TY - JOUR
AU - Glatthorn,, Austin
AB - Abstract Georg Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos (1775) was an immediate success. By the end of the century, not only was it in the repertory of nearly every German theatre, but it was also one of the few German-language pieces translated for performances across Europe. Central to this melodrama—traditionally defined as an alternation of emotional declamation and pantomime with instrumental music—is its evocation of the sublime. Though scholars have posited Ariadne and its defining aesthetics as a model employed in subsequent Romantic opera, such teleological readings overlook reform melodramas that embraced vocal music and localized sublime moments. I argue that these works, rather than Ariadne, pushed melodrama’s generic boundaries to the verge of opera and in the process provided instrumental music with the power to express the sublime without the aid of text. This exploration offers fresh insight into melodrama’s music–text relations, generic hybridity, and aesthetic entanglements with opera and symphonic music. In the 1776 volume of his widely readTheater-Kalender, Heinrich August Ottokar Reichard (1751–1828) began including engravings of actors in famous roles and theatrical moments, a feature that persisted for nearly the entire run of the periodical (1775–1800). The very first of some one hundred tableaux depicted Esther Charlotte Brandes (1742–86) as the title character in the melodrama Ariadne auf Naxos (Pl. 1).1 At about the same time that this engraving was being prepared for print, the portraitist Anton Graff (1736–1813) completed a life-sized likeness of Brandes as Ariadne, which he presented to her on behalf of Dresden’s public on New Year’s Day 1776 (Pl. 2).2 These images of Brandes as the forsaken Ariadne are considered the first German Rollenbildnisse, portraits that, alongside the poem ‘ An Madam Brandes: Als Ariadne auf Naxos’ by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner (1748–1807), betray the immediate success of both the actor and the work created specifically for her.3 Pl. 1 View largeDownload slide Gottlob August Liebe after Georg Melchoir Kraus: Esther Charlotte Brandes as Ariadne. Engraving. [Theater-Kalender], Gotha, 1776 Pl. 1 View largeDownload slide Gottlob August Liebe after Georg Melchoir Kraus: Esther Charlotte Brandes as Ariadne. Engraving. [Theater-Kalender], Gotha, 1776 Pl. 2 View largeDownload slide Copy after Anton Graff: Esther Charlotte Brandes as Ariadne. Oil on canvas. Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung, University of Cologne, Inv. 31781 Pl. 2 View largeDownload slide Copy after Anton Graff: Esther Charlotte Brandes as Ariadne. Oil on canvas. Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung, University of Cologne, Inv. 31781 Ariadne auf Naxos unfolds in one act. Its events begin just before dawn as Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Crete, sleeps peacefully on the island of Naxos. Her love, the Athenian King Theseus, approaches her but is called away by the ships that are ready to depart the isle. Knowing that his duty is to his people, Theseus reluctantly abandons Ariadne on Naxos. She then awakes unable to find her beloved. Ariadne becomes increasingly distraught when she realizes—with the help of an Oread—that she has been marooned with no means of salvation. Her fear is confirmed when she catches sight of Theseus’ ship sailing away on the horizon (see Pl. 1). As a storm approaches, the horrified and distraught Ariadne climbs high up the cliffs overlooking the sea. Depending on the version, she is either struck by lightning and falls to her death or, seeing death as a means of both revenge and escape, she jumps from the precipice into the sea. Graff’s portrait captures Ariadne’s distress just before this fateful moment (Pl. 2). Crafted for Brandes by her husband Johann Christian (1735–99) and composer Georg Benda (1722–95), Ariadne auf Naxos premiered in the Duchy of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg on 27 January 1775. What set this work apart from earlier theatrical settings of the subject was that it was among the first contributions to a new genre of music theatre, one which at the time had no standard generic label but would soon be called melodrama (set for two principal characters, Ariadne was designated a duodrama, as opposed to a monodrama for one leading role).4 In her noteworthy exploration of the genre, Jacqueline Waeber has variously defined melodrama as: a technique (that alternates and occasionally overlaps spoken text and pantomime with instrumental music); a dramatic genre; and an aesthetic (of emotional excess).5 Through an analysis of Benda’s melodramas, she has suggested that Melodram is characterized generally by disrupted and ambiguous narratives, overdetermined dramaturgy, the transformation of the idyllic to the terrible, and music that illustrates the inexplicable and extraordinary without the aid of declamation. Their dramatic attributes aside, melodramas like Ariadne were logistically forgiving, for they required only a few performers who did not have to be singers and, what is more, they could be staged at a fraction of the cost of other genres of music theatre. Ariadne was also published in at least four separate editions not long after its premiere.6 Owing to its publicly available (declaimed) text, emotional drama, and descriptive instrumental music, Ariadne proved to be accessible and became especially popular across Europe. Indeed, not only was Ariadne auf Naxos a staple in the repertories of nearly all of the Holy Roman Empire’s theatres, but it was among the few German-language works translated into French, Danish, Hungarian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Italian, and Swedish for performance on European stages.7 As Thomas Bauman has pointed out, Benda could claim to possess what very few of his imperial contemporaries had achieved: an international reputation.8 This was largely due to the triumph of Ariadne auf Naxos. Ariadne’s success and popularity then means that it features prominently in studies of German and French melodramatic traditions now. The study of German Melodram has long been the domain of musicologists and is represented by Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos, Medea (also 1775), and, to a lesser extent, Pygmalion (1779).9 Scholars of the ‘elite’ German tradition commonly fashion Ariadne auf Naxos as a point of departure so as to trace Benda’s influence on later German composers and their works, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s unfinished Zaide (1780), Ludwig van Beethoven’s Leonore/Fidelio (1805, 1806, and 1814), Franz Schubert’s Die Zauberharfe (1820), and Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz (1821).10 But while musicologists have long shown interest in Melodram, they have only recently begun considering the ‘popular’ French tradition, which has been treated as a literary topic.11 Although scholars of French mélodrame à grand spectacle commonly identify Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) as the genre’s progenitor and acknowledge Benda’s contributions, they typically trace its history beginning with dramatist René-Charles Guilbert de Pixerécourt (1773–1844) and his many works for Paris’s boulevard theatres.12 The disciplinary division persists, but recent work has investigated the intersection of German and French melodrama. For instance, Sarah Hibberd has argued that these national traditions first converged in Hippolyte André Jean Baptiste Chérlard’s (1789–1861) Macbeth (1827), an opera that employs melodramatic practices to achieve a more overwhelming spectacle.13 Although such recent efforts help to narrow the disciplinary divide, the musicological community has not yet afforded French melodrama the same status or attention as its German counterpart.14 To borrow Hibberd’s words, ‘the term “melodrama” when used in musical circles has tended to refer to the parallel German tradition of “concert” melodrama … which derived from Benda’s example and evolved in the hands of such composers as Schubert, Schumann and Strauss’.15 Others teleologically posit Benda’s melodrama more specifically as a type of model integral to the development of later grand opera.16 David Charlton has examined precisely this ‘melodrama model’ to reveal how the genre’s most dramatic elements were subsumed into subsequent French Romantic opera. Focusing on Benda’s Ariadne—which was performed at the Comédie-Italienne in 1781—and tracing its influence on Ariane dans l’isle de Naxos by Jean-Frédéric Edelmann (1749–94), premiered at the Opéra the following year, Charlton argues that this model is in essence a type of extended scene that may or may not contain speech but combines through-composed music with dramatic events and pantomime on stage.17 The scene unfolds in Ariadne auf Naxos over a roughly 300-bar segment that begins when Ariadne realizes that Theseus has fled and concludes with her death. Benda sets the beginning of this segment, when Ariadne catches sight of Theseus’ ship, as he does nearly the entire work: as spoken dialogue alternating with musical interjections (see Ex. 1 and Pl. 1 above).18 Yet at its conclusion, as Ariadne screams for help in vain just before her demise, he breaks this practice and presents text and music simultaneously so as to heighten its dramatic