'Divan' Dialogues: Orientalism and the Lied, 1814–1840

Thesis

The analytical problem of the early nineteenth-century Orientalist Lied is peculiar. Scholars have noted how exoticising musical signifiers rarely appear. Any arguments about Orientalism in the Lied thus necessarily engage the reception of text and the specificities of context. This thesis takes this ‘musical’ problem as an interdisciplinary invitation. It explores some of the material contexts, the aesthetic and intellectual discourses, and the representational practices of Orientalist Lieder between 1814 and 1840 by way of two reception histories. The connective in the title signals that these relationships were far from straightforward, but both positive and negative, affirmative and repellent.

The first half considers the reception of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 'West-östlicher Divan' in the 1820s through two case studies. The first chapter explores the roles of Zelter in the collection’s genesis; the aesthetic issues of both imagined and sung Orientalist Lieder; and suggests literary reasons for the wider musical public's silence. The second chapter considers the rich culture of song production in the Mendelssohn family, in particular the issues of song cyclicity in Fanny Mendelssohn's unpublished Divan settings from 1825; sociable Orientalist festivities in handwritten newspapers, such as the 'Gartenzeitung' (1826); and intermedial practices of performing Orientalist song.

The second half investigates the reception of Heinrich Stieglitz’s 'Bilder des Orients' in the 1830s. The third chapter charts some of the Orientalist forces that shaped Stieglitz’s Bilder and one of his earliest musical exponents, Adolph Bernhard Marx. The fourth chapter discusses settings of the Bilder by various ‘Kleinmeister’ against their reception in the critical press in the 1830s. The final chapter explores how Carl Loewe and Heinrich Marschner capitalised on Stieglitz’s Bilder to experiment with the Lied’s visual techniques of representation in the mid-1830s.

Authors: Arora, A

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-2a249pzbg
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: orientalism; Stieglitz; Zelter; Lied; Goethe; Divan
• Subjects: Orientalism; Musicology