Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Cooper, John Michael.

Title Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis night : the heathen muse in European culture, 1700-1850 / John Michael Cooper
Published Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press, 2007

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xvi, 284 pages) : illustrations, music
Series Eastman studies in music, 1071-9989 ; [v. 43]
Eastman studies in music ; v. 43.
Contents The cultural and religious prehistories -- Tolerance, translation, and acceptance : Goethe's and Mendelssohn's voices in European cultural discourse to ca. 1850 -- Reality and illusion, past and present : Goethe and the Walpurgisnacht -- The composition, revision, and publication of Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht -- The sources, structure, and narrative of Mendelssohn's Walpurgisnacht settings -- At the crossroads of identity : critical and artistic responses to Goethe's and Mendelssohn's Walpurgisnacht treatments -- Performing identity and alterity : Die erste Walpurgisnacht then and now
Summary 'Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night' addresses tolerance and acceptance in the face of cultural, political, and religious strife. Its point of departure is the Walpurgis Night. The Night, also known as Beltane or May Eve, was supposedly an annual witches' Sabbath that centered around the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains. After exploring how a notoriously pagan celebration came to be named after the Christian missionary St. Walpurgis (ca. 710-79), John Michael Cooper discusses the Night's treatments in several closely interwoven works by Goethe and Mendelssohn. His book situates those works in their immediate personal and professional contexts, as well as among treatments by a wide array of other artists, philosophers, and political thinkers, including Voltaire, Lessing, Shelley, Heine, Delacroix, and Berlioz. In an age of decisive political and religious conflict, Walpurgis Night became a heathen muse: a source of spiritual inspiration that was neither specifically Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim. And Mendelssohn's and Goethe's engagements with it offer new insights into its role in European cultural history, as well as into issues of political, religious, and social identity - and the relations between cultural groups - in today's world. John Michael Cooper is professor of music at Southwestern University and author of 'Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony' (Oxford University Press)
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-274) and indexes
Subject Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix, 1809-1847. Erste Walpurgisnacht.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. Faust.
Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang{von.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang{von / Walpurgisnacht.
SUBJECT Erste Walpurgisnacht (Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix) fast (OCoLC)fst01368860
Faust (Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von) fast (OCoLC)fst01356033
Faust I / Walpurgisnacht. swd
Faust. swd
Die erste Walpurgisnacht. swd
Subject Other (Philosophy)
ART -- Reference.
ART -- Performance.
MUSIC -- General.
Other (Philosophy)
Walpurgisnacht Motiv
Rezeption
Europe -- Religious life and customs
Europe.
Europa
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2006034692
ISBN 9781580466912
1580466915