Kelvin H. F. Lee

Formenlehre and the Challenge of History: Rethinking Contexts in Fin-de-Siècle Musical Form

Edited volume in progress
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About

This edited volume explores the intricate relationship between Formenlehre and history, as pertinent to European art music at the fin de siècle. Considering the historicisation of musical form in the nineteenth century and the emergence of novel societal conditions after 1848, it pursues a twofold goal: 1) to scrutinise the ways in which history underpins the analysis of musical form; and 2) in doing so, to (re)assess the role and the methodological utilities of contexts in theorising formal praxis. The volume focuses on how formal behaviour is circumscribed by various historical, social, cultural and political contexts, which arguably have a significant impact on the adaptation of concepts from the contemporary theories of form for this repertoire. It consists of twelve essays on music from all across Europe, including Austria, the Czech lands, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Hungary, Russia and Spain.

The chapters are organised in four parts, in which contributors examine how historical forces act on the material relations in musical form via individual case studies. Essays in each part engage with a specific category of context and a particular conception of history underlying formal analysis. The first part, ‘Temporality and Historical Time’, suggests a notion of history that rests upon temporality generated from the internal relationships between musical materials. The second part, ‘Genres and Beyond’, demonstrates an understanding of history based upon generic contexts that fall both within and beyond the purview of the sonata genre in James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s terms (2006). The third part, ‘Society and Culture’, considers how social and cultural relations play into the formal process and interact with the sonata teleology as a representation of the historical circumstances surrounding the production of the work. The fourth part, ‘Musical Time, National Space’, attends to the rise of the nation as a historical category, examining the integration of folk, linguistic and topographical devices in musical form as an expression of nationalist ideology. The volume concludes with an afterword, which reflects on the margins of Formenlehre when it comes to term with history.

Formenlehre and the Challenge of History (FatCH) is conceived as part of the project ‘Rethinking Peripheral Symphonism: Transcultural Form and Glocal Modernism at the Fin de Siècle’, funded by Research Foundation Flanders (reference no: 12ZO222N).

Contents (tentative)

List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Music Examples
List of Abbreviations
Contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Problem of History in Postclassical Form
Kelvin H. F. Lee

Part I Temporality and Historical Time

  1. Bruckner’s Gesansperiode: The Issue of ‘Variation within Sonata’ and Its Temporal Implications
    Sunbin Kim
  2. Bruckner and the Concept of Symphonic Time
    Julian Horton
  3. Narrative and Non-Linear Temporality in Nielsen’s Saga-Drøm
    Christopher Tarrant

Part II Genre and Beyond

  1. Nikolai Medtner’s Early Single-Movement Sonatas: Conceptions of Symmetry and Balance in Opp. 11 and 22
    Wendelin Bitzan
  2. Gustav Mahler’s ‘Der Abschied’ in Context: Form, Genre, Mortality
    Sam Reenan
  3. Variations of an Apprentice: Webern’s Contrapuntal Studies with Schoenberg
    Sebastian Wedler

Part III Society and Culture

  1. Between Oriental States and Goal-Oriented Motion: Karl Goldmark’s Overture Sakuntala
    Dan Deutsch
  2. Vincent d’Indy’s Vision of France: National Socialism, Aesthetics and la Sonate Cyclique
    Giselle Y. P. Lee
  3. Analysing the Festival Choral Commission: Formal Waves and Philosophical Pessimism in Elgar’s The Music Makers
    Matthew Riley

Part IV Musical Time, National Space

  1. Isaac Albéniz’s Coplas in Iberia: Spanish Folklore in Sonata Form
    Alberto Martín Entrialgo
  2. ‘Living Tonality’ and the Politicisation of Language in Sibelius’s Bilingual Songs, Op. 17
    Sarah Moynihan
  3. Fibich’s Formal Topography: Landscape, Klangflächen and the Reimagination of Czechness
    Kelvin H. F. Lee

Afterword: Fragmented Histories and the Margins of Theory
Kelvin H. F. Lee

Index of Key Concepts
General Index