Alchemy and Counterpoint in an Age of Reason

1998 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Yearsley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
Previous Generation ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Aesthetic

This essay demonstrates the importance of alchemy to the theory and practice of learned counterpoint as articulated in the writings of a group of early eighteenth-century German musicians, in particular, those of canon enthusiast and alchemist Heinrich Bokemeyer (1679-1751). While leading eighteenth-century theorists such as Johann Mattheson argued vigorously against the persistence of occult beliefs in music, the correspondence of J. G. Walther with Bokemeyer reveals a lively discourse on the principles of Hermeticism in conjunction with the exchange of counterpoint manuscripts, one of the most important of which was Johann Theile's Musicalisches Kunstbuch. The title and contents of this collection, as well as the pictorial and contrapuntal features of another of Theile's creations, the Harmonischer Baum, suggest further links with alchemy. In 1723-24, Bokemeyer became engaged in a dispute with Mattheson over the merits of canon; this debate was published as "Die canonische Anatomie" in Mattheson's periodical Critica musica. Bokemeyer's lengthy defense of learned counterpoint draws heavily on alchemical metaphors and Hermetic concepts. Bokemeyer would later become a member, along with J. S. Bach, of Lorenz Mizler's Societät der Musicalischen Wissenschaften. Bokemeyer may have seen in Bach's Canonic Variations (BWV 769), presented to the society on Bach's admission in 1747, a reflection of the aesthetic principles articulated in "Die canonische Anatomie." While learned counterpoint's role in composition and pedagogy diminished in the years following the publication of "Die canonische Anatomie," midcentury theorists such as F. W. Marpurg continued to explore the complex workings of canon, but they did so as enlightened encyclopedists holding none of the occult views that had informed the musical belief system of Bokemeyer and the counterpoint devotees of the previous generation.

Handel’s Transformative Compositional Practices

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-502
Author(s):  
David Ross Hurley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Original Music ◽  
Developing Variation ◽  
Compositional History ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Musical Transformations ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
First Time ◽  
Variation Process

In recent decades singers of Handel’s music have made great strides in recapturing the art of embellishing his music, thus breathing new life into forms such as the da capo aria. Yet Handel’s own “variations”—his development and transformation of musical material in his vocal music, important for understanding his compositional practice with borrowed as well as (presumably) original music—are not yet fully explored or appreciated. Admittedly, scholars have discussed musical procedures such as inserting, deleting, and reordering musical materials, as well as other Baroque combinatorial practices in Handel’s arias, but the musical transformations I discuss here are closer to a specifically Handelian brand of developing variation. To my knowledge, the concept of developing variation has never before been applied to early eighteenth-century music. I explore the relation of developing variation to drama (also rarely done) in two of Handel’s arias, providing a close examination of “Ombre, piante” from the opera Rodelinda and new thoughts about “Lament not thus,” originally intended for the oratorio Belshazzar. Although these arias belong to different genres and different stages of Handel’s career, they both exhibit material that undergoes a kind of progressive variation process that has tangible musical and dramatic ramifications, of interest to opera specialists and performers. Furthermore, both arias have a complicated compositional history; I offer fresh insights into the aesthetic qualities of each version, thereby throwing light on Handel’s possible compositional intentions. This article also discloses for the first time some recurring musical passages shared between “Lament not thus” and other pieces that could influence the listener’s interpretation of certain musico-dramatic gestures.

John Weaver and the Origins of English Pantomime: A Neoclassical Theory and Practice for Uniting Dance and Theatre

2001 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Neoclassical Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rare Combination ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

Theatre historians have long acknowledged John Weaver as the father of English pantomime. In 1985, however, the foremost Weaver scholar, Richard Ralph, noted that no one had systematically studied Weaver's pantomime descriptions, printed in The Loves of Mars and Venus, nor had classical influences upon Weaver been sufficiently investigated.1 Scholarship in the past fifteen years has not filled these gaps; thus, this article begins an examination of these two areas of Weaver's work. They are especially significant because the pantomime descriptions and classical influences reveal that Weaver was a scholar-artist, a rare combination in his era, whose theories and practices deepened the interplay among the arts in early eighteenth-century England.2

The Discussion of Taste, from 1750 To 1770, and the New Trends in Literary Criticism

PMLA ◽  
1934 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 577-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Niles Hooker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Standard Of Taste ◽  
The Aesthetic

The attempts to define and to arrive at a standard of taste lie at the heart of the aesthetic inquiries that were being carried on in eighteenth-century England. That such inquiries, by examining certain fundamental assumptions of traditional æsthetics, exerted an influence on the theory and practice of literary criticism, is a commonplace. But why and how this influence was felt has not been explained. Its importance can be gauged by the fact that within a period of twenty years several of the ablest minds in England and Scotland, including Burke, Hume, Hogarth, Reynolds, Kames, and Gerard—most of them interested in literary criticism—were focussed upon the problem of taste. It was not a coincidence that in the years from 1750 to 1770, when the search for a standard of taste was at its height, the old assumptions of literary criticism were crumbling and the new “romantic” principles were being set forth, sometimes timidly and sometimes boldly, by the Wartons, Young, Hurd, Kames, and many others. The relation between these two phenomena is the subject of this study.

