Estelle Joubert

German Opera and the Politics of Sensation makes the case that opera played a central role in one of the foremost political shifts in modern European history: the emergence of the public sphere and formation of modern liberal-democratic ideals.  Delving into political philosophy, aesthetics of sensation, reception documents and less familiar German operas as well as works by Mozart and Beethoven, I trace opera’s engagements with political debates such as human equality, civil freedom and modern systems of justice from the Enlightenment to the Napoleonic era.  Unlike previous studies that emphasize the primacy of rational-critical debate in the Enlightenment public sphere, I uncover opera’s role in the history of sensation and its contribution in cultivating moral sentiment and feeling, driving the formation of political thought during the eighteenth century.  This study places opera at the heart of a growing discourse in government studies, cognitive neuroscience and the history of sensation challenging predominant neo-Kantian paradigms that privilege reason, and affirming affect in political decision-making in the eighteenth century and today.

Opera and the Musical Canon, 1750-1815 uncovers opera’s decisive role in the history of the musical canon during its formative period. Challenging the long-held supremacy of instrumental repertories in histories of the musical canon, the study reconnects opera to the conceptual elaboration of key ideas such as aesthetic autonomy and the musical work concept. Key catalysts for canon formation during the second half of the eighteenth century--a public audience and concert hall, an increase in printed music and, most importantly, music criticism––are believed to have emerged in relative isolation of, if not opposition to court culture and its associated musical genres such as Italian opera seria. My study foregrounds the convergence of the sphere of music criticism and court opera collections, most notably the Berlin court library, now part of the recently rediscovered Sing- Akademie archive, ultimately offering a fresh historical account of the musical canon still acknowledged today.

In September 2010, Québécois stage director Robert Lepage boldly unveiled his production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Occupying the stage was ‘The Machine’ – a large set of planks that can be transformed into various architectural formations. Despite all the media attention that it has garnered, ‘The Machine’ itself is not what makes the production new.  What is decidedly novel is that Lepage’s production features digital stage-sets projected onto the planks.  The interactive computerized projections produce what new media theorist Lev Manovich refers to as an augmented space: a physical space overlaid with dynamically changing information.  Despite awards such as MIT’s 2012 McDermott Award and the 2013 Glenn Gould Prize, the reception of Lepage’s production has been marked by fervent criticism.  One of the persistent criticisms is a perceived lack of direction—the central interpretive framework in current operatic practice.  Yet I argue that Lepage’s production, inherently coping with the human body’s experience mediated by code, has made a decisive break with so-called Regietheater (director’s theatre), thereby requiring fresh analytical approaches.
In this chapter, I posit that Lepage’s idea of augmenting the singer’s space with interactive technology has catapulted opera into a new realm, one that brings opera into dialogue with digital technology.  Despite its shortcomings, the production holds enormous potential to open up areas for innovation that truly fuse computer science with opera.  To explore some of these possibilities, I offer a brief description of the technology itself.  Subsequently, I offer ideas on a conceptual framework for augmented space in opera.  Drawing on new media theorist Mark Hansen’s Bodies in Code, I explore the idea of the ‘framing function’ of the human body to direct the audio-visual narrative as it unfolds on the operatic stage.  I also point to the potential of new media art installations for staging subjectivity in opera.  Finally, I suggest that immersive technologies allows for a new experience of the geography of operatic realms.  Ultimately, the possibilities of augmented space for opera, set in motion by Lepage’s Ring Cycle, are likely to unfold rapidly in a realm beyond Regietheater.

