The Secular Commedia: Comic Mimesis in Late Eighteenth-Century MusicWye Jamison AllanbrookÕs The Secular Commedia is a stimulating and original rethinking of the music of the late eighteenth century. Hearing the symphonies and concertos of Haydn and Mozart with an ear tuned to operatic style, as their earliest listeners did, Allanbrook shows that this familiar music is built on a set of mimetic associations drawn from conventional modes of depicting character and emotion in opera buffa. Allanbrook mines a rich trove of writings by eighteenth-century philosophers and music theorists to show that vocal music was considered aesthetically superior to instrumental music and that listeners easily perceived the theatrical tropes that underpinned the style. Tracing Enlightenment notions of character and expression back to Greek and Latin writings about comedy and drama, she strips away preoccupations with symphonic form and teleology to reveal anew the kaleidoscopic variety and gestural vitality of the musical surface. In prose as graceful and nimble as the music she discusses, Allanbrook elucidates the idiom of this period for contemporary readers. With notes, musical examples, and a foreword by editors Mary Ann Smart and Richard Taruskin. |
Contents
Comic Flux and Comic Precision | 1 |
Comic Voice in the Late Mimetic Period | 41 |
The Comic Surface | 84 |
Comic Finitude and Comic Closure | 128 |
Notes | 177 |
| 219 | |
| 231 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
absolute music aesthetic affect Agawu Allanbrook Allegro Allgemeine Theorie aria Aristotle Baroque Music Beethoven Buelow Burney cadence cadential century chapter character Charles Burney comedy comic Commedia commonplace composer composition contrast conventions critics dance dialogue Diderot E. T. A. Hoffmann eighteenth-century music Elaine Sisman Empfindungen essay example expression feelings Figaro galant genre Gesture in Mozart gigue Haydn heart Heinichen human Ibid imitation instrumental music Johann Koch La serva padrona late eighteenth late eighteenth-century loci topici Mattheson means melody mimesis mimetic minuet modern motion movement Mozart Musikalisches Lexikon narrative nature Nephew opera buffa opera seria paradigm passage passions Pergolesi philosophes phrase Piano Concerto Plato play polyp Princeton Ratner representation rhetorical Rhythmic Gesture rhythms romantic Rousseau Serpina serva padrona singing social sonata song soul String Quartet style Sulzer surface Symphony term theater theme Thorough-Bass tion tone topical topoi topos trans vocal voice vollkommene Capellmeister word writers Zaslaw