Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | N | Notes

Music, Theatre and Politics in Germany: 1848 to the Third Reich.

Article Excerpt
Music, Theatre and Politics in Germany: 1848 to the Third Reich. Edited by Nikolaus Bacht. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. [xi, 315 p. ISBN-10: 0754655210; ISBN-13: 9780754655213. $99.95.] Illustrations, bibliography, index.

A quick glance at the index of this volume suggests that it comprises the papers of a conference: fourteen papers distributed among five "parts," each with its own topical title. But no conference corresponding to these papers ever took place, and it is only on the second page of the editor's introduction that one finds that the present volume is in fact a Festschrift (John Deathridge zum Sechzigsten, to be exact), the publication type that increasingly dare not speak its name. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education of 13 April 2001, Peter Monaghan notes, in addition to the usual objections about variability in topical focus and contribution quality, that Festschrifts tend to sell poorly--thus the attempt on the part of some publishers "to disguise the volumes as thematic collections of papers that just happen to be in honor of one graying eminence or another" (p. A20). Not that this translates into any great degree of concern for the product on the part of publishers and editors: "Reviewers of Festschrifts note in sometimes astonished comments how often the books are riddled with typos and other signs of less-than-full editorial commitment" (p. A20). The present volume is a demonstration of the continued relevance of Monaghan's findings.

A quick glance of the table of contents immediately arouses suspicion with regard to the topical integrity of the volume's five "parts" as well as the volume as a whole. The five "parts" bear the titles "The New German School," "Wagnerian Politics," "The Politics of Reception," "An Excursus on Vienna," and "Interwar Germany." Of these, only the last is entirely beyond question. "The New German School" is a passable fit for essays on Wagner, but hardly for one on Euryanthe and Genoveva (and, to a much lesser extent, on Lohengrin). Beyond the question of how much a consideration of Vienna constitutes an "excursus"--in political terms it does to a high degree; in cultural terms much less so--the essays in question (on Schreker's Die Gezeichneten, the post-World War I opera projects of Schoenberg, and Berg's operas) do not pertain to works with specifically Viennese subject matter, the Schreker opera arguably excepted. It is also worth noting that most of the works in question were premiered in Germany; there was not only less money, but also less interest, in staging modernist and avant-garde works in Vienna, to say nothing of the rest of Austria. Rather than view Vienna as the destination of any kind of real or metaphorical excursus, it would be more worthwhile to point out that after 1918, Viennese composers tended to look toward Germany as a real and metaphorical destination for artistic contact, performances, and conservatory appointments.

The remaining two "parts" share the word "politics" in their titles, as does the volume...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!