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Music, Culture and Social Reform in the Age of Wagner
Author(s): James Garratt (Author)
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press
- Publication Date: March 8, 2010
- Edition: Illustrated
- Language: English
- Print length: 306 pages
- ISBN-10: 0521110548
- ISBN-13: 9780521110549
Book Description
Challenging received views of music in nineteenth-century German thought, culture and society, this 2010 book provides a radical reappraisal of its socio-political meanings and functions. Garratt argues that far from governing the nineteenth-century musical discourse and practice, the concept of artistic autonomy and the aesthetic categories bequeathed by Weimar classicism were persistently challenged by alternative models of music’s social role. The book investigates these competing models and the social projects that gave rise to them. It interrogates nineteenth-century musical discourse, discussing a wide range of manifestos championing musical democratization or seeking to make music an engine for the transformation of society. In addition, it explores institutions and movements that attempted to realize these goals, and compositions – by Mendelssohn, Lortzing and Liszt as well as Wagner – in which the relation between aesthetic and social claims is programmatic.
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
A radical reappraisal of the left-wing politics at the heart of nineteenth-century German music and culture, first published in 2010.
About the Author
James Garratt is Senior Lecturer in Music and University Organist at the University of Manchester.
