bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Gleichschaitung of the Armed Forces
Authors: Deist Wilhelm
Published: November 2023

Those officers of the Reichswehr who had supported Hitler’s succession to power had done so partly out of the hope that the Reichswehr would be able to regain its traditional position ‘above politics’. However, as this passage argues, the logic of a one-party state with totalitarian claims demanded the opposite —the subordination of the armed forces to the political leadership. The Blomberg-Fritsch crisis of February 1938 marked the completion of this process of subordination; nonetheless, although the army was keen to protect its autonomy vis-a-vis the SA and SS, its leadership was itself responsible for some of the subordination process. Indeed, as Wilhelm Deist argues, the fact that the armed forces’ leadership shared many of the aims of the National Socialist regime led it to active complicity in the transformation of the military into a ‘National Socialist Wehrmacht’.
The Wehrmacht in the National Socialist State
Authors: Messerschmidt Manfred
Published: November 2023

The theme of complicity in the ideological penetration of the armed forces is developed further by Manfred Messerschmidt, who examines the infusion of the army’s personnel policy and propaganda with National Socialist ideology. Application of National Socialist ideology may have been partly motivated by the desire to prove the army’s reliability and to sustain its position against the SA and the SS, but it was at least partially a product of conviction among the leadership of the armed forces. In any case, as Messerschmidt argues, far from enabling the army to retain its independence, it led to ever deeper complicity in the translation of Hitler’s goals into reality.
Jews on Trial
Authors: Angermund Ralph
Published: November 2023

The terroristic nature of the Nazi regime naturally created a prominent role for the judiciary in general. Beyond this, moreover, they played an important role in reinterpreting existing laws in line with the new state ideology, and thus in infusing the legal system with National Socialist values. Not only pressure from the party, but also substantial sympathy with the anti-Semitism of the regime on the part of the judiciary, meant that the legal establishment proved more than amenable to facilitating ever greater discrimination against the Jewish population. This was despite the fact that the party had relatively little success in influencing the personnel policy of the legal authorities.
The Hitler State
Authors: Broszat Martin
Published: November 2023

Martin Broszat’s study of the ‘Hitler State’, which originally appeared in Germany in 1969, was the first influential attempt at a synthesizing analysis which sought to emphasize the relationship between the evolution of policy and structural developments within the regime. Broszat argued that the ‘coordination’ of the state and public sphere which occurred in 1933—4 resulted in a regime which combined authoritarian and fascist elements and which lasted until 1936—7; thereafter, the increasing fragmentation of government reduced institutional and bureaucratic restraints upon the exercise of arbitrary power. These systemic pressures, rather than fixed ideological goals which Broszat characterizes as being ‘of a very general nature’, led to the destruction of the Jews.
Cumulative Radicalization and Self-Destruction of the Nazi Regime
Authors: Mommsen Hans
Published: November 2023

In another defining statement of the ‘structuralist’ position, Mommsen argues that specific or concrete ideological imperatives played only a very subordinate role in the formulation of policy in the ‘Third Reich’, the dynamic of whose internal development was responsible for what he characterizes as the ‘cumulative radicalization’ of the regime.
Intention and Explanation
Authors: Mason Tim
Published: November 2023

The tendency of’functionalist’ scholars to downplay the role of Hitler as an individual led to charges of historical trivialization (which were returned in kind). In this seminal piece.
Inventory of Revolutionary Appearance
Authors: Bloch Ernst
Published: November 2023

The unorthodox Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch stressed how the appropriation of elements of the political activism and ritual of the Left was aimed at creating the illusion of Nazism’s revolutionary nature and disguising what he saw as its reactionary goals.When two do the same thing, they do not do the same thing. Especially when one copies what the other is doing, in order to deceive. So it is today, when the Nazi cannot yet reveal the way he really looks and what he really wants, and thus disguises himself. He pretends to be rebellious, as we know; the most dreadful white terror against populace and socialism which history has ever seen camouflages itself as socialist. To this end its propaganda must develop sheer revolutionary appearance, garnished with thefts from the commune.
The Aesthetics of Production in the Third Reich
Authors: Rabinbach Anson G
Published: November 2023

The ‘aestheticization of politics’ in National Socialist Germany reproduced itself in all spheres of society, including in the factory environment and industrial relations, where improvements to work conditions and symbolic assertions of the notion of ‘community’ within the workplace served as compensation for the political emasculation of the working class. These methods simultaneously embodied capitalist strategies of management and control and a eugenics-orientated programme of hygiene and health improvement.
The Matrix of Totalitarian Imagery: Public Space, the National Socialist Year, and the Generational Cycle
Authors: Dülffer Jost
Published: November 2023

