THE VIRTUOSO UNDER SUBJECTION: HOW GERMAN IDEALISM SHAPED THE CRITICAL RECEPTION OF INSTRUMENTAL VIRTUOSITY IN EUROPE, c. 1815–1850 A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Zarko Cvejic August 2011 © 2011 Zarko Cvejic THE VIRTUOSO UNDER SUBJECTION: HOW GERMAN IDEALISM SHAPED THE CRITICAL RECEPTION OF INSTRUMENTAL VIRTUOSITY IN EUROPE, c. 1815–1850 Zarko Cvejic, Ph. D. Cornell University 2011 The purpose of this dissertation is to offer a novel reading of the steady decline that instrumental virtuosity underwent in its critical reception between c. 1815 and c. 1850, represented here by a selection of the most influential music periodicals edited in Europe at that time. In contemporary philosophy, the same period saw, on the one hand, the reconceptualization of music (especially of instrumental music) from ―pleasant nonsense‖ (Sulzer) and a merely ―agreeable art‖ (Kant) into the ―most romantic of the arts‖ (E. T. A. Hoffmann), a radically disembodied, aesthetically autonomous, and transcendent art and on the other, the growing suspicion about the tenability of the free subject of the Enlightenment. This dissertation‘s main claim is that those three developments did not merely coincide but, rather, that the changes in the aesthetics of music and the philosophy of subjectivity around 1800 made a deep impact on the contemporary critical reception of instrumental virtuosity. More precisely, it seems that instrumental virtuosity was increasingly regarded with suspicion because it was deemed incompatible with, and even threatening to, the new philosophic conception of music and via it, to the increasingly beleaguered notion of subjective freedom that music thus reconceived was meant to symbolize. Thus while the virtuoso could be and often was celebrated as a direct embodiment of free subjectivity, he was more typically dreaded as a threat to it. Chapter One reviews the conceptual links between music and subjectivity in the early German Romantics, Schelling, and Schopenhauer, as well as in Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. The topic of Chapter Two is the impact of early-nineteenth-century aesthetics of music and the philosophy of subjectivity on the critical reception of virtuosity in performance, with focus on the denigration of performance (and thus also of virtuosity) in favor of composition, the imposition of interpretation as the guiding ideal of performance, and the binary opposition between ―expressivity‖ and ―empty virtuosic technique‖. Chapter Three revisits some of the same issues but in the context of the reception of virtuosity in composition and adds some new ones, such as the valorization of clear-cut formal structures and historically established genres at the expense of program music, improvisation, and most genres of virtuosic music. Finally, Chapter Four examines the hyper-masculine tropes in the reception of some virtuosi, their female rivals, and Chopin, from the perspective of the contemporary gendering of the subject, of music, and of musical instruments. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Zarko Cvejic (correct Serbian spelling: Žarko Cvejić) was born in 1981 in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia and is now Serbia. Upon graduating from high school in 1999, Cvejic enrolled in the musicology program of the Belgrade Academy of Music. In 2000, however, he received full funding to read music at the University of Oxford, where he graduated with a first-class degree in 2003. Cvejic stayed in Oxford for another year, to complete the Master of Studies program in musicology there, which he did with distinction in the summer of 2004. In the fall of that year, Cvejic enrolled in the PhD in Musicology program at Cornell University. Apart from nineteenth-century Western music, Cvejic‘s interests include Marxist, Lacanian, and gender critical theory, as well as performance and editing of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century music: a professional baritone/countertenor, Cvejic has performed with several professional early-music ensembles in Oxford, Ithaca, New Jersey, New York City, and Los Angeles, as well as produced the first modern transcription of the Reson Mass, one of the earliest known complete Mass cycles, published by Antico in 2005. Cvejic has also published on late- twentieth-century popular music—in 2010, Women and Music published his article on New Wave performer Klaus Nomi. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The present dissertation would not happen without the perfect balance of respect, patience, but also gentle yet firm prodding, encouragement, and always timely and constructive criticism that Professor Judith Peraino, my main advisor, exercised in guiding me throughout my graduate career at Cornell; therefore, it is to Prof. Peraino that I owe my deepest gratitude. Thanks are also due to the rest of my advisory committee: Dr James Webster, Goldwin Smith Professor of Music and simply one of the best teachers and readers, with whom I have had the privilege to work, and Professor Amy Villarejo, one of the most exciting thinkers I encountered at Cornell, whose instruction and encouragement were invaluable not only in helping me complete this dissertation, but also grow as a scholar. I am likewise grateful to Dr Suzannah Clark, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of Music at Harvard University, and Dr Emanuele Senici, Professor of Music at La Sapienza University in Rome, both formerly of Oxford University, whose excellent tuition and continuing friendship turned me from an enthusiastic youth into a young intellectual and thus enabled me to take up graduate study in the first place. I am also thankful to Dr Margaret Bent, CBA, FBA, of All Souls College, Oxford, for her generous instruction and assistance in graduating from Oxford and enrolling at Cornell. Also, I must thank my friend Vladimir Stanković, not only for his friendship of many years, but also for his undying hospitality in New York, which made my self-imposed doctoral seclusion in Ithaca so much more manageable. Finally, I want to use this opportunity to express my gratitude to my family: to my father, Branko Cvejić, whose calm confidence in me kept me going whenever the tasks of completing iv this dissertation threatened to overwhelm me; to my sister, Bojana Cvejić, an invaluable intellectual stimulus for as long as I can remember; to my partner, Katarina Tešić, whose apparently boundless love, goodness, and patience helped me negotiate the most difficult stages of researching and writing this dissertation; and last but certainly not least, to my mother, Dr Vesna Cvejić, who first taught me not simply to read, but also to enjoy it, to learn and appreciate knowledge, to try and hope even when it seemed hopeless. The present dissertation attests to her success as a parent and educator. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch........................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements.........................................................................................................................iv Table of Contents............................................................................................................................vi Introduction......................................................................................................................................1 A Selective Survey of Modern Scholarly Literature on Virtuosity in Reception................6 Interpreting Secondary Literature and Going Beyond.......................................................19 The Scope, Sources, and Methodology..............................................................................26 Summaries of Chapters......................................................................................................44 Chapter One: Music in Philosophy around 1800...........................................................................48 The Ascendancy of Music, the Subjected Subject, and Reason in Retreat: The Early German Romantics, Schelling, and Schopenhauer…………………...54 Transcendental Freedom and the ―Agreeable Art‖ of Music: Kant and Fichte.................71 The Passing of Music on the Road to Freedom and Absolute Knowledge: Hegel………90 Chapter Two: Virtuosity in Concert……………………………………………………………103 ―Not just a skilled virtuoso‖, but an ―Artist‖: General Attitudes to Instrumental Virtuosity in the Journalistic Critical Community……………….......................103 ―Idealities‖ and ―animal spirits‖: The Denigration of Performance in Favor of Composition in Nineteenth-Century Criticism of Instrumental Virtuosity…………………………………………………………110 The Only Good Virtuoso is a Dead Virtuoso: From Virtuosity to ―Interpretation‖……117 Heroes and Charlatans, Demons and Monsters: The Demands and Dangers of Originality, Part I………………………………126 How to Be a Perfect Virtuoso, but Not an Automaton: The Elusive Notions of Expression and Expressivity…………………………..143 vi Expression‘s Mortal Enemy: Virtuosic Technique……………………………………..152 The Fallen Angels of Music: Moralist Critiques of Virtuosity…………………………157 Chapter Three: Virtuosity in Composition……………………………………………………..164 ―Mere frivolous eartickling amusement‖ and German ―metaphysical studies‖: An Overview of General Music Aesthetics in Journalist Criticism of Instrumental Virtuosity, c. 1815–c. 1850…………………….…………165 The ―genuine Sarmatian‖ and his ―defiant originality‖: The Demands and Dangers of Originality, Part II…...........................................171