Symphonic Aspirations
by Karen Painter
Introduction
Symphonic Ambitions
The Politics of the Apolitical
A History of Criticism
Critics and their Craft
Aesthetics and Ideology
I. Tradition in a Modern Age: Bruckner and Mahler at the Fin de siècle
1. Symphonic Idealism in Crisis
The Symphony and Selfhood
Authenticity in Symphonic Meaning
Jewish Identity and Symphonic Assimilation
2. Symphonic Conventions of a World Past
The Trivialization of Genre
The Logic of Counterpoint
The Vindication of Modern Polyphony
Reinventing Traditions of Unity
Fulfillment in Closure
Vitalism in Absolute Music
3. Sensuality and Redemption
Innovations in Orchestration
Ornament and Color
Orchestration and the Critique of Modernity
The Sensual and the Feminine
In Defense of Musical Pleasure
Symphonic Redemption
II. The Politics of Tradition: Mahler and Bruckner, 1914-1933
4. Mahler’s Progressive Legacy and the Aestheticization of Violence
Myths of Building and Destruction in the Sixth Symphony
The Influence of World War I
The Symphony in the Age of Socialism
The Will in Music
Paul Bekker and an Aesthetics of Strength
Rhythm and Violence
Postwar Mahler
5. Bruckner’s Nationalist Legacy and the Aestheticization of Space
Brucknerian Polemics
“In the Spirit of Bruckner”
The Consolation of Metaphor and Visions of Wholeness
Spatial Listening
Ernst Kurth and Aesthetic Absorption
III. Symphonic Traditions under National Socialism
6. Symphony Ambitions and Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler Symphony
The Symphony as Symbol
The Politicization of the Symphony
New Music for the New Regime
The Turn against Hindemith
The Politics of Interpretation
Redemption and the Effacing of Genre
7. Symphonic Defeat
Bruckner in the Third Reich
From the Symphony to the “Symphonic”
The Waning of Symphonic Ideals
Orff’s Carmina burana
The Ethics of Music Criticism