Germany (18th century culture of Music):

In the Enlightenment (1715-89) German music, sponsored by the upper classes, came of age with composers such as JS Bach, Haydn, Mozart & Beethoven.  Normally working for an aristocrat, their compositions were written for aristocratic players & listeners.  Haydn was an employee of Nikolaus I, Prince Esterházy; Mozart wrote 3 string quartets for the King of Prussia, Frederick William II; many of Beethoven's quartets were first performed with patron Count Andrey Razumovsky.  However as the 18th century waned composers increasingly made money by selling their compositions & performing.  They held subscription concerts, renting a hall & collecting the receipts from the performance.  They wrote chamber music for rich patrons as well as professional musicians playing for a paying audience.  The middle class was also expanding.  There were an increasing number of amateur musicians.  Women became more involved; they were professional singers & appeared on the amateur scene notably as keyboard players. Publishers began printing for amateurs, in particular scores for keyboard, voice & keyboard & chamber ensemble, & after 1750 choral music.  Music became more accessible with books published for dilettantes (rather than the specialist).  Music magazines, reviews & critical works which suited both amateurs & connoisseurs surfaced as more & more people discussed & read about music, performances & composers.

 

Hoffmann:

1776-1822, German Romantic author of fantasy & Gothic horror, a jurist, composer, music critic & artist, one of the major Romantic authors, his stories influenced 19th-century literature.   Offenbach used his stories in his opera Tales of Hoffmann.  Likewise Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King was used by Tchaikovsky for the ballet; the opera Coppélia uses 2 stories by Hoffmann (The Sandman & and The Doll); Schumann's Kreisleriana is based on Hoffmann's character Johannes Kreisler.

 

Kapellmeister Kreisler:

character in 3 novels by E.T.A. Hoffmann: Kreisleriana (1813), Johannes Kreisler, des Kapellmeisters Musikalische Leiden (1815), and The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper (1822). He also appears briefly in The Golden Pot (1814) and in some of Hoffmann's journalism as well.  The moody, asocial musical genius & composer Kreisler is Hoffmann's alter ego, whose creativity is stymied by an excessive sensibility.  The character inspired many musical compositions, including works by Schumann, György Kurtág and Brahms

 

“gingerbread" courts:

heavily, gaudily, and superfluously ornamented architecture

 

cantilena:

a simple, lyric, melodic passage for voice or instrument [cantilena]

 

cartouches:

a rounded, convex surface, usually surrounded with carved ornamental scrollwork, for receiving a painted or low-relief decoration, as an escutcheon.

see Chapter II page 87

 

cadences:

the beat, time, or measure of rhythmical motion or activity

 

copings:

a pieces of woodwork with their end shaped to fit together with a molding

 

Dresden Zwinger:

see Chapter II, page 87

 

allegro fugitive:

Italian, cheerful fugitive

 

Poppelmann: * see EndNote<A>

1662–1736, German master builder & architect who helped to rebuild Dresden after the 1685 fire.  In 1680 he began work as a building designer in the court of Dresden Castle.  As court architect for the King of Poland & Elector of Saxony, Augustus II the Strong, he designed the grandiose Zwinger palace in Dresden.  He was also in charge of major works at Dresden Castle, Pillnitz Castle & designed the Vineyard Church in Pillnitz.  With Johann Christoph Naumann, he developed an urban plan for Warsaw, including the Saxon Axis and other important streetscapes.

 

Schluter (architect): * see EndNote<B>

1664-1714 German sculptor & architect; better known as a late Baroque sculptor (few of his buildings survive).  Called to Berlin in 1694 to serve as court sculptor to the elector Frederick III; 4 years later appointed Supervisor for Construction & actively engaged in directing building operations in Berlin.  He was commissioned to transform the Berlin Schloss into a royal palace.  This palace (finished in 1701) was his greatest achievement & reflects the influence of Bernini & Gameren &  Le Pautre.  Between 1701-1704 he was Director of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.  Between 1702-04 he designed & built the Wartenberg Palace, Berlin.  The year he finished this project however, the Mint Tower (built on sandy soil) collapsed.  He fell out of favour.  It was an event which deeply saddened him.  In 1707 he was dismissed as Supervisor of Construction; in 1710 he resigned from the Academy of Arts.  Nonetheless his reputation was still untarnished abroad & in 1713 he was summoned by Peter the Great to St. Petersburg..  He began planning the layout of the new city, the grotto near the Summer Palace & other major buildings.  He died in 1714 before any of these plans could be initiated.  Despite a somewhat mixed career, his work influenced Poppelmann & Fischer von Erlach.