In the following discussion of National Socialist efforts to remodel the public sphere, Jost Dulffer offers a cautious assessment of the extent to which the regime succeeded in using architecture, public ceremony, and education to mobilize the ‘people’s community’ behind war.Hitler’s position within the system was based not least on the faith of others in him as the Führer. As that faith had its limits, not only among the victims of National Socialism, the claim that Germany was one national community was not completely accepted. But in the stereotyped phrases of Nazi propaganda the Fuhrer and the nation constituted a unity, and this was expressed in many ways. The organization of public space, the calendar of events and celebrations during the year, and the teaching that every German was simply a biological link in a long succession of generations reflected the claim to totalitarian inclusiveness.
The Social Bases of Resistenz and Resistance
Authors: Tenfelde Klaus
Published: November 2023

Whilst the pioneering work of the 1970s and 1980s into patterns of dissent and nonconformity in everyday life played a major role in, for example, enabling scholars to think about the responses of various groups in society in more nuanced and differentiated ways, the notion of Resistenz was also criticized for encouraging too broad a definition of resistance. Further, as Klaus Tenfelde argues, one should not overestimate the extent to which Resistenz had a genuine political dimension in the sense that resistance did.
Resistance without the People?
Authors: Kershawi Ian
Published: November 2023

In the following passage, Ian Kershaw questions whether manifestations of dissent—however widespread among various sectors of the population—had any real limiting effect on the ability of the regime to implement its murderous policies, and stresses the extent to which genuine resistance took place within a context of far broader popular support for the regime.On the basis [of a] survey of various manifestations of dissent we can conclude that the regime’s ability to function was hardly undermined by them, and that its ‘will to power’ was at best only temporarily and very partially limited. The extent of dissent is often astonishing, but its compatibility with a fundamental agreement with the main elements of National Socialist policy is even more astonishing.
Mothers in the Fatherland
Authors: Koonz Claudia
Published: November 2023

Claudia Koonz’s argument that female no less than male consent and behaviour was essential in stabilizing and underpinning the Nazi regime unleashed an ongoing controversy among feminist historians.
Racial Hygiene and Professional Leadership
Authors: Weindling Paul
Published: November 2023

Paul Weindling’s study of German medical culture since 1870 stresses the extent to which the German medical profession had adopted the notion of racial hygiene much prior to 1933, and that doctors’ long-standing tendency to regard medicine in terms of service to state and nation rather than to sick individuals made it easy for the National Socialists to co-opt them into the service of the regime’s racial policies; while there were tensions between technocratic-eugenicist and racial-biological anti-Semitic conceptions of social engineering, the points of similarity were sufficient, in a context which offered substantial professional advancement, to facilitate widespread collaboration.
Death and Deliverance
Authors: Burleigh Michael
Published: November 2023

Michael Burleigh’s humane and bleak work on the child and adult ‘euthanasia’ programme demonstrates convincingly that not only were broad sectors of the medical profession (including both doctors and nurses) complicit—for a variety of reasons—in the mass murder of many tens of thousands of mentally ill and mentally handicapped people, but that this was itself rooted in a broader ‘moral climate’ of consent or at least acquiescence, extending, most notably, to parents and relatives themselves.
Reflections on a Massacre
Authors: Browning Christopher
Published: November 2023

Not only the SS but also regular Wehrmacht and police units participated in the mass shootings of Jews in eastern Europe. Police Battalion IOI took part in one such mass shooting in the Polish town of Józefów in July 1942, at which at least 1,500 Jews were killed.
The Third Reich and Society
Authors: Schoenbaum David
Published: November 2023

David Schoenbaum was one of the first scholars to recognize that, for all its atavistic rhetoric and the anti-modern elements of its ideology, developments under National Socialism in many ways went with the grain of longer-term secular changes. For Schoenbaum, this was a product of the fact that the regime represented a ‘revolution of means and ends’—a revolution against bourgeois industrial society which mobilized bourgeois industrial society itself in its pursuit of the revolution. The resultant acceleration of secular trends inherent in industrial society, combined with the revolution of status engendered by National Socialism’s radical egalitarianism, created the illusion of a classless society open to the talents, a transformation of objective and subjective reality which amounted, in Schoenbaum’s view, to a ‘social revolution’.
National Socialist Germany and the Social Revolution
Authors: Dahrendorf Ralf
Published: November 2023

Proceeding from an understanding of German history since the nineteenth century which drew heavily on old analyses of the supposed disjuncture between the ‘modern’, dynamic processes of industrialization and the survival of pre-industrial political structures.
Persecution and Coordination
Authors: Peukert Detlev
Published: November 2023

The Nazi seizure of power was accompanied by a massive wave of repression and persecution of political opponents, the main victims of which were the Communists. In this extract, Detlev Peuk.ert illustrates the nature and extent of this process with examples from the Ruhr industrial area.Immediately following the seizure of power the Hitler regime began to establish the fascist system: the reforming of the state apparatus into an even more effective instrument of repression and of state monopoly power, the campaign of destruction against the organizations of the working class, and the coordination of the bourgeois parties and associations.
Between Resistance and Martyrdom
Authors: Garbe Detlev
Published: November 2023

The Jehovah’s Witnesses, although a very small group numerically, experienced massive persecution under the Nazi regime, both for their unwavering commitment to their faith and for their mass conscientious objection to military service. As a highly marginal social group and religious community their suffering has rarely been acknowledged in mainstream post-war culture.
Soviet Prisoners of War-Mass Deportation-Forced Workers
Authors: Streit Christian
Published: November 2023

