Mozart's Ghosts: Reception and Renown, 1791-present
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Southampton
Department Name: Faculty of Humanities
Abstract
'Mozart's Ghosts' examines the developing reputation of the composer from his death in 1791 to the present. Building on earlier summary or bibliographical studies, the project presents a number of sites of the reception of Mozart and reads them against the musical worlds in which they were created. The project therefore contrasts, for example, the way in which Mozart was received in Berlin in the 1840s with the reception in Paris in 1880 or in London in 1920, and treats opera, sacred music and instrumental music as evenhandly as the history that supports it.
The overarching aim of the project is to examine the proposition that modern reverence for the composer is conditioned by earlier responses to his music, and that such earlier responses are more complex than a simple model of production and reception allows (for example, the idea that Shaw's essay 'Don Giovanni Explains' functions both as a response to Mozart's opera and as a satire of E.T.A. Hoffmann's own essay on the opera). It does this by stressing the problematic and indirect nature of much Mozart reception and contrasts this with the more antiquarian, perhaps even static, gathering of information about sites of reception: inter alia, performance history, biography and reviews.
The project addresses a wide range of material in addition to such conventional sites of reception, and encompasses the embodiment of Mozart in the novel and film, the reverence imparted to works by the composer during the nineteenth century that have subsequently turned out not to be by Mozart (the so-called 'Twelfth Mass'), and the rituals established by Pauline Viardot around the autograph of 'Don Giovanni' in the second half of the nineteenth century which involved both reliquary and pilgrimage. The geographical range of the project is broad, and focuses not just on Western Europe but on North America (including the pioneering west of the nineteenth century), Australia and parts of India.
The project will be disseminated via a monograph entitled 'Mozart's Ghosts: Reception and Renown, 1791 to the Present', contracted with Oxford University Press New York, scheduled for publication in 2011, and this will be supported by further public output in papers and other media.
The overarching aim of the project is to examine the proposition that modern reverence for the composer is conditioned by earlier responses to his music, and that such earlier responses are more complex than a simple model of production and reception allows (for example, the idea that Shaw's essay 'Don Giovanni Explains' functions both as a response to Mozart's opera and as a satire of E.T.A. Hoffmann's own essay on the opera). It does this by stressing the problematic and indirect nature of much Mozart reception and contrasts this with the more antiquarian, perhaps even static, gathering of information about sites of reception: inter alia, performance history, biography and reviews.
The project addresses a wide range of material in addition to such conventional sites of reception, and encompasses the embodiment of Mozart in the novel and film, the reverence imparted to works by the composer during the nineteenth century that have subsequently turned out not to be by Mozart (the so-called 'Twelfth Mass'), and the rituals established by Pauline Viardot around the autograph of 'Don Giovanni' in the second half of the nineteenth century which involved both reliquary and pilgrimage. The geographical range of the project is broad, and focuses not just on Western Europe but on North America (including the pioneering west of the nineteenth century), Australia and parts of India.
The project will be disseminated via a monograph entitled 'Mozart's Ghosts: Reception and Renown, 1791 to the Present', contracted with Oxford University Press New York, scheduled for publication in 2011, and this will be supported by further public output in papers and other media.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Mark Everist (Principal Investigator) |
| Description | Mozart's Ghosts traces the many lives of this great composer that emerged following his early death in 1791. Crossing national boundaries and traversing two hundred years-worth of interpretation and reception, author Mark Everist forges new paths to investigate how Mozart's past status can be understood as part of today's veneration. He examines a number of ways in which Western culture has absorbed the idea of Mozart, how various cultural agents have appropriated, deployed, and exploited Mozart toward both authoritarian and subversive ends, and how the figure of Mozart and his impact illuminate the cultural history of the last two centuries in Europe, England, and America. As modern reverence for the composer is conditioned by earlier responses to his music, Everist argues that such earlier responses are more complex than allowed by a simple "reception studies" model. Closely linking nine case studies in an innovative cultural and theoretical framework, the book approaches the developing reputation of the composer from death to the present day from three sides: "Phantoms of the Opera" deals with stage music, "Holy Spirits" addresses the trope of the sacred, and "Specters at the Feast" considers the impact of Mozart's music in literature and film. Mozart's Ghosts adeptly and engagingly moves the study of Mozart reception away from hagiography and closer to cultural and historical criticism, and will be avidly read by Mozart scholars and students of eighteenth-century music history, as well as literary critics, historians of philosophy and aesthetics, and cultural historians in general. |
| Exploitation Route | The work will be cited by the scholarly community. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy |
| Description | Cited in the scholarly literature and related discourses. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2013 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Education |
| Impact Types | Cultural |
| Title | Dossier de presse of Don Giovanni in Paris, 1866 |
| Description | Dossier de presse of three productions of Don Giovanni in Pais 1866 |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | Scholarly use |
| URL | http://fmc.ecs.soton.ac.uk |