effect (see Ex. 2 and Pl. 2 above).19 Contemporaries clearly recognized the significance of this section of the melodrama—or at least the moments bookending it—for Ariadne’s abandonment and final moments are the subjects of the very first images created of Brandes in her celebrated role mentioned at the beginning of the present article. Ex. 1 View largeDownload slide Ariadne realizes that she has been abandoned by Theseus. Georg Benda, Ariadne auf Naxos, bb. 516–21 Ex. 1 View largeDownload slide Ariadne realizes that she has been abandoned by Theseus. Georg Benda, Ariadne auf Naxos, bb. 516–21 Ex. 2 View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide Ariadne cries for help in vain and plunges into the sea. Georg Benda, Ariadne auf Naxos, bb. 803–16 Ex. 2 View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide Ariadne cries for help in vain and plunges into the sea. Georg Benda, Ariadne auf Naxos, bb. 803–16 This moment is key. While Charlton is concerned more generally with how the melodrama model constituting this section found its way into opera, others such as Ulrike Küster, Laurenz Lütteken, and Waeber have interpreted it, and by extension early melodrama more widely, as a manifestation of the sublime.20 In the mid-eighteenth century, two principal works addressed the sublime—characterized as ‘the paradoxical experience of being at once overwhelmed and exalted ’—as a philosophic–aesthetic theory.21 Throughout his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), Edmund Burke (1729–97) posits that while both the beautiful and the sublime produce pleasure, the sublime’s overwhelming terror is even more pleasurable because it is tied to the possibility of pain. Although Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) distinguishes between magnificent, noble, and terrifying categories of sublimity in his Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen (1764), this latter category closely resembles Burke’s conception of the sublime. Both identified the untamed power of nature, including darkness, mountains, storms, gloomy forests, and wild animals, as sources of sublime terror. Yet the problem that Burke and Kant faced was how to separate the sublime from its terrible source; things that evoke terror can simply be terrifying, after all. Their answer was to turn to representation, making the sublime a virtual experience: in this way one can at once be overwhelmed by and find pleasure in the sheer power of nature because the observer knows it is unable to cause harm. Thus, both Burke and Kant established the sublime as an aesthetic, one which could be represented in art, literature, poetry, theatre, and music. The sublime is especially characteristic of German melodrama of the 1770s, for both their poetry and music evoke the aesthetic.22 Taken on their own, these melodramatic texts are indicative of the Sturm und Drang, a German literary movement which forefronts extreme emotional turmoil and draws on the power of nature. The popularity of such proto-Romantic works as Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774) helped establish the sublime as a fashionable concept among Europe’s reading public.23 It is little surprise that when Ariadne premiered the following year, it also embraced this aesthetic, for, according to Küster, common melodramatic topoi, such as the terror of death, death as a release, darkness, storms, mountains, solitude, and revenge are indicative of sublime horror.24 Although the Sturm und Drang was once also considered a musical topic, musicologists have increasingly called into question its validity.25 Clive McClelland has recently proposed that the term ‘tempesta’ is more appropriate to describe music communicating violent storms, rage, panic, and madness, to name but a few.26 Storm scenes and their corresponding tempesta music had of course been employed in operas since the seventeenth century; but what set apart those found in Melodram of the mid-1770s was their ability to evoke the sublime through a combination of their Sturm und Drang text and tempesta music, upon which their plots depended. Indeed, according to Waeber, the sublime is slowly articulated throughout the course of a melodrama in part or entirely through music that suspends the narrative between reality and a dreamlike state. Melodrama, she argues, is the perfect mode of expressing situations where tangible drama gives way to intangible situations—darkness on stage reveals the darkness of the soul, the idyllic past becomes a terrible present.27 In short: early melodramas like Ariadne were tantamount to a transformation in which the beautiful yielded to the sublime throughout the duration of the spectacle. As Charlton would have it, such realizations of the melodramatic sublime were increasingly localized, extracted, and inserted into opera during the last two decades of the eighteenth century.28 In searching for the origins of this process, he turns to Paris and Edelmann’s Ariane of 1782, which he identifies as the first opera to embrace this melodramatic moment, better-known examples of which include Fidelio’s grave-digging scene and Der Freischütz’s Wolf’s Glen scene. But, as I shall demonstrate, the phenomena that Charlton recognized as occurring on French stages from the 1780s onward—the localization of melodramatic practices in opera—can also be found taking shape in the Holy Roman Empire only months after Ariadne’s premiere in 1775. Understanding the reasons why dramatists and composers focused melodramatic moments, as well as how they were realized on stage, offers fresh insight into music–text relations, generic hybridity, and the aesthetic nexus of melodrama, opera, and symphonic music in the late eighteenth century. Part reception study, part close examination, this article explores melodrama’s development in the years immediately following Ariadne’s premiere, c.1775–80, a period for which melodrama scholarship has hitherto had little to say. I demonstrate that despite its initial popularity, German Melodram had become problematic by 1780. Once considered a novel means of operatic reform, melodrama’s own peculiar succession of music and text—which had no accepted label at the time but is known today as melodramatic technique—had attracted serious criticism. By tracing the reception of Ariadne immediately after its premiere, I illustrate how critics continually denigrated the duodrama’s defining monologic text and music–text dynamics as confusing and boring. A movement ensued in the Holy Roman Empire which sought to reform the genre so as to make early Bendaian melodrama more entertaining, as they employed instrumental music only. As a result, dramatists and composers introduced into melodrama vocal music, which contemporaries considered aesthetically superior to instrumental music alone.29 By exploring Zelmor und Ermide (1779/c.1780) by Johann Karl Wezel (1747–1819) and Anton Zimmermann (1741–81), as well as Philon und Theone (1779) by Johann Ludwig Röllig (1754/55–1804) and Benda, I reveal that, although they maintained the emotional excess typical of the genre, reformists focused melodramatic technique and the sublime on specific moments in the plot to make room for song. In so doing, I illustrate that melodrama was pushed to the boundaries of opera and, in the process, helped enable instrumental music to take on a new ability to express the sublime without the aid of text and onstage action. By shedding much-needed light on works composed in the wake of critical reactions to Ariadne, my investigation not only reveals melodrama’s broader operatic and symphonic entanglements, but also complicates the definition of melodrama itself, a genre that some had once believed might even replace opera. melodrama: ‘it’s the latest fashion’ The author and diplomat Otto Heinrich von Gemmingen zu Hornberg (1755–1836) published Auch ein Melodram mit Chören und Tänzen untermischt: Der Tod der Dido in 1780. Like Benda’s most famous melodramas, this piece embraces a tragic classical subject. However, unlike other early melodramas, Gemmingen’s work is satire. Of course, not all satire is funny, but in the words of one contemporary reviewer: ‘He who reads this script without prejudice, belts out a boisterous laugh and cries, “here is a witty joke!”’30 The dramatist published his melodrama, as many did during the 1770s and 1780s, in the hope that it would find a composer, be set to music, and then staged. But Auch ein Melodram was never performed. In fact, it was never even set to music. Nevertheless, its text was influential, as the same Munich-based reviewer claimed: ‘since the appearance of this script, melodramas have more rarely been performed on our stage’.31 The work begins with a prologue that ridicules those who commissioned, authored, composed, performed, and consumed melodrama. It depicts an exchange between two poets and a count who wants to commission a piece to celebrate his birthday. The clueless patron considers an opera, but is concerned that such a large production would strain his resources. One poet then suggests a melodrama, since it requires only a few performers and, what is more, ‘the simpler and more inartistic the action, the better the piece’.32 This causes the count to recall a bizarre performance he attended when he was last in the city: ‘Every time someone pulled a face and really screamed, one fiddled; and at moments people came out and