Bach in Berlin by Celia Applegate

Bach in Berlin by Celia Applegate

In this book, Celia Applegate asks why the 1829 performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion crystallized the hitherto inchoate notion that music was central to Germans' collective identity.

Bach in Berlin is a wonderful piece of scholarship from a leading historian of German national identity... It is not so much an account of the revival itself, but instead an examination of how educated Germans (the Bildungsbürgertum) learned to view music as a fundamental component of German culture and how they saw Bach, especially in his vocal music, as the epitome of German music: serious, profound, religious. Applegate tells the story brilliantly, traversing disciplinary boundaries with virtuosic ease.... Stunningly original, well-written, and judicious in its handling of historical and musicological controversies, Bach in Berlin is an engaging, first-rate book that should be on the reading list of anyone with interests in nineteenth-century music and German history.

-- Anthony J. Steinhoff * H-Germany, H-Net Reviews *

Applegate brings together the personnel and circumstances around an event famous in all music history books. Her confident handling of written sources reveals Berlin as a burgeoning city of culture and, let us not forget, military power, both of which were to impinge so radically on Europe that all kinds of historians will find much of interest in Bach in Berlin. I particularly appreciated the excerpts from the day's musical journals, pleased to see that, for example, Bach’s recitative was already admired by the discriminating.

* Musical Times *

Exemplary.... Applegate arranges her material elegantly around an account of the 1829 performance itself, supported by a detailed examination of the circumstances in which it took shape, and discusses how these illuminate an emerging German culture.... The story of the revival of the St. Matthew Passion is people by vivid characters. Among the principals are Mendelssohn, Schinkel and Goethe, supported by Zelter and Fasch and the actor Eduard Devrient, but the evocation of place and period is made more lively by Applegate's fascination with the coteries surrounding them.

-- Richard Coles * Times Literary Supplement *

It is easy to enjoy Applegate's fascinating and flawlessly written book, which abounds in colorful prose and into which a myriad of well-chosen and superbly translated quotations are woven. Every page is engaging.

-- Mark-Daniel Schmid * Nations and Nationalism *

Celia Applegate is William R. Kenan, Jr. Chair of History and Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat and coeditor of Music and German National Identity.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780801479724
ISBN 10	080147972X
Titel	Bach in Berlin
Autor	Celia Applegate
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Paperback
Verlag	Cornell University Press
Erscheinungsjahr	2014-10-31
Seitenanzahl	304
Preise	Winner of Winner of the 2007 DAAD Book Prize (German Studies.
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar