David Brodbeck - Böcker

This is an open access title. It is available to read and download as a free PDF version on Oxford Academic and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. Defining Deutschtum: Political Ideology, German Identity, and Music-Critical Discourse in Liberal Vienna offers a nuanced look at the intersection of music, cultural identity, and political ideology in late-nineteenth-century Vienna. Drawing on an extensive selection of writings in the city's political press, correspondence, archival documents, and a large body of recent scholarship in late Habsburg cultural and political history, author David Brodbeck argues that Vienna's music critics were important agents in the public sphere whose writings gave voice to distinct, sometimes competing ideological positions. These conflicting positions are exemplified especially well in their critical writings about the music of three notable composers of the day who were Austrian citizens but not ethnic Germans: Carl G

Offers a historical context in which to understand how Brahms's three most intensely political and nationalistic works interact with questions of German patriotism, liberalism and nationalism.Johannes Brahms rarely composed music that engaged the national-political issues of the day. Three of his works, though, do precisely this: the Fünf Lieder für Männerchor; the Triumphlied for eight-part chorus and orchestra; and the Fest- und Gedenksprüche for eight-part chorus a cappella. In Brahms Patriotic and Political, David Brodbeck challenges notions that Brahms's political music evinces embarrassing anticipations of later Prussian militarism and German chauvinism. Instead, he provides a thick historical context in which to read these works and offers a more nuanced understanding of the intersections of Brahms's music and questions of German patriotism, liberalism, and nationalism than has been customary in the field of historical musicology. In particular, Brodbeck relates the Männerchor-Lieder to the debate over how and in what form a German nation-state might be achieved; he relates the Triumphlied to the euphoria but also the solemnity that attended the foundation of the German Reich; and he relates the Fest- und Gedenksprüche to the necessary work of instilling in the diverse German people a genuine sense of national belonging. At the same time, he traces Brahms's changing attitude toward Otto von Bismarck, the "Blacksmith of the Reich," whom he originally loathed but, in time, came to venerate.Brahms Patriotic and Political will appeal to readers with interests in both nineteenth-century German music and Central European history.