Eric Schneeman received his doctorate in musicology from the University of Southern California in 2013. His doctoral research on the early 19th-century German reception of Christoph Gluck was supported by a research grant from DAAD and a fellowship from USC. He is currently a lecturer of world music, jazz, and musicology at the University of Texas at San Antonio and teaches music fundamentals and history at Northeast Lakeview College. His research has appeared in the journal "Musicorum" and "Notes." His work on 19th-century opera, cosmopolitanism, Giacomo Meyerbeer, and Christoph Gluck has appeared in "The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia," "Oxford Handbook Online," "Eighteenth-Century Music in Context," and the "Hoffmann-Jahrbuch." Supervisors: Bruce Brown and Bryan Simms Address: San Antonio, Texas, United States
In 1816, the German-Jewish musician Jakob Meyerbeer began his decade-long career as an Italian op... more In 1816, the German-Jewish musician Jakob Meyerbeer began his decade-long career as an Italian opera composer in Padua. Meyerbeer quickly established himself as a leading composer of Italian opera, and began using the Italian form of his name, Giacomo, to show his appreciation for the country’s pivotal role in launching his career. But when Meyerbeer’s Italian operas were staged in Germany in the 1820s and 1830s, the composer and his works caused a mixture of responses from German critics and musicians: On the one hand, many of Meyerbeer’s detractors felt that the composer’s adoption of Italian culture represented a betrayal to German culture and likened his infatuation with Italian opera to a sickness. Furthermore, many of these critics’ attacks, especially those of Richard Wagner, were subtle anti-Semitic commentaries against the composer’s “rootlessness” and cosmopolitanism. On the other hand, Meyerbeer’s supporters such as Heinrich Heine and August Lewald claimed that Meyerbeer’s Italian career was either a youthful dalliance or common practice for German musicians, citing the Italian sojourns of earlier composers such as Mozart, Gluck, and Handel. Building on the research of Mark Everist, Sabine Henze-Döhring, and Sieghart Döhring, my paper will examine the reception of Meyerbeer’s Italian career and operas in the German press to demonstrate the manner in which German critics either attacked or justified the composer’s work in Italy. In particular, my research unpacks many of the stereotypes that German critics held of Italy, Italian music, and italianità within the context of Germans’ anxiety and apprehension over their own identity crisis in the early nineteenth century.
Appearing in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1809, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s novella Ritter Gluc... more Appearing in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1809, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s novella Ritter Gluck depicts the 18th-century composer Christoph von Gluck as a ghost wandering the streets of 19th-century Berlin. Using the work of Ian Bent, Lydia Goehr, and Jerrold Levinson, my paper contextualizes Hoffmann’s novella within the neoplatonic revival of the early Romantic movement and the musical culture of 19th-century Berlin. In particular, Hoffmann proposes that music derives from a single essence that exists in a metaphysical world. Therefore a composer must manipulate these ideal sounds in order to create his own compositions. As tokens of this metaphysical realm, compositions provide listeners with a whisper of the ideal and a transformative experience. But, according to Hoffmann, Berlin musical institutions altered and changed a composer’s score to the point that their connection to the ideal is lost and noise is all that remains. Ultimately this practice creates a doppelgänger effect in which audiences think they are hearing the original work when in fact they are experiencing a falsification of the original. For Hoffmann and his contemporaries, audiences could only grasp the essence of music when performers remained true to the composer’s original score. By providing a contextual analysis of Hoffmann’s Ritter Gluck, my research demonstrates the manner in which these 19th-century Romantic views of composer intentionality and of the Werktreue ideal still overshadow our current investigation of the essence of music.
When Gaspare Spontini directed Gluck's Armide at the Berlin Hofoper in 1837, Ludwig Rellstab comp... more When Gaspare Spontini directed Gluck's Armide at the Berlin Hofoper in 1837, Ludwig Rellstab complained that Spontini turned act three into a phantasmagoric scene of "drunk, giddy gnomes [and] an orgy of centaurs." As a rebuke to Spontini's production of Armide, local critics hailed Meyerbeer as Gluck’s savior, declaring that his 1843 production of Armide achieved "the highest degree of perfection." Wagner dissented, claiming that Meyerbeer failed to understand Gluck’s music and conducted the work with the “coarsest insensitivity.” Wagner’s views on Meyerbeer vis-à-vis Gluck have prevented us from appreciating the, at that time, prevailing view—that Meyerbeer played a pivotal role in restoring integrity to the production of Gluck’s operas in Berlin. Furthermore, at the tercentenary of Gluck’s birth, our understanding of the eighteenth-century composer’s place in nineteenth-century culture has relied on the writings and adaptations of either Berlioz or Wagner, thereby neglecting Meyerbeer’s role in establishing Gluck’s place in the canon.