Operation ‘Barbarossa’ was conceived and embarked upon as an ideological war of destruction, and represented a type of warfare which was qualitatively different from that which occurred in western Europe. While the SS was at the forefront of implementing the regime’s ideological goals in the east, the Wehrmacht also became deeply implicated-offering support and cooperation to the SS Ein¬satzgruppen, which killed over 2 million Jews, and causing the deaths of millions of Soviet prisoners of war. In this passage, Christian Streit discusses the fate of the Soviet prisoners of war at the hands of the Wehrm.acht.
The Number of Victims
Authors: Piper Francjszek
Published: November 2023

The largest of the extermination camps used in the genocide process was Auschwitz. Estimates as to how many people died there varygiven the nature of the killing process and the incomplete nature of the surviving evidence.
Operation Reinhard
Authors: Arad Yitzhak
Published: November 2023

Operation Reinhard was the codename given by the Nazi regime to the programme to exterminate the Jews of the Generalgouvernement of Poland. From 1942 to 1943 r.7 million Jews were exterminated at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Not only the Jews of the Generalgouvernement, but Jews from all over Europe perished in these camps. In these passages Yitzhak Arad summarizes the findings of his study of Operation Reinhard.The largest single massacre action of the Holocaust, Operation Reinhard, which lasted twenty-one months, from March 1942 to November 1943, was carried out by, and accomplished according to the plans of, the Nazi extermination machine.
The Persecution of Sinti and Roma
Authors: Burleigh Michael , Wippermann Wolfgang
Published: November 2023

One of the least well-known and at the same time most comprehensive acts of destruction on the part of the National Socialist regime was the genocide of the Sinti and Roma, which has consistently been overshadowed by the much larger genocide of the Jews. Up to 500,000 Sinti and Roma may have been killed in the Holocaust.
Vienna and Viennese music—conditions at the Opera (May–July 1897)
Authors: Grange Henry-Louis De La
Published: November 2023

MUCH has been written about Vienna, yet no one has been wholly successful in explaining the charm that has endeared the city to so many artists; no one has clearly defined the forces that attracted so many composers and for so long made it the musical capital of Europe. It is the meeting place for north and south, for east and west, for a rich profusion of widely different ethnic groups and influences, all of which have contributed to the unique and vigorous blend of Viennese culture. In 1900 Vienna already had a long history as a cosmopolitan city and an imperial capital, while Germany had only recently shaken off the last vestiges of medieval Kleinstaaterei to achieve unification. Vienna was both loved and hated, but its name was never mentioned without admiration and a touch of envy. Gustav Mahler, a provincial boy from a simple family background, had first encountered this enchanting world at the age of 15 and had never completely recovered from the shock of his discovery. It is easy therefore to imagine his secret pride when, now aged 36, he arrived in 1897 to take up a key position in the capital of Germanic music.
Substitute director—opening of the new season—the Opera under Jahn—first reforms (July–September 1897)
Authors: Grange Henry-Louis De La
Published: November 2023

DURING Mahler’s summer of convalescence, among the many hopes and fears disturbing his peace of mind, there now arose once more a problem that he thought had been solved by his departure from Hamburg. If he had not yet broken definitively with Anna von Mildenburg, this was probably because he feared some violent reaction on her part and therefore wanted to avoid giving her an unnecessary shock. Now there was a possibility of her being engaged at the Hofoper, thanks once more to the influence of Rosa Papier and her friend Eduard Wlassack. Mahler’s first letters to Mildenburg from Vienna were friendly and even somewhat paternal in tone. After refusing the offers from America, she sang that summer in Bayreuth and he often gave her advice.
Fresh anti-Semitic attacks—Richter’s departure—Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—Hirschfeld’s declaration of war (December 1899–April 1900)
Authors: Grange Henry-Louis De La
Published: November 2023

FROM the beginning of 1899 the atmosphere within the Vienna Philharmonic deteriorated, powerful opposition to Mahler having arisen following the events of the previous summer. The warring factions now brought their quarrel into the open, publishing articles for or against the director of the Opera in various Viennese papers. At the annual general meeting of 30 May, Mahler’s opponents moved that the election of the chief conductor be deferred,1 and that Hans Richter be approached to see if he was prepared to resume direction of the concerts. This attachment to Richter was after all quite understandable.
Venice—Paris—Maiernigg—completion of the Fourth Symphony—Gutheil-Schoder joins the Hofoper (April–August 1900)
Authors: Grange Henry-Louis De La
Published: November 2023