in unison lifted their right arm or left leg. Behind the theatre I saw the court scribe’s son, who sang with the rest [of them].’33 To this, the poet responds: ‘your excellence, that was a melodrama mixed with music, song, choruses, and dance. It’s the latest fashion.’34 He informs the count that he himself has already penned fifty-two such works and that the more improbable and confusing the material, the better.35 Upon agreeing on Dido’s death as a suitable topic, the count asks what more the poet requires, to which he responds: ‘just the normal ingredients of a melodrama: thunder, lightning, poison, revenge, a dagger, night, chorus, dance, graves, spirits, and floral crowns’.36 The Melodram that followed vacillates between satire and farce, ridiculing the hallmarks of the genre. Amidst instrumental interjections, Dido exclaims: ‘Gods—earth—chaos—nature—and what other counterbalancing worlds—can I invoke!’37 Shipwrecked in a storm, Aeneas appears and when Dido lunges to stab him, her temperament changes and she declares her love for him (Gemmingen explains to his readers that this may seem ridiculous if it were another genre, but it is completely normal for melodrama).38 Later, an unseen chorus chimes in and persuades Aeneas to abandon Dido. Much like Ariadne, Dido becomes aware that her love has fled, and she sinks in despair. She goes into a rage and when people approach to help her, they die in shock. Dido then grabs a torch, sets a makeshift prop palace ablaze, and jumps inside. The unseen chorus lays bare the moral of the story: ‘You old women have seen it, don’t take a young man. Otherwise who knows what can happen to you.’39 A ballet begins and the bystanders who died rise up and join in. The curtain falls. This text brings to mind two adages. The first is that imitation is the finest form of flattery. Melodrama had ‘made it’ as a generic innovation. Thanks to Ariadne, it was so popular and well known that by 1780 Gemmingen could ridicule the genre in a relatable manner. And Auch ein Melodram was not a one-off. It was among the first of a number of melodrama parodies, three of which specifically took aim at Ariadne around twenty years later. These included Friedrich Satzenhofen’s Die travestierte Ariadne auf Naxos, eine musikalische Laune (1798), Joachim Perinet’s Ariadne auf Naxos travestirt (1803), and August von Kotzebue’s Ariadne auf Naxos: Ein tragi-komisches Triodrama (1804).40 Satzenhofen composed new music to accompany his text, which Perinet’s version borrowed.41 Kotzebue, however, clarified that ‘if [his version] is to achieve its entire intended comic effect, someone must play Benda’s solemn music to it at the piano’.42 A fourth parody, Medea, ein travestirtes Melodrama (c.1800) by Paul Wranitzky, set in its sights Benda’s Medea. John Rice and Christoph-Hellmut Mahling have shown how Wranitzky provided his audiences with just enough of Benda’s music to give them a point of reference before digressing as the work continued.43 In a similar fashion to Auch ein Melodram, Wranitzky’s parody included vocal music. This led Rice to conclude: ‘although the title page of Wranitzky’s manuscript score preserves Benda’s generic term “melodrama”, the work that follows is in fact an opera’.44 Wranitzky’s parody was no opera, however. Much as Auch ein Melodram and other melodramas of the time (as I shall demonstrate), it lies somewhere between opera and early Bendaian melodrama that exclusively alternated and occasionally overlapped declamation and instrumental music. Such parodies illustrate not only the lasting significance of Ariadne and Medea on the stage, but also changing approaches to melodramatic practices. The second adage that pops into mind is that there is some truth behind every joke. The truth here is that within five years of Ariadne’s premiere, Gemmingen, and others, found the genre so problematic that he could satirize it in ways that audiences found amusing. He did so by ridiculing melodrama’s most characteristic elements: the separation of text from music, overly detailed tone-painting, and the contrasting emotional extremes of a forsaken woman. For instance, he derides alternating paratactic text and music right from the beginning, when Dido shouts for no apparent reason ‘counterbalancing worlds' amidst intervening instrumental music. In fact, the prologue’s poet comments precisely on this aspect of melodrama: The fools [composers] have thought until now that one must arrange the music according to the words. But this is a clear folly, since not even in a grand Italian opera does one think that. They must only pay attention to the principal words: lightning, thunder, death, love, darkness, and the like. For example, if I have my Dido say with the greatest agony ‘every joy has escaped me’, the music must not be sad, for the word ‘joy’ always includes a merry German dance.45 Through this comment, Gemmingen took aim at the excessive tone-painting characteristic of Bendaian melodramas. The poet’s claim that composing music to suit words is so stupid that not even the Italians do so suggests both melodrama’s troubled music–text relations as well as its inferior status in comparison to Italian opera. Similarly, the poet’s ‘principal words’ and ‘normal ingredients’ sum up melodrama’s sublime aesthetics in one sentence. And the ridiculousness of Auch ein Melodram combines these factors in a work that not only brings to life the poet’s ‘inartistic action’, but, considering their similar plots, also invites comparison to Ariadne auf Naxos. So while melodrama was very popular in the Empire’s public theatres, critics like Gemmingen believed that the genre was incapable of sustaining action because of a persistent routine of monologues interrupted by music. Gemmingen might have lampooned melodrama’s generic features, but its separation of music from emotive text was the very feature responsible for the genre’s novelty and initial popularity. Melodrama can be understood as a reaction to the perceived failure of opera that aimed to reform the relationship between text and music.46 By the 1750s, opera’s continuous singing was considered unintelligible and hollow, little more than a display of technical ability. In France, Rousseau sought to return meaning to vocal music by detaching text from music in his scène lyrique Pygmalion (1762; premiered 1770) so as to restore the predominance of the voice in music theatre.47 And when Pygmalion appeared on the Empire’s stages, it assuaged those, such as the followers of Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700–66), who believed that opera’s incomprehensible texts corrupted theatre’s didactic capacity.48 Yet by allowing text and music to speak independently of one another, melodrama simultaneously restored primacy to the voice and liberated instrumental music from a purely mimetic function in music theatre, for, in separating words and music, the new genre engaged with the emerging category of the ‘characteristic’.49 Consisting of tone-painting and expression, the doctrine of mimesis dominated aesthetic judgement throughout most of the eighteenth century. But by mid-century, tone-painting, like opera, had attracted significant criticism. Noting how composers imitated wind, thunder, and the ocean in musical notes alone, Johann Georg Sulzer (1720–79) believed such practices violated ‘the true spirit of music, which should not convey notions of inanimate objects, but [rather] express the sentiments of feeling’.50 In regard to Italian opera and vocal practices, Sulzer maintained that only the dominant emotion of the onstage character should be presented, which tone-painting alone obscured.51 Yet despite the perceived shortcomings of this technique, many composers continued to use it, because besides representing objective things it could also elicit emotions.52 Evoking such emotions was essential to characteristic music, which comprised a succession of Affekte or a principal emotion that made up the essence of a composition.53 Sulzer continued: [character entails painting] those emotions that stir our soul through specific sentiments, such as the tenderness of a calm pastoral scene[. This is only possible] when music is accompanied by poetry, by which the painting, whose effect is sensed by the ear, also presents itself to our imagination. … The poet remembers the most pleasurable feelings aroused by a storm, which had once disturbed him, and makes mention of these. But it is nonsensical for the composer to mention them with notes. … By all means, the composer must refrain from such childishness [tone-painting] except when he must truly be comical.54 Expression (character) was therefore paramount. Moreover, text was the element that elevated music to a fine art for Sulzer and others like Johann Jakob Engel (1741–1802), as without it they considered music (i.e. instrumental music) merely ‘pleasant-sounding noise’.55 To avoid creating only sound, music should, so Engel contended in his Über die musikalische Malerei (1780), realize only a single unifying character, otherwise it ran the risk of presenting too many, overly diverse, and contrasting emotions.56 This was especially important because, unlike the objective imitations of tone-painting, characteristic music depended upon the listener, who was free to construct meaning in music.57 In this way, the concept of character represented a pivot between naturalist and idealist