Overview

Music Criticism in Vienna records a culture in which musical criticism had achieved the status of a minor art form. The period covered - October 1896 to December 1897 - was an eventful time in Vienna. Bruckner died, then Brahms; Mahler arrived; premieres of works by Czech composers coincided with increasing tension in the Empire between Czechs and Germans; Puccini's La Boheme reached Vienna on its sensational progress around the world; and the great programme music debate continued. These events and issues were recorded and debated by some two dozen critics ranging from Eduard Hanslick, widely credited with (and blamed for) raising music criticism to an art, to Heinrich Schenker. The focus of Sandra McColl's monograph is unashamedly on the critics themselves, and her reconstruction of the climate of debate about whatever music or musicians came to their notice. She illuminates the intellectual climate in which the music was created, performed and received, and provides a foundation for the study of musical criticism in the post-Hanslick generation.

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9780198165644

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<br> This absorbing monograph places music criticism gleaned from the daily press of Vienna during the last two years of Brahm's life within the context of the personal backgrounds of the critics, the cultural politics of post-Wagnerian Europe, and the social and civil climate of the day. Reaction to the music of Brahms is one of the threads that runs through this richly recreated fabric. --The American Brahms Society Newletter<br>

This absorbing monograph places music criticism gleaned from the daily press of Vienna during the last two years of Brahm's life within the context of the personal backgrounds of the critics, the cultural politics of post-Wagnerian Europe, and the social and civil climate of the day. Reaction to the music of Brahms is one of the threads that runs through this richly recreated fabric. --The American Brahms Society Newletter<br>

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