On 6 August 1805 the Sing-Akademie in Berlin gathered to celebrate the birthday of King Friedrich Wilhelm the III.  Zelter’s address, bookended with performances of Handel’s Te Deum and Joseph Haydn’s Gloria, in excelsis Deo, offers fascinating insight into the convergence of court culture with the public sphere.  The Sing-Akademie is renowned for revivals of sacred choral music, especially the works of J.S. Bach.  Yet I argue that the workings between the Berlin court and so-called public sphere are most pronounced in a substantial collection of opera materials in the Sing-Akademie archive.  This paper investigates the operatic holdings of the Sing-Akademie archive, with a focus on which operas were collected and preserved, how the archive was constituted in the early nineteenth century, and what the presence of these sources in Berlin afforded music critics such as Johann Friedrich Reichardt.  The archive not only features full scores of operas by local composers such as Reichardt, Graun, and Hasse. Representation of foreign composers such as Lully, Handel, Gluck, Rameau, Leonardo Leo and Alessandro Scarlatti––whose works were not all performed at the Berlin court during the eighteenth century––raises the question of the importance of music’s mobility in securing vast music collections, on which collective ascriptions of aesthetic value would be based.  Evidence suggests that the Berlin court music collection of Frederick II and Frederick William III was subsumed into Zelter’s Sing-Akademie archive around 1800, as were the private collections of numerous public figures such as Friedrich Nicolai, Kirnberger and Marpurg.  Using Berlin as a case study, I hope t
o provide some insight into flows of material culture between European courts, and between court and music criticism, ultimately assessing the impact of an increasingly international knowledge exchange on aesthetic debates regarding music around 1800.

Colonial enterprise, global trade and scientific exploration are frequently cited as catalysts for global musical interactions of the early modern period. As a result, scholarly examinations of international music exchange tend to focus on documents and artifacts associated with such expeditions, including missionary and diplomatic records, travellers’ accounts and organological records.  What has received relatively little attention is an assortment of mid to late eighteenth-century periodical entries documenting Europe’s encounters with musical communities around the world, including those in North America (Iroquois), China, Egypt, India, Indonesia (Javanese), West Africa, South Africa New Zealand, Japan, Tahiti, and Turkey. Though smaller in scope compared to the in-depth studies by Lafitau, Amiot or Villoteau, these periodical reviews constitute a strand of music criticism richly laden with eighteenth-century constructions of difference.  Whereas some reviews are unique documents, a sizeable proportion of entries strategically summarize, even quote from and comment on pre-existing travel documents.  Within the context of the public sphere, it is precisely the omissions, small amendments or brief commentary surreptitiously woven through the narrative that makes these documents valuable in the intellectual history of ethnomusicology.  As I demonstrate, these ‘analytical encounters’ reveal fascinating insight into the role of nature in Chinese musico-scientific knowledge, the perceived exceptionalism of counterpoint, the potential of postcolonial organology and the impact of extending indigenous communal rituals to European readers.

This article assesses representations of sovereignty in the court operas of Maria Antonia of Saxony, Il trionfo della fedelta' (1754) and Talestri, regina delle amazzoni (1762). I argue that while clothed in the garb of representational court culture, the princess’s operas are substantially inflected with (then new) ideals of autonomy. The decisive philosophical ideal that individuals are equally capable of moral decision-making even- tually enabling self-government is inscribed most frequently in extended displays of interiority, of which opera seria had an established tradition. Situated in the religious milieu of the Dresden court, Maria Antonia’s operas transform Augustinian Christian morality into a framework in which compassion coupled with autonomy becomes a catalyst for societal transformation. As such, her operas curiously interrogate the very power relationships between ruler and subject that opera seria is designed to fortify. Ultimately, these operas display a fascinating and unusual instance of ruler-driven trans- formation of sovereignty in opera seria during the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment witnessed the rise of a public whose role as sovereign arbiter of operatic taste irreversibly changed the processes by which fame and renown were bestowed upon composers.  The public sphere – a conceptual space in which texts (including music) were disseminated and debated – emerged as an expansive intellectual forum in which composers, performers and works could be evaluated.  In spite of opera’s long-standing association with fame and renown, its role in the processes leading to ascriptions of musical value and fame in the Enlightenment public sphere is a significant dimension of canon formation that has yet to be fully investigated.  This article offers a case-study of Electress Maria Antonia of Saxony (1728-1780), whose mutually beneficial relationship with the Breitkopf firm, coupled with its redesigned ‘movable type’ in 1755, prompted a new mode of opera criticism, one that focussed sharply on the music itself.  Maria Antonia’s Il trionfo della fedeltà (1754) and Talestri (1762) were the first operas to receive reviews featuring in-text musical examples, fuelling the public’s quest to monumentalize Maria Antonia as celebrated composer.  Ultimately, the inclusion of musical excerpts in opera criticism was an important step toward the construct of the work as separate from individual localized performances.

This article examines the changing reception of the da capo aria in Johann Adam Hiller’s Singspiele.  Hiller’s tremendous success in establishing the Singspiel as an essentially German operatic genre lies in his selection of song-forms, most notably the inclusion of the tremendously popular strophic Lied.  The da capo aria, perceived by the public as the embodiment of the Italian operatic tradition, received a much more varied but fascinating reception.  Initially, Hiller composed a number of the da capo arias for noble characters in his Lisuart und Dariolette (1766).  Following a less enthusiastic public reception, Hiller then revised the opera, adding more strophic and simple songs.  In the preface to his next opera, Lottchen am Hofe (1767), Hiller proudly claims that this time enthusiasts will not find a trace of the Italian style, and that not a single aria contains a da capo.  A careful examination of the scores of Lottchen am Hofe (1767) and Die Liebe auf dem Lande (1768) indicates that Hiller did in fact exclude the da capo aria, but crafted instead a somewhat shortened aria (AB in form) for noble characters.  Most interestingly, in his most popular opera Die Jagd (1770), the da capo aria is found favourable once again, although not without alteration.  Reichardt praises what he perceives as da capo arias for peasant characters; in fact he hails one of Christel’s arias as a ‘true exemplar’ of the da capo aria.  Within the ternary form of the da capo aria, Hiller was able to incorporate the perceived aesthetic of the Lied, which in turn allowed it to be sung peasant characters who, within the pastoral mode, sing simple and natural-sounding melodies.

"This chapter investigates genres and forms of eighteenth-century opera within the German linguistic area.  The underlying thread of the essay concerns itself with the interaction of Italian opera with vernacular genres; this unifying theme is explored through close readings of paradigmatic scenes from Hiller’s Die Liebe auf dem Lande (1768), Schweitzer’s Alceste (1773) and Dittersdorf’s Doktor und Apotheker (1786). 

Keywords: German opera, singspiel, romanze, central finale, gesture, J.A. Hiller, A. Schweitzer, K. von Dittersdorf.
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This article examines aspects of variation and transmission in the Office of Thomas Becket in the Diocese of Trier, Germany. Palaeographic evidence suggests that by the mid-fifteenth century, liturgical sources in Trier exhibited numerous transmission errors and disruptions in the modal scheme of the Thomas Office. However, a subset of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century manuscripts from St Florin and St Castor in Koblenz displays efforts to restore the theoretical modal scheme of the Office by composing new melodies for four items; the uniqueness of these items has been confirmed with the assistance of a large-scale electronic project cataloguing the Office of Thomas Becket across Europe, headed by Andrew Hughes at the University of Toronto. The present study provides a detailed melodic and modal analysis of the four newly composed items: the invitatory, Adsunt Thome martyris; the fourth responsory for Matins, Post sex annos; the ninth responsory for Matins, Iesu bone per Thome; and the fourth antiphon for Lauds, Ad Thome memoriam. Numerous melodic allusions to the Office of St Gorgonius – a martyr also venerated in Koblenz from the turn of the fifteenth century – have been uncovered in the four newly composed items. The re-ordering of the modal schemes of the Thomas Office and the colourful array of musical and theological echoes and allusions between the Becket and Gorgonius Offices suggests a desire to establish, reflect and cultivate a local liturgical identity within the community in Koblenz.

"In this article I assert that our modern understanding of the singspiel as a genre has been shaped not by eighteenth-century principles but rather by nineteenth-century notions of ‘romantic’ German opera. In contrast to a later through-composed ideal, Johann Adam Hiller’s comic operas, often viewed as the prototype of the German comic genre, were designed precisely in order that the songs might easily be detached from the spoken dialogue, disseminated outside of the public opera house and sung by audiences in various other contexts. The express purpose of these songs, as articulated by librettist Christian Felix Weisse, was to promote communal singing in social circles across Germany. The genre was thus designed for circulation within what Habermas describes as the public sphere: a conceptual space between the State and the private home in which texts, ideas and musical works were circulated and debated.

Composed in what was called the German Volkston (in the manner of the Volk), Hiller’s melodies are recorded as being sung and played throughout the streets and parks of major German cities and became so popular that they became known as folksongs. This idea of the Volk as a collective entity and of the Volkston, however, was rooted in a deeper sense of the public as nation. Inspired by Le devin du village and J. J. Rousseau’s writings on politics, language and the fine arts, Weisse and Hiller’s operas employ the pastoral mode, in which idealized peasants sing in the manner of a folksong. The idyllic simplicity of these early German-language comic operas appealed to a diversified German audience by affirming their roots, the public use of their language and their morally upright character as a nation. Thus comic opera as a genre was circulated within the public sphere with the intention of transcending the boundaries of social class to unite the German nation in song."

Opera’s Canonic Entanglements seeks to recover the connections between opera and aesthetics that assisted in forging the idea of a work as regulative concept ca. 1800; as such, we will not be examining the formation of an operatic canon as a separate counterpart to symphonic or other canons.  With an emphasis on Central Europe (defined as the German-speaking regions of Europe), the conference will probe operatic engagements with aesthetic autonomy, the work concept and canon formation, emphasizing the sensualist (rather than rational-formalist) philosophical tradition of the eighteenth century (Baumgarten, Lessing, Herder, and Goethe, among others).

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RIPM (Le Répertoire International de la Presse Musicale) is widely regarded as the most comprehensive resource offering electronic access to music periodicals from the early Romantic era to the twentieth century. Founded in 1980 by H. Robert Cohen, RIPM is the youngest of the so-called ‘4 R's of International Music Research’; its partner initiatives include RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales), RILM (Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale), and RIdIM (Répertoire International d'Iconographie Musicale). Cohen's ambitious project was notably visionary in its use of technology: not only did it use computing from the start (beginning with DOS-based indexing systems), but it was also the first of the 4 R's to explore full text searching. RIPM seeks to address ‘two main problems that have prevented these [historic music] journals from being systematically collected and examined: (1) the limited number of libraries possessing the journals, and (2) ...

Composing the Canon in the German Democratic Republic: Narratives of Nineteenth-Century Music , by Elaine Kelly. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. xiii, 246 pp. Aptly coinciding with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, this is the first large-scale English-language account of music in the German Democratic Republic. It is not an exhaustive account of music during the forty years of the socialist regime; rather, Elaine Kelly productively examines how the GDR recast history, including the historiography of nineteenth-century composers and musical works, in order to construct self-images of the socialist state. She argues that the socialist canon—especially works by Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner—emerged as a site at which engagements between state and society played out. By tracing the historical and musicological approaches used by the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) to construct national myths, she offers a fascinating account of what this “society reveals of itself through its relationship with its cultural heritage” (p. 1). Studies of music and cultural politics in regimes burdened with state control demand erudite readings of a dizzying array of sources, and this project is no exception. Delving into government documents, musicological studies emanating from the GDR, films, performance reviews in the socialist press, and government-sanctioned accounts of aesthetics and history, Kelly negotiates interpretive challenges deftly. She also revels courageously in the gray areas, emphasizing the blurred line between state and citizen in the GDR, the porousness of the border between East and West, especially for musicians, and the “Germanness” of …

This article offers a series of experiments exploring the potential for ‘distant reading’ in French music criticism. ‘Distant reading’, a term first coined by literary theorist Franco Moretti, refers to quantitative approaches that allow for new insights into a large corpus of texts by aggregating data. While the main corpus employed here is the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris (1831–1877), I also use secondary corpora of reviews of Félicien David's Herculanum in 1859, Berlioz's reviews of Gluck and Beethoven in the Journal des débats and reviews that mention Gabriel Fauré in the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America database. My experiments employ a text analysis tool named Voyant, built by Geoffrey Rockwell and Stéfan Sinclair, thereby also offering a basic introduction to the range of visualizations employed in distant reading. My experiments focus on areas in which quantitative methods are particularly well suited to generating new knowledge: corpus-wide visualizati...