Music Theatre and the Holy Roman Empire: The German Musical Stage at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

by Austin Glatthorn

Overview

Packed full of new archival evidence that reveals the interconnected world of music theatre during the 'Classical era', this interdisciplinary study investigates key locations, genres, music, and musicians. Austin Glatthorn explores the extent to which the Holy Roman Empire delineated and networked a cultural entity that found expression through music for the German stage. He maps an extensive network of Central European theatres; reconstructs the repertoire they shared; and explores how print media, personal correspondence, and their dissemination shaped and regulated this music. He then investigates the development of German melodrama and examines how articulations of the Holy Roman Empire on the musical stage expressed imperial belonging. Glatthorn engages with the most recent historical interpretations of the Holy Roman Empire and offers quantitative, empirical analysis of repertoire supported by conventional close readings to illustrate a shared culture of music theatre that transcended traditional boundaries in music scholarship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009066068
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/30/2024
Pages:	389
Product dimensions:	6.65(w) x 9.57(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Austin Glatthorn is the British Academy Newton International Fellow, Department of Music at Durham University. Glatthorn received the Mozart Society of America's Marjorie Weston Emerson Award (2018) and was a winner of the Music & Letters Centenary Prize Competition (2019).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Music for an imperial stage; 1. An empire of theatres; 2. (In)forming repertoire; 3. Letters from the German stage; 4. 'Germany's daughter, Melodrama'; 5. Staging imperial identity; Epilogue: Echoes of an empire.

Editorial Reviews

'A ground-breaking new book … Glatthorn’s study of music theatre in the late Holy Roman Empire [is] important reading for musicologists and historians alike’. Axel Körner, Eighteenth-Century Music

From the Publisher