 

Bahr: * see EndNote<C>

1666-1738, German architect; in 1705 named Dresden's City Master Carpenter; his main goal was to modernise the city's churches as he believed the existing buildings did not do  justice to Protestant church services.  His first building was the parish church in the Loschwitz area of Dresden, a building in the shape of a stretched-out octagon (1708).  Next he built the Dresden Waisenhauskirche (Orphanage Church) in 1710, followed by the Dreifaltigkeitskirche (Trinity Church) in Schmiedeberg, 1713-1716.  Between 1719 and 1726 the church in Forchheim was built, as well as several other churches in Saxony.  His fames rests on the design the Frauenkirche in Dresden (1722-26).  Work began in 1730.  Whilst working on this he also oversaw the building of the Dreikönigskirche (Church of the Three Kings) in Dresden's although the design was by Pöppelmann.

 

Naumann: * see EndNote<D>

1664-1742, [Johann Christoph von], urban designer who with Pöppelmann, designed portions of the city of Warsaw, including the Saxon Axis & other important streetscapes. In 1729-30 he modernized Bautzen town hall where he had already added the upper storeys to Reichenturm tower in 1718.  He worked in remodelling the Opernhaus am Taschenberg building in Dresden, to the first Catholic Hofkirche.

 

Fischer von Erlach: * see EndNote<E>

1656-1723 Austrian architect, sculptor & architectural historian, his Baroque architecture profoundly influenced & shaped the tastes of the Habsburg Empire.  His influential book A Plan of Civil and Historical Architecture (1721) was one of the first & most popular comparative studies of world architecture. His major works include Schönbrunn Palace, Karlskirche, and the Austrian National Library in Vienna, and Schloss Klessheim, Holy Trinity Church, and the Kollegienkirche in Salzburg.

 

Dinzenhofer:

surname of a family of Germans who became notable architects of the Baroque period:

Christoph (1655-1722), prominent architect of Bohemian Baroque.  His son was Kilian Ignaz (1689–1751), also a prominent architect of Bohemian Baroque.  Leonhard (1660–1707) & Johann his brother- also prominent German architect (built Banz Abbey).  Johann (1663–1726), also a prominent German architect

 

“Impressionism":

derived from the title of a Monet painting- Impression, Sunrise (1872).  It provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satirical review published in the Parisian newspaper Le Charivari.  In his review of the 1874 exhibition, which he labelled "The Exhibition of the Impressionists", he used the word "Impressionism" to describe the new style of works typified by Monet’s painting.  However the term was not new & had been used previously to describe work from the Barbizon school.  

and see Chapter I page 5, Chapter VI page 184 and Chapter VII age 239

 

Manet (and Impressionism):

1832-1883 was associated with the Barbizon school & had been known to use the term impressionism to describe his work.  He was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.  His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia, both 1863, were controversial and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism.

and see Chapter I page 35

 

Kant (space): * see EndNote<F>

Space, claimed Kant, is a condition that the subject inherently possesses to perceive spatial presentations; for the subject to have any experience at all, then it must be bounded by these forms of presentations.  They are constructs in the mind BEFORE any experience, independent of experience.

​

Impressionism:

19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (showing passage of time), ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement & unusual visual angles.  Their freely brushed colours took precedence over lines and contours.  They portrayed overall visual effects instead of details, used short "broken" brush strokes of mixed & pure unmixed colour (not blended smoothly or shaded, as was customary) to achieve an effect of intense colour vibration & tried to capture momentary & transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air (outdoors). The essential point of Impressionism is capturing the essence of a scene without filling in specific detail; the art gives enough to work out what is being conveyed but allowing the imagination to fill in the rest.  Impressionism is a mesh of the creative mind of the painter with the viewer & based on experiences each viewer will see something different.  The development of Impressionism in oil paint was soon followed by analogous styles in other media notably in music & literature.