Through an analysis of reviews in the Vossische Zeitung, Berlinische Nachrichten, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, and other writings overlooked in Helmut Kirchmeyer’s study of the 1843 productions, this paper contextualizes, for the first time, the reception of Meyerbeer’s production of Armide within the overarching Gluck-Pflege that dominated nineteenth-century Berlin culture. In contrast to E. T. A. Hoffmann’s mystic reading of Armide in Ritter Gluck, my analysis demonstrates that critics and politicians appropriated Gluck’s Armide for a nationalistic agenda that projected Berlin as the stronghold of classical culture. For Berliners, Meyerbeer saved Gluck’s music from the debasement of Spontini’s production and restored Gluck to the pantheon of great German composers.
As Thomas Bauman and Christoph Henzel note, due to Frederick the Great’s conservative taste in mu... more As Thomas Bauman and Christoph Henzel note, due to Frederick the Great’s conservative taste in music, Gluck’s operatic reform principles were met with a degree of skepticism by northern German critics, and performances of Gluck’s reform operas in Berlin were relegated to smaller theaters. Moreover, Daniel Heartz’s research places the negative reaction to Gluck’s music within the larger context of northern German critics’ apprehension about Viennese composers’ music. In the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek (1771), Johann Friedrich Agricola published a point-by-point repudiation of the preface to Alceste, and claimed that Gluck’s compositions were full of “…forbidden fifths and octaves… .” Working in Berlin in 1775, Reichardt was one of the earliest supporters of Gluck’s reform operas and wanted to alter northern German critics’ negative perception of the composer. Drawing upon the recent aesthetic philosophies of Kant, Reichardt published an analysis of Gluck’s setting of “Misero! E che farò!” from Alceste in his Musikalisches Kunstmagazin (1782) to demonstrate that Gluck’s music cannot be judged according to rules set forth for other works, since the composer himself brought forth new rules of art and music, thereby creating an entirely new form of dramatic music altogether. In 1792, Reichardt printed anecdotes about Gluck in his journal Studien für Tonkünstler und Musikfreunde in order to refute some of the negative claims written by northern German critics, while also furthering his earlier claims about the composer’s inherent genius. This paper demonstrates the influence of Kant’s aesthetic theories and the prevailing Cult of Genius movement on Reichardt’s understanding of Gluck and his operas. Furthermore, this examination contextualizes Reichardt’s writings within the broader performance and reception history of Gluck’s operas on the Berlin stage, as northern German critics initially rejected Gluck’s works but then embraced the composer as one of their own after a successful performance Iphgénie en Tauride in 1795. Ultimately, Reichardt’s writings, coupled with the continual presence of Gluck’s operas in the Berlin repertoire, influenced 19th-century critics A. B. Marx’s, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s, and others’ perception of Gluck and his music, thereby building an aesthetic aura around the composer that lasts to this very day.
In recent studies of the 19th-century reception of Christoph Gluck, Alexander Rehding and William... more In recent studies of the 19th-century reception of Christoph Gluck, Alexander Rehding and William Gibbons focus on Wagner’s writings about the composer, his adaptation of Iphigénie en Aulide, and critics’ attempts to bring Gluck’s operatic reforms into a teleological process that culminated in Wagner’s music dramas. What has not received scholarly attention is that other 19th-century critics believed that Meyerbeer was the heir of Gluck’s operatic legacy. In his Künstlernovelle “Gluck in Paris,” printed in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (1836), Johann Peter Burmeister-Lyser fictionalized Gluck’s tenure in Paris in order to draw parallels between Gluck’s and Meyerbeer’s career. Lyser also printed a pamphlet in defense of Meyerbeer’s career and musical style in which he points out the inherent contradiction in attacks against Meyerbeer’s cosmopolitanism, in that the career and musical style of Gluck, a composer greatly admired by Meyerbeer’s critics, reveal the same cosmopolitanism. When Meyerbeer conducted Gluck’s Armide at the Berlin royal opera for his first official appearance as the General Music Director in 1843, local critics used this event to draw comparisons between the two composers. While the Berlin press gave Meyerbeer’s operas mixed reviews, critics praised his 1843 production of Armide, saying that it displayed a profound understanding of Gluck’s opera. By focusing on Lyser’s writings and reviews of the 1843 production of Armide, this paper demonstrates that, prior to Wagner taking his place, Meyerbeer was deemed as the inheritor of Gluck’s legacy of operatic reform, a fact that was obscured by the later-inthe-century pro-Wagner crowd.
Example of non-academic work for the Chelsea Music Festival. Trying to share musicology to the w... more Example of non-academic work for the Chelsea Music Festival. Trying to share musicology to the world.
This article outlines how nineteenth-century German critics evoked Gluck’s name to justify Meyerb... more This article outlines how nineteenth-century German critics evoked Gluck’s name to justify Meyerbeer’s cosmopolitan career and compositional style. In Gluck in Paris, Burmeister-Lyser fictionalized Gluck’s biography to draw parallels between Gluck’s and Meyerbeer’s tenure in Paris. He also printed a pamphlet defending Meyerbeer’s career and musical style. Lyser and his contemporaries Lewald and Griepenkerl argued that Gluck’s and Meyerbeer’s cosmopolitanism belonged to a nationalistic endeavor to introduce European audiences to the musical innovations of German composers. German critics had further opportunity to draw comparisons between the two composers when Meyerbeer returned to Berlin to conduct Gluck’s Armide at the Hofoper. By focusing on the critical writings of Lyser, Lewald, and Griepenkerl and on reviews of the 1843 production of Armide, this article demonstrates that Meyerbeer was deemed the inheritor of Gluck’s legacy of operatic reform.
On-line, mobile tour for the special exhibition "Luminous Impression by Henri Fantin-Latour" at t... more On-line, mobile tour for the special exhibition "Luminous Impression by Henri Fantin-Latour" at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
In 1816, the German-Jewish musician Jakob Meyerbeer began his decade-long career as an Italian op... more In 1816, the German-Jewish musician Jakob Meyerbeer began his decade-long career as an Italian opera composer in Padua. Meyerbeer quickly established himself as a leading composer of Italian opera, and began using the Italian form of his name, Giacomo, to show his appreciation for the country’s pivotal role in launching his career. But when Meyerbeer’s Italian operas were staged in Germany in the 1820s and 1830s, the composer and his works caused a mixture of responses from German critics and musicians: On the one hand, many of Meyerbeer’s detractors felt that the composer’s adoption of Italian culture represented a betrayal to German culture and likened his infatuation with Italian opera to a sickness. Furthermore, many of these critics’ attacks, especially those of Richard Wagner, were subtle anti-Semitic commentaries against the composer’s “rootlessness” and cosmopolitanism. On the other hand, Meyerbeer’s supporters such as Heinrich Heine and August Lewald claimed that Meyerbeer’s Italian career was either a youthful dalliance or common practice for German musicians, citing the Italian sojourns of earlier composers such as Mozart, Gluck, and Handel. Building on the research of Mark Everist, Sabine Henze-Döhring, and Sieghart Döhring, my paper will examine the reception of Meyerbeer’s Italian career and operas in the German press to demonstrate the manner in which German critics either attacked or justified the composer’s work in Italy. In particular, my research unpacks many of the stereotypes that German critics held of Italy, Italian music, and italianità within the context of Germans’ anxiety and apprehension over their own identity crisis in the early nineteenth century.