aesthetics: while the former sought to explain the listener’s reactions to music, the latter concerned music’s ability to reflect a higher ideal. This was the aesthetic world in which German melodrama first arose. With its poetry and intervening orchestral interludes, early Bendaian melodrama not only comprised operatic reform, but also characteristic music, in that its words prescribed the meaning of the instrumental music.58 But this was not the only style of early melodrama. Indeed, composers and dramatists began experimenting with varying methods of setting melodrama texts immediately after Ariadne’s premiere. The Gothaische gelehrte Zeitung reported: Those who have felt boredom from the simple recitative and aggravation through the aria’s unavoidable incomprehensibility of the text, will yet find therein a great advantage, that here the actor can deliver his entire power in declamation [and] attaches the complete fire of his action … to the god who inspires him without consideration of the orchestra.59 At face value this positive opinion of Ariadne’s music–text interface could be interpreted as a reaction to the incomprehensibility of Italian opera. Yet, the correspondent’s position was also probably informed by a very different kind of melodrama that premiered in Gotha only a few weeks earlier. The lyric melodrama Polyxena was first staged at the Gotha court theatre on 7 April 1775.60 Although it is uncertain if this performance was the setting by Anton Schweitzer or that of Weimar Kapellmeister Ernst Wilhelm Wolf (1735–92), the work represents the first major stylistic divergence from earlier Melodramen.61 Both composers set Polyxena’s lyric prose entirely in music.62 This little-known early melodrama therefore illustrates that vocal music was a part of the genre from its beginnings, a genre that has often been defined as an absence, if not a renunciation, of singing.63 Yet by including recitative and aria, this type of melodrama lacked the characteristic technique that both the columnist for the Gothaische gelehrte Zeitung and audiences found so attractive.64 Indeed, having heard news of Benda’s works, the dramatist Heinrich Leopold Wagner (1747–79) impatiently waited to see a melodrama, which he described as ‘a completely new, not-yet-seen genre of music in the local region’.65 Following a performance of Medea in Frankfurt am Main, Wagner claimed that those who had not seen this type of music theatre could not conceive how well the music assisted the text, leading him to believe that similar works might fulfil the ever-increasing need for new pieces.66 But the melodramatic technique was more than a novel way of presenting sentiments through declamation, pantomime, and music. By placing poetry, gesture, and music on an equal footing, melodrama also provided instrumental music with a purpose for those like Sulzer and Engel who believed such music on its own was only noise. Although the ties of Ariadne, Polyxena, and Medea to the Gotha court might seem to suggest that melodrama was developed to suit elite tastes, it is worth noting that it was a public genre from the very beginning. The acting company of Abel Seyler, for which these works were composed, did indeed perform them at the Gotha palace theatre. Yet that is not to say that it was a court-financed Hoftheater. Duke Ernst II Ludwig of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1745–1804) merely permitted the company to use his otherwise vacant theatre from its arrival in 1774 until the autumn of 1775. Therefore, melodrama as fostered in Gotha was not intended to satisfy the Duke’s tastes, but rather those of the theatre-going—and paying—public (Medea was premiered at a public theatre in Leipzig). Yet despite its success and practicality as a genre for public (touring) theatres, melodrama remained a local phenomenon until the Duke founded a fully funded court theatre in late 1775.67 His decision to establish an exclusive Hoftheater was a significant turning point for melodrama. Although the Duke now subsidized a court theatre, he neither determined nor significantly shaped its musical repertory. This duty was reserved explicitly for Heinrich August Ottokar Reichard.68 To help inform his decisions, Reichard began editing the Theater-Kalender, the journal that transmitted the very first image of Brandes as Ariadne. The editor relied on a vast network of correspondents from across the Empire to deliver on his promise that the journal would comprise a space in which the latest theatrical developments could be announced in lieu of a central national theatre.69 Contributors submitted reports in such quantities that Reichard not only kept the journal going for twenty-five years, but he was also able to publish the Theater-Journal für Deutschland. This subsequent periodical contained reports on the latest imperial theatrical activities from 1777 until 1783. Reichard’s journals helped melodrama to reach new areas outside Gotha and Leipzig. Although the first volume of his Theater-Kalender (compiled in 1774) includes only a brief mention of Brandes’s ‘yet unpublished’ Ariadne auf Naxos, the Theater-Kalender of 1776 betrays far more information about the piece.70 Alongside the engraving of Brandes as Ariadne and Bretzner’s poem mentioned at the beginning of this article, the latter volume also contains an extended section dedicated to Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea entitled ‘Merkwürdige Zeitpunkte’.71 It reports that a new type of ‘Schauspiel’ premiered in Gotha on 27 January of the previous year—a development so noteworthy that it might cause a ‘beneficial revolution’ in music theatre and perhaps even displace opera from German stages.72 It was further reported that melodrama had not yet been performed in foreign theatres.73 But now that the Duke had his own permanent Hoftheater, Seyler’s actors, who were not employed by the new court theatre, were free to bring Ariadne and Medea to audiences further afield. For these reasons melodrama not only reached new centres, but it also began to undergo a period of development in the public press and on public stages. Esther Charlotte Brandes was one of those who left Gotha, as she was back on tour with the company. In Leipzig, Seyler’s actors approached the dramatist August Gottlieb Meißner (1753–1807) to write a melodrama that their new music director Christian Gottlob Neefe (1748–98) would set to music. The result was Sophonisbe (1776). In a departure from Benda’s models, Meißner chose to abandon mythological subjects altogether. Rather, his work tells the historical story of Sophonisba (235–203 bc), the Carthaginian queen who poisoned herself rather than be humiliated in a Roman triumph following Rome’s victory in the Second Punic War (218–201 bc). This change in subject matter was owing to the fact that Bendaian melodramas centred on introspective and paratactic exclamation rather than narration. Reacting to the monologic elements of Benda’s works, the dramatist was convinced that theatregoers who did not already know Ariadne’s and Medea’s stories stood in the parterre sympathetic to their emotions, but were unable to comprehend fully what was unfolding on stage.74 Audiences, he felt, were therefore left ‘in the dark until finally Ariadne herself clarifies [what is happening] towards the end of the piece’.75 He warned that it would be very wrong to conclude, like the editor of the Theater-Kalender, that melodramas would displace opera and Singspiel from German stages, for he was concerned that the genre was limited because dramatists would encounter difficulty finding a subject that contained sufficient action without dialogue.76 His answer was simply to add dialogue and include a spoken prologue that explained the story before his melodrama began. As for the music, Meißner and Neefe included a chorus in Sophonisbe’s penultimate scene, which, according to one reviewer, broke up the monotony caused by the unrelenting repetition of music and declamation.77 As this sentiment suggests, the qualities that made melodrama appealing to some were paradoxically the very same that attracted criticism and prompted cries for reform from others. ‘by god, be quiet orchestra, so that she can finally die!’: ariadne under attack In 1777, Reichard’s Theater-Journal für Deutschland featured three articles that discussed Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Neefe’s contribution ‘Ueber des Herrn Benda’s Arbeiten fürs deutsche Theater’ acknowledged that Rousseau first conceived the idea of melodrama, but that Benda was responsible for its success.78 The composer’s views help in part to explain Ariadne’s appeal: Without [this] becoming an enthusiastic panegyric I must say: that my complete soul possesses admiration and reverence as soon as I merely have a score of Benda’s before me or hear one of his works performed. His Ariadne—what glowing, highly aspiring imagination and abundant inventive talent! How everything [is] so deeply rethought! How everything [is] so deeply felt at heart! What knowledge of the most hidden mysteries of harmony! What penetrating melody! What a successful application of every instrument of the full orchestra! At times the music comes first, sometimes together with the declamation, other times after the declamation so as to prepare the passion and the consequential action arising therefrom, to support and enhance, or carry on if the actor