlebrow","authors":"Adam Weitzer","doi":"10.46580/cx83220","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46580/cx83220","url":null,"abstract":"Written to mark the centenary of Brahms’s birth in 1933, Robert Haven Schauffler’s The Unknown Brahms (1933) was received rapturously by many American critics as a work which had humanised Brahms to a public that had perceived the composer as mysterious, contradictory, and unrelatable. Today, however, Schauffler’s book is regarded as a readable but unreliable work of popular psychology based not on serious research, but hearsay and rumour. Given its faults, why was The Unknown Brahms met with such acclaim by American critics? This article analyses the book’s early reception to explain its public success. Interpreting a range of reviews published in large-circulation newspapers, I situate The Unknown Brahms’s reception within the discursive context of the middlebrow, to which musicologists have devoted increasing attention in recent years. I also point to the prominence of popular psychology in interwar American society and its importance to a new paradigm of humanistic biography. I argue principally that The Unknown Brahms engrossed middlebrow readers and critics because it was an effective work of music appreciation which allowed lay listeners to engage empathetically with Brahms’s music. By contributing a new case study of Brahms’s American reception, the article broadens understandings of Brahms’s cultural status in the twentieth century.","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":"137 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75106331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：
京公网安备 11010802042870号