AFTER the uproar over the Ninth Symphony, the last two Philharmonic Concerts took place in an atmosphere of relative calm. The seventh concert, on 18 March, began with Haydn’s E flat major ‘Drumroll’ Symphony (No. 103). This and Weber’s Konzertstück (Liszt’s version), with Ferruccio Busoni as piano soloist,1 were acclaimed as ‘outstanding successes’ by the Neue Freie Presse. The other items in the programme were Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz, one of the Philharmonic’s old favourites, and Karl Goldmark’s concert overture Im Frühling. According to Richard Robert, the orchestra had never played better, although certain details in Haydn’s symphony, and in particular the overemotional interpretation of the introduction, had been alien to his style.2
Concerts in the Rhineland—first marital storms—the first Roller collaboration: Roller’s Tristan—première of Louise (June 1902–April 1903)
Authors: Grange Henry-Louis De La
Published: November 2023

ON his return from Krefeld, Mahler spent a week and a half settling affairs at the Opera before leaving for Maiernigg around 20 June. As Alma describes it, his summer life as a newly .married man differed little from his previous bachelor existence. Inspired by his recent triumph, he devoted all his energy to completing the Fifth Symphony. He would get up at his usual hour of 6 or so, and ring for his breakfast of café au lait, diet bread, butter, and jam, which he ate in the Häuschen. According to Alma, the cook had to carry the tray in all weathers up a steep, narrow path, well away from the main one, for Mahler didn’t want to see or speak to anyone before settling down to work.
Calendar of Feasts, Anniversaries, and Royal Observances
Authors: Robertson Anne Walters
Published: November 2023

For Abbot Hilduin (814–41) of Saint-Denis the name of King Dagobert (died c.639) proved an entree to the Carolingian throne in the ninth century. By invoking that name in 1108, Abbot Adam (1099–1122) intended to establish Saint-Denis permanently as the royal necropolis. And Adam very nearly succeeded, for the earthly remains of almost every French ruler from 1137 until the Revolution lay in homage alongside the relics of the patron saint of the monarchy.
Introduction to Liturgy and Music at Saint-Denis
Authors: Robertson Anne Walters
Published: November 2023

The special feasts and rites described in Chapter shaped the calendar of Saint-Denis over several centuries and distinguished the abbey from other houses. Within these celebrations, certain ceremonial and musical features likewise stand apart from those of pre-eminent institutions in Paris and throughout the West. Chapters 3 and 4 survey the most telling of these traits.
Performance Practices, Musicians, and Liturgists
Authors: Robertson Anne Walters
Published: November 2023

Charged with the burials of kings and the yearly commemoration of these events, the monks of Saint-Denis paid close attention to the solemnity of the royal services as early as the twelfth century. The feastdays for the patron saint likewise varied in level of cult from annuale to duplex, and the community showed concern for the performance of its worship when it enhanced the ceremony of older celebrations, created new ranks of feasts, and added festivals to the liturgy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The Ideal Audience: The Greeks and ‘The Art-Work of the Future’
Authors: Borchmeyer Dieter
Published: November 2023

Wagner’s theory of improvisation presupposes an ideal community which is not set apart from the artist in the way that the darkened auditorium is divorced from the brightly lit stage (thus symbolizing the alienation between art and reality), but which produces the work of art as a matter of course from within its midst, as an integral part of itself. It is a community, in short, which is not yet distinguished from that specific ‘public’ which makes up modern theatre audiences. The ‘mystic abyss’ (ix. 338) between stage and public in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus was a concession to modern necessity which should not be confused with Wagner’s Utopian vision of the ideal relationship between the theatre and its audience. For him, the incarnation of that ideal was always Greek society as manifested in the Greater Dionysia and in the architecture of the country’s amphitheatres.
Improvisation and Vocational Skill: The Poetics of Die Meistersinger
Authors: Borchmeyer Dieter
Published: November 2023

Wagner completed the full score of Tannhäuser in April 1845, and in early July he set off for Marienbad (Mariánské Láznĕ) in order to take the waters. It was here that he sketched out the first prose draft of a ‘comic opera in three acts’, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, a work which was not to receive its first performance until twenty-three years later in Munich. ‘Just as, with the Athenians, a comic satyr play followed the tragedy’, Wagner wrote in A Communication to my Friends six years after this first draft was completed, ‘so I was struck by the idea for a comic play which could indeed follow after my “Wartburg Tournament of Song” as a richly allusive satyr play.’ (iv. 284.) Originally, then, Die Meistersinger was intended as a parodistic variant of Wagner’s Romantic opera about the artist Tannhäuser, a comic interlude in the series comprising Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin (the latter conceived and executed immediately after the Meistersinger sketch).
Villa-Lobos
Authors: Wright Simon
Published: November 2023

The music of the prolific Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) typifies Brazil, in its diversity, spirit of racial amalgam, and awesome beauty. Through the sheer quantity of his output, his original use of folkloric material, and the striking accessibility of his scores, Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer of all time. This book provides an introduction to his music, and by focusing attention on important or unusual works from his large oeuvre, charts Villa-Lobos's own often anguished musical journey through the Brazilian landscape. Jungle, grasslands, river, city, and ocean all find a legitimate place in his aural mosaic of Brazil, but as he approached death his music assumed a deep spiritual quality of peace and resignation. His personal journey of discovery and fulfilment is clearly explained, set against the pervasive backdrop of social and political upheaval which characterized Brazil during Villa-Lobos's lifetime. Simon Wright has lectured, broadcast, and written on all aspects of Latin American music, and was awarded the Rocha Miranda Award of the Anglo-Brazilian Society for research in Brazil.
Themes and Landscapes (1912-1922)
Authors: Wright Simon
Published: November 2023