or the actress is no longer able to express the inner drive themselves. How so new and yet so genuine it all is! So varied, and yet so consistent!79 While these words may not have constituted an ‘enthusiastic panegyric’ in Neefe’s mind, he could hardly have been more enthusiastic about the work. His praise of Ariadne notwithstanding, not all were so convinced of melodrama’s future. The second article dealt with French theatre. Here, the anonymous author similarly noted how Rousseau’s Pygmalion and Benda’s Ariadne caused a ‘noteworthy revolution’ in music drama.80 However, the author claimed that Pygmalion had little effect on France’s leading stages. Parisians laughed at Galatée (the actor portraying this statue had to stand perfectly still for nearly thirty minutes), and he personally found the piece neither tragic, comic, nor lyric.81 Thus, the author considered melodrama a failure in France, and, according to the opinion of a famous French actor who read Ariadne, its success would likewise soon come to an end in the Empire.82 Benda defended melodrama—or at least Ariadne—in the journal’s next issue. He dismissed this French report as ludicrous. The Gotha Kapellmeister suggested that, before passing judgement, the actor should have considered how audiences in Gotha, Leipzig, Dresden, and Hamburg received ‘the first German duodrama, Ariadne’, with acclaim.83 Furthermore, he noted that the work had already been performed thirty times in Berlin alone.84 And it was not only German audiences that enjoyed Ariadne: Benda stated that French theatregoers in the Empire also overwhelmingly approved of the piece, even if he thought it was ‘despicably butchered’ in Berlin’s French theatre.85 Citing the success of the latest melodrama, Cephalus und Procris (1777) by Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752–1814) in Hamburg, Benda dismissed outright the opinion of the French actor and insisted that Melodram would have as long a life as any other dramatic genre.86 Melodrama faced criticism not only from those abroad, but also from those at home. Ariadne was the target of their attacks. This was in part because the piece had been made widely available in transcriptions by 1778. Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749–1818) reviewed keyboard versions of Ariadne and Medea printed by the Leipzig publisher Engelhard Benjamin Schwickert (1741–1825) in the Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek the following year.87 Despite claiming that these pieces were ‘certainly well known already’, Forkel considered melodrama so new that he felt compelled to explain how it differed from traditional musical theatre.88 He celebrated Benda’s works as ‘the first endeavours in a completely new genre’, labelled them ‘true masterworks’, and pointed out that because they alternated declaimed text with instrumental music they had two principal advantages over opera: music and poetry were presented on an equal plane, and in this way they stimulated ideas and sentiments evenly.89 His approval stops there. Acknowledging those who hoped melodrama (which he refers to only as ‘the new genre’) would replace opera, he asserted that the sacrifice would be too great. Forkel believed that melodramatic music only exhibited a portion of its total power in supporting text. ‘The listener’, the reviewer suggested, ‘maintains the advantage of having a perpetual guide in the text, which can always tell him what the musical passages represent.’90 In this way, Forkel recognized the advantage of the melodramatic technique as an ingenious but limited crutch for inexperienced listeners, concluding that the separation of music from poetry is most beneficial for audiences who are otherwise unable to enjoy them in their ‘true union’ (i.e. opera seria).91 Just how to achieve a closer alliance between melodrama and established genres like opera and Singspiel became a common topic among dramatists of the period. In 1778, Johann Friedrich Schink (1755–1835) published ‘Ueber das musikalische Duodrama, mit und ohne Gesang’, which focused on how melodramatic practices could be reformed. Employing Ariadne as a point of departure and echoing Meißner’s earlier gripes, the Vienna-based dramatist proclaimed that Benda’s music was worthless because it was not supported by action. On this ground, he considered the piece more cantata than drama and dismissed it as an unsuitable model for future Melodramen.92 In an unwittingly prophetic statement, Schink feared that those who had seen Ariadne believed that all melodramas were similar in tone and style. Rather, he stressed that this was not the case, arguing that these works could be comic, tragic, sentimental, ridiculous, and even farcical.93 Such variety extended to music. Again citing Ariadne, Schink warned that any melodrama—mono- or duodrama—would fail if the action were not properly maintained, no matter how beautiful the music.94 Significantly, he states these works could comprise instrumental and vocal music. While simple and accompanied recitative produced an equally bad effect, the dramatist most ardently disapproved of bravura aria, which he suggested ‘could well be left to the Italians’.95 Instead, Schink advocated simple songs, such as those found in the Singspiele of Johann Adam Hiller (1728–1804). He practised what he preached. Schink not only embraced a diversity of mythological, contemporary, comic, and exotic topics, but also avoided coloratura aria in his duodramas Orpheus und Euridice, Werther und Lotte, Doctor Faust, and Inkle und Yariko.96 Set by Friedrich Wilhelm Rust (1739–96), Inkle und Yariko (1777), for example, includes a simple lament at an emotional climax in the drama.97 Such songs are far more appropriate than Italian aria, because their words ‘come from the heart and must also fill the heart, not the ear’.98 For this reason, bravura arias, like instrumental music alone, belonged in the concert hall rather than in the theatre. Indeed, Schink’s estimation that Italianate aria cannot elicit emotion is analogous to Sulzer’s belief that instrumental music on its own is incapable of engaging the heart. Reformed melodrama, however, was at once mono- and dialogic, comprising a genre in which declamation and instrumental as well as vocal music could have equal effect. Schink and Meißner were not the only dramatists who valued Ariadne, yet refused to accept it as a model for future melodramas. When the then-popular author and philosopher Johann Karl Wezel first saw Ariadne, he too found Benda’s music compelling, but unable to compensate for the monotonous text.99 The philosopher argued that, because of its lack of dialogue, the piece could not conceal the boredom and repetitious nature of the genre, even if he had admired Benda’s music.100 His approval of the music notwithstanding, Wezel ultimately criticized how Benda set Ariadne. He believed that the music disrupted the drama—that the longer it lasted, the more it became ‘mere tones’ (i.e. meaningless instrumental music).101 Every time he saw Ariadne performed, Wezel found himself thinking ‘by God, be quiet orchestra, so that she can finally die!’.102 His frustration with Ariadne’s persistent instrumental interjections inspired him to position melodrama more precisely as a bridge that could span the chasm between completely spoken theatre and Singspiel.103 In so doing, the dramatist sought to make melodrama more entertaining by enhancing its musico-dramatic qualities, rather than replacing Italian opera outright, as some hoped the new genre might.104 Wezel laid out his ideas in the preface to his musikalisches Schauspiel Zelmor und Ermide (1779). Action was paramount; he suggested that melodramatic subjects be taken from the supernatural world or from a part of history, as these realms allow for a wider range of emotions than stories based on everyday life, which are best for spoken theatre.105 It appears that like Engel, who would later warn against including too many unrelated emotions, Wezel was also concerned that presenting a variety of disorganized emotions might obscure the work’s unifying character. To guard against this, he devised a hierarchy of how sentiments should be set to music. This ordering comprised: (1) prose text without music for dialogue and narration; (2) prose text with accompanied recitative-like music (i.e. melodrama) for the work’s primary and secondary emotions when they need to be emphasized; (3) versified text set as accompanied recitative for when the emotion rises high above the principal tone; and (4) versified text set in song for exceptional expressions of emotion.106 Wezel also believed that these songs should be nothing more than a melodic expression of the text and therefore that the coloratura aria and the excessive tone-painting associated with it had no place on German stages. In melodramatic moments, Wezel suggested, the music must only occur in breaks in the declamation and should last only as long as the pause would be if there were no music at all. He recognized that these short musical phrases were common in Bendaian melodrama; but whereas the composer of Ariadne ‘painted merely the single picture or idea’ expressed at that moment, he argued that the music should provide a glimpse of the entire monologue.107 In other words: melodramatic music should not merely tone-paint, it should be characteristic. The reception of early melodrama sketched here and