I'm Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. My work focuses on European literature, philosophy and music in the long 19th century. I am the author of four books, have co-authored one book. I am the editor of the Goethe Yearbook and have edited special issues of Opera Quarterly and Republics of Letters. I write for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Zeit in German, and I tweet at @adriandaub in whatever language fits.
This study traces the phenomenon of four-hand piano playing in the nineteenth century, as well as... more This study traces the phenomenon of four-hand piano playing in the nineteenth century, as well as the philosophical, political, aesthetic and literary discourses surrounding it. Drawing on specific four-hand transcriptions, literary and artistic depictions of four-hand players and nineteenth century writings on four-hand playing, it explores how the image of two pianists hunched over the same keyboard permitted contemporaries to investigate the relationships between gender, community, eroticism and work.
"Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Siegfried. Parsifal. Tristan und Isolde. Both revered and revile... more "Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Siegfried. Parsifal. Tristan und Isolde. Both revered and reviled, Richard Wagner conceived some of the nineteenth century’s most influential operas—and created some of the most indelible characters ever to grace the stage. But over the course of his polarizing career, Wagner also composed volumes of essays and pamphlets, some on topics seemingly quite distant from the opera house. His influential concept of Gesamtkunstwerk—the “total work of art”—famously and controversially offered a way to unify the different media of an opera into a coherent whole. Less well known, however, are Wagner’s strange theories on sexuality—like his ideas about erotic acoustics and the metaphysics of sexual difference.
Drawing on the discourses of psychoanalysis, evolutionary biology, and other emerging fields of study that informed Wagner’s thinking, Adrian Daub traces the dual influence of Gesamtkunstwerk and eroticism from their classic expressions in Tristan und Isolde into the work of the generation of composers that followed, including Zemlinsky, d’Albert, Schreker, and Strauss. For decades after Wagner’s death, Daub writes, these composers continued to grapple with his ideas and with his overwhelming legacy, trying in vain to write their way out from Tristan’s shadow."
"“What a strange invention marriage is!” wrote Kierkegaard. “[I]s it the expression of that inexp... more "“What a strange invention marriage is!” wrote Kierkegaard. “[I]s it the expression of that inexplicable erotic sentiment, that concordant elective affinity of souls, or is it a duty or a partnership . . . or is it a little of all that?”
Like Kierkegaard a few decades later, many of Germany’s most influential thinkers at the turn of the eighteenth century wondered about the nature of marriage, but rejected the easy answers provided by biology and theology. In Uncivil Unions, Adrian Daub presents a truly interdisciplinary look at the story of a generation of philosophers, poets, and intellectuals who turned away from theology, reason, common sense, and empirical observation to provide a purely metaphysical justification of marriage.
Through close readings of philosophers like Fichte and Schlegel, and novelists like Sophie Mereau and Jean Paul, Daub charts the development of this new concept of marriage with an insightful blend of philosophy, cultural studies, and theory. The author delves deeply into the lives and work of the Romantic and Idealist poets and thinkers whose beliefs about marriage continue to shape ideas about gender, marriage and sex to the present day."
Das vierhändige Klavierspiel war die Schallplatte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Erst durch das Sp... more Das vierhändige Klavierspiel war die Schallplatte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Erst durch das Spiel am Klavier wurde der Musikliebhaber zum Musikkonsumenten. Und nur durch den vierhändigen Auszug konnte das Bürgertum kanonische und neue Werke kennenlernen, mit ihnen umgehen, sie besitzen und sammeln. Doch anders als das Grammophon erforderte der vierhändige Klavierauszug eine aktive Leistung von Seiten des Besitzers. Um das Versprechen, den musikalischen Kanon als Objekt zu besitzen, einlösen zu können, mußte der Sammler selber aktiv werden im Zusammenspiel mit einem Anderen. Dieses Buch behandelt diese merkwürdige Konstellation, und zeigt auch, daß diese Form des Musikkonsums dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert in vielerlei Hinsicht bereits unheimlich war. Ob in der musikalischen Fachpresse, in der Literatur oder der bildenden Kunst das vierhändige Klavierspiel war immer der Rede wert. Anhand von Notenbeispielen und Handpositionen werden Fragen der Arbeitsteilung, der Erotik und der körperlichen Wahrnehmung behandelt. Bearbeitungs-, Übungs- und Spielpraxis stehen dabei genauso im Vordergrund wie die Behandlung des Phänomens in Presse, Literatur und (später) im Film.
