Music, Culture and Social Reform in the Age of Wagner

Challenging received views of music in nineteenth-century German thought, culture and society, this 2010 book provides a radical reappraisal of its socio-political meanings and functions. Garratt argues that far from governing the nineteenth-century musical discourse and practice, the concept of artistic autonomy and the aesthetic categories bequeathed by Weimar classicism were persistently challenged by alternative models of music's social role. The book investigates these competing models and the social projects that gave rise to them. It interrogates nineteenth-century musical discourse, discussing a wide range of manifestos championing musical democratization or seeking to make music an engine for the transformation of society. In addition, it explores institutions and movements that attempted to realize these goals, and compositions - by Mendelssohn, Lortzing and Liszt as well as Wagner - in which the relation between aesthetic and social claims is programmatic.

Author: James Garratt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 01/21/2010
Pages: 306
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.65lbs
Size: 9.80h x 6.90w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780521110549

About the Author
Garratt, James: - James Garratt is Senior Lecturer in Music and University Organist at the University of Manchester.

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