Page 84 - 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. 84
glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes | music criticism – yesterday and today
sketches the path of music as a situational progression with many setbacks
from Gregorian chant to the enlightened Germany of his time: “General-
ly, all the ‘educated’ acquired a religion whose credo was easy to remember,
since it was reduced to the dogmas of a ‘supreme being’ and the ‘immortality
of the soul’.”43 Ambros criticises the
true zeal in overthrowing and eliminating the old – churches are sold
for demolition or converted into ‘useful institutions’, serious ruins of
old castles are utilised as ‘granaries’, venerable town halls are ‘tasteful-
ly modernised’, and so on. The old cathedrals actually only remained
standing because our elders built so unpleasantly solidly.44
This speaks of a high esteem for church music. In the preface to his
Culturhistorische Bilder aus dem Musikleben der Gegenwart, dedicated to
Franz Liszt, he explicitly acknowledges the musical heritage of the Catho-
lic Church:
The more sincerely I belong to the Catholic Church, in which I was born
and brought up, the more I wish that excessive zeal should not devastate
a part of the very gardens which are richest in blossoms and which the
Church has tended and cultivated for centuries.45
Ambros criticises the “philosophical-theoretical speculation,” since it is
“partly in fantasies, partly in abstractions,”46 and points out
that even the generally comprehensible work of art, apparently based on
the purest beauty, does not entirely get rid of the inherited flavour of its
origin according to time, place, religious creed, state constitution, cli-
mate, etc.47
The controversy between Ambros and Hanslick makes it clear that the
musical party formation of the 19th century had a strong socio-political-ide-
ological dimension that was shaped “by the struggle for Christianity and
modernity.” Julius Schaeffer already described this clairvoyantly, albeit bi-
ased, in 1852:
We are in the middle of the struggle of the ‘parties’. Not only the state
and the church, not only the old social order is undergoing a process of
43 Ibid., 121.
44 Ibid., 122.
45 August Wilhelm Ambros, Culturhistorische Bilder aus dem Musikleben der Ge-
genwart (Leipzig: Matthes, 1860; 2nd ed.: Leipzig, 1865), 3.
46 Ibid., 11.
47 Ibid., 8.
84
sketches the path of music as a situational progression with many setbacks
from Gregorian chant to the enlightened Germany of his time: “General-
ly, all the ‘educated’ acquired a religion whose credo was easy to remember,
since it was reduced to the dogmas of a ‘supreme being’ and the ‘immortality
of the soul’.”43 Ambros criticises the
true zeal in overthrowing and eliminating the old – churches are sold
for demolition or converted into ‘useful institutions’, serious ruins of
old castles are utilised as ‘granaries’, venerable town halls are ‘tasteful-
ly modernised’, and so on. The old cathedrals actually only remained
standing because our elders built so unpleasantly solidly.44
This speaks of a high esteem for church music. In the preface to his
Culturhistorische Bilder aus dem Musikleben der Gegenwart, dedicated to
Franz Liszt, he explicitly acknowledges the musical heritage of the Catho-
lic Church:
The more sincerely I belong to the Catholic Church, in which I was born
and brought up, the more I wish that excessive zeal should not devastate
a part of the very gardens which are richest in blossoms and which the
Church has tended and cultivated for centuries.45
Ambros criticises the “philosophical-theoretical speculation,” since it is
“partly in fantasies, partly in abstractions,”46 and points out
that even the generally comprehensible work of art, apparently based on
the purest beauty, does not entirely get rid of the inherited flavour of its
origin according to time, place, religious creed, state constitution, cli-
mate, etc.47
The controversy between Ambros and Hanslick makes it clear that the
musical party formation of the 19th century had a strong socio-political-ide-
ological dimension that was shaped “by the struggle for Christianity and
modernity.” Julius Schaeffer already described this clairvoyantly, albeit bi-
ased, in 1852:
We are in the middle of the struggle of the ‘parties’. Not only the state
and the church, not only the old social order is undergoing a process of
43 Ibid., 121.
44 Ibid., 122.
45 August Wilhelm Ambros, Culturhistorische Bilder aus dem Musikleben der Ge-
genwart (Leipzig: Matthes, 1860; 2nd ed.: Leipzig, 1865), 3.
46 Ibid., 11.
47 Ibid., 8.
84