The Royal Sign and Visual Literacy in Eighteenth-Century London

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Koscak
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Aesthetic

AbstractThis article argues that the commercialization of monarchical culture is more complex than existing scholarship suggests. It explores the aesthetic dimensions of regal culture produced outside of the traditionally defined sphere of art and politics by focusing on the variety of royal images and symbols depicted on hanging signs in eighteenth-century London. Despite the overwhelming presence of kings and queens on signboards, few study these as a form of regal visual culture or seriously question the ways in which these everyday objects affected representations of royalty beyond asserting an unproblematic process of declension. Indeed, even in the Restoration and early eighteenth century, monarchical signs were the subject of criticism and debate. This article explains why this became the case, arguing that signs were criticized not because they were trivial commercial objects that cheapened royal charisma, but because they were overloaded with political meaning. They emblematized the failures of representation in the age of print and party politics by depicting the monarchy—the traditional center of representative stability—in ways that troubled interpretation and defied attempts to control the royal image. Nevertheless, regal images and objects circulating in urban spaces comprised a meaningful political-visual language that challenges largely accepted arguments about the aesthetic inadequacy and cultural unimportance of early eighteenth-century monarchy. Signs were part of an urban, graphic public sphere, used as objects of political debate, historical commemoration, and civic instruction.

ANTONIO VIVALDI AND THE SUBLIME SEASONS: SONORITY AND TEXTURE AS EXPRESSIVE DEVICES IN EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ITALIAN MUSIC

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICHOLAS LOCKEY
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Antonio Vivaldi ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Four Seasons ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Italian Music ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Powerful Demonstration

ABSTRACTAntonio Vivaldi's cycle of violin concertos dramatizing the four seasons marked a substantial shift in the way that the seasons were depicted in the arts. Moving away from religious and mythological allegory, they exemplify a growing interest in descriptive representation of nature's power and in humanity's complex physical and emotional relationship with elements beyond its control. Positing new connections to Arcadian reform ideals of verisimilitude, this article addresses important questions concerning Vivaldi's pairing of sonnets with concertos and the aesthetic factors behind his choice of narrative topics to depict in the music. The article also demonstrates how Vivaldi used diverse textures and sonorities to create powerful contrasts that heighten the emotional impact of the aural imagery while underlining recurring expressive and pictorial motifs throughout the cycle. These last aspects, in particular, provide a new understanding of the historical significance of Vivaldi'sFour Seasonsas a powerful demonstration of both the expressive potential of the concerto genre and the still underappreciated art of orchestration during the early eighteenth century.

Ballads and Britons: Imagined Community and the Continuity of ‘English’ Opera

1997 ◽  
Vol 122 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Aspden
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Many ◽  
English Opera

Joseph Addison's Spectator is perhaps the best-known early eighteenth-century periodical, its title a byword for the period's acute critical sensibility, its pages of enthusiastic enquiry a fitting monument to what we like to call the ‘Age of Reason’. Of the many commentaries on opera included in its pages, Spectator no. 5 (6 March 1711), critiquing the inadequacy of attempts at scenic verisimilitude on London's operatic stage, is justly renowned. Addison's tale of the undesirable (and wholly unmusical) results of releasing quantities of sparrows inside a theatre derives much of its pungency from the consequences of what Addison feels to be an improper juxtaposition of 'shadows and realities': sparrows and castrati alike escape pastoral fantasy to invade more sordid reality, penetrating ‘a lady's bed-chamber’ or perching ‘upon a king's throne’.

scholarly journals Hanswurst and Herr Ich: Subjection and Abjection in Enlightenment Censorship of the Comic Figure

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Jürs-Munby
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
Historical Relationship ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Historical Movement

The well-known ‘banishment’ of the popular comic figure Hanswurst from the German stage by Gottsched and the Neuber acting troupe in the early eighteenth century is usually read as part of the historical movement from improvised folk theatre to bourgeois literary theatre. In this article Karen Jürs-Munby goes beyond that received wisdom to discuss what kind of acting, what kind of body, and what kind of relationship between stage and audience were censored by banishing Hanswurst. Considering this censorship as part of the larger historical relationship between discourses on acting and the emergence of a modern self in the Enlightenment, she argues that the osmotic body and stage that Hanswurst stood for prevented the aesthetic mirroring relationship sought by eighteenth-century stage reformers in an increasing need for bourgeois self-representation. The Hanswurst banishment can be theorized with reference to Julia Kristeva as an abjection of grotesque acting – a form of acting whose political power to question the autonomous bourgeois subject was to be rediscovered by practitioners in the twentieth century. Karen Jürs-Munby is a lecturer in Theatre Studies at Lancaster University; she has published articles on theories and discourses of acting in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries and recently translated Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatic Theatre.

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