Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Speaking German Musically: Poetic Recitation in Central Europe, 1760-1820

Speaking German Musically: Poetic Recitation in Central Europe, 1760-1820

Waeber, Jacqueline

Hardcover

Literary CriticismGeneral World History

ISBN10: 1837652147
ISBN13: 9781837652143
Publisher: Boydell Press
Published: May 20 2025
Pages: 506
Weight: 1.95
Height: 1.13 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
Shows how poetic recitation and the interweaving of music and poetry contributed to the advent of a German identity in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe.

The art of reciting a text out loud, known as Vortragskunst, be it in a private circle or in a concert hall, originated in German-speaking countries in the 1760s, and by the nineteenth century had become a well-established practice subjected to an artistic blossoming unparalleled in the rest of Europe.

In this book Jacqueline Waeber explains and examines how and why this happened, focusing on the origins of poetic recitation and its development during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a period essential to the development of modern German literature and theatre, bookended by the two main figures who contributed to the theoretical and aesthetical tenets of poetic recitation, the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832).

Poetic recitation quickly gained attraction for the Lied and the musical melodrama, both musical genres that were driven by a search for new declamatory styles. As a result, poetic recitation became increasingly 'musicalized' by the frequent addition of a musical accompaniment. As the book shows, this intertwining of music and poetry made a huge contribution to the advent of German identity through the reappraisal of its language.

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