Chapter 22: Musical Politics at Mid-Century: Historicism and the New German School

I. Introduction
A. Much music history is cast in the tale of the composers, but the people who actually do the
writing are also significant contributors to how the story is told.
B. “Historicism” defines social and cultural situations by their history.
1. It was promoted by Karl Heinz Brendel.
2. He wrote the most popular music history of the nineteenth century, Geschichte der
Musik ... (1852).
3. The philosophy behind his history was dependent on ideas put forth by Hegel and
concerned the dialectic.

II. Historicism and the Hegelian Dialectic

A. The Hegelian dialectic has become somewhat a cliché. History is always in a state of flux.
B. The Hegelian dialectic aims to show why things change.
C. Hegel taught that historical change was to realize human freedom—the progress of the world
soul.
D. Brendel adopted these values.
1. He saw the history of music as a series of emancipations: from mechanical rules, from
religion, from words.
2. Musical value was best measured in how it embodied its own era’s evolutionary
synthesis and pointed forward.
3. Brendel placed the highest value on German composers.
a. After Beethoven, he placed Liszt and Wagner.
E. The idea that music must evolve led to a division between those in the know and everybody
else.

III. The New German School

A. Brendel became editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik after Schumann, and his aesthetic
preferences differed substantially from those of his predecessor.
B. He formed a new organization to promote his agenda for progressive music and gave the
keynote address at its formation.
1. Brendel named a group of composers who comprised the “New German School.”
2. Liszt was the honorary president.
a. Even though he wasn’t German, Liszt had spent a lot of time in Weimar.
C. The “New German School” came to be identified with Liszt, Berlioz, and Wagner.
D. As conductor in Weimar, Liszt championed the music of Wagner and himself (among others).
1. He premiered Lohengrin.
2. He began writing symphonic poems, which follow the Hegelian ideal of “unity of the
poetic and the musical.”
a. These are single-movement works, but can be quite lengthy.
b. The titles and occasional prefaces explain the non-musical content.
c. He also composed two programmatic symphonies, Faust and Dante.
d. Liszt incorporated aspects of sonata form in the symphonic poems, but also
gives them characteristics of multi-movement works.
 1) He linked them “organically” through elements such as a circle of
major thirds—a particular favorite.
3. The symphonic poems differ from earlier program pieces in that their poetic content
was philosophical, not narrative.
4. Liszt felt that the audience did not have to be entertained but subjected to higher
demands.

IV. “The Music of the Future”

A. The composers of the New German School adopted the slogan “Music of the Future,” coined
by one of Liszt’s lovers.
B. The phrase was easily turned into joke, and Brendel advocated not using it.
1. The response that Brendel preferred “New German School” including two non-
Germans received the explanation that Liszt and Berlioz took over where Beethoven left off, so
they were essentially German in their origins.
2. From this point, Germanness was not defined from folklore but spiritually.

V. Absolute Music
A. While many non-German composers decried the “universalist pretensions” of the “New
German School” to be at heart nationalistic, the most famous opposition came from the Viennese
critic and historian Eduard Hanslick.
B. His tract “On the Musically Beautiful” argued for a different aesthetic than the “New German
School.”
C. He valued music for its absolute and abstract character.
D. He blended form and feeling together, instead of opposing each other.
E. Hanslick favored timeless musical values over the intentions of the composer or reception of
the listener, and this was an entirely new concept.
1. It is a sort of antihistoricism in which the timeless values are found in the past.
Brahms and the violinist Joachim (who resigned from working with Liszt) represented
Hanslick’s position.
F. Joachim wrote a response to Brendel’s keynote address and sent it around to like-minded
musicians for review.
1. Unfortunately, someone allowed it to be exposed with only four signatures: Brahms,
Joachim, and two conductors.
2. They were ridiculed in the press, and Brahms retreated from the fray.

VI. Liszt’s Symphonic Poems

A. Liszt’s symphonic poem Les préludes (1856 publication) is based on poetry by Lamartine.
B. It consists of four episodes that function like movements.
C. The harmony, structure, and even some of the thematic material derives in part from
Beethoven.
D. The opening motive is transformed throughout the work, to the point where the listener may
not recognize it.
1. Liszt called this technique “thematic transformation.”
a. It resembles Berlioz’s use of the idée fixe in the Symphony fantastique, but
breaks down the essence of the motive in a manner similar to Beethoven’s treatment of material.
2. This seemingly justifies the claim that content creates its own form.
VII. But What Does It Really Mean?
A. On the other hand, Les préludes existed in another guise before its association with
Lamartine’s poetry.
B. This might seem to negate the New German School’s claims.
C. However, it is not a single idea that was promised, but emotional impact. Who is to judge?
D. Does it matter if the listener does not get the correct meaning?

VIII. The Concerto Transformed

A. The New German School’s agenda had implications for genre definitions.
B. Chamber music was not a part of their world. They wrote symphonic music and operas.
C. Those in opposition to the New German School generally eschewed opera.
D. Both sides, however, composed concertos: Beethoven wrote them, after all.
E. The New Germans saw his progressive innovations; the opposition to the seriousness of his
concertos (as opposed to the virtuoso flash of Liszt and Paganini).
F. During the Romantic period, the balance of forces was weighted in favor of the soloist
(“lonely hero”).
G. The relationship between the soloist and orchestra became an important issue.
1. Melodic material was shared.
2. Structural roles were shared.
H. Form was compressed.
I. Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto exemplifies many of the new changes in the concerto.
J. Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor also points the way for innovations in form and the
interplay between orchestra and soloist.
K. Liszt wrote two concertos. The first, in E-flat, is structurally substantial but with colorful
orchestration.
1. It is thematically dense and compressed, formally unique and unpredictable.

IX. Genre Trouble: Berlioz Again

A. Paganini commissioned a viola concerto from Berlioz in 1832.
B. Berlioz rejected the concerto idea in favor of “a solo for viola, but a solo combined with
orchestral accompaniment in such a way as to leave the orchestra full freedom of action.”
C. He initially advertised the work as The Last Moments of Mary Stuart and called it a dramatic
fantasy for orchestra, chorus, and solo viola.
D. By the time it was finished, it was called Harold en Italie, there was no program, and
Paganini was not involved.
1. The solo part is not virtuoso.
2. It seems to represent the solitary Romantic idealist against a backdrop of virtuoso
orchestral writing.
E. Harold en Italie is literary (based on Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimmage),
picturesque, programmatic, and thematically unified (again with an idée fixe, but one that
behaves differently from the Symphony fantastique).