During the nineteenth century the ballad was understood in hereditary terms: it was a tradition p... more During the nineteenth century the ballad was understood in hereditary terms: it was a tradition passed down from generation to generation, its authority rested on its supposedly oral ancestry, and it, like the fairy tale, tended to tell of families in disarray that had to be brought back into line. This association of poetic form and family politics made sisterhood a useful topic for ballads that wanted to critique and interrogate the ideology of the ballad. Through detailed readings of Christina Rosetti's Goblin Market, An-nette von Droste-Hülshoff's balladry and Friedrich Hebbel's family ballads, this article traces how sisterhood allowed for a kind of anti-balladry – poems that looked and sounded like ballad, but that undercut the ballad's claim to represent popular knowledge, oral culture, and the ancestry of the Volk. Putting children to bed with song or story is a practice as old as parenting itself, but the nineteenth century obsessively analyzed and sought to structure that quotidian transaction – from Grimm's Hausmärchen to Proust's bedtime vigils, from Heinrich von Ofterdingen's dreams to Freud's Wolf-Man. In the oedipal age, the question of how lessons, stories, Geist moved from generation to generation felicitously, and what might disrupt their movement, became the source of immense anxiety. The ballad form was an important technology of transmission. Since ballads have implicit narrators, ballads tend towards monovocality of a very different kind than, say, lyric poetry. Where the lyric places a single subjectivity at the origin of poetic locution, the ballad puts a single epistemic unit. The story exists to convey information rather than feeling, and when the story is re-told, it is re-told for information.
What did Sigmund Freud know about and think about the work of Richard Wagner, and why did he seem... more What did Sigmund Freud know about and think about the work of Richard Wagner, and why did he seem to suppress the manifest commonalities with his own theories? The essay addresses those questions and considers the ramifications for reading Wagner and the operatic canon "after Freud."
This study traces the phenomenon of four-hand piano playing in the nineteenth century, as well as... more This study traces the phenomenon of four-hand piano playing in the nineteenth century, as well as the philosophical, political, aesthetic and literary discourses surrounding it. Drawing on specific four-hand transcriptions, literary and artistic depictions of four-hand players and nineteenth century writings on four-hand playing, it explores how the image of two pianists hunched over the same keyboard permitted contemporaries to investigate the relationships between gender, community, eroticism and work.
"Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Siegfried. Parsifal. Tristan und Isolde. Both revered and revile... more "Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Siegfried. Parsifal. Tristan und Isolde. Both revered and reviled, Richard Wagner conceived some of the nineteenth century’s most influential operas—and created some of the most indelible characters ever to grace the stage. But over the course of his polarizing career, Wagner also composed volumes of essays and pamphlets, some on topics seemingly quite distant from the opera house. His influential concept of Gesamtkunstwerk—the “total work of art”—famously and controversially offered a way to unify the different media of an opera into a coherent whole. Less well known, however, are Wagner’s strange theories on sexuality—like his ideas about erotic acoustics and the metaphysics of sexual difference.
Drawing on the discourses of psychoanalysis, evolutionary biology, and other emerging fields of study that informed Wagner’s thinking, Adrian Daub traces the dual influence of Gesamtkunstwerk and eroticism from their classic expressions in Tristan und Isolde into the work of the generation of composers that followed, including Zemlinsky, d’Albert, Schreker, and Strauss. For decades after Wagner’s death, Daub writes, these composers continued to grapple with his ideas and with his overwhelming legacy, trying in vain to write their way out from Tristan’s shadow."
"“What a strange invention marriage is!” wrote Kierkegaard. “[I]s it the expression of that inexp... more "“What a strange invention marriage is!” wrote Kierkegaard. “[I]s it the expression of that inexplicable erotic sentiment, that concordant elective affinity of souls, or is it a duty or a partnership . . . or is it a little of all that?”
Like Kierkegaard a few decades later, many of Germany’s most influential thinkers at the turn of the eighteenth century wondered about the nature of marriage, but rejected the easy answers provided by biology and theology. In Uncivil Unions, Adrian Daub presents a truly interdisciplinary look at the story of a generation of philosophers, poets, and intellectuals who turned away from theology, reason, common sense, and empirical observation to provide a purely metaphysical justification of marriage.
Through close readings of philosophers like Fichte and Schlegel, and novelists like Sophie Mereau and Jean Paul, Daub charts the development of this new concept of marriage with an insightful blend of philosophy, cultural studies, and theory. The author delves deeply into the lives and work of the Romantic and Idealist poets and thinkers whose beliefs about marriage continue to shape ideas about gender, marriage and sex to the present day."
Das vierhändige Klavierspiel war die Schallplatte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Erst durch das Sp... more Das vierhändige Klavierspiel war die Schallplatte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Erst durch das Spiel am Klavier wurde der Musikliebhaber zum Musikkonsumenten. Und nur durch den vierhändigen Auszug konnte das Bürgertum kanonische und neue Werke kennenlernen, mit ihnen umgehen, sie besitzen und sammeln. Doch anders als das Grammophon erforderte der vierhändige Klavierauszug eine aktive Leistung von Seiten des Besitzers. Um das Versprechen, den musikalischen Kanon als Objekt zu besitzen, einlösen zu können, mußte der Sammler selber aktiv werden im Zusammenspiel mit einem Anderen. Dieses Buch behandelt diese merkwürdige Konstellation, und zeigt auch, daß diese Form des Musikkonsums dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert in vielerlei Hinsicht bereits unheimlich war. Ob in der musikalischen Fachpresse, in der Literatur oder der bildenden Kunst das vierhändige Klavierspiel war immer der Rede wert. Anhand von Notenbeispielen und Handpositionen werden Fragen der Arbeitsteilung, der Erotik und der körperlichen Wahrnehmung behandelt. Bearbeitungs-, Übungs- und Spielpraxis stehen dabei genauso im Vordergrund wie die Behandlung des Phänomens in Presse, Literatur und (später) im Film.
