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Among Franz Liszt’s symphonic poems, Hunnenschlacht (“The Battle of the Huns,” 1857) and Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe (“From the Cradle to the Grave,” 1883) were inspired by the visual arts. With these works, Liszt attempted to translate painterly figurations into music; this intention is particularly embodied in his symphonic transformation of Wilhelm Kaulbach’s monumental fresco, Hunnenschlacht. Liszt was attracted by the idea of religious devotion and at the same time identified himself with the Huns. This paper considers the ways in which Liszt expressed the narrative plot and imitated the visual qualities of the Hunnenschlacht fresco by deploying innovative instrumental techniques and a progressive formal structure. This work illustrates Liszt’s interest in combining different art forms, and the prominent use of an apotheosis is an expression of the Beethovenian symphonic model. Liszt shared with early-nineteenth-century Romantics such as E. T. A. Hoffmann an interest in synaesthesia, associating colors with sounds. In Hunnenschlacht, he used the graphic illustration of the fresco as his primary source, yet he also attempted to convey the various tone colors associated with the figures. This interpretative process is explained in his preface to the score, in which Liszt describes the lights and colors associated with the Huns, the Romans, and the Cross. The peculiar treatment of instrumentation, including the use of wooden and sponge drum sticks, organ, unusual combinations of instruments, and an audacious treatment of dynamics, vibrantly depict the distinct colors or lights that envelop the principal figures in the painting.
ABSTRACT
This contribution argues that Zhu Quan’s (1378–1448) apotheosis must be interpreted as a paratextual discourse on authorship. Substantiating this claim, this article discusses how the extant editions of the Divine Pivot Ready to Hand construct the king’s divine authorship. In its three sections, the article examines the physical, paratextual and ritual dimensions of his apotheosis. Focusing on the last chapter of the Pivot, it demonstrates that calendars serve as a material cum textual media through which to posit Zhu Quan’s divine status. In a dialogue with the field of ritual studies, the article explains to what degree Zhu Quan’s calendars may be interpreted as an act of ritual textualisation.
This paper examines a painting by the prominent Biedermeier painter Josef Danhauser, Liszt at the Piano, a unique visual document of the Romantic generation’s cultic relationship and collective memory surrounding the virtually holy predecessor, Beethoven. It demonstrates the Beethoven reverence of (1) the commissioner Conrad Graf, a piano maker, who gave an instrument to Beethoven, (2) the painter Danhauser, who took the death mask of the German composer, and (3) Liszt, who considered himself the artistic heir to Beethoven. Although it is a well-known and thoroughly researched painting, its re-examination is still worthwhile. Focusing on aspects of cultural history, the contemporary reception of the painting should be reconsidered from a synthesizing point of view utilizing the results of art historical iconography and musicology. As a kind of cultural study, the paper attempts to demonstrate the background and motives that lead to the creation of the painting. I shall place the painting in the wider context of the history of ideas which is represented by the art-religious experience Liszt and his Paris companions gained from Beethoven’s music. An evaluation of the narrower, historical background — the Beethoven cult triggered by the piano concerts given by Liszt in Vienna in 1839–1840 — will also be discussed.
The imperial cult played important role throughout the whole antique world. It reached Rome with Caesar. In the centuries following him the divinity of the emperors were accepted by the whole population of the empire. The cult — in the eyes of the Roman population — assured the wellbeing of the state and its inhabitants. The only exception were Christians (together with Jews), who on the bases of their faith regarded emperor worship as idolatry. This is why, they became, in the eyes of the contemporary Roman population, atheists and the enemy of the state. This paper deals with the new results of the research of the imperial cult of Rome and its relationship with Christians.
Lucanus Cornelia-alakja a nyelvi és motivikus utalások szerint Vergilius és Ovidius mitikus nőalakjainak rokona, de motivikus szinten sokat köszönhet Propertiusnak és Seneca tragédiáinak is. Lucanus Cornelia-narratívájában meglehetős bizonyossággal tételezhető tudatos nyelvi és motivikus utalás egyrészt Catullus Ariadnéjára, másrészt Ovidius több, hosszabb-rövidebb Ariadne-narratívájára. A tanulmány áttekinti az Ariadne-történetre való lehetséges utalásokat Lucanus eposzában. Rómában, ahol az Ariadne-történet legtöbbet emlegetett része a naxosi epizód volt, a krétai királylány alakjához kapcsolódott a katastérismos képzete: az ’Ariadne Naxoson’-történet Corneliával való összekapcsolása ezért mitológiai metaforája lehet a megistenülés képzetének. Cornelia tehát erényes asszonyként éppúgy kiérdemeli a megistenülést a férjével kapcsolatban, mint Pompeius a maga férfiúi állapotában.
