FHS List A: Topics in Music History After 1750
Pastoral Idylls, National Anxieties: the Nineteenth-Century Symphony
Daniel Grimley
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Course Booklet
Welcome to the course! This booklet provides a summary of the course, a list of lecture topics, and some suggestions for reading.
The nineteenth-century symphony is such a familiar part of the Western musical canon that it is easy to overlook how complex and contested the genre became. Indeed, despite its associations of monumentality, grandeur, and musical unity, it was a discourse concerned as much with conflict and (problematically) hybridity as with synthesis and resolution. This course will scrutinise key works from historical and analytical perspectives. Attention will be directed towards issues of narrative (structural as well as historical), representation, and meaning, across a broad range of works, critically engaging with notions of centre and periphery, inheritance, and musical tradition. The symphony emerges as an anxious site of musical-cultural practice, and simultaneously offers a sharp lens for refracting broader issues in nineteenth-century musical history. You are strongly encouraged to listen widely, particularly to explore areas of the repertoire beyond works discussed during the lecture course (for instance, symphonies by composers such as Niels W Gade, Franz Berwald, Louise Farrenc, Johan Svendsen, Camille Saint-Saëns, ElfridaAndrée, and C V Stanford, just to name a few).The course will also consider issues of performance, interpretation, ideology, and musical space. Listening to symphony concerts regularly on Radio 3 (via the I-player) is an excellent way to broaden your knowledge of the repertoire, and there is much material to explore on Naxos.
Resources
This is a vast topic, with a vast critical literature. You should aim to be selective in your research: don’t try and cover everything! Essential introductory discussions can be found in MGG and New Grove Online (individual composer entries, as well as Mark Evan Bond’s extensive subject chapter on the nineteenth-century symphony). You should also consult A. Peter Brown’s substantial 2-volume set The Symphonic Repertoire vol. III a and b (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), which provides a wide range of repertoire beyond the mainstream canon and succinct analytical summaries of individual movements, as well as D Kern Holoman’s useful anthology The Nineteenth Century Symphony (New York: Schirmer, 1997). More detailed suggestions for reading follow:
Sample Essay Questions
1. To what extent was the nineteenth-century symphony an Austro-German phenomenon?
2. How successful were nineteenth-century composers in addressing the ‘finale problem’ in their symphonic works?
3. Assess the importance of one of the following in relation to the development of the nineteenth-century symphony: a) counterpoint; b) programmaticism; c) landscape
4. To what extent can the nineteenth-century symphony be considered a popular genre?
1. Antiphonies. Schubert—Berlioz
Reading:
Carl Dahlhaus, ‘The Symphony after Beethoven’, in Nineteenth-Century Music trans. J Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 152-60
Brian Newbould, ‘Schubert’, The Nineteenth-Century Symphony, ed. D Kern Holoman, 1-16
Schubert: Symphony in B Minor, ed. Martin Chusid (New York: Norton, 1968/71)
Berlioz: Fantastic Symphony, ed. Edward T. Cone (New York: Norton, 1971)
John M. Gingerich, ‘Unfinished Considerations: Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony in the Context of his Beethoven Project’, 19th Century Music 31/2 (Fall, 2007), 99-112
James Hepokoski, ‘Beethoven reception: the symphonic tradition’ in The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 424-59
F. E. Kirby, ‘The Germanic Symphony of the Nineteenth Century: Genre, Form, Instrumentation, Expression’, Journal of Musicological Research 14/2 (1995), 193-221
Sanna Pederson, ‘On the Task of the Music Historian: The Myth of the German Symphony after Beethoven’, Repercussions 2/2 (1993), 5-30
Stephen Rodgers,Form, Programme and Metaphor in the Music of Berlioz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
Maynard Solomon, ‘Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony’, 19th Century Music 21/2 (Fall, 1997), 111-133
Richard Taruskin, ‘B minor Moods’, The Oxford History of Western Music(OHWM), vol. 3, ch. 2, 107-118
2. Inventing the German Traditions. Mendelssohn—Schumann
Reading:
John Daverio,Robert Schumann: Herald of a ‘New Poetic Age’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 222-41
Thomas S. Grey, ‘Tableaux Vivants: Landscape, History Painting, and the Visual Imagination in Mendelssohn’s Orchestral Music’, 19th Century Music 21/1 (Summer 1997),
Seth Haney, ‘Navigating Sonata Space in Mendelssohn’s Meeresstille und glücklicheFahrt’, 19th Century Music 28/2 (Autumn 2004), 108-32
Peter Mercer-Taylor, ‘Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony and the Music of German Memory’, 19thCentury Music 19 (1995), 68-82