especially in the preface to Zelmor und Ermide demonstrates changing trends in melodramatic aesthetics. While valued, Ariadne incited and was indeed the focus of critical attacks on the young genre. Taken together, this discourse can be interpreted as a melodramatic reform movement, one that has hitherto attracted little attention in scholarship. The common factor across reform melodramas is that they incorporate vocal music so as to lessen the monotony caused by the incessant and nearly exclusive repetition of declaimed text, gesture, and music found in melodramas such as Ariadne. To make room for song, reformists localized the use of the melodramatic technique. Wezel went a step further and relegated such practices to a subordinate role within the drama. His insistence that melodramas comprise a wide range of emotions suggests that, for contemporaries, the melodramatic technique that has come to define the German tradition of melodrama was not the determining aspect of the genre. Instead, emotional range and a varied spectrum of expressivity, as identified in the French tradition, was crucial in understanding the generic label. And by including spoken dialogue, song, melodramatic technique, and accompanied recitative, Wezel proposed to tear apart the Ariadne model and shift the genre to the nexus between Singspiel, melodrama, and Italian opera by incorporating key features from each. Nevertheless, he was careful to preserve melodrama’s sublime character. Investigating how he put his plan into action in Zelmor und Ermide illustrates more clearly how he focuses the melodramatic sublime in this mixed-genre work. wezel and zimmermann’s zelmor und ermide (1779/C.1780) Wezel’s Zelmor und Ermide was an intellectual exercise in how melodrama might be successfully reformed, yet it was one that its author hoped would also attract a composer. Unlike Gemmingen’s Auch ein Melodram, Wezel’s text succeeded in this aim. In fact, the text was set by no fewer than three musicians: Anton Zimmermann, Johann Lasser (1751–1805), and Franz Sebastian Haindl (1727–1812).108 These composers were not left entirely to their own devices, however, as Wezel went so far as to note how each section should ideally be composed according to his hierarchy of sentiments. Although their work may have been performed on additional occasions, performances of these settings were recorded in Munich in 1782, Brno in 1783, and Vienna in 1794.109 Only Zimmermann’s version has been found.110 Following a lengthy overture, the work begins as the shepherd Zelmor arrives at the palace of Xarinim, a sorcerer who has abducted the beautiful Ermide. Zelmor expresses in melodrama his desire to find his beloved and sings a lament in despair. Suddenly, an offstage choir of spirits assures him that his patience and courage will be rewarded. Empowered by these disembodied voices, Zelmor enters the palace. There, Xarinim hatches a plan to destroy Zelmor. The shepherd sings a romance explaining how he and Ermide fell in love, and a captivated Xarinim promises to reunite the lovers under a set of conditions: Zelmor will be able to see and speak to Ermide, who remains under a spell that renders her mute. If the shepherd attempts to embrace her, Xarinim will conjure up a storm and Ermide will vanish. Zelmor is shocked, but the choir of spirits repeats its reassuring message. Xarinim leads Zelmor to Ermide. Seeing her is too much to handle and Zelmor runs to his beloved. A storm erupts, Ermide disappears, and Zelmor is transported to a gloomy forest. He is awestruck and expresses his distress in recitative. But just as the shepherd collapses in hopelessness, the music gradually becomes more ‘bold’ and ‘resolute’, empowering him once more (expressed in melodrama).111 Although Xarinim appears and chides the shepherd in dialogue for his folly, he agrees to give him a second chance. Now Zelmor will only hear Ermide; if he looks at her, she will be lost to him forever. Convinced Zelmor no longer loves her, Ermide sings in anguish. Her song is interrupted by the reassuring spirits. In his only melodramatic moment, Xarinim senses the presence of the fairy queen Arimaxa and succumbs to her enchanted powers. Wind music accompanies Arimaxa’s descent from the clouds, and she frees Ermide. Arimaxa explains in dialogue that she has rewarded them for their courage and persistence as foretold by the spirits. Under the accompaniment of majestic music, Zelmor and Ermide appear in a great hall and take their place on a throne while Xarinim is dragged away in chains. The piece ends in a celebratory duet and chorus declaring the triumph of love. Wezel clearly repositions melodramatic practices in Zelmor und Ermide. Rather than embracing contemplative monologues interrupted by music for the drama’s entirety, he turns to dialogue to drive the action. In so doing, Wezel positions melodramatic technique in a subordinate role, just below song and recitative. Although such interjections are still used throughout most of the work, it is a far cry from the Ariadne model. This is not only observable in the integration of vocal music, but also in the size and increased role of the orchestra. Much as in Chelard’s orchestration in Macbeth, Zimmermann’s use of trombones is particularly striking.112 Although he includes a choir of trombones occasionally throughout the work, Zimmermann most consistently employs this instrument during moments where music articulates the supernatural, such as the unknown, empowering forces projected visually through Zelmor’s pantomime and aurally by the disembodied chorus. In choosing to score trombones as accompaniment to these spirits—not to mention the invisible power that they bestow on Zelmor—Zimmermann borrowed ombra elements more commonly found in operas containing supernatural scenes. For instance, this topos manifests itself when Zelmor realizes that Ermide has been put under a spell and is overcome by shock. Here, the music is a near-textbook example of the ombra style, as it includes repeated rhythms, chromaticism, sudden and extreme changes in dynamics, and harrowing trombones in a minor key and slow tempo (Ex. 3).113 As McClelland has argued, although they are not equivalent, it is nevertheless possible to interpret ombra as a musical manifestation of sublime horror.114 Ex. 3 View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide ‘Zelmor steht mit versteinerter Niederschlagenheit da.’ [Zelmor realizes Ermide has been entranced by Xarinim]. Anton Zimmermann, Zelmor und Ermide, bb. 7–14 Ex. 3 View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide ‘Zelmor steht mit versteinerter Niederschlagenheit da.’ [Zelmor realizes Ermide has been entranced by Xarinim]. Anton Zimmermann, Zelmor und Ermide, bb. 7–14 Wezel and Zimmermann most clearly evoke sublime terror during the storm episode, just as Ermide vanishes because Zelmor embraced her. His hope of regaining her gives way to horror as the stage transforms from a beautiful palace to a dark wilderness. While Küstler interprets the music of this scene as an antecedent to comparable depictions in Haydn’s Die Schöpfung (1798) and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (1808), I posit this moment as the very type of through-composed scene that Charlton has labelled the melodrama model.115 The stage directions clarify the onstage events: With these words [oh Ermide!] he flies to her with open arms; as he goes to wrap his arms around her, thunder, lightning, and wind arise; night surrounds Ermide; Zelmor sinks back dazed. The night grows thicker, the palace vanishes with Ermide and a gloomy forest appears. At the same moment as the storm, the music begins raging and roaring. Zelmor lies stunned in the bleakest forest. The musical storm subsides in an extinguishing piano, and continues in a solemn Grave with Zelmor’s awakening. He is astonished; he looks shivering around himself, becomes conscious of his loss, and sinks back in despair.116 Zimmermann firmly establishes the tonic (C major) and dominant before his musical tempest erupts in the parallel minor. Semiquaver triplets drive the storm rhythmically in the lower voices, while the winds bolster the C minor harmony and the first violins play descending arpeggios in a slower dotted-minim, crotchet motion. The full tempest erupts when the palace and Ermide disappear: the triplets yield abruptly to semiquavers, the lower voices sound quickly rising and falling septuplets and quintuplets, the flutes and oboes play dovetailing descending scalar runs, and the trombone choir joins the orchestra. This music circles harmonically through F minor, B flat major, C minor, and C major before landing back in F minor. As the storm intensifies, the music eventually becomes even more harmonically unstable, spiralling as it does rapidly from F minor to G major by way of dominant-seventh and diminished harmonies. The comfort of G major is only fleeting; the continuous semiquaver rhythmic current propels the listener through other related keys. Zimmermann further marks this music liberally with ‘Blitz’, ‘Donner’, and ‘Sturm’.117 While Küster points out that such markings are clearly assigned to certain musical figures, I would take this a step further to argue that they are instructions to the theatre’s machinists and technicians.118 The musical figures are frequently repeated: if these labels merely indicate what the music represents, there