Louis Sphor's early chamber music (1796-1812): A contribution to the history of nineteenth-century genres.
Item
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Title
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Louis Sphor's early chamber music (1796-1812): A contribution to the history of nineteenth-century genres.
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Identifier
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AAI9907991
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identifier
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9907991
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Creator
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Wulfhorst, Martin.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Barry Brook
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Date
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1995
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Music | History, European | Biography
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Abstract
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Uses concepts of structural historiography in order to examine how Spohr's aesthetics, performing career, teaching, and relations to publishers affected his response to the conventions of the classical quartet and of four virtuosic genres: violin duet, short display piece for one or two solo instruments, alone or with three to five players or orchestra (rondo, fantasy, paraphrase-potpourri, variation set, variation-potpourri), concertant harp-violin sonata, and quatuor brillant.;Spohr's enlightened maxim that the artist must serve society (inspired by members of his family, Masons, and Philanthropinists) brought him to gear his early instrumental composition to the contemporary mixed-program public concert and 'music party', characterized by a combination of education and entertainment. He composed his first-period chamber works primarily for the performances he gave alone and together with his wife, the harp virtuoso Dorette Scheidler--in Brunswick, Gotha, and on his tours; to a lesser degree they were also intended for his students and for publication.;But while he accepted some of the conventions of functional, virtuosic genres (concertant or brillant texture, extended passagework sections, additive, episodic, or rhapsodic forms, and use of popular, borrowed tunes), his enlightened principle that music must be "ennobling" led him not only to perfect his early compositions by means of extensive revisions but especially to raise his works representing 'low' genres to the level of substantial chamber music: after a juvenile phase of composition in the galant style, he adopted, first, forward-looking proto-romantic elements from French opera and violin concerto (bold chromatic harmony, individual, un-Viennese structures such as binary sonata form and free, short forms, exploration of timbre, melancholic and grand expression--analogous to his expressive style of violin playing), and, later, "classizing" elements (motivic development and smooth, symmetrical classical form), which were integrated successfully in his early oeuvre but increasingly curbed the progressive traits, kept them from developing into full-fledged romanticism, and ultimately led in some of his late works to monotony, mannered quality, academicism, and extreme eclecticism (Biedermeier style).;Spohr's aesthetic maxim of "ennobling" caused his seemingly contradictory stylistic development and generated an integrative conception of functional music with strong autonomous traits--a conception which proved incompatible with the dichotomical thinking of the romantic era and caused his valuable and once-famous early chamber works to fall into near-oblivion after his death.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy Restricted.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.