Appearing in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1809, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s novella Ritter Gluc... more Appearing in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1809, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s novella Ritter Gluck depicts the 18th-century composer Christoph von Gluck as a ghost wandering the streets of 19th-century Berlin. Using the work of Ian Bent, Lydia Goehr, and Jerrold Levinson, my paper contextualizes Hoffmann’s novella within the neoplatonic revival of the early Romantic movement and the musical culture of 19th-century Berlin. In particular, Hoffmann proposes that music derives from a single essence that exists in a metaphysical world. Therefore a composer must manipulate these ideal sounds in order to create his own compositions. As tokens of this metaphysical realm, compositions provide listeners with a whisper of the ideal and a transformative experience. But, according to Hoffmann, Berlin musical institutions altered and changed a composer’s score to the point that their connection to the ideal is lost and noise is all that remains. Ultimately this practice creates a doppelgänger effect in which audiences think they are hearing the original work when in fact they are experiencing a falsification of the original. For Hoffmann and his contemporaries, audiences could only grasp the essence of music when performers remained true to the composer’s original score. By providing a contextual analysis of Hoffmann’s Ritter Gluck, my research demonstrates the manner in which these 19th-century Romantic views of composer intentionality and of the Werktreue ideal still overshadow our current investigation of the essence of music.
When Gaspare Spontini directed Gluck's Armide at the Berlin Hofoper in 1837, Ludwig Rellstab comp... more When Gaspare Spontini directed Gluck's Armide at the Berlin Hofoper in 1837, Ludwig Rellstab complained that Spontini turned act three into a phantasmagoric scene of "drunk, giddy gnomes [and] an orgy of centaurs." As a rebuke to Spontini's production of Armide, local critics hailed Meyerbeer as Gluck’s savior, declaring that his 1843 production of Armide achieved "the highest degree of perfection." Wagner dissented, claiming that Meyerbeer failed to understand Gluck’s music and conducted the work with the “coarsest insensitivity.” Wagner’s views on Meyerbeer vis-à-vis Gluck have prevented us from appreciating the, at that time, prevailing view—that Meyerbeer played a pivotal role in restoring integrity to the production of Gluck’s operas in Berlin. Furthermore, at the tercentenary of Gluck’s birth, our understanding of the eighteenth-century composer’s place in nineteenth-century culture has relied on the writings and adaptations of either Berlioz or Wagner, thereby neglecting Meyerbeer’s role in establishing Gluck’s place in the canon.
Through an analysis of reviews in the Vossische Zeitung, Berlinische Nachrichten, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, and other writings overlooked in Helmut Kirchmeyer’s study of the 1843 productions, this paper contextualizes, for the first time, the reception of Meyerbeer’s production of Armide within the overarching Gluck-Pflege that dominated nineteenth-century Berlin culture. In contrast to E. T. A. Hoffmann’s mystic reading of Armide in Ritter Gluck, my analysis demonstrates that critics and politicians appropriated Gluck’s Armide for a nationalistic agenda that projected Berlin as the stronghold of classical culture. For Berliners, Meyerbeer saved Gluck’s music from the debasement of Spontini’s production and restored Gluck to the pantheon of great German composers.
As Thomas Bauman and Christoph Henzel note, due to Frederick the Great’s conservative taste in mu... more As Thomas Bauman and Christoph Henzel note, due to Frederick the Great’s conservative taste in music, Gluck’s operatic reform principles were met with a degree of skepticism by northern German critics, and performances of Gluck’s reform operas in Berlin were relegated to smaller theaters. Moreover, Daniel Heartz’s research places the negative reaction to Gluck’s music within the larger context of northern German critics’ apprehension about Viennese composers’ music. In the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek (1771), Johann Friedrich Agricola published a point-by-point repudiation of the preface to Alceste, and claimed that Gluck’s compositions were full of “…forbidden fifths and octaves… .” Working in Berlin in 1775, Reichardt was one of the earliest supporters of Gluck’s reform operas and wanted to alter northern German critics’ negative perception of the composer. Drawing upon the recent aesthetic philosophies of Kant, Reichardt published an analysis of Gluck’s setting of “Misero! E che farò!” from Alceste in his Musikalisches Kunstmagazin (1782) to demonstrate that Gluck’s music cannot be judged according to rules set forth for other works, since the composer himself brought forth new rules of art and music, thereby creating an entirely new form of dramatic music altogether. In 1792, Reichardt printed anecdotes about Gluck in his journal Studien für Tonkünstler und Musikfreunde in order to refute some of the negative claims written by northern German critics, while also furthering his earlier claims about the composer’s inherent genius. This paper demonstrates the influence of Kant’s aesthetic theories and the prevailing Cult of Genius movement on Reichardt’s understanding of Gluck and his operas. Furthermore, this examination contextualizes Reichardt’s writings within the broader performance and reception history of Gluck’s operas on the Berlin stage, as northern German critics initially rejected Gluck’s works but then embraced the composer as one of their own after a successful performance Iphgénie en Tauride in 1795. Ultimately, Reichardt’s writings, coupled with the continual presence of Gluck’s operas in the Berlin repertoire, influenced 19th-century critics A. B. Marx’s, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s, and others’ perception of Gluck and his music, thereby building an aesthetic aura around the composer that lasts to this very day.
