So romantic

Musical Times, Winter 2002 by Walton, Chris

CHRIS WALTON appraises a semi-revisionist account of the music of the long nineteenth century

The Cambridge history of nineteenth-century music Edited by Jim Samson Cambridge UP (Cambridge, 2001 [recte 2002]); xv, 772pp; L,80. ISBN 0 521 59017 5.

THE DUST-JACKET blurb is remarkably (though in part unintentionally) accurate: `This comprehensive overview of music in the nineteenth century [...] avoids mere repertory surveys, focusing instead on issues which illuminate the subject in novel and interesting ways. The book is divided into two parts (1800-1850 and 1850-1900), each of which approaches the major repertory of the period by way of essays investigating the intellectual and socio-political history of the time.'

This is indeed a comprehensive, impressive overview of the music of the period in question. It succeeds in this because Jim Samson has assembled an equally impressive selection of Anglo-American musicological minds to write it with him - John Butt, Thomas Grey, Roger Parker, Anthony Pople, John Rink, Julian Rushton and more. The century in question is the `long nineteenth century', i.e. from 1789 to 1914; the book's division into two halves at about 1850 is not purely arbitrary, since - as Samson points out - the revolutions of 1848/49 form a neat caesura in mid-century. Each half includes essays on aesthetics, reception history and the like (e.g. `The construction of Beethoven' and `The invention of tradition' in Part the First, `Beethoven reception' and `Music as ideal: the aesthetics of autonomy' in the Second), on socio-political issues (1: `The opera industry', `The profession of music'; 2: `The structures of musical life', `Music and social class') and, of course, on the music itself (e.g. 1: `Choral music', `Music and the poetic'; 2: `Chamber music and piano', `Opera and music drama').

That this volume `avoids mere repertory surveys' in favour of `novel and interesting [issues]' is a publicist's way of saying that this is a history book for post-Modern man, eschewing the grand narratives of old, and including, it is implied, a spot of socio-political, New Musicological genderbending of the kind in which we all indulge nowadays. But it also aims to `serve as a major work of reference', and one can always rely on the likes of Samson, Rushton et al. to temper new musicological abandon with good common sense. As it happens, there is in fact nothing gimmicky here, but much to admire. A few contributions manage to combine concision with breadth in a manner that could with difficulty be bettered (though it is a little unnerving that more than one chapter begins with an apology for the necessity to generalise). Samson & Co. skilfully chart music's course from Napoleon to Wilhelm 11, the vast increase in its means of dissemination, the rise of the music 'industry', of a musical canon, the aesthetic conflicts of the time, and the manner in which music, society and nationhood impinged upon each other. And much more. It is unfair to single out individual contributions, as this will reflect the preferences of the present writer as much as anything else; but I did particularly like the opera chapters in each half (by Parker and Grey respectively).

Jim Samson's brief, but admirably succinct, preface states the pros and cons of this book's format from the editor's perspective:

Single-author histories of nineteenth-century music are probably no longer tenable [...] Yet existing multi-authored histories present their own problems [...] Of course it is easy to criticise [...] How, anyway, can such surveys be anything other than partial and arbitrary? [...] Lacunae will not be hard to find for those who seek.

Samson thus does his best to pull out the rug from under the feet of all those experts on Augusto Rotoli, Wilhelm Baumgartner or Robert Pearsall who will scour the index of this tome in vain for a mention of their favourites. He is obviously aware that the main criticism that can be levelled at this book is that it is, as the dustjacket text implies, essentially a celebration of the existing canon (`the major repertory of the period'). While the creation of the canon is indeed questioned (Samson himself does this in a chapter specifically entitled `The great composer'), this questioning merely serves to confirm its acceptance. In fact, the book's lacunae are in some cases not inconsiderable. For example, a description of music education and of the singing movements in the nineteenth century really must not ignore the contribution of the Swiss Hans Georg NAgeli (as does John Rink here). It's all right to shout hurrah for Hullah and his British colleagues, but in a European context, Nageli was arguably the most significant figure of the era. Nor is he mentioned in Rink's discussion of the early publishers of Bach, even though his company's contribution was arguably greater than that of Breitkopf, Hoffmeister or Peters.

This leads us to a wider problem regarding those lacunae. In the penultimate chapter, `Nations and nationalism', Samson gives an excellent overview of Europe's 'edges', pointing out that `it would be misleading to project back on to the nineteenth-- century map the "Eastern Europe" created by Yalta, together with that sharp sense of separation from the West which characterised [...] late twentieth-- century political history'. But this is essentially what many (though not all, nota bene) of his fellow authors do. This book has a definite Franco-- Austro-Germanic bias that seems to the present writer not a little typical of today's Anglo-American approach to musicology. While one could argue that the `major repertory' originated within the triangle of Vienna, Paris and Berlin, and that a book dealing with that repertory should confine itself geographically in accordance with this fact, there is surely a missed opportunity here. It is perhaps of little consequence (except in Lithuanian pub quizzes or Baltic editions of Trivial Pursuit) that the geographical centre of Europe is situated not in Germany or Austria, but near Vilnius (as measured by Napoleon's scientists, no less).