is little reason to mark them each time they appear. What is more, Zimmermann includes these indicators at irregular intervals and under different musical figures, which become more frequent as the intensity of the storm grows.119 It seems rather more likely that Zimmerman was noting when he wanted stage effects to be seen and heard rather than merely indicating what natural phenomena the tone-painting suggested. Thus, accompanying the orchestra’s musical depiction of the storm, audiences heard wind and thunderclaps; visually they saw the stage scenery transform, Zelmor perform an extended pantomime, the theatre darken, and lightning flash across the stage (through the use of gunpowder). These effects worked in tandem with the music to increase the dramatic spectacle of this awesome moment (for the opening of this music, see Ex. 4). Ex. 4 View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide ‘Bey diesen Worten fliegt er mit offnen Armen auf sie zu’ [Storm scene]. Anton Zimmermann, Zelmor und Ermide, bb. 1–14 Ex. 4 View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide ‘Bey diesen Worten fliegt er mit offnen Armen auf sie zu’ [Storm scene]. Anton Zimmermann, Zelmor und Ermide, bb. 1–14 Now firmly back in G major, the tumult of this spectacle proceeds attacca into the work’s only recitative. Here, Zelmor reflects on what has happened in ‘astonishment’, which according to Burke is the highest degree of the sublime.120 Following Wezel’s directions, Zimmermann marks this moment when emotion rose ‘high above the principal tone’ by bringing text and music together, not as spoken text set over music as Benda had done at the conclusion of Ariadne, but rather as recitative. His decision to do so heightened the impact of this scene. According to the dramatist’s scheme, expressions of exceptional emotions should be communicated in song. Zelmor and Ermide each sing one solo song, coming together in a joyful duet with chorus at the conclusion of the piece. That Zelmor’s reflection after the physical and psychological turmoil of the storm is in accompanied recitative distinguishes this sublime moment from others where the drama depicts otherwise intense characters through song. For this storm scene, Zimmermann clearly disregarded Wezel’s instruction that the music should only last as long as the pantomime required. At roughly eighty-eight bars, this is, next to the overture (198 bars), by far the most expansive uninterrupted instrumental music within the drama, extending well beyond the time needed to execute the pantomime and change of scene. By ignoring Wezel and composing an extended section of through-composed instrumental music, Zimmermann achieved more than simply tone-painting the natural sounds of a storm or even the emotional turmoil of the psyche: he was able to fashion instrumental music into a narrative force that propelled the action forward and in the process provided the audience with sufficient time to construct this music’s sublime character. Indeed, during this moment the orchestra assumed a narrative capacity that worked in combination with pantomime and technology to enhance the dramatic events unfolding visually on stage and elicit a sublime response. In Charlton’s words, ‘storms, thanks to orchestra and stagecraft, made the “sublime” available’.121 By ‘generating the illusion of realistic, controlled sequences perceived to run in “real time”’, this scene is an example of the very melodrama model that he so compellingly identifies in subsequent French opera.122 röllig and benda’s philon und theone (1779) The year 1779 also marked Georg Benda’s return to melodrama after a four-year hiatus. Having resigned his position as Kapellmeister in Gotha in 1778, Benda embarked on a tour of the Empire designed to capitalize on the fame he had acquired through Ariadne. While on this journey, he composed his little-known Philon und Theone, a reform melodrama that contains a number of similarities to Zelmor und Ermide.123 Yet despite the publication of a broadside announcing Philon und Theone’s upcoming premiere, it appears that the work was never performed as Benda composed it.124 Retaining most of his music, a revised version was performed in Prague under the title Almansor und Nadine in 1791.125 Nevertheless, Philon und Theone reveals how the composer of Ariadne abandoned the archetypal style of melodrama to embrace the latest developments in melodrama aesthetics for his final contribution to the genre he had helped establish throughout Europe. The court customs officer and music collector Michael Bartenschlag related the story behind the work’s genesis as told to him by the glass harmonica virtuoso Johann Ludwig Röllig.126 In early 1779, Benda arrived in Vienna with the hope of becoming the musical director of Emperor Joseph II’s new National-Singspiel. Ariadne’s earlier triumph there led to a performance of Medea, which had not yet been heard in the city. The Weimar councillor Johann Friedrich Schmidt, with whom Benda was residing while in the city, attested to the work’s success with Viennese audiences.127 In turn, the erstwhile Kapellmeister was then offered a commission to write new ‘Opernmusik for the Kärntnertortheater’, which he accepted under the condition that the ‘scene’ be something that he had already composed.128 This piece may have been his German-language setting of Rousseau’s Pygmalion, which Schmidt reported as complete on 10 February 1779.129 Whatever the work, Röllig claimed that it was either ill-suited for Viennese audiences or that intrigue worked against Benda, as it was unsuccessful.130 As a result, Benda’s finances began dwindling to the extent that he lacked the funds to depart for Berlin. The musician turned to Röllig, who lent him the money required to travel and suggested that the renowned composer repay him by setting Philon und Theone, a melodrama he was working on that featured a harmonica.131 Acknowledging audiences’ mixed opinions of the genre, the harmonica virtuoso hoped to placate those who felt that (instrumental) music served no purpose in such works by bringing melodrama closer to serious opera so as to make it more entertaining, much as Wezel had attempted in Zelmor und Ermide.132 To do so, he employed choruses to frame Philon und Theone and incorporated the harmonica into its action.133 The work begins with an instrumental introduction during which a tempest separates the lovers Philon and Theone. This opening leads into a chorus of spirits, who assure Theone that the gods will protect her despite the dangers she faces. Meanwhile, the shipwrecked Philon washes ashore and contemplates his fate without Theone in a characteristically paratactic and sensationalized melodrama. Unaware if Theone survived the storm, Philon vows to find her. The central section of the work unfolds as a chorus that reassures Philon and Theone that patience and courage will prevail; a melodrama in which Philon beholds an apparition of Theone that convinces him that she is on the island; a chorus repeating its earlier message; a vocal solo, during which Theone pleads with the gods to return her to Philon; and the chorus which concludes the section. Now convinced Theone is somewhere on the island, Philon pleads with the gods to lead him to Theone in melodrama. Soon after a harmonica is heard, which Philon immediately associates with the heavenly voice of his beloved, he descends into madness. The earth opens below him, and, standing at the abyss, monsters harass him. A bright light unexpectedly extinguishes the darkness, and Philon beholds Theone standing before him with open arms. The work concludes as he rushes to join her in Elysium, while the spirits rejoice and proclaim that the gods protected and reunited the lovers. Much as with Zelmor und Ermide, Philon und Theone includes not only vocal music, but also a localized sublime moment. Right from the very beginning, the orchestra assumes a narrative role to portray in through-composed characteristic music the storm that separates the lovers and maroons Philon on the island. Benda depicts this tempest and its tumultuous winds and waves as a D minor Allegro with continuously rising and falling passages that contain sudden extremes in dynamics and quickly ascending scalar runs, music which he would later incorporate into the opening of his popular Singspiel Romeo und Julie (1776) when he revised it for the Mannheim stage (see Ex. 5). Similarly, portions of the music heard during melodramatic sections were taken from his Pygmalion, a work he had finished only weeks earlier. It seems somewhat fitting that Benda would later reuse music from Philon and Theone in one of his most successful Singspiele, and borrowed music from his latest melodrama to complete it, for it was part opera, part melodrama. Ex. 5 View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide Introduction. Georg Benda, Philon und Theone, bb. 22–9 Ex. 5 View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide Introduction. Georg Benda, Philon und Theone, bb. 22–9 The music of the shipwreck sets the plot in motion; that of Theone’s voice—represented by the harmonica—brings it to its climax. The absence of stage directions makes it difficult to determine exactly what happens once Philon hears these ethereal tones, which serve as the catalyst for his madness. He cries: I’ll depart this labyrinth of despair. — Look! How the earth is torn apart