Content area
Full Text
IDENTITY, RESISTANCE Defining Deutschtum: Political Ideology, German Identity, and MusicCritical Discourse in Liberal Vienna. By David Brodbeck. (New Cultural History of Music.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. [xviii, 365 p. ISBN 9780199362707 (hardcover), $45; (e-book, Oxford Scholarship Online).] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index.
Defining Deutschtum explores the notion of Germanness in fin-de-siècle Vienna from the perspective of music criticism. More specifically, David Brodbeck's aim in this book is to "reveal the very great extent to which contemporary political ideology . . . was tied to questions of German identity in late-nineteenth-century Austria, and to show how, in turn, these questions were implicated in the musical culture and above all articulated by Vienna's music critics" (pp. xiii-xiv). To understand what it meant to be German in this context-who counted as German, and who did not- Brodbeck focuses on the music-critical reception of three Austrian composers of either Jewish or Czech heritage who were all denied, at some point, German identity: Carl Goldmark, Antonín Dvorák, and Bedrich Smetana.
The preface tells us that this ambitious book project originates from a footnote read some twenty-five years ago. Intrigued by Max Kalbeck's mention of "the liberal German in Brahms," Brodbeck wondered to what extent the composer's political ideology was informing his works, but decided to leave the question aside and focus on "purely musical" aspects of Johannes Brahms's Third Symphony. The present book takes the opposite stance, shifting the focus away from the music towards its critical reception, placing the previously unaddressed political question at the center. Not an object of study per se, music is used here from the perspective of its reception, to inform the sociopolitical context. In fact, while clearly acknowledging the value of music criticism for understanding the contested notion of Deutschtum, Brodbeck warns us not to overestimate its ability to inform the "quotidian musical life" in Vienna, a point clarified at the end.
The book is divided into two parts. The first follows the rise of Austrian-German liberalism (1840s to 1870s), while the second describes the destabilization of German hegemony (1880s and 1890s). Each part contains four chapters, framed by an introduction and an epilogue. The chapters unfold symmetrically, beginning and ending with the question of Deutschtum. Chapter 1 concerns the Germanness of...