Musical Politics at Midcentury

Historicism and the New German School

Historicism and the Hegelian Dialect

• Historicism: defining of social and cultural situations by their history

• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)• Franz Brendel (1811–1868)• Dialectic– thesis– antithesis– synthesis

The New German School

• Brendel– “New German School” “progress to a new

consciousness”– Liszt, Berlioz, Wagner– Joachim Raff (1822–1882)– Peter Cornelius (1824–1874)– Hans von Bülow (1830–1894)

The New German School

• Liszt– Symphonic Poems • “unity of the poetic and the musical”

– Piano Sonata in B minor• “organic” continuity• “thematic transformation”

Absolute Music

• Eduard Hanslick (1825–1904)• Vom musikalisch-Schönen (On the Musically

Beautiful)

Liszt’s Symphonic Poems

• Symphonische Dichtungen• Composed 12 between 1848 and 1858– Les Préludes [Anthology 2-51]• The Great Question• Love• Storm• Pastoral Calm• Battle and Victory

The Concerto Transformed

• Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64 (1844) [Anthology 2-52]• impression of “organic” structural unity

• Schumann, Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54• Liszt, Concerto No. 1 in E♭ Major

Genre Trouble:Berlioz Again

• Berlioz, Harold en Italie (1834)– for viola and orchestra– non-virtuosic concerto