Although Villa-Lobos’s solitary expeditions around Brazil, embroidered fabulously in his own imagination or not, effectively ended when he met the pianist Lucilia Guimaraes in 1912 and married her on 12 November 1913, in reality his pioneering journey as a composer began at this time. With his supportive, musically accomplished partner, Villa-Lobos was now able to commence his career as a serious musician in earnest. Prodigious talent, energy, and opportunism meant that never again was he forced to return to the itinerant and insecure means of livelihood of his youth.
Bach and Brazil (1930-1945)
Authors: Wright Simon
Published: November 2023

When Villa-Lobos alighted at the north Brazilian port of Recife in June 1930, his intention was to return to Paris as soon as he had fulfilled a series of conducting engagements in the North, and in the city of Sao Paulo. Political circumstances forced him to alter his plans. The October 1930 Revolution brought wily ‘gaucho’ Getulio Vargas to power, overthrowing the moribund, complacent, coffee-oriented Old Republic, and initiating fifteen years of autocratic, though largely benign, dictatorial constitutions for Brazil, and meant that it was temporarily impossible to make payments abroad. Villa-Lobos, unable to remit the rent on his Paris apartment, was evicted in absentia, along with various valuable works of art and, it is thought, the now lost autograph scores of Choros nos. 13 and 14.
Vargas and Brazil (1930-1945)
Authors: Wright Simon
Published: November 2023

While the Bachianas brasileiras reflect the successful application of nationalist principles to concert music and are the most significant single achievement of Villa-Lobos’s many activities during the years of Getulio Vargas’s government, by far the larger part of his energies in that period was concentrated on the composition of educational music, for nationalistic propaganda, and the dissemination of this music and related textual materials. Overnight Villa-Lobos became a prolific man of words, but after the overthrow of Vargas in 1945 his musical and political writings abruptly ceased. The compilation of teaching material, methods, and apologias occupied Villa-Lobos as director of SEMA from 1932 until the foundation in 1942 of the Conservat6rio Nacional de Canto Orfeonico, of which he was also director.
Last Years (1946-1959)
Authors: Wright Simon
Published: November 2023

The sudden fall from power of Getulio Vargas, and the ending of the Second World War, both in 1945, marked a distinct change of direction in Villa-Lobos’s life-style and activities. He was no longer constrained at home by his official duties with SEMA and the CNCO, although he continued to take an active administrative role in both organizations, and the lifting of restrictions on world travel after the war meant that he was able, for the first time in many years, to travel frequently abroad. Particularly as a conductor of his own music, but also as a broadcaster and lecturer, Villa-Lobos spent the last years of his life almost entirely as an unofficial Brazilian ‘ambassador of Art’ (as he termed it), using the newly-opened air passenger routes to best advantage. His old base of Paris continued to welcome him, and he also explored territories new, such as Great Britain and Israel, but the major centre of activity soon proved to be the United States of America, where he found sympathetic audiences, promoters, publishers, recording companies, and commissioners. Villa-Lobos first visited the USA in October 1944, and he continued to appear there at least once every year until his death.
The Plainsong & Mediaeval Music Society, 1888-1988
Authors: Hiley David
Published: November 2023

A volume of centennial essays calls for a historical introduction, an outline of the history and aims of the Plainsong & Mediaeval Music Society. Unfortunately, any attempt to write such an account runs into a more or less insuperable obstacle: the lack of early records of the Societys activities. Some early publications list members of the Society, and one can be found in the first volume of Paléographie musicale Various editions of Grove’s Dictionary state the original aims of the Society—‘to be a centre of information in England for students of plainsong and medieval music, to publish facsimiles of important manuscripts, translations of foreign works, etc.; to form a catalogue all plainsong and measured music in England dating from before the mid-16th century; and to found a choir (The New Grove Dictionary, article by H. C. Colles revised by the present author).
Establishing the Order of a Latin Liturgical Celebration
Authors: Harper John
Published: November 2023

All the information included in this book serves to provide an introduction to the framework and pattern of formal Western liturgy. But at every turn there have to be caveats—local practice, seasonal variation, variation over a period of time. The same information can also be used as a base to establish the order of a specific liturgy in an identified foundation at a particular period of time. Of course this is a highly complex and specialized procedure, and it is only possible to give practical pointers here.
The Ordering of Selected Medieval Sources
Authors: Harper John
Published: November 2023

The descriptions of the Office, Mass, and other liturgical observances in Chapters 6 to 9 are inevitably general. The guidance given in Chapter 12 on establishing a specific liturgical celebration is equally open—intended to prepare the reader for problems, rather than following through identified, detailed solutions. What follows here is more specific. It is intended to introduce the reader to the organization of a number of surviving medieval sources. The individual sections of this chapter should be useful for anyone attempting to establish the order of a liturgy, or simply as an introduction to the ordering of a source.
Wagner’s Later Stage Works
Authors: Whittall Arnold
Published: November 2023

