"In Song Loves the Masses, Philip V. Bohlman has achieved what I regard as the finest achievement (only finest so far, of course) in his enormously productive, wide-ranging, innovative, and influential career as a scholar."—Celia Applegate, Vanderbilt University

"This book is that rarity, a genuinely original work. It is simultaneously a valuable translation of Herder and a meditation on translation itself. In this double role it will merit a wide readership in literary scholarship, history, German studies, philosophy, and musicology."—Harry Liebersohn, Professor of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Herder's essays on music are ground zero for the study of musical nationalism, especially in Europe but also in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. All of us interested in this important topic owe Philip V. Bohlman a debt of gratitude for translating them into English for the first time."—Timothy Rice, UCLA Distinguished Professor of Ethnomusicology

"Philip V. Bohlman takes us back with Herder to witness the birth of the conjoined triplets Romanticism, modern anthropology, and comparative musicology. No one reading this book will ever forget their nexus, as well as its costs and its benefits. And we also meet the eighteenth-century philosopher who truly understood—though his contemporaries did not—the dynamic power of music. Herder needs to become our contemporary once more, and now, thanks to Philip V. Bohlman, he can."—Richard Taruskin, author of Oxford History of Western Music

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) was a theologian, philosopher, ethnographer, and historian of the late Enlightenment, whose writings on music have been widely influential during the two centuries since his death.

Philip V. Bohlman is Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor of Music and the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where he is also Artistic Director of the ensemble-in-residence, The New Budapest Orpheum Society.

Song Loves the Masses

Herder on Music and Nationalism

By Johann Gottfried Herder, Philip v. Bohlman

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2017 The Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-23495-6

Contents

List of Illustrations,
Acknowledgments,
Note on the Text,
Note on Translation and Commentary,
Prologue: Again, Herder,
PART I. THE ONTOLOGY PROJECT,
1. Folk Song at the Beginnings of National History: Essay on Alte Volkslieder (1774) Translation from Alte Volkslieder / Ancient Folk Songs,
2. The Folk Song Project at the Confluence of Music and Nationalism: Essay on Volkslieder (1778/79) and Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (1807),
Translation from Volkslieder and Stimmen der Völker in Liedern / Folk Songs and Voices of the People in Song,
Appendix A: Introduction to the Folk Song Texts,
Appendix B: Translation from the Folk Song Texts,
3. Singing the Sacred Body: Essay on Lieder der Liebe (1778),
Translation from Lieder der Liebe: Die ältesten und schönsten aus Morgenlande / Songs of Love: The Oldest and Most Beautiful from the Orient,
PART II. THE HISTORY PROJECT,
4. The Nation and Its Fragments: Essay on "Briefwechsel über Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker" (1773),
Translation from "Briefwechsel über Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker" / "Correspondence about Ossian and the Songs of Ancient Peoples",
5. Songs of the Enlightenment Bard: Essay on "Homer und Ossian" (1794) Translation of "Homer und Ossian" / "Homer and Ossian",
6. Redemption through Sacred Song: Essay on Letter 46, Theologische Schriften (1780/81),
Translation of Letter 46, Theologische Schriften / Theological Writings,
PART III. THE NATION PROJECT,
7. The Shores of Modernity: Essay on "Wirkung der Dichtkunst auf die Sitten neuerer Zeiten" (1777),
Translation from "Wirkung der Dichtkunst auf die Sitten neuerer Zeiten" / "The Influence of Poetry on the Customs of Modernity",
8. The Epic as Nation: Essay on Herder's Der Cid,
Translation from Der Cid / The Cid,
9. Music Transcendent and Sublime: Herder's "Von Music" (1800) Translation of "Von Musik" / "On Music",
Epilogue: Herder's Journey,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

Folk Song at the Beginnings of National History

Essay on Alte Volkslieder (1774)

Philip V. Bohlman

Wen sangen die Deutschen? / Whom did the Germans sing?

— JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDER, Von Ähnlichkeit

In the beginning there were folk songs. Starting from the preface to the first of its four books, Johann Gottfried Herder's Alte Volkslieder (Ancient Folk Songs) possesses the character of Torah, a set of law-giving principles for hearing a nation's past and present in song. From the beginning, Herder makes the conditions of his search for "old folk songs" clear. Though beginning at least as early as the formative era of a German culture with Charlemagne, the search for songs with German character remains inchoate. It lags behind the histories of song in other peoples, those whose identity largely depends on language and culture, as well as those for whom language provides the basis for a national, political identity. Herder's admiration for the English notwithstanding, the Alte Volkslieder is a call to action: the old folk songs of all peoples deserve to be gathered. Together, they should be compared to understand both the distinctive character of individual peoples — and nations — as well as the universal wellspring of culture they have in common. They should be afforded a place in the present so that the character of their origins can be translated and transformed to shape the future. Herder's folk song project, at its own beginnings in 1774, becomes a bold response to this call to action.

With the Alte Volkslieder we find ourselves in the midst of Herder's first laboratory. He approaches song as complex empirical material, adapted for experimentation, allowing him to locate folk song in history, hence establishing several levels of narrative meaning. Herder gathers songs as fragments, particularly because of the ways they might be fitted together in different, even unexpected ways, above all at the crossroads between story and history at which identity, especially national identity, itself still inchoate in the waning Enlightenment, is forming.

The tools with which Herder approaches experimentation in Alte Volkslieder include the following: 1) an anthology consisting of four volumes in which folk songs from different peoples coalesce as common historical discourses; 2) the transition from oral to written tradition, with all the theoretical issues that determine that transition (e.g., translation, the core question in the second book, in "Would Shakespeare Be Untranslatable?"); 3) comparisons of texts and historical contexts, the most striking of which reflect Herder's positions on the relation of language to nation; 4) classification and categorization, which establish genre and social function; 5) translation as critical for integrating songs into the history of Germany; 6) writing with fragments, no less than including songs as fragments, often deliberately retaining their jagged edges.

Like its contents, Alte Volkslieder appeared in a publication project that was in many ways fragmentary. Each of the four books begins with a substantial introductory essay, which, however, stands on its own. The introductory essay was to be followed by a modest section of song texts. Herder refers to these as "the planned collection" (JGHW3, 12), and he lists most songs in that collection quite specifically, by song title or genre. There are fifteen songs each for the first two books, twelve and thirteen for the third and fourth books. The songs, which were left in manuscript form, both do and do not illustrate the specific theme of the introductory essay. The songs that would have followed pick up some themes from the introductions — some songs in the third book exemplify the similarity between English and German — but others deliberately expand the theme to broaden the foundations on which Herder's folk song project is taking shape. The "Nordic songs" of the fourth book, which Herder takes to propose a way of "approaching the songs of foreign peoples," thus provide a critical framework for a more fully developed theory of music and the nation.

The reasons that the different parts — complete introductory essays, songs left in fragmentary manuscripts — did not appear in a single publication in 1774 or soon thereafter are not entirely clear. Publication in fragments, as in chapter 4 on Ossian in the present book, was not uncommon in the eighteenth century, especially for anthologies of literary and musical works from the past (see also chapter 8 on El Cid in the present book). The serial publication of books, too, was widespread in the late eighteenth century, especially for publications meant to reach a broad readership. The folk song volumes of 1778 and 1779 (see chapter 2), for example, appeared serially, and then were gathered as two larger volumes (Volkslieder [Folk Songs] in the first edition, and Stimmen der Völker in Liedern [Voices of the People in Song] in the 1807 posthumous edition). The fragmentary nature of the sections of Alte Volkslieder, it follows, does not itself serve as evidence that Herder left this initial stage of...