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2 - Mozart and Ethnic Identity

from Part I - Authenticity and Ethnicity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2023

Martin Nedbal
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
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Summary

This chapter shows how ethnic concepts became prominent in Bohemian debates about Mozart in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The chapter first explores the writings of Mozart’s first biographer Franz Xaver Niemetschek to show that around 1800 regional identity in Prague was dominated by the ambiguous concept of Bohemian patriotism. With the rise of Czech and German ethnic nationalism in the ensuing decades, Prague’s critics and musicologists mined Mozart’s operas, as well as works by his eighteenth-century contemporaries and predecessors, such as Stamitz and Gluck, for inherent qualities associated with Czech and German-Bohemian cultures, especially folk music. In the 1930s, Czech and German-Bohemian musicologists used racial criteria to prove that Gluck’s and Mozart’s music was inherently Czech or German (or Sudeten German, as many Czechoslovak Germans identified themselves by then). These ethnocentric preoccupations were further emphasized by Czech Marxist musicologists in the post–World War II period.

Type
Chapter
Information
Mozart's Operas and National Politics
Canon Formation in Prague from 1791 to the Present
, pp. 59 - 96
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Mozart and Ethnic Identity
  • Martin Nedbal, University of Kansas
  • Book: Mozart's Operas and National Politics
  • Online publication: 27 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009257619.004
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  • Mozart and Ethnic Identity
  • Martin Nedbal, University of Kansas
  • Book: Mozart's Operas and National Politics
  • Online publication: 27 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009257619.004
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Mozart and Ethnic Identity
  • Martin Nedbal, University of Kansas
  • Book: Mozart's Operas and National Politics
  • Online publication: 27 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009257619.004
Available formats
×