During the nineteenth century the ballad was understood in hereditary terms: it was a tradition p... more During the nineteenth century the ballad was understood in hereditary terms: it was a tradition passed down from generation to generation, its authority rested on its supposedly oral ancestry, and it, like the fairy tale, tended to tell of families in disarray that had to be brought back into line. This association of poetic form and family politics made sisterhood a useful topic for ballads that wanted to critique and interrogate the ideology of the ballad. Through detailed readings of Christina Rosetti's Goblin Market, An-nette von Droste-Hülshoff's balladry and Friedrich Hebbel's family ballads, this article traces how sisterhood allowed for a kind of anti-balladry – poems that looked and sounded like ballad, but that undercut the ballad's claim to represent popular knowledge, oral culture, and the ancestry of the Volk. Putting children to bed with song or story is a practice as old as parenting itself, but the nineteenth century obsessively analyzed and sought to structure that quotidian transaction – from Grimm's Hausmärchen to Proust's bedtime vigils, from Heinrich von Ofterdingen's dreams to Freud's Wolf-Man. In the oedipal age, the question of how lessons, stories, Geist moved from generation to generation felicitously, and what might disrupt their movement, became the source of immense anxiety. The ballad form was an important technology of transmission. Since ballads have implicit narrators, ballads tend towards monovocality of a very different kind than, say, lyric poetry. Where the lyric places a single subjectivity at the origin of poetic locution, the ballad puts a single epistemic unit. The story exists to convey information rather than feeling, and when the story is re-told, it is re-told for information.
What did Sigmund Freud know about and think about the work of Richard Wagner, and why did he seem... more What did Sigmund Freud know about and think about the work of Richard Wagner, and why did he seem to suppress the manifest commonalities with his own theories? The essay addresses those questions and considers the ramifications for reading Wagner and the operatic canon "after Freud."
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Books by Adrian Daub
Drawing on the discourses of psychoanalysis, evolutionary biology, and other emerging fields of study that informed Wagner’s thinking, Adrian Daub traces the dual influence of Gesamtkunstwerk and eroticism from their classic expressions in Tristan und Isolde into the work of the generation of composers that followed, including Zemlinsky, d’Albert, Schreker, and Strauss. For decades after Wagner’s death, Daub writes, these composers continued to grapple with his ideas and with his overwhelming legacy, trying in vain to write their way out from Tristan’s shadow."
Like Kierkegaard a few decades later, many of Germany’s most influential thinkers at the turn of the eighteenth century wondered about the nature of marriage, but rejected the easy answers provided by biology and theology. In Uncivil Unions, Adrian Daub presents a truly interdisciplinary look at the story of a generation of philosophers, poets, and intellectuals who turned away from theology, reason, common sense, and empirical observation to provide a purely metaphysical justification of marriage.
Through close readings of philosophers like Fichte and Schlegel, and novelists like Sophie Mereau and Jean Paul, Daub charts the development of this new concept of marriage with an insightful blend of philosophy, cultural studies, and theory. The author delves deeply into the lives and work of the Romantic and Idealist poets and thinkers whose beliefs about marriage continue to shape ideas about gender, marriage and sex to the present day."
Papers by Adrian Daub
Drawing on the discourses of psychoanalysis, evolutionary biology, and other emerging fields of study that informed Wagner’s thinking, Adrian Daub traces the dual influence of Gesamtkunstwerk and eroticism from their classic expressions in Tristan und Isolde into the work of the generation of composers that followed, including Zemlinsky, d’Albert, Schreker, and Strauss. For decades after Wagner’s death, Daub writes, these composers continued to grapple with his ideas and with his overwhelming legacy, trying in vain to write their way out from Tristan’s shadow."
Like Kierkegaard a few decades later, many of Germany’s most influential thinkers at the turn of the eighteenth century wondered about the nature of marriage, but rejected the easy answers provided by biology and theology. In Uncivil Unions, Adrian Daub presents a truly interdisciplinary look at the story of a generation of philosophers, poets, and intellectuals who turned away from theology, reason, common sense, and empirical observation to provide a purely metaphysical justification of marriage.
Through close readings of philosophers like Fichte and Schlegel, and novelists like Sophie Mereau and Jean Paul, Daub charts the development of this new concept of marriage with an insightful blend of philosophy, cultural studies, and theory. The author delves deeply into the lives and work of the Romantic and Idealist poets and thinkers whose beliefs about marriage continue to shape ideas about gender, marriage and sex to the present day."