Intimacy, Performance, and the Lied in the Early Nineteenth Century [Hardcover]

The German lied, or art song, is considered one of the most intimate of all musical genresoften focused on the poetic speakers inner world and best suited for private and semi-private performance in the home or salon. Yet, problematically, any sense of inwardness in lieder depends on outward expression through performance.

With this paradox at its heart,Intimacy, Performance, and the Lied in the Early Nineteenth Centuryexplores the relationships between early nineteenth-century theories of the inward self, the performance practices surrounding inward lyric poetry and song, and the larger conventions determining the place of intimate poetry and song in the public concert hall. Jennifer Ronyak studies the cultural practices surrounding lieder performances in northern and central Germany in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, demonstrating how presentations of lieder during the formative years of the genre put pressure on their sense of interiority. She examines how musicians responded to public concern that outward expression would leave the interiority of the poet, the song, or the performer unguarded and susceptible to danger. Through this rich performative paradox Ronyak reveals how a song maintains its powerful intimacy even during its inherently public performance.

Jennifer Ronyaks primary interest in this important new book is in the power of performance, and her radical insistence is that the social contexts of performance generate meanings often quite different from those we find by examining text-music relationships. Zelter and Goethe, Mignon, Anna Milder-Hauptmann, the origins ofDie sch?ne M?llerinRonyak focuses on a fascinating gallery of characters fictive and real and on songs we will hear differently from now on.

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Safeguarding the Self

2. Breathing Subjectivity

3. Serious Play in the Salon

4. The Poetic Public Sphel£Ý