In recent studies of the 19th-century reception of Christoph Gluck, Alexander Rehding and William... more In recent studies of the 19th-century reception of Christoph Gluck, Alexander Rehding and William Gibbons focus on Wagner’s writings about the composer, his adaptation of Iphigénie en Aulide, and critics’ attempts to bring Gluck’s operatic reforms into a teleological process that culminated in Wagner’s music dramas. What has not received scholarly attention is that other 19th-century critics believed that Meyerbeer was the heir of Gluck’s operatic legacy. In his Künstlernovelle “Gluck in Paris,” printed in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (1836), Johann Peter Burmeister-Lyser fictionalized Gluck’s tenure in Paris in order to draw parallels between Gluck’s and Meyerbeer’s career. Lyser also printed a pamphlet in defense of Meyerbeer’s career and musical style in which he points out the inherent contradiction in attacks against Meyerbeer’s cosmopolitanism, in that the career and musical style of Gluck, a composer greatly admired by Meyerbeer’s critics, reveal the same cosmopolitanism. When Meyerbeer conducted Gluck’s Armide at the Berlin royal opera for his first official appearance as the General Music Director in 1843, local critics used this event to draw comparisons between the two composers. While the Berlin press gave Meyerbeer’s operas mixed reviews, critics praised his 1843 production of Armide, saying that it displayed a profound understanding of Gluck’s opera. By focusing on Lyser’s writings and reviews of the 1843 production of Armide, this paper demonstrates that, prior to Wagner taking his place, Meyerbeer was deemed as the inheritor of Gluck’s legacy of operatic reform, a fact that was obscured by the later-inthe-century pro-Wagner crowd.
Example of non-academic work for the Chelsea Music Festival. Trying to share musicology to the w... more Example of non-academic work for the Chelsea Music Festival. Trying to share musicology to the world.
This article outlines how nineteenth-century German critics evoked Gluck’s name to justify Meyerb... more This article outlines how nineteenth-century German critics evoked Gluck’s name to justify Meyerbeer’s cosmopolitan career and compositional style. In Gluck in Paris, Burmeister-Lyser fictionalized Gluck’s biography to draw parallels between Gluck’s and Meyerbeer’s tenure in Paris. He also printed a pamphlet defending Meyerbeer’s career and musical style. Lyser and his contemporaries Lewald and Griepenkerl argued that Gluck’s and Meyerbeer’s cosmopolitanism belonged to a nationalistic endeavor to introduce European audiences to the musical innovations of German composers. German critics had further opportunity to draw comparisons between the two composers when Meyerbeer returned to Berlin to conduct Gluck’s Armide at the Hofoper. By focusing on the critical writings of Lyser, Lewald, and Griepenkerl and on reviews of the 1843 production of Armide, this article demonstrates that Meyerbeer was deemed the inheritor of Gluck’s legacy of operatic reform.
On-line, mobile tour for the special exhibition "Luminous Impression by Henri Fantin-Latour" at t... more On-line, mobile tour for the special exhibition "Luminous Impression by Henri Fantin-Latour" at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
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Conference Presentations by Eric Schneeman
Building on the research of Mark Everist, Sabine Henze-Döhring, and Sieghart Döhring, my paper will examine the reception of Meyerbeer’s Italian career and operas in the German press to demonstrate the manner in which German critics either attacked or justified the composer’s work in Italy. In particular, my research unpacks many of the stereotypes that German critics held of Italy, Italian music, and italianità within the context of Germans’ anxiety and apprehension over their own identity crisis in the early nineteenth century.
