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UC Santa Barbara Dissertation Template View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by eScholarship - University of California UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title English Reception of Felix Mendelssohn as Told Through British Music Histories Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3vd203gj Author Shaver-Gleason, Linda Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara English Reception of Felix Mendelssohn as Told Through British Music Histories A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Music by Linda Joann Shaver-Gleason Committee in charge: Professor Derek Katz, Chair Professor David Paul Professor Stefanie Tcharos September 2016 The dissertation of Linda Joann Shaver-Gleason is approved. ____________________________________________ David Paul ____________________________________________ Stefanie Tcharos ____________________________________________ Derek Katz, Committee Chair September 2016 English Reception of Felix Mendelssohn as Told Through British Music Histories Copyright © 2016 by Linda Joann Shaver-Gleason iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I must first acknowledge my own mortality. During the course of writing this dissertation, I was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer which had spread to my spine. I spent weeks in the hospital and months afterward mostly bedridden. So, I owe a debt of gratitude to oncologists Juliet Penn and James Waisman for finding a chemotherapy that fights my tumors while keeping the side effects manageable enough for me to work. A warm thank you to the folks at the Solvang Cancer Center who take care of me during chemo sessions, and thank you also to the people at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, Santa Ynez Valley Cottage Hospital, Lompoc Valley Medical Center, City of Hope, and Sansum Clinic Lompoc. Without them, I would not be around to thank anyone else. Thank you to my family who helped out during this difficult time, particularly my parents, Carl and Patricia Shaver; my sister-in-law, Andrea Langham; and my niece, Daisy Langham. Thank you also to Ellen and Rich Krasin, Ruth and Steve Marotti, Shirley Shaver, Mary Lou Trocke, Jim and Cindy Gleason, and Ralph Lincoln. On to the people who helped me with the actual dissertation: Thank you to my advisor, Derek Katz, for challenging me to think messily when necessary. Thank you to the rest of my committee—Dave Paul, whose seminar led me to this topic, and Stefanie Tcharos, whose dissertation workshop showed me how to reach out to others for help. Many thanks to people who read portions of this document and offered valuable feedback: Alejandro Planchart, Alexandra Monchick, John Michael Cooper, William Weber, Byron Adams, and Nicholas Temperley. A special thanks to my colleagues at UCSB who formed a dissertation support system as we all worked together: Sasha Metcalf, Vincent Rone, Emma Parker, iv Meghan Tozer, Scott Dirkse, Claire Barbasch, Rachel Short, Luke Hannington, and Emma Levine. Finally, thank you to my husband, Chris Gleason, for everything. v VITA OF LINDA SHAVER-GLEASON September 2016 EDUCATION Bachelor of Music in Viola Performance, Roosevelt University, May 2005 Master of Music in Viola Performance, University of California, Santa Barbara, June 2009 Master of Arts in Music, University of California, Santa Barbara, June 2012 Doctor of Philosophy in Music, University of California, Santa Barbara, September 2016 (expected) PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT 2006-2010: Teaching Assistant, Department of Music, University of California, Santa Barbara 2010-2011: Graduate Instructor, Writing Program, University of California, Santa Barbara 2011-2013: Teaching Assistant, Department of Music, University of California, Santa Barbara 2012-2013: Student Supervisor, Music Library, University of California, Santa Barbara PUBLICATIONS “Ritter’s Viola Alta: The Viola’s Nineteenth Century Identity Crisis,” Journal of the American Viola Society, 21:2 (2005), 19-25. “Felix Mendelssohn: Violist,” Journal of the American Viola Society, 27:2 (2011), 19-27. AWARDS David Dalton Viola Research Competition, American Viola Society, 2005 Stanley Krebs Memorial Prize in Musicology, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2008-09 Roger Chapman Memorial Prize in Music Theory, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2008-09 FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Musicology Studies in Reception History with Professors Derek Katz and David Paul vi ABSTRACT English Reception of Felix Mendelssohn as Told Through British Music Histories by Linda Shaver-Gleason In this dissertation, I analyze presentations of German composer Felix Mendelssohn in English music history books published between 1850 and 1910 in order to explore the cultural forces affecting English music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining different authors’ passages on Mendelssohn, I demonstrate how trends in historiography, taste formation, and nationalism affect the reception of an individual composer. Mendelssohn is a thread that weaves through all these discussions; following it provides a provocative view of a tumultuous period in English music history. The latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed many interrelated cultural shifts that affected England’s musical culture: a boom in the publication of books on the history of music, a rise in nationalistic sentiment that spurred English writers to tout their country’s accomplishments, increased interest in ancient music that led to significant discoveries about music in the Tudor era, new historiographical approaches that rendered previous history books antiquated, and a zeal for educating the wider public about music in the hopes of shedding the stigma of being das Land ohne Muisk. These decades also coincide with the vii peak and decline of “Mendelssohn Mania,” England’s fervent devotion to Mendelssohn that reached its height after his death in 1848 and diminished by the 1880s. In Chapter 1, I review the available scholarship on Mendelssohn reception and English musical culture during the Victorian era, leading to the English Musical Renaissance. I also provide background information on the authors of the music history books used as sources throughout the dissertation, noting the social networks formed by these historians. Chapter 2 details a major historiographical shift in the nineteenth century which made Mendelssohn less relevant to later histories as they excluded some of his greatest accomplishments. This chapter places five English music history books in a continuum from Carlylean hero worship to Spencerian evolutionary progressions, demonstrating how each author reconciled the two models and the resulting effect on Mendelssohn’s representation. In Chapter 3, I trace various discussions surrounding Mendelssohn’s popularity and how it reflected on the perceived musical taste of the nation. Finally, in Chapter 4, I detail the effects of Mendelssohn reception through writings about subsequent generations of English composers, as they struggled to overcome the perception of being the “Land without Music” and claim a national musical identity comparable to but distinct from the Austro-German hegemony. The chapter examines the reception of three composers from this Dark Age: William Sterndale Bennett, Henry Hugo Pierson, and Arthur Sullivan. As the narrative surrounding the Dark Age and Renaissance coalesces, the ways in which historians portray their relationship to Mendelssohn shifts, as Mendelssohn moves from being a beneficial mentor to English composers to a harmful influence they must discard. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 A. Preliminaries ........................................................................................... 1 B. Previous Scholarship ............................................................................... 6 1. Mendelssohn Reception ..................................................................... 6 2. English Music in the Nineteenth Century .......................................... 9 C. Considering Primary Sources................................................................ 15 1. Sir George Grove (1820-1900) ........................................................ 19 2. William Smith Rocksto (1823-1895)............................................... 20 3. Sir Frederick Arthur Gore Ouseley (1825-1889) ............................. 22 4. Reverend Hugh Reginald Haweis (1838-1901) ............................... 23 5. Edward Dannreuther (1844-1905) ................................................... 24 6. Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918) .............................. 25 7. Henry Davey (1853-1929) ............................................................... 26 8. John Alexander Fuller Maitland (1856-1936) ................................. 28 9. Ernest Walker (1870-1949) ............................................................. 30 D. Conclusion ............................................................................................ 31 II. Mendelssohn in Music History Writ Large ............................................................. 32 A. Introduction ........................................................................................... 32 B. Fully embracing the Carlylean Hero: Hugh Reginald Haweis, Music
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