Full Description
In The Necessity of Music, Celia Applegate explores the many ways that Germans thought about and made music from the eighteenth- to twentieth-centuries. Rather than focus on familiar stories of composers and their work Applegate illuminates the myriad ways in which music is integral to German social life. Musical life reflected the polycentric nature of German social and political life, even while it provided many opportunities to experience what was common among Germans. Musical activities also allowed Germans, whether professional musicians, dedicated amateurs, or simply listeners, to participate in European culture. Applegate's original and fascinating analysis of Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, and military music enables the reader to understand music through the experiences of listeners, performers, and institutions. The Necessity of Music demonstrates that playing, experiencing, and interpreting music was a powerful factor that shaped German collective life.
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction
PART I: PLACES
Chapter 1 How German Is It?
Chapter 2 Music in Place
Chapter 3 Musical Itinerancy in a World of Nations
Chapter 4 Music at the Fairs
PART II: PEOPLE
Chapter 5 Mendelssohn on the Road
Chapter 6 The Internationalism of Nationalism in the Writings of A. B. Marx.
Chapter 7 Schumann's German Nation
Chapter 8 The Musical Worlds of Brahms' Hamburg.
PART III: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
Chapter 9 What Difference does a Nation Make?
Chapter 10 Men with Trombones
Chapter 11 Women's Wagner
Chapter 12 The Past and Present of Hausmusik in the Third Reich
Chapter 13 To be or not to be Wagnerian in Riefenstahl's Films
Chapter 14 Saving Music