WAGNER’s life can scarcely be considered in other than Romantic terms, as a highly eventful affair of opportunism, intrigue, intransigence, and the dogged pursuit of the ideals and ambitions which ultimately found fruition in the Bayreuth Festival. And dangerous though it is to search for simple parallels, there can be little doubt that the composer’s life and works match each other in their eager embrace of restlessness and rhetoric, and their reliance on that ‘instinctive impulse’ which, Wagner believed, characterized the nature of the creative artist’s gift.1 Nevertheless, the more one examines his life, from the time he completed Lohengrin in 1848 until his death thirty-five years later, the more amazing it seems that Wagner found either the time or the inclination to undertake any creative work at all. The works are more a triumph over the life than a mere illustration of it.
The Symphonic Poem and Kindred Forms
Authors: Abraham Gerald
Published: November 2023

IT has been remarked in an earlier chapter that perhaps the most characteristic form of Romantic orchestral music was the concert overture, and at the middle of the century, as music aspired still more ardently towards the qualities of the other arts, the programmatic concert overture began to develop new characteristics and acquired a new generic title: ‘symphonic poem’. (It was first employed by Liszt, on the occasion of a performance of his Tasso Overture at the Weimar Court on 19 April 1854.) Under its cover composers felt freer to indulge in structural licences like those taken by Mendelssohn in Meeresstille und gliickliche Fahrt and Berlioz in Le Carnaval romain, and in the devices of tone symbolism and tone painting that were still regarded with suspicion, if not hostility, by many musicians at the middle of the century. It is impossible to draw a defining line between the early symphonic poems and contemporary concert overtures; the terms were for some time almost interchangeable. It is true the scores of symphonic poems were generally prefaced by literary programmes like those to Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Spohr’s Die Weihe der Tone, but so too, occasionally, were the scores of overtures.
Christian Chant In Syria, Armenia, Egypt, And Ethiopia
Authors: Velimirović Miloš
Published: November 2023

The first Christian communities outside Jerusalem and Palestine were formed in the city of Antioch, and thus the territory of present-day Syria was one of the first areas in which Christianity gained sizeable followings. The first significant translations of Christian writings were made in Syria. It was also from Syria that missions started in the direction of Armenia and Greece, while Alexandria appears to have received its Christian message directly from Jerusalem.
Chants of the Roman Mass
Authors: Crocker Richard
Published: November 2023

The repertory of Gregorian proper chants for the Mass-Introits, Graduals, Offertories, and Communions-is as a whole more stable than that for the Office. A number of additions were made to the repertory over the centuries, including new formularies for newly established feasts; new texts (or newly selected texts) were set, usually to older melodies. The Frankish-Roman formularies, however, were left almost completely intact, and with appropriate controls can be read out of modern chant books. The melodies themselves may also turn out to be more stable than those for the Office; but variant apparatus for the Mass chants is still not available, and work on the manuscript traditions for the Office chants has scarcely begun.
Other Churches
Authors: Strohm Reinhard
Published: November 2023

In the Middle Ages, Bruges had two collegiate churches. This slightly unusual situation may have been due to the rival claims of the bishops of Tournai and Utrecht: whereas the burg with St Donatian’s was founded under the patronage of Tournai, the territory on which Our Lady’s arose in the eighth century originally belonged to the chapter of Utrecht. Our Lady’s was a parish church as early as 909, and elevated to the status of a collegiate church in 1091 by the bishop of Tournai. According to the legend, the church had been founded by St Boniface in 744; in any case, it later possessed some relics of this saint and of his companions Cyrobaldus and Hilarius, which were gifts of the abbey of Fulda.
The Musical Repertory
Authors: Strohm Reinhard
Published: November 2023

The music which was produced and performed in Bruges in the late Middle Ages was a cross-section of the major trends in European music as a whole. For music as well as for the other arts, Bruges was a centre of production and even more of consumption and distribution. Its trade supremacy provided not only an economic foundation, but also specific opportunities for cultural exchanges with other regions and countries. While the role of Bruges in the history of the visual arts is widely appreciated, it is hitherto unknown what music was once heard within its walls–whether composed there or not. It is not possible here to fill this gap completely, but a surprising number of extant musical works and manuscripts can be connected with the city at least tentatively–enough material to put Bruges back on the musical map of Europe.
1883–1884
Authors: Bordman Gerald
Published: November 2023

As it had in so many recent seasons,. the American theatre provided its patrons with a more or less continuous stream of passable entertainment, which, as “dull,” Alice Brooks’s Desdemona as “feeble,” and J. A. Arneaux’s Iago as “a passable ‘amateur’ delineation,” then went on to record the “roars of laughter” provoked by “J. S. Webster’s Rodrigo, an amazing specimen of namby-pambyism and awkwardness, and by G. F. Chinn’s Brabantio, whose facial and tonsorial ‘make up’ was strikingly suggestive of the head of a skye terrier.”
1893–1894
Authors: Bordman Gerald
Published: November 2023

The new season was one of the finest Broadway had ever seen, although Broadway was not prepared to acknowledge that at the time.

