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
Conclusion: An Assessment of Joachim's Style
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
In the first full-length biography of Joachim, written in 1899 and published in 1901 while Joachim was still alive, Moser praised the musician's ‘great gift of representing different styles’ in his violin playing. Moser continued:
[E]ven greater than this is his power to bring out national characteristics. In the masterpieces of the ‘Fatherland’ he expresses the thoughtfulness of German art. He exhibits in the sonatas of Tartini the rich beauty and the passion of the old Italian, in the A minor concerto of Viotti the lightness and charm which distinguish the French classic, and in his own Hungarian Concerto the fiery temperament of the Magyar – a many-sidedness which can only be explained by his exceptional disposition and by the heterogeneous influences to which he had been subjected from his childhood.
In the following, as we attempt a conclusion, we can apply a similar line of thought to the music of Joachim. He flourished in many styles and genres, and revealed, through his music, skill and familiarity with a breadth of different styles, beginning in a Mendelssohnian idiom and ending by embracing a Prussia-affirming compositional language. We may here briefly assess and summarize his compositional output.
Joachim's early melodic preferences betray Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte in 6/8 metre (combining crotchet, quaver, and dactyl rhythms), while he also inherits his mentor's ‘Elfin character’ (Irish Fantasy) and twomovement, slow-fast pairing (Op. 1). Beside the early Mendelssohnian influence, evidence from the mid-1840s – before Weimar – suggests a clear orientation to the idiomatic solo violin writing of both Charles de Bériot and H. W. Ernst, as revealed in Joachim's now lost Adagio and Rondo (1845) and the two fantasies (1848–52), respectively.
In Weimar (and continuing in Hanover) Joachim transforms himself, under Liszt's important influence, into a composer of serious orchestral programmatic overtures with multi-layered forms, thematic transformation (in the overtures to Hamlet, Demetrius, and Henry IV) and occasionally even acrostics formed with lines from the underlying plays (in said overtures). The Gozzi Overture experiments with a lighter, comic aesthetic; at the same time Joachim does not shake off completely his brooding musical temperament, a sombre passion that remains one of the greatest assets of his compositional style.
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- Information
- The Music of Joseph Joachim , pp. 429 - 436Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2018