Nineteenth-Century Programme Music
Creation, Negotiations, Reception
Edited by Jonathan Kregor
The history of program music stretches back centuries, but only in the nineteenth century did it enter into widespread use. Indeed, seminal compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven and Frederic Chopin to Arnold Schoenberg and Jean Sibelius have helped program music to secure a position within the artistic pantheon, albeit not without bringing a significant amount of controversy in tow. Yet despite its ubiquitous presence in the nineteenth century, scholarship has not adequately articulated the full extent of program music’s range and impact. This volume explores the diverse ways in which program music was defined, historicized, practiced, disseminated, and judged. It considers how biography, tradition, and function informed the compositional approaches taken by Beethoven, Joseph Joachim, Ethel Smyth, and Zygmunt Noskowski, among others. It draws on extra-musical elements-novels, poems, lithographs, and other forms of creative expression-to determine the ontological profile of works by Chopin, Franz Liszt, Antonio Pasculli, Piotr Tchaikovsky, and Leos Janacek. It situates compositions by Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, Sibelius, and Schoenberg within the ongoing discourse around Hanslickian absolute and Lisztian program music. And it visits major European cities to highlight the critical streams of reception toward the end of the century. Throughout, it repeatedly engages with questions of generic identity (with special attention given to the symphonic poem), issues of narrativity and topicality, and considerations of form and structure.
The history of program music stretches back centuries, but only in the nineteenth century did it enter into widespread use. Indeed, seminal compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven and Frederic Chopin to Arnold Schoenberg and Jean Sibelius have helped program music to secure a position within the artistic pantheon, albeit not without bringing a significant amount of controversy in tow. Yet despite its ubiquitous presence in the nineteenth century, scholarship has not adequately articulated the full extent of program music’s range and impact. This volume explores the diverse ways in which program music was defined, historicized, practiced, disseminated, and judged. It considers how biography, tradition, and function informed the compositional approaches taken by Beethoven, Joseph Joachim, Ethel Smyth, and Zygmunt Noskowski, among others. It draws on extra-musical elements-novels, poems, lithographs, and other forms of creative expression-to determine the ontological profile of works by Chopin, Franz Liszt, Antonio Pasculli, Piotr Tchaikovsky, and Leos Janacek. It situates compositions by Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, Sibelius, and Schoenberg within the ongoing discourse around Hanslickian absolute and Lisztian program music. And it visits major European cities to highlight the critical streams of reception toward the end of the century. Throughout, it repeatedly engages with questions of generic identity (with special attention given to the symphonic poem), issues of narrativity and topicality, and considerations of form and structure.
- Edited by Jonathan Kregor
Other Titles in this Series
Beethoven the European
Transcultural Contexts of Performance, Interpretation and Reception
Volume 48
En pelerinage avec Liszt
Virtuosos, Repertoire and Performing Venues in 19th-Century Europe
Volume 24
The Sound of Empire
Soundscapes, Aesthetics and Performance between Ancien regime and Restoration
Volume 51
Vivaldi, Motezuma and the Opera Seria
Essays on a Newly Discovered Work and its Background
Volume 13
Remapping the Classics
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven in Spain during the Long Nineteenth Century
Volume 54
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