Page 81 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2024. Glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes ▪︎ Music Criticism – Yesterday and Today. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 7
P. 81
music of progress and the future. on the roots of a fierce press feud ...
cred temple by erecting an opera altar for the idol Baal, the work of art
of the future.22
Without going into the many possible references here, one particular-
ly characteristic one should be singled out:
All the ingratitude, the dizziness, all the vanity, all the self-reflection, all
the inertia to push on the future what one should accomplish oneself, all
the hollowness and hall bathing of the aesthetic chatterers - how beau-
tifully it all sums up in the one word ‘future music’!23
This article has recently been included in a large anthology containing
writings on this central music-aesthetic controversy of the 19th century.24 It
is the result of a long-term research project initiated by Detlev Altenburg at
the Franz Liszt School of Music in Weimar. In contrast to previously com-
mon treatises on the New German School, the critical voices are included
in this anthology. It contains 12 articles from the Rheinische Musik-Zeitung
and 24 from the Niederrheinische Musik-Zeitung. James Deaville writes about
the selection of articles in his introduction:
Quite in contrast to the one-sided perspective [...] offered by previous,
all-too-selective - and thus tendentious - source collections on the New
German School, the inclined reader can now follow the debates exact-
ly as they were conducted between the actors involved - we thus also get
to read that to which the progressives responded with their writings!25
What Deaville formulates so succinctly here is nothing other than a
fundamental critique of the long-prevailing trend in German musicology
to perpetuate “master narratives” of music history and to provide them with
a scientific claim. I have called this direction the art religion of moderni-
ty26 and thus point to the strongly religiously influenced language that is ex-
22 Ibid., 30.
23 Lp., “Zukunftsmusik,” Niederrheinische Musik-Zeitung 7, no. 41 (1859): 324–6, here
325.
24 Dominik von Roth and Ulrike Roesler, eds., Die Neudeutsche Schule – Phänomen
und Geschichte. Quellen und Kommentare zu einer zentralen musikästhetischen
Kontroverse des 19. Jahrhunderts, 3 vols. (Berlin, Kassel: Metzler, Bärenreiter, 2020),
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04923-0.
25 James Deaville, “Introduction,” in Die Neudeutsche Schule – Phänomen und Geschi-
chte. Quellen und Kommentare zu einer zentralen musikästhetischen Kontroverse des
19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Dominik von Roth and Ulrike Roesler (Berlin, Kassel: Metzler,
Bärenreiter, 2020), 1–7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04923-0.
26 Helmut Loos, E-Musik - Kunstreligion der Moderne. Beethoven und andere Götter
(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2017).
81
cred temple by erecting an opera altar for the idol Baal, the work of art
of the future.22
Without going into the many possible references here, one particular-
ly characteristic one should be singled out:
All the ingratitude, the dizziness, all the vanity, all the self-reflection, all
the inertia to push on the future what one should accomplish oneself, all
the hollowness and hall bathing of the aesthetic chatterers - how beau-
tifully it all sums up in the one word ‘future music’!23
This article has recently been included in a large anthology containing
writings on this central music-aesthetic controversy of the 19th century.24 It
is the result of a long-term research project initiated by Detlev Altenburg at
the Franz Liszt School of Music in Weimar. In contrast to previously com-
mon treatises on the New German School, the critical voices are included
in this anthology. It contains 12 articles from the Rheinische Musik-Zeitung
and 24 from the Niederrheinische Musik-Zeitung. James Deaville writes about
the selection of articles in his introduction:
Quite in contrast to the one-sided perspective [...] offered by previous,
all-too-selective - and thus tendentious - source collections on the New
German School, the inclined reader can now follow the debates exact-
ly as they were conducted between the actors involved - we thus also get
to read that to which the progressives responded with their writings!25
What Deaville formulates so succinctly here is nothing other than a
fundamental critique of the long-prevailing trend in German musicology
to perpetuate “master narratives” of music history and to provide them with
a scientific claim. I have called this direction the art religion of moderni-
ty26 and thus point to the strongly religiously influenced language that is ex-
22 Ibid., 30.
23 Lp., “Zukunftsmusik,” Niederrheinische Musik-Zeitung 7, no. 41 (1859): 324–6, here
325.
24 Dominik von Roth and Ulrike Roesler, eds., Die Neudeutsche Schule – Phänomen
und Geschichte. Quellen und Kommentare zu einer zentralen musikästhetischen
Kontroverse des 19. Jahrhunderts, 3 vols. (Berlin, Kassel: Metzler, Bärenreiter, 2020),
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04923-0.
25 James Deaville, “Introduction,” in Die Neudeutsche Schule – Phänomen und Geschi-
chte. Quellen und Kommentare zu einer zentralen musikästhetischen Kontroverse des
19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Dominik von Roth and Ulrike Roesler (Berlin, Kassel: Metzler,
Bärenreiter, 2020), 1–7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04923-0.
26 Helmut Loos, E-Musik - Kunstreligion der Moderne. Beethoven und andere Götter
(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2017).
81
