Haydn, Laurence Sterne, and the Origins of Musical Irony

1991 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Evan Bonds
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Laurence Sterne

The repeated comparisons during Haydn's own lifetime between his music and the prose of the English novelist Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) point to qualities that go beyond essentially local devices generally described as "humorous" or "witty." Both Haydn and Sterne were acknowledged masters at fusing serious and comic elements in a single work, and both were strongly associated with the quality of Laune, by which the artist's disposition will inevitably be perceptible in his works. Like Sterne's prose, Haydn's music frequently calls attention to its own structural rhetoric. By openly subverting formal conventions of the day, Haydn drew attention to the craft of his art, thereby making the listener all the more aware of the very artificiality of that art, just as Sterne had consistently drawn his readers' attention toward the act of reading. The resulting subversion of aesthetic illusion led, in both instances, to a sense of ironic distance between the artist, his work, and his audience. And while techniques that fostered ironic distance had already enjoyed a long tradition in literature, they represented a new, and to many critics objectionable, aesthetic of music in the second half of the eighteenth century.

scholarly journals Using the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) as a teaching resource

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-606
Author(s):  
CHRISTINE WALLIS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Language Attitudes ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Teaching Resource ◽  
The University ◽  
Late Modern

This article reports on the use of the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) as a teaching resource in historical sociolinguistics and historical linguistics courses at the University of Sheffield. Pronouncing dictionaries are an invaluable resource for students learning about processes of standardisation and language attitudes during the Late Modern English period (1700–1900), however they are not easy to use in their original format. Each author uses their own notation system to indicate their recommended pronunciation, while the terminology used to describe the quality of the vowels and consonants differs from that used today, and provides an additional obstacle to the student wishing to interrogate such sources. ECEP thus provides a valuable intermediary between the students and the source material, as it includes IPA equivalents for the recommended pronunciations, as well as any metalinguistic commentary offered by the authors about a particular pronunciation. This article demonstrates a teaching approach that not only uses ECEP as a tool in its own right, but also explores how it can be usefully combined with other materials covering language change in the Late Modern English period to enable students to undertake their own investigations in research-led courses.

Nordic retirement contracts and the economic situation of widows

2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEATRICE MORING
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Economic Situation ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
The Family ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Right

The aim of this article is to explore the economic status and the quality of life of widows in the Nordic past, based on the evidence contained in retirement contracts. Analysis of these contracts also shows the ways in which, and when, land and the authority invested in the headship of the household were transferred between generations in the Nordic countryside. After the early eighteenth century, retirement contracts became more detailed but these should be viewed not as a sign of tension between the retirees and their successors but as a family insurance strategy designed to protect the interests of younger siblings of the heir and his or her old parents, particularly if there was a danger of the property being acquired by a non-relative. Both the retirement contracts made by couples and those made by a widow alone generally guaranteed them an adequate standard of living in retirement. Widows were assured of an adequately heated room of their own, more generous provision of food than was available to many families, clothing and the right to continue to work, for example at spinning and milking, but to be excused heavy labour. However, when the land was to be retained by the family, in many cases there was no intention of establishing a separate household.

Air and Odour

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-87
Author(s):  
William Tullett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Environmental Medicine ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
Royal Institution ◽  
Airborne Disease ◽  
The Relationship

Starting with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s experience of the Royal Institution lectures of 1802, this chapter sets out the relationship between smell, chemistry, and environmental medicine in the period from the 1660s to the 1820s. Putridity and putrefaction had long been associated with bad smell, but what the chemical investigations of the mid-eighteenth century succeeded in doing was separating the stink of putridity from its unhealthy qualities. Eudiometers, devices for measuring the quality of air that enjoyed a short vogue in the later eighteenth century, were one way of replacing the, now untrustworthy, sense of smell. Ultimately smell became a useful analogy for thinking about airborne disease or contagious particles, but by the early nineteenth century most physicians and chemists no longer believed that all smell was disease.

A modern business

Erard ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 24-45
Author(s):  
Robert Adelson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Customer Service ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Modern Approach ◽  
Dual Identity ◽  
Modern Business ◽  
Time And Energy ◽  
New Consumer

In these early years, the Erard firm adopted a surprisingly modern approach to marketing their square pianos and piano organs. Numerous contemporary business concepts are already present, at least in nascent form. The Erards were keen to inspire brand loyalty among their customers, through the wooing of successful musicians, teachers, and dealers, and by offering substantial volume discounts. They also displayed a clear notion of customer service, providing their customers with a sort of mail-order catalogue and reassuring their clients on every detail, from the efficiency of the packing and transport to the quality of their products. The Erards even seemed to subscribe to today’s ‘the customer is always right’ attitude, complying with special requests from musicians. The amount of time and energy the Erards devoted to resolving such problems with their customers demonstrates that the notion of the instrument maker as a solitary artisan, toiling alone in his workshop oblivious to commercial concerns, is a romantic image born in the nineteenth century. The Erards were both artisans and merchants, a dual identity that was necessary in late eighteenth-century Paris, when a new consumer culture coalesced around the hundreds of boutiques of the capital.

Silence in the Woods

Sibirica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Art Leete
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Western Siberia ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
The North ◽  
Russian North ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Colonial Encounter

This article explores the ethnographic, philosophical, and political background of the image of the northern peoples as “silent,” by analyzing the diachronic perspective descriptions of the Finno-Ugric peoples of the north who inhabit Western Siberia and the Russian North from the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth. Early modern ethnographies treated the Siberian peoples as aggressive, although from the end of the eighteenth century this image was reassessed and a different view of the silent character of the indigenous people was introduced in scholarly literature. Silent conduct was assessed as an archaic quality of the Finno-Ugric temperament, or as the result of the colonial encounter. This manifestation of silence was the most distinctive marker of the modern transformations of power and knowledge in the arena of Siberian studies.

The Idea of the Aesthetic

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-22
Author(s):  
Michael Bell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Sentiment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic

Lawrence spoke readily of art and its relation to life but was suspicious of the word ‘aesthetic’, which had been inflected by the aestheticism of the preceding generation. It is nonetheless a necessary term which his thought and practice help to clarify. The idea of the aesthetic has been controversial since its emergence in the late eighteenth century partly in response to the movement of moral sentiment and the fashion of sensibility. Rather than simply reject the excesses of sensibility, the aesthetic condition sought to transmute the quality of the emotion, turning feeling into impersonal understanding. But the cultural war over the value of feeling continued into the modernist generation who sometimes identified as ‘classical’ or ‘romantic’ in their view of emotion. Lawrence mocked such ‘classiosity’ as fear of feeling. This chapter compares him with his major contemporaries and suggests his significance within a broader history of thinking on the aesthetic.

scholarly journals The Industrial Revolution in Miniature: The Spinning Jenny in Britain, France, and India

2009 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 901-927 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Cotton Production

The spinning jenny helps explain why the Industrial Revolution occurred in Britain rather than in France or India. Wages were exceptionally high relative to capital prices in Britain, so the jenny was profitable to use in Britain but not elsewhere. Since it was only profitable to use the jenny in Britain, that was the only country where it as worth incurring the costs of developing it. Irrespective of the quality of their institutions or the progressiveness of their cultures, neither the French nor the Indians would have found it profitable to mechanize cotton production in the eighteenth century.

Georgian Churchmanship Reconsidered: Some Variations in Anglican Public Worship 1714–1830

1985 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. C. Mather
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Good Works ◽  
High Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
Public Worship

Current evaluation of the Church of England under the first four Georges follows in the main the assessment made by Norman Sykes in his monumental Church and State in England in the Eighteenth Century, published in 1934. According to that view the Church, which was lastingly cleared of the universal slackness previously imputed to it, exhibited a pervasive Latitudinarianism sympathetically portrayed by Sykes as ‘practical Christianity’, an emphasis on cdnduct and good works to the neglect of ‘organised churchmanship’ and the ‘mystical element’ in religion. R. W. Greaves detected similar features in the concept of ‘moderation’: suspicion of popery and friendship towards dissenters, a cult of plainness in theological explanation and a very general contempt of whatever was medieval. Historians have been willing to acknowledge as exceptions to this ‘mild’ quality of Anglican churchmanship the early Methodists and ‘small Evangelical and High Church minorities’, but only the two former have been taken seriously. Piety of a more traditional kind - rubrical, sacramental, Catholic - has been identified, only to be discounted. The Establishment has been seen in the light of the judgement recently summarised by Dr Anthony Russell: ‘Certainly the temper of the eighteenth century which favoured reason above all else, and was deeply suspicious of mysticism and the emotions, was against any form of sacramentalism.’

Pedro Calderon de la Barca and Madrid's Theatrical Calendar, 1700–1750: A Question of Priorities

1984 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-81
Author(s):  
Donald C. Buck
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Popular Theatre ◽  
General Consensus ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
Calderón De La Barca

Until recently, the subject of Calderón's dominance of eighteenth-century popular theatre has been a closed case. What discussion there had been was centered on the heated polemics which surged during the second half of the century between the rabidly anti-Calderonian neo-classicists and the pro-Calderonian nationalists. Despite their conflicts over the literary and dramatic quality of his work, the general consensus on both sides was that Calderón's plays enjoyed widespread popularity among theatre-goers, and that his style influenced successive generations of dramatists throughout the century.

The Import of Firearms into West Africa 1750–1807: a quantitative analysis

1977 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. Inikori
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Crop Protection ◽  
Strong Preference ◽  
African History ◽  
Agricultural Commodities

A series of articles on firearms in Africa published in the Journal of African History in 1971 raised a number of questions which have not been given adequate attention since those articles appeared. In the present paper an attempt is therefore made to shed some light on some of these questions in relation to West Africa in the second half of the eighteenth century. On the basis of import figures from England total imports during this period was estimated to be between 283,000 and 394,000 guns per annum, excluding imports into the Congo–Loango area which Phyllis Martin estimated to be about 50,000 yearly at this time. These guns went largely to the major slave exporting regions of West Africa, especially the Bonny trading area. The sellers of slaves showed a very strong preference for firearms, which is an indication of a strong connexion between guns and the acquisition of slaves. This reinforces the gun-slave cycle thesis. The evidence fails to support the idea that firearms were used primarily for crop protection in West Africa in the eighteenth century. If this were so it should have been reflected in the European goods demanded by sellers of agricultural commodities. It is likely, however, that the use to which firearms were put in West Africa changed after 1900. While the quality of firearms imported into West Africa during the period of this study was generally low, it would seem that those firearms largely served the purposes for which the African buyers purchased them.

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