The persistence of voice : : instrumental music and romantic orality / / by John Neubauer.

• Author: Neubauer, John, 1933-2015.
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, [2017]
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: National Cultivation of Culture 14.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (304 pages) :; illustrations.

This work, completed by Neubauer on the very eve of his death in 2015, complements both his benchmark The Emancipation of Music from Language (Yale UP, 1986) and his History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe (John Benjamins, 2004-10). It thematizes Romantic interest in oral speech, its poetical usage in music and musical discourse, and its political usage in the national-communitarian cult of the vernacular community. Subtly and with great erudition, Neubauer traces in different genres and fields the many transnational cross-currents around Romantic cultural criticism and writings on music and language, offering not only fresh analytical insights but also a rich account of the interaction between Romantic aesthetics and cultural nationalism.

Table of Contents

Introduction -- New Discourses about Music -- The Music Journals -- From Poetry to Music Novels -- Failing Musicians, Failed Education -- Serialized Novellas -- Narrating Listeners, Narrating Instruments -- Romantic Orality -- From Journals to Battles -- Music Histories: From Gossip to Nationalism -- Speech and Song -- Vocal Authenticity? -- “Write as You Speak” – in Serbian -- Contrafacts from the British Isles -- Vernacular Operas -- Epilogue.