Studia Musicologica
Volume/Issue:
Volume 65: Issue 1-2
Understanding Mahler's Central European Musical Identity: Literary Analogues in the Works of Joseph Roth and Gregor von Rezzori
Author:
Jeremy Barham University of Surrey, Stag Hill, University Campus, Guildford GU2 7XH, United Kingdom

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Pages:
21–32
Online Publication Date:
25 Nov 2024
Publication Date:
25 Nov 2024
Article Category:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1556/6.2024.00001
Keywords:
Central Europe; Mahler; national identity; Joseph Roth; Gregor von Rezzori
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Abstract

The difficult task of determining Mahler's socio-political and ethnic-national identity within a larger Central European context is made no easier by recourse to biographical information. For every indication there is a counter-indication, for every claim a counterclaim. Similarly, his music shifts between or juxtaposes a relatively non-specific folk tone and a frequently subverted though nevertheless readily discernible mode of core Western European symphonism. These deeply meaningful creative processes offer both hyper- and hypo-eloquent testimonies to the complex culture of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century imperial Habsburg politics. Overflowing with expressive suggestions, allusions, and oblique metaphors, Mahler's music nevertheless remains pre-linguistic, proto-conceptual, its text settings favoring parable and metaphysical poetic licence. Using the works of two great literary chroniclers of fin-de-siècle to WWI Central European life and manners – Joseph Roth (1894–1939; The Emperor's Tomb, Hotel Savoy) and Gregor von Rezzori (1914–1998; Memoirs of an Anti-Semite; An Ermine in Czernopol) – I attempt in this study to recover through works of narrative verbal fiction a measure of what Mahler's music says, without being fully able to communicate, about his Central European world and identity.

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Cover Studia Musicologica
Studia Musicologica
Print ISSN:
1788-6244
Online ISSN:
1789-2422

Senior editors

Editor(s)-in-Chief: Péter BOZÓ (Institute for Musicology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest, H)

Review Editor: Lynn HOOKER (Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA)

Assistant Editor(s):
Patrick DEVINE (Maynooth University, Maynooth, IRL)
Anna LASKAI (Institute for Musicology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest, H)

Editorial Board

  • Anja BUNZEL (Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ)
  • William A. EVERETT (Conservatory University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA)
  • Denis HERLIN (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, F)
  • Vjera KATALINIĆ (HR)
  • Katalin KOMLÓS (professor emerita, Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest, H)
  • Valeria LUCENTINI (University of Bern, CH)
  • Tatjana MARKOVIĆ (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, A)
  • Pál RICHTER (Institute for Musicology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest, H)
  • László SOMFAI (Institute for Musicology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest, H)
  • László VIKÁRIUS (Institute for Musicology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest, H)

 

Editorial Secretary

  • István Csaba NÉMETH (Institute for Musicology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest, H)

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Studia Musicologica
Language English
French
German
Size B5
Year of
Foundation		 2007 (1961)
Volumes
per Year		 1
Issues
per Year		 4
Founder Magyar Tudományos Akadémia
Founder's
Address		 H-1051 Budapest, Hungary, Széchenyi István tér 9.
Publisher Akadémiai Kiadó
Publisher's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
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Publisher		 Chief Executive Officer, Akadémiai Kiadó
ISSN 1788-6244 (Print)
ISSN 1789-2422 (Online)

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