| Contents |
Ambivalent modernism: perspectives from the 1870s and 1880s. Wagner and German modernism ; Crosscurrents in Wilhelmine Germany ; Nietzsche and Wagner ; Nietzsche's neoclassical turn ; Nietzsche's "German depth," "Music of the south," and the "Grand style" ; Wagner's Parsifal and ambivalent modernism -- German naturalism. Naturalism: definitions and perspectives ; Naturalism and Wagner ; Declamatory naturalism ; German Verismo ; Tiefland ; Mona Lisa ; Der ferne Klang ; Salome and Elektra -- Convergences: music and the visual arts. Adorno's "Convergence" ; The total artwork ; Max Klinger ; The Brahms Fantasy ; Symbolism abstraction, Jugendstil ; Music and Jugendstil ; The theories of August Endell ; The blue rider ; The Schoenberg concert of January 2, 1911 ; Schoenberg's music ; Kandinsky's Impression III ; Thoughts in conclusion -- Bach, regeneration, and historicist modernism. Bach as healthy, Bach as healer ; Bach reception around 1900 ; Bach and music theory ; Reger's historicist modernism ; Reger's organ suite, op. 16 ; Reger's Bach variations, op. 81 ; Reger's piano concerto, op. 114 ; Busoni's Bach ; Toward irony: Mahler and Bachian counterpoint -- Ironic Germans. Thomas Mann, Wagner, and irony ; Buddenbrooks ; Mann's Tristan ; Parody ; Blood of the Walsungs ; Mahler's irony -- "Dancing in chains": Strauss, Hofmannsthal, Pfitzner, and their musical pasts. Strauss and Hofmannsthal ; Tristan in Der Rosenkavalier ; Ariadne auf Naxos ; The Ariadne year 1911 ; Mozart, Wagner, and Ariadne ; The character of Ariadne ; Ariadne as hypertext ; Pfitzner's regressive modernism ; Epilogue: "Our play has long ago finished its run". |
| Abstract |
In this pioneering, erudite study of a pivotal era in the arts, Walter Frisch examines music and its relationship to early modernism in the Austro-German sphere. Seeking to explore the period on its own terms, Frisch questions the common assumption that works created from the later 1870s through World War I were transitional between late romanticism and high modernism. Drawing on a wide range of examples across different media, he establishes a cultural and intellectual context for late Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and Arnold Schoenberg, as well as their less familiar contemporaries Eugen d'Albert, Hans Pfitzner, Max Reger, Max von Schillings, and Franz Schreker. Frisch explores "ambivalent" modernism in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as reflected in the attitudes of, and relationship between, Nietzsche and Wagner. He goes on to examine how naturalism, the first self-conscious movement of German modernism, intersected with musical values and practices of the day. He proposes convergences between music and the visual arts in the works of Brahms, Max Klinger, Schoenberg, and Kandinsky. Frisch also explains how, near the turn of the century, composers drew inspiration and techniques from music of the past?the Renaissance, Bach, Mozart, and Wagner. Finally, he demonstrates how irony became a key strategy in the novels and novellas of Thomas Mann, the symphonies of Mahler, and the operas of Strauss and Hofmannsthal. |