Of course, contemporary viewpoints and hindsight frequently provide disparate perspectives. Certainly there was no reason for late nineteenthcentury American playgoers to conclude that the preceding season had initiated a new era on American stages. A few did, not many. In any case, breaking up theatrical history into eras is usually a matter of arbitrary convenience and not irrefutable. But the quality of so many of the plays to reach Broadway in this new theatrical year was striking. First of all, American playwrights did themselves proud. Second, England gave us two plays that are still occasionally revived. And from the Continent came several plays that remain accepted as classics, even if they are rarely presented any more on this side of the Atlantic. In some instances the failure of the Continental plays here may be attributed to faulty initial mountings. But the utter neglect now of the season’s best American work is sadly indicative of our modern theatre’s smug refusal to reexamine its past with the same dedication that Europe brings to exploring its own.
1894–1895
Authors: Bordman Gerald
Published: November 2023

Except possibly for the succession of marvelous seasons that so rightly excited theatregoers beginning about the time of World War I, great theatrical years rarely follow one another. Coming after the brilliant showing made by the previous season, 1894-95 was no exception. True, two of the best 19th-century English comedies had their New York debuts, and England also sent over some other good plays and noteworthy players, one of whom gave producer-star, Sadie Martinot, told the cast she could not pay their salaries.
1896–1897
Authors: Bordman Gerald
Published: November 2023

America continued to expand and prosper. At least most Americans thought so. William Jennings Bryan was not so sure, and when he was nominated to run for the presidency he warned the opposition that Two other plays that opened the same evening fared better. Madeleine Lucette Ryley’s The Mysterious Mr. Bugle (4-19-97, Lyceum) served as Annie Russell’s second starring vehicle of the season. Obviously the star was not the mystery man. In fact, he didn’t exist. Rather he was the invention of Tom Pollinger (Joseph Holland), who is waiting for his rich aunt to die or to change her mind and allow him to wed. In the meanwhile, he uses his imaginary friend to keep other suitors away from his fiancee, Betty Fondacre (Miss Russell).
1904–1905
Authors: Bordman Gerald
Published: November 2023

The outlook at the start of the season was gloomy. Memories of 1903-04’s troubles were gallingly fresh when Charles Frohman returned from his annual early summer European trip to lament the paucity of good new English and Continental plays. Since importations were still the backbone of any strong Broadway season, that was ominous. Theatre, noting that “things often go by contraries,” endeavored to cast a rosy limelight on the coming months by predicting that despite low expectations smiles might be in order at season’s end. American playwrights, the magazine argued, were being handed a golden opportunity. Happily, the rationalization was not too far-fetched. If new American offerings were not as enduring as those that would begin to appear a decade down the road, they could, without much exaggeration, be viewed not only as good theatre pieces but as legitimate beacons of better things to come.
1908–1909
Authors: Bordman Gerald
Published: November 2023

Broadway rebounded handsomely in the new season. The count of novelties offered in first-class theatres rose. More important, so did their quality.
1913–1914
Authors: Bordman Gerald
Published: November 2023

The pat optimism that had prevailed for so long in so many seasonal forecasts was missing in a number of late summer articles crystal-balling prospects for the new theatrical year. Whether a restive sense of doom or merely a swelling list of projected entries crowded out the old complacency is uncertain. What was certain was that readers had to look harder to find it. At the beginning of autumn, Life issued a “War Number,” which featured a large cartoon of flagcarrying, gun-toting masses aligned in the shape of a snake. Beneath the picture was the ominous remark, “The trail of the serpent of war still follows the path of progress.” On the other hand, Theatre discounted the conversion of old playhouses to film theatres by observing, “The old-fashioned theatre, with its huge stage, cavernous-like auditorium, bad acoustics, is rapidly becoming an institution of the past.
Antisemitism in America
Authors: Dinnerstein Leonard
Published: November 2023

