Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Figures
- List of Music Examples
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Approaching the Music of Joseph Joachim
- 1 Virtuosity Uncoiled: Two Fantasies Rediscovered
- 2 From Leipzig to Weimar
- 3 Between Uncoiled Virtuosity and Lisztian Temptations
- 4 Finding his Voice: Between Vergangenheitsmusik and Zukunftsmusik
- 5 Joachim Encoded, or ‘Psychological Music’
- 6 ‘Psychological Music’ Experienced and Remembered: Joachim and the Demetrius Plot in 1854 and 1876
- 7 Resisting the Dark Butterfly
- 8 Joachim and the Art of Variation
- 9 Identities
- 10 Ciphers in Disguise: Gisela von Arnim and Compositional Memories
- 11 Cultural Objects in a Prussian Society
- Conclusion: An Assessment of Joachim's Style
- Appendix: Catalogue of Works
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Finding his Voice: Between Vergangenheitsmusik and Zukunftsmusik
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Figures
- List of Music Examples
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Approaching the Music of Joseph Joachim
- 1 Virtuosity Uncoiled: Two Fantasies Rediscovered
- 2 From Leipzig to Weimar
- 3 Between Uncoiled Virtuosity and Lisztian Temptations
- 4 Finding his Voice: Between Vergangenheitsmusik and Zukunftsmusik
- 5 Joachim Encoded, or ‘Psychological Music’
- 6 ‘Psychological Music’ Experienced and Remembered: Joachim and the Demetrius Plot in 1854 and 1876
- 7 Resisting the Dark Butterfly
- 8 Joachim and the Art of Variation
- 9 Identities
- 10 Ciphers in Disguise: Gisela von Arnim and Compositional Memories
- 11 Cultural Objects in a Prussian Society
- Conclusion: An Assessment of Joachim's Style
- Appendix: Catalogue of Works
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
As I went on reading, it seemed as if the scene became more and more brightly illuminated and Ophelia and Hamlet stepped forward in the flesh.
– Robert SchumannUnderstanding Joachim's aesthetic as a composer of programme music in the early 1850s has proved challenging for scholars. The many dichotomies of his life and work have often blurred his contours as a composer. History has situated him between Leipzig (Moritz Hauptmann) and Weimar (Liszt), and between absolute (Brahms) and programme music (Liszt). There are also his two musical personae as violinist and composer, as well as conflicts between his German and Hungarian nationalities, and between the Jewish and Christian faiths (he converted to the latter in 1855). Borchard has offered a valuable start to understanding his Zerrissenheit (disunity):
If one follows the self-portrait that Joachim sketched in the letters to Gisela von Arnim, he saw himself in contrast to Brahms as a disjointed man: in conflict with his family, in conflict between material security and artistic claims, between concessions to the public taste and the requirements of ‘pure’ art, for which he stood as an interpreter, but for which he did not feel suited as a composer. This inner turmoil was mirrored on other levels, for example in the conflict between his Jewish origin and social assimilation or between his first and second homelands, Hungary and Germany. Disunity was a typical theme of Weltschmerz around 1850: an entire generation saw itself in moulds such as Shakespeare's Hamlet.
This chapter will follow Borchard's method and investigate Joachim's Hamlet Overture by asking how Shakespeare's tragedy served as a mirror to a whole generation. It provides a window into Joachim's political and historical worldview. What was the cultural situation that elevated Weltschmerz? And how, specifically, was cultural and societal disunity an issue for Joachim? The following analysis of Joachim's Hamlet approaches his disunity from a musical perspective. It does so by positioning the work between a musical past and present, by acknowledging its programmatic and counter-Lisztian features, and by exploring how Joachim portrays the character Hamlet. Joachim closely followed the political events of the 1848–49 revolutions in Hungary and Germany. His letters written between March and October 1848 reflect the enthusiasm for Hungarian independence and subsequent frustration when the dream of independence was shattered.
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- The Music of Joseph Joachim , pp. 101 - 140Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2018