Using GDR dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann's 'Chile-Ballade vom Kameramann' as a point o... more Using GDR dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann's 'Chile-Ballade vom Kameramann' as a point of departure, this article explores the role that 'revolutionary' South America and its musical corollary, the Nueva Canción, played in expressions of inner-communist critique in 1970s East Germany. Biermann's critique was Janus-faced. Lyrically, the 'Chilean' allegory of his ballad, in which a cameraman is murdered by a soldier, expressed support for the Allende administration while simultaneously destabilizing Soviet Bloc rhetoric. Musically, references to Nueva Canción music such as that of singer-songwriter Daniel Viglietti represented the anti-imperialist Other while simultaneously rejecting GDR-style socialist realism. On the one hand, Biermann's inspiration in South America can be heard as a colonizing gesture; on the other, it can be understood to reflect a provincialized East German society looking to the Third World for alternative sociopolitical and musical models.
Using hermeneutic analyses of compositions Felix Mendelssohn wrote during the 1840s as points of ... more Using hermeneutic analyses of compositions Felix Mendelssohn wrote during the 1840s as points of departure, this dissertation depicts this composer as a cultural figure who used music to both underwrite and transform the state and identity politics of Restoration-era Prussia. Four musical case studies point to diverse facets of this sociopolitical engagement, contextualizing it within contemporary Prussian politics and the history of German-speaking Jewry. In Chapter 2, a Sir Walter Scott-inflected examination of the narrative of the Scottish Symphony sheds light on Mendelssohn’s investment in a “politics of reconciliation,” a state-sponsored discourse that advocated the integration of minority groups into Prussian modernity through the historicization of difference. In Chapter 3, a Ludwig Tieck-informed hearing of the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream reveals an effort at state-sponsored cultural appropriation that both glorified and critiqued the Prussian monarchical order. In Chapter 4, comparison of Mendelssohn’s Prussian sacred music with the work of contemporary plastic artists August Reichensperger and Philipp Veit suggests that the composer’s use of historical “Catholic” styles was intended as a form of engagement in nationalist politics, both Prussian and pan-German. In Chapter 5, a rehearing of the opening Allegro of the Violin Concerto is used as a metaphor for the leadership role that Mendelssohn assumed in developing a “German” musical canon, building “German” musical institutions, and assimilating Jewish musicians into “German” musical life. The dissertation concludes, in Chapter 6, with a brief look at Weimar-era anti-Semitic and philo-Semitic reactions to Mendelssohn’s oeuvre, an exploration intended to emphasize the sociopolitical stakes of discourse about music and to invite further research on Mendelssohn reception.
This dissertation engages in the ongoing conversation regarding the nature of folk music and folk... more This dissertation engages in the ongoing conversation regarding the nature of folk music and folk music scholarship through an ethnographic and historiographic exploration of the Chacarera, a genre of Argentine music whose practitioners are often associated with the rural desert geography and peasant culture of the northern province of Santiago del Estero. Approaching the Chacarera as an “imaginary” – a sonic and discursive representation mediated by technological means and reified by a flexible community of professional and semi-professional musicians in public performance – it explores the ways in which this folk music has been historically constructed, is socially maintained, and is experienced by the musicians who (re)produce and consume it. This exegesis is carried out in two parts. Chapters three and four take a historiographic look at the ways in which early- and mid-twentieth century professional musicians engaged with political, institutional and commercial networks to construct Chacarera musical styles and discourses. Chapters five through eight, meanwhile, draw on ethnographic case studies of contemporary folk musicians and aficionados in order to explore the performative and technocultural practices through which the “Chacarera imaginary” is (re)produced, and the personal, professional, and political “Chacarera games” in which these practices are mobilized.
Using GDR dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann's 'Chile-Ballade vom Kameramann' as a point o... more Using GDR dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann's 'Chile-Ballade vom Kameramann' as a point of departure, this article explores the role that 'revolutionary' South America and its musical corollary, the Nueva Canción, played in expressions of inner-communist critique in 1970s East Germany. Biermann's critique was Janus-faced. Lyrically, the 'Chilean' allegory of his ballad, in which a cameraman is murdered by a soldier, expressed support for the Allende administration while simultaneously destabilizing Soviet Bloc rhetoric. Musically, references to Nueva Canción music such as that of singer-songwriter Daniel Viglietti represented the anti-imperialist Other while simultaneously rejecting GDR-style socialist realism. On the one hand, Biermann's inspiration in South America can be heard as a colonizing gesture; on the other, it can be understood to reflect a provincialized East German society looking to the Third World for alternative sociopolitical and musical models.
Using hermeneutic analyses of compositions Felix Mendelssohn wrote during the 1840s as points of ... more Using hermeneutic analyses of compositions Felix Mendelssohn wrote during the 1840s as points of departure, this dissertation depicts this composer as a cultural figure who used music to both underwrite and transform the state and identity politics of Restoration-era Prussia. Four musical case studies point to diverse facets of this sociopolitical engagement, contextualizing it within contemporary Prussian politics and the history of German-speaking Jewry. In Chapter 2, a Sir Walter Scott-inflected examination of the narrative of the Scottish Symphony sheds light on Mendelssohn’s investment in a “politics of reconciliation,” a state-sponsored discourse that advocated the integration of minority groups into Prussian modernity through the historicization of difference. In Chapter 3, a Ludwig Tieck-informed hearing of the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream reveals an effort at state-sponsored cultural appropriation that both glorified and critiqued the Prussian monarchical order. In Chapter 4, comparison of Mendelssohn’s Prussian sacred music with the work of contemporary plastic artists August Reichensperger and Philipp Veit suggests that the composer’s use of historical “Catholic” styles was intended as a form of engagement in nationalist politics, both Prussian and pan-German. In Chapter 5, a rehearing of the opening Allegro of the Violin Concerto is used as a metaphor for the leadership role that Mendelssohn assumed in developing a “German” musical canon, building “German” musical institutions, and assimilating Jewish musicians into “German” musical life. The dissertation concludes, in Chapter 6, with a brief look at Weimar-era anti-Semitic and philo-Semitic reactions to Mendelssohn’s oeuvre, an exploration intended to emphasize the sociopolitical stakes of discourse about music and to invite further research on Mendelssohn reception.
This dissertation engages in the ongoing conversation regarding the nature of folk music and folk... more This dissertation engages in the ongoing conversation regarding the nature of folk music and folk music scholarship through an ethnographic and historiographic exploration of the Chacarera, a genre of Argentine music whose practitioners are often associated with the rural desert geography and peasant culture of the northern province of Santiago del Estero. Approaching the Chacarera as an “imaginary” – a sonic and discursive representation mediated by technological means and reified by a flexible community of professional and semi-professional musicians in public performance – it explores the ways in which this folk music has been historically constructed, is socially maintained, and is experienced by the musicians who (re)produce and consume it. This exegesis is carried out in two parts. Chapters three and four take a historiographic look at the ways in which early- and mid-twentieth century professional musicians engaged with political, institutional and commercial networks to construct Chacarera musical styles and discourses. Chapters five through eight, meanwhile, draw on ethnographic case studies of contemporary folk musicians and aficionados in order to explore the performative and technocultural practices through which the “Chacarera imaginary” is (re)produced, and the personal, professional, and political “Chacarera games” in which these practices are mobilized.
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