Is antisemitism on the rise in America? Did the "hymietown" comment by Jesse Jackson and the Crown Heights riot signal a resurgence of antisemitism among blacks? The surprising answer to both questions, according to Leonard Dinnerstein, is no--Jews have never been more at home in America. But what we are seeing today, he writes, are the well-publicized results of a long tradition of prejudice, suspicion, and hatred against Jews--the direct product of the Christian teachings underlying so much of America's national heritage. In Antisemitism in America, Dinnerstein provides a landmark work--the first comprehensive history of prejudice against Jews in the United States, ranging from its foundations in European culture to the present day. Dinnerstein's deeply documented book reveals how non-Christians were excluded from voting, for example, in Rhode Island until 1842, North Carolina until 1868, and in New Hampshire until 1877. The Civil War, Dinnerstein writes, brought a new wave of antisemitism as both sides assumed that Jews supported with the enemy. The decades that followed marked the emergence of a full-fledged antisemitic society, as Christian Americans excluded Jews from their social circles. Antisemitic fervor climbed higher after the turn of the century, accelerated by eugenicists, fear of Bolshevism, the publications of Henry Ford, and the Depression. Just before our entry into World War II, the author tells us, it reached a climax, as Father Coughlin attacked Jews over the airwaves (with the support of much of the Catholic clergy) and Charles Lindbergh delivered an openly antisemitic speech to an isolationist meeting. Dinnerstein devotes individual chapters to antisemitism in the South and among African Americans, showing that prejudice among both whites and blacks flowed from the same stream of Southern evangelical Christianity. After the war, with fresh economic opportunities and increased activities by civil rights advocates, antisemitism went into a sharp decline--though it frequently appeared in shockingly high places, including statements by Nixon and his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "It must also be emphasized," Dinnerstein writes, "that in no Christian country has antisemitism been weaker than it has been in the United States," with its traditions of tolerance, diversity, and a secular national government. This book, however, reveals in disturbing detail the resilience, and vehemence, of this ugly prejudice. Penetrating, authoritative, and frequently alarming, this is the definitive account of a plague that refuses to go away.
Developing Patterns(1790s-1865)
Authors: Dinnerstein Leonard
Published: November 2023

The creation of the United States did not significantly alter either American Christian perceptions of Jews or Jewish attitudes toward themselves and Gentiles. The small number of American Jews in the United States remained in the few urban centers where they had been in previous decades, and folk wisdom, literary sources, and varieties of Christian teachings rather than personal interactions continued to shape Americans’ judgments of them. At odd times and places, and in a variety of circumstances and settings, antisemitic outbursts came to the fore; their roots, however, had already been firmly planted. Most citizens of the new nation had never seen a Jew but many of those who had warmly embraced the individual. Thus, paradoxically, one pattern that developed in America held the “mythical Jew” in contempt while praising and respecting the Jew who was known.
African-American Attitudes (1830s-1990s)
Authors: Dinnerstein Leonard
Published: November 2023

It is ironic that just as African Americans benefitted from their greatest legislative accomplishments in a century-the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965-many of them focused on Jews as a source of their difficult predicaments. To other Americans in the North who had followed the civil rights struggle it seemed as if Jews and blacks were firm allies in their quest for legislation to provide equality of status and opportunity to all Americans. And, in fact, their legislative goals in the early 1960s meshed. Nonetheless, several antisemitic outbursts in northern, urban areas-especially New York City-shocked contemporaries who had perceived a much stronger alliance than had ever existed between African Americans and Jews.1
At Home in America (1969-1992)
Authors: Dinnerstein Leonard
Published: November 2023

Despite well-publicized outbursts of black antisemitism in New York in the summer and fall of 1992, American Jews have never been more prosperous, more secure, and more “at home in America” than they are today. Not only has antisemitism, according to historian Edward Shapiro, “diminished almost to the point of insignificance,” but Jews have been increasingly accepted into the American mainstream. This is equally true for the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and non-observant Jews. Unlike previous eras, articles are no longer written advising parents how to explain the pitfalls of being Jewish to their children, printed debates no longer assess the relative merits of changing one’s name, and discussions of “the Jewish problem” are neither in vogue nor in need. Contemporary Christian theologians are questioning church teachings about Jews, no mainstream politician campaigns against them, and there are no antisemitic demagogues of national stature. Moreover, the circulation of the most popular antisemitic weekly, The Spotlight, declined from 315,000 in 1981 to 112,000 in 1987. The critical issues of yesteryear-expanded immigration, limited educational and employment opportunities, residential and resort segregation-have ceased being concerns of the community. More significantly, Jews no longer rely exclusively on behind-the-scenes diplomacy to obtain political objectives.
Abolitionists and "This Matter of Color"
Authors: Jones Howard
Published: November 2023

Cinque and his companions could not have known, but the timing of their arrival in the United States was fortunate: the nation was experiencing a widespread reform movement that, on the surface at least, exalted the common man and emphasized equality of opportunity. Although Andrew Jackson was no longer in the White House, his presidency had left an imprint on the nation that carried into the administration of his successor, Martin Van Buren. Questions have arisen over democratic myth and reality in the Jacksonian period, but numerous Americans claimed that they were serious about ending undemocratic practices and redeeming the grand promises contained in the Declaration of Independence.
"Oh How Shall I Do Justice . . . ?"
Authors: Jones Howard
Published: November 2023

John Quincy Adams agonized many hours while preparing his defense of the Amistad blacks before the Supreme Court. He recognized his limitations—age, long absence from the courtroom, numerous responsibilities as a House representative—and yet he and his family had always upheld fundamental principles of liberty, even when popular opinion argued otherwise. His father had taken up the cause of the British soldiers who fired the first shots of the "Boston Massacre" during the Revolution and had succeeded in securing reduced charges in the emotion-laden atmosphere of Massachusetts. How could he, John Quincy, refuse an opportunity to go before the highest court in the land and proclaim the principles of justice contained in the Declaration of Independence?