Abstract
At the time of the renovation of the Bishops’ Residence in Kroměříž after the fire in 1752, Franz Anton Maulbertsch was invited to the town and in 1759 painted the fresco in the Feudal Hall the commission of Bishop Leopold von Egkh. Two drawings by attributed Monika Dachs to the painter Josef Stern in her thesis in 2003 were until recently considered as unexecuted variations of the central scene of The Apotheosis of Leopold von Egkh. The drawing Allegory with Fides, Justitia and Pictura (Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Wien) represents a part of the wall painting, executed in 1759 on the vault of the Great Library of the Castle by Josef Stern. Another drawing, Apotheosis with Saturn, Hercules and Fama (Ratjen Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington), was after the style analysis attributed to Stern as well, but as a draft for composition of bishop's apotheosis in the Feudal Hall. This article proves Stern's authorship of both drawings. As regards the first of them, in accordance with final painting in the library the drawing's iconographic plan is revised and corrected (Doctrina, Justitia, Astronomia and Medicina). Another drawing from the Ratjen Collection is connected to the preserved written draft of the unexecuted painting in the Great Dining Room of the Castle Residence. This commission was ordered from Maulbertsch again according to the contract from 1760. The drawing adopts Maulbertsch's style and composition of Egkh's apotheosis in Feudal Hall, but it follows the motif of bishop's glorification, which was planned for the dining room. The reason of joint art work of the two painters at the dining room may be an extremely demanding scale of the commission – large area of the vault surface, that was to be covered by wall painting.
Vergil’s Eclogues, despite belonging to the bucolic genre and being largely modelled on Theocritus’ Idylls, bear clear marks of cosmic inspiration; these emerge from time to time, now in one poem, next in another, issuing ideas and images apparently inconsistent with the pastoral world: this happens especially in the three central Eclogues. Non-pastoral ideas and images often refer to philosophical or mythological themes, possibly coming either from poets with a cosmic vein (such as Hesiod and Lucretius), or from philosophic schools dealing with cosmogony (such as Orphism and Stoicism). Vergil develops these themes in innovative ways. This broadening of perspective concerns the power of song that seduces and dominates nature (with remarkable self-reflexive implications), the human desire to interact with the gods (even to enter their realm and identify with them through apotheosis), and the longing for purification and rebirth, hand-in-hand with the universal aspiration for peace and happiness.
The symphonic poem From the Cradle to the Grave deserves a special status among Liszt’s symphonic works because he wrote it after a long break as part of his series of symphonic poems from his Weimar period. The composition was inspired by a drawing by the Hungarian painter Mihály Zichy. Many aspects of Liszt’s musical response to this drawing contrast with his older symphonic works. Liszt chooses a simple three-part structure, in which each movement is dedicated to one of the stages of life. The final movement functions as a thematic recapitulation and synthesis, which, however, is no longer staged as an emphatic breakthrough, as in earlier works, but rather as a process of dismantlement preceded by a dramatic collapse at the end of the second movement. The demonstrative break with the concept of a final apotheosis relates back not only to the source of inspiration for the work, but also to a transformation in the composer’s aesthetic viewpoint.
Falkoner Xavér Ferenc (1737–1792) budai festő művei
Works of Xaver Ferenc Falkoner (1737–1792), a Painter of Buda
Abstract
The recently identified works by Xaver Ferenc Falkoner (Falconer, 1737–1792), a painter of Buda known so far mainly from verbal sources and works in Croatia, provide a more detailed and richer picture of his activity. After a review of the family workshop, the paper analyses his altarpieces in rural churches of historical Hungary. He delivered his altar pictures of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, the Prayer of Saint Anthony of Padua and Saint Helen to the friars minor in the upper town of Szeged around 1770. The Franciscans ordered a painting (Stigmatization of Saint Francis of Assisi) for Bács (Bač, RS) in 1774; in Futak (Futog, RS) he was commissioned by András Hadik (side altar pictures of Saint Andrew, Saint Frances de Chantal, Saint Anne teaching Mary, and Crucifixion) in 1776; he probably painted the Prayer of St Francis of Assisi, St Francis Seraph, the Apotheosis of St Didacus, the Apotheosis of St Anthony the Hermit, the death of St Joseph and the picture of the votive Pieta statue at Sasvár around 1780 for Baja. His half-length pictures of saints (Ss Francis, Bonaventura, Francis Solano, James of the March, Bernardine of Siena, Anthony of Padua, John of Capestrano, and of the Mother of Good Advice, 1774–76) for praedellas and superstructures of altars in churches of the listed saints in the Franciscan province named after Saint John of Capestrano. Though repainted, his frescoes only survive in the Budakeszi parish church: Wisdom with Faith, Hope and Love, and painted altar architecture, dated 1784. The painting technique and easily recognizable language of forms and colouring typical of Ferenc Falkoner, who was trained in the academy in Vienna, are presented on the basis of restorers' researches.
The heroine of Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin, Tatyana became the prototype of a brilliant series of female characters in 19th-century Russian literature. Various interpretations of her image can be grouped around an idealizing pole (Dostoevsky: “apotheosis of the Russian woman”) and a realistic one (Belinsky regarding the figure in her evolution from an ardent but naive provincial damsel to a dame of the Muscovite high society). Chekhov narrates in his short story После театра [After the theatre] about a 16-year-old girl Nadya, who, having returned home from the performance of the opera Eugene Onegin, and effected by Tatyana’s writing to Onegin, starts to write a letter to a young man, who, as she thinks, is in love with her; then, suddenly she decides to write to another young man who also pays court to her. At the same time, she experiences rapid changes of her mood: she bursts out now into tears, now into laughter without any real reason; and gradually, she becomes filled with an incomprehensible feeling of joy. Chekhov, who was not only a sensitive writer but also a sharp-sighted physician, reliably describes in Nadya’s behaviour the psycho-somatic symptoms of early puberty when the estrogenic hormones come into action. The undercurrent of this story is apparently a delicate ironical hint at Tatyana’s juvenile rapture over Onegin. Chekhov does not deglorify Pushkin’s heroine, he just supplements her realistic interpretation with the psycho-physiological aspect of the formation of her personality.
