Relevance and Marginalisation in Scandinavian and European Performing Arts 1770–1860: Questioning Canons reveals how various cultural processes have influenced what has been included, and what has been marginalised from canons of European music, dance, and theatre around the turn of the nineteenth century and the following decades.
This collection of essays includes discussion of the piano repertory for young ladies in England; canonisation of the French minuet; marginalisation of the popular German dramatist Kotzebue from the dramatic canon; dance repertory and social life in Christiania (Oslo); informal cultural activities in Trondheim; repertory of Norwegian musical clocks; female itinerant performers in the Nordic sphere; preconditions, dissemination, and popularity of equestrian drama; marginalisation and amateur staging of a Singspiel by the renowned Danish playwright Oehlenschläger, also with perspectives on the music and its composers; and the perceived relevance of Henrik Ibsen’s staged theatre repertory and early dramas.
By questioning established notions about canon, marginalisation, and relevance within the performing arts in the period 1770–1860, this book asserts itself as an intriguing text both to the culturally interested public and to scholars and students of musicology, dance research, and theatre studies.
Author(s): Randi Margrete Selvik, Svein Gladsø, Annabella Skagen
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 300
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of contents
Illustrations
Contributors
Preface
1 The (pre)history of canons
Introduction
Music
Dance
Theatre
The chapters of the anthology
Canon formation
Canon at home
In the margins and on the move
National canons and repertories
Notes
Bibliography
2 Meeting the masters: Repertory choices for young ladies
Introduction
Georg Friedrich Händel
Bland’s collections
Eighteenth-century pedagogy
Into the nineteenth century
Clementi’s Introduction
Cramer’s Instructions
Popular tunes and fashionable composers
The trivial and the true
Piano arrangements for two and four hands
Virtuoso pianist-composers
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
3 Canonisation of the danced minuet over centuries
Introduction
Belle danse as a canon
How could the eighteenth-century minuet be presented as canonical?
Rules about spacing
Rules about steps
A changing minuet
Playing with rules on spacing
Playing with rules on the steps
Late versions of the minuet
Testimony of the minuet from the late eighteenth century to the present day: Reinventions or re-canonisations?
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
4 On the other side of the canon: August von Kotzebue as a popular playwright and controversial public persona
Introduction
Negative canonisation
Moral criticism
Bourgeois convention versus common moral sense
Immoral satire
Aesthetic normalisation
Theatrical professionalism versus aesthetic innovation
Amateur theatre versus idealist aesthetics
Political controversy
From ‘national character’ to nationalism
After Kotzebue
Notes
Bibliography
5 Traces of dance and social life: A dance book and its context
Introduction
Dancing master Walcke
A collection of dances
Dance forms
The relationship between dance and manners
A young dance student’s tale
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
6 Outside canon: Anonymous music and informal cultural activities in Trondheim around 1800
Introduction
The cultural history of Trondheim: A ‘canonical version’
Literature on theatre, music, and social dance in Trondheim
Outside canon: A different voice from Trondheim’s past
Enjoyment of dramatic works outside of the theatre
Informal musical activity
Song and music books
Social dance in Trondheim
Anonymous, unstable, and unclassifiable
Complexity, functionality, and marginalisation
A dancing master’s perspective: Possible bias
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
7 A private playlist?: Repertory in Norwegian eighteenth-century musical clocks
Introduction
Models and technology
The Norwegian musical clock: An overview
Imported or locally produced musical clockworks?
Close-up: Ingebrigt Graboe (1726–1798), Trondheim
The repertory on Graboe musical clocks
Repertory on Norwegian musical clocks
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
8 Itinerant female performers in the Nordic sphere 1760.1774
Introduction
Researching itinerant female artists
Tracing biographical information on De Preussiske Kunstnerinder
Tracing biographical information on the Mesdames Nürenbach, Scaglia, and Stuart
Emerging from the shadows of husbands
The visibility of Christina Doreothea Stuart
The visibility of Maria Scaglia
The visibility of Anna Catharina Rancke Nürenbach
Visibility through making additional money from selling goods and teaching dance
Application procedures and their importance for traceability and visibility
Visibility and traceability according to expectations of gender
Female itinerant artists emerging from the records
Notes
Bibliography
9 The hybrid child: The preconditions, dissemination, and enduring popularity of equestrian drama
Introduction
Preconditions for the form
The evolution and dissemination of equestrian drama
The enduring interest and popularity of equestrian drama
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
10 Vittorio Alfieri’s tramelogedia Abéle: A physiognomic reading of a marginalised play by a canonical author
Introduction
Vittorio Alfieri: A canonical author?
The tramelogedia
Abéle
Predestination and physiognomy
Alfieri and physiognomy
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
11 Oehlenschläger’s Freyas Altar: A rejected Singspiel performed
Introduction
Methodical approach and structure
Part 1: The printed play
Historical background (1804–1828)
Dramatic action
Poetry in motion: Romanticism on the stage
A matter of taste
Part 2: The play performed
Off-Copenhagen: Circulation and performance in the provinces
Music for Freyas Altar in Norway
Freyas Altar at Det offentlige Theater in Trondheim
‘A few comical persons and some that are in love’: Situated reception and social mobility
Politics at play: Rejects in provincial performance
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Archival sources
12 Forgotten music: Early Norwegian composers and Oehlenschläger’s Freyas Altar
Introduction
Freyas Altar in Trondheim and Christiania
The Singspiel of 1805: Possible musical numbers
Musical sources in Norway
Peter Eberg: Town musician in Trondheim
Hans Hagerup Falbe and Lars Møller Ibsen: Dilettante composers in Christiania
Professionalism versus dilettantism
Marginalised composers and the idea of a musical canon
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
13 Questioning the canons of Ibsen’s theatre: Re-searching the relevance of Ibsen’s theatre repertory, 1852–1862
Introduction
Were the ‘classics’ really ‘classics’ in Ibsen’s time?
Were Ibsen’s years in the theatre really a waste of time?
Was the ‘staple diet’ repertory really of low standard?
Was Christiania the problem?
If Ibsen did everything right, why did theatre attendance decline?
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
General index
Person index