Anthony Newcomb, ‘Once more “Between Absolute and Programme Music”: Schumann’s Second Symphony’, 19th Century Music 7 (1983-4), 233-50
Sanna Pederson, ‘A. B. Marx, Berlin Concert Life and German National Identity’, 19th Century Music 18 (1994-5), 87-107
Linda CorrellRoesner, ‘Schumann’, and R Larry Todd, ‘Mendelssohn’ in Holoman (ed.), The Nineteenth-Century Symphony, 43-107
3. Late Idylls, Symphonic Anxieties. Brahms, Dvořák
Reading:
Reinhold Brinkmann, Late Idyll: The Second Symphony of Johannes Brahms trans. Peter Palmer (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1997)
Brahms: Symphony no. 4, ed. Kenneth Hull (New York: Norton, 2000)
David Brodbeck, ‘Brahms’, and Michael Beckerman, ‘Dvořák’, Holoman (ed.), The Nineteenth-Century Symphony, 224-298
David Brodbeck, Brahms: Symphony no. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
David Brodbeck, ‘Dvořák’s Reception in Liberal Vienna: Language Ordinances, National Property, and the Rhetoric of Deutschtum’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 60/1 (Spring 2007), 71-131
A Peter Brown, ‘Brahms’ Third Symphony and the New German School’, The Journal of Musicology 2/4 (Autumn 1983), 434-52
Carl Dahlhaus, ‘The Second Age of the Symphony’, Nineteenth-Century Music, 265-76
Walther Frisch, Brahms: the Four Symphonies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004)
Raymond Knapp, Brahms and the Challenge of the Symphony (New York: Stuyvesant, 1997)
Richard Taruskin, ‘The Return of the Symphony’, OHWM, vol. 3, ch. 13, 675-744
4. Defining Russia Symphonically. Tchaikovsky—Borodin
Reading:
Philip Ross Bullock, Pyotr Tchaikovsky (London: Reaktion, 2016)
Marina Frolova Walker, ‘Constructing the Russian National Character: literature and music’; and ‘The beginning and the End of the Russsian Style’, in Russian Music and Nationalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 1-51 and 140-225
Susanne Dammann, ‘An Examination of Problem History in Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony’, trans. Alice DampmanHumel, in Tchaikovsky and his World, ed. Leslie Kearney (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 197-215
Joseph C Kraus, ‘Tchaikovsky’, Holoman (ed.), The Nineteenth-Century Symphony, 299-326
Joseph C Kraus, ‘Tonal Plan and Narrative Plot in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony’, Music Theory Spectrum 13/1 (Spring 1991), 21-47
Richard Taruskin, ‘P. I. Chaikovsky and the Ghetto’; ‘How the Acorn took Root’; and ‘Chaikovsky and the Human’, in Defining Russia Musically (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 48-60, 113-151, 239-307
Richard Taruskin, ‘Slavs as Subjects and Citizens’, OHWM, vol. 3, ch. 9, 443-478
Roland John Wiley, Tchaikovsky (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), chs. 10-12
5. Wagner and the Symphonic Sublime. Bruckner—Franck
Reading:
Brian Hart, Vincent D’Indy and the Development of the French Symphony’, Music & Letters 97/2 (May 2006), 237-61
Julian Horton,Bruckner’s Symphonies: Analysis, Reception, and Cultural Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Benjamin Korstvedt, Bruckner: Symphony no. 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Benjamin Korstvedt, ‘The First Published Edition of Anton Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony: Collaboration and Authenticity’, 19th Century Music 20/1 (Summer 1996), 3-26
Vera Micznik, ‘The Absolute Limitations of Programme Music: The case of Liszt’s “Die Ideale”, Music & Letters 80/2 (May 1999), 207-40
Margaret Notley, ‘Bruckner Problems, in Perpetuity’, 19th Century Music 30/1 (Summer 2006), 81-93
Margaret Notley, ‘“Volksconzerte” in Vienna and the Late Nineteenth-Century Ideology of the Symphony’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 50/2-3 (Summer/Autumn 1997), 421-53
Stephen Parkany, ‘Kurth’s Bruckner and the Adagio of the Seventh Symphony’, 19th Century Music 11/3 (Spring 1998), 262-81
Richard Taruskin, ‘The symphony Goes (Inter)national’,OHWM, vol. 3, ch. 14, 745-824.
6. Romantic Sunset, Modernist Dawns. Mahler—Amy Beach—Sibelius
Reading:
Thomas Bauman, ‘Mahler in a New Key: Genre and the “Resurrection” Finale’, Journal of Musicology 23/3 (Summer 2006), 468-85
Adrienne Fried Block, Amy Beach: Passionate Victorian (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 86-103
Stephen Downes, ‘Pastoral idylls, erotic anxieties and heroic subjectivities in Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of the Island and first two symphonies’ in Daniel M. Grimley ed.,The Cambridge Companion to Sibelius(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Peter Franklin, Mahler: Symphony no. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
James Hepokoski, Sibelius: Symphony no. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Julian Johnson, Mahler’s Voices: Expression and Irony in the Songs and Symphonies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
Kay M. Knittel, ‘“Polemik in Konzertsaal”: Mahler, Beethoven and the Viennese Critics’, 19th Century Music 29/3 (Spring 2006), 289-321
Thomas Peattie, Gustav Mahler’s Symphonic Landscapes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 11-46