But, according to Hoffmann, Berlin musical institutions altered and changed a composer’s score to the point that their connection to the ideal is lost and noise is all that remains. Ultimately this practice creates a doppelgänger effect in which audiences think they are hearing the original work when in fact they are experiencing a falsification of the original. For Hoffmann and his contemporaries, audiences could only grasp the essence of music when performers remained true to the composer’s original score. By providing a contextual analysis of Hoffmann’s Ritter Gluck, my research demonstrates the manner in which these 19th-century Romantic views of composer intentionality and of the Werktreue ideal still overshadow our current investigation of the essence of music.
Through an analysis of reviews in the Vossische Zeitung, Berlinische Nachrichten, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, and other writings overlooked in Helmut Kirchmeyer’s study of the 1843 productions, this paper contextualizes, for the first time, the reception of Meyerbeer’s production of Armide within the overarching Gluck-Pflege that dominated nineteenth-century Berlin culture. In contrast to E. T. A. Hoffmann’s mystic reading of Armide in Ritter Gluck, my analysis demonstrates that critics and politicians appropriated Gluck’s Armide for a nationalistic agenda that projected Berlin as the stronghold of classical culture. For Berliners, Meyerbeer saved Gluck’s music from the debasement of Spontini’s production and restored Gluck to the pantheon of great German composers.
This paper demonstrates the influence of Kant’s aesthetic theories and the prevailing Cult of Genius movement on Reichardt’s understanding of Gluck and his operas. Furthermore, this examination contextualizes Reichardt’s writings within the broader performance and reception history of Gluck’s operas on the Berlin stage, as northern German critics initially rejected Gluck’s works but then embraced the composer as one of their own after a successful performance Iphgénie en Tauride in 1795. Ultimately, Reichardt’s writings, coupled with the continual presence of Gluck’s operas in the Berlin repertoire, influenced 19th-century critics A. B. Marx’s, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s, and others’ perception of Gluck and his music, thereby building an aesthetic aura around the composer that lasts to this very day.
Papers by Eric Schneeman
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Building on the research of Mark Everist, Sabine Henze-Döhring, and Sieghart Döhring, my paper will examine the reception of Meyerbeer’s Italian career and operas in the German press to demonstrate the manner in which German critics either attacked or justified the composer’s work in Italy. In particular, my research unpacks many of the stereotypes that German critics held of Italy, Italian music, and italianità within the context of Germans’ anxiety and apprehension over their own identity crisis in the early nineteenth century.
But, according to Hoffmann, Berlin musical institutions altered and changed a composer’s score to the point that their connection to the ideal is lost and noise is all that remains. Ultimately this practice creates a doppelgänger effect in which audiences think they are hearing the original work when in fact they are experiencing a falsification of the original. For Hoffmann and his contemporaries, audiences could only grasp the essence of music when performers remained true to the composer’s original score. By providing a contextual analysis of Hoffmann’s Ritter Gluck, my research demonstrates the manner in which these 19th-century Romantic views of composer intentionality and of the Werktreue ideal still overshadow our current investigation of the essence of music.
Through an analysis of reviews in the Vossische Zeitung, Berlinische Nachrichten, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, and other writings overlooked in Helmut Kirchmeyer’s study of the 1843 productions, this paper contextualizes, for the first time, the reception of Meyerbeer’s production of Armide within the overarching Gluck-Pflege that dominated nineteenth-century Berlin culture. In contrast to E. T. A. Hoffmann’s mystic reading of Armide in Ritter Gluck, my analysis demonstrates that critics and politicians appropriated Gluck’s Armide for a nationalistic agenda that projected Berlin as the stronghold of classical culture. For Berliners, Meyerbeer saved Gluck’s music from the debasement of Spontini’s production and restored Gluck to the pantheon of great German composers.
This paper demonstrates the influence of Kant’s aesthetic theories and the prevailing Cult of Genius movement on Reichardt’s understanding of Gluck and his operas. Furthermore, this examination contextualizes Reichardt’s writings within the broader performance and reception history of Gluck’s operas on the Berlin stage, as northern German critics initially rejected Gluck’s works but then embraced the composer as one of their own after a successful performance Iphgénie en Tauride in 1795. Ultimately, Reichardt’s writings, coupled with the continual presence of Gluck’s operas in the Berlin repertoire, influenced 19th-century critics A. B. Marx’s, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s, and others’ perception of Gluck and his music, thereby building an aesthetic aura around the composer that lasts to this very day.