under me, — as my steps impend doom! — Around me a chain of abysses! — Armies of monsters rage at me — Here! — Here! — They’re engulfing me! — What sudden light shatters this darkness? — Heavenly figures! — Also you Theone, you also appear to me again with open arms! — Your lovely image awakens, that I shall follow you! — To you in the sojourn of shades, in Elysium — I’m hurrying.134 His deteriorating sense of reality is typical, though not the rule, for melodrama of the period. It is indeed possible that the events Philon describes could all occur his mind—the opening of the earth, the armies of monsters, and Theone’s appearance among other spirits might simply be imagined. Just as Ariadne plunges into the sea as a means of escape, so too does the delirious Philon take his own life by jumping into a precipice on the island. Alternatively, these events may not have been confined to Philon’s imagination, but could have been realized on stage. As Philon begins to lose grasp of reality, the gods intervene: they first open the earth before Philon and then present Theone to him in a flash of light. With the help of the gods and as foretold by the spirits, Philon jumps into the abyss so as to be with Theone, who did not survive the tempest and shipwreck. Whatever Röllig and Benda’s intentions, it appears that Philon ends his life in this world to be reunited with Theone in the next. That the harmonica’s ghostly tones ring out during a section of melodrama is no coincidence. Like the trombones used to mark the supernatural and sublime elements in Zimmermann’s melodrama, Benda’s harmonica is a signifier of the otherworldly. In one of the earliest German-language descriptions of the instrument, the author suggests ‘it would be good to use in the theatre, if one intends to imitate a heavenly music of angels or in the Elysian fields’.135 Considering that the melodrama concludes with Philon joining Theone in Elysium, this was precisely the context in which Benda and Röllig employed the harmonica. Moreover, the harmonica was the ideal instrument to signify both Theone’s heavenly, disembodied voice and Philon’s cognitive deterioration, for contemporaries associated it closely with the supernatural, the female voice, and madness.136 Rather than notating this music in the score, Benda merely indicated when the harmonica should sound.137 Nevertheless, a later emendation—perhaps by Röllig or even Benda himself—in the margin of the autograph’s final page includes an eight-bar phrase for harmonica (Pl. 3).138 Pl. 3 View largeDownload slide Music for glass harmonica written in the margin of Philon und Theone’s final page. A-Wn Mus.Hs. 18521, fo. 51v Pl. 3 View largeDownload slide Music for glass harmonica written in the margin of Philon und Theone’s final page. A-Wn Mus.Hs. 18521, fo. 51v Though much shorter than the storm music heard at the beginning of the melodrama (not to mention the storm scene in Zelmor und Ermide), this moment is just as effective in eliciting the sublime associated with the supernatural. While the simple antecedent–consequent phrase does little in the way of tone-painting or even establishing character, the harmonica’s timbre alone was sufficient to set the imagination in motion. Just as it would for Romantic writers such as E. T. A. Hoffmann, who would later describe the instrument as ‘the sublime voice of the ethereal, superhuman realms’, so too did the harmonica occupy a special place in the minds of eighteenth-century audiences.139 As Annette Richards would have it: in appearing to distil the pure essence of music the glass harmonica seemed to access higher truths, more telling even than the human voice, bypassing words as it spoke directly to the heart, or soul. Its music was closely associated with the most flexible of instruments, the human voice, but paradoxically it also transcended humanity altogether, evoking instead superhuman realms—the after-life, heaven, or, more darkly, a frightening underworld realm of ghosts and the undead.140 Thus, this music accomplished in eight bars what Zimmerman’s storm did in eighty-eight: it invited audiences to experience the sublime. Zelmor und Ermide and Philon und Theone share similar features other than their use of vocal music, localization of melodramatic practices and sublime moments, and inclusion of instruments associated with the uncanny. Both unfold in the spirit world rather than in the realm of mythology. The melodramas incorporate choruses that deliver a suspiciously similar message: that ‘courage and patience’ (Geduld und Mut) will prevail.141 They both forego the typical female protagonists for male leads (Philon und Theone portrays a male—rather than the archetypal female—character who goes mad). As with Orpheus and Eurydice, Zelmor seeks Ermide while Philon searches for Theone, who are all tested by a series of supernatural trials. Rather than the tragic conclusion typical of other early melodramas, both reform works end happily, as the pairs of lovers are reunited in the end. Given the shared orphic qualities of these pieces, it is possible that they were themselves inspired by Gluck’s reform opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). Why the dramatists did not use the Orpheus myth itself is unclear. Schink had earlier written a duodrama on the subject, so it is possible that it had simply been done already. But the Orpheus-like plots employed in Zelmor und Ermide and Philon und Theone may have been a deliberate choice to help make melodrama appear more operatic—that was, after all, Wezel’s and Röllig’s motivation behind creating their works. Following opera’s lead, these dramatists may have chosen the Orpheus myth as the foundation upon which their reform melodramas would be set, marking the beginning of a new era for a contentious genre. The works examined here reveal that German Melodram in the late 1770s was stylistically more complex than a series of paratactic monologues interrupted by instrumental music. Immediately following the premiere of Ariadne auf Naxos, dramatists and composers sought to adapt the melodramatic technique to make way for dialogue, song, and chorus. In so doing, they reintroduced into melodrama the very same musical–theatrical practices that critics first believed—and some hoped—it might replace: aria and recitative. Nevertheless, Zelmor und Ermide and Philon und Theone preserve the typical matrix of aesthetic qualities that impart a sense of the sublime. Maintaining melodrama’s emotional excess and music–text interface, not only did these pieces focus the practice of alternating music and declamation, but they also concentrated their sublime moments. Together with the critical reception of Ariadne, such works illustrate how, leading up to 1780, melodrama’s aesthetic pendulum was reaching its peak and began swinging back towards opera and Singspiel. While reform melodramas may not denote the end of melodrama as an autonomous genre, they do help to explain how its defining features were slowly broken down. reform melodrama as an aesthetic nexus Despite the efforts of reformists, many continued to find melodrama problematic. By 1788, the genre’s erstwhile selling point, the separation of music from text, led the philosopher Johann August Eberhard (1739–1809) to condemn it as ‘aesthetically impossible’.142 Unsurprisingly, it was during this very period that the qualities defining a genre now situated even more precariously between vocal and instrumental music were increasingly claimed by both. Melodrama’s trademark technique and characteristic sublime moments continued to be concentrated in plots and were gradually embraced by dramatists and composers who set melodramatic scenes in their operas; for example, Neefe’s Adelheid von Veltheim (1781), André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry’s Richard Cœur-de-lion (1785), Peter von Winter’s Das unterbrochene Opferfest (1796), Étienne Méhul’s Ariodant (1799), Luigi Cherubini’s Les deux journées (1800), Wenzel Müller’s Der eiserne Mann (1801), Beethoven’s Leonore/Fidelio (1805, 1806, and 1814), Joseph Schuster’s Konrad von Riesenburg (1806), and Joseph Weigl’s Die Schweizer Familie (1809), to name but a few, all include melodramatic moments. Such scenes found lasting success in episodes for which composers especially needed to impart to audiences instances of emotional extremes, the supernatural, and sublime horror. As melodramatic practices found a new home in opera and Singspiel, the instrumental music that had worked in tandem with declamation and onstage spectacle started to be perceived differently. Due in part to a philosophical shift away from naturalism and towards idealism, no longer was instrumental music alone considered without purpose and meaning, as Sulzer and Engel had once believed.143 The notion of character in music was at the centre of this paradigm shift. As Matthew Pritchard suggests, it was the imaginative freedom to construct character that at once prompted composers to go further than just mimicking sentiments of the text and allowed listeners to relate captivating moments to one another, giving pieces their greatest aesthetic value.144 Far from being ‘nonsensical’ as Sulzer once contended, depictions of storms in music assumed a new potential. Empowered by idealism, concentrated sublime moments expressed in the instrumental music of reform melodrama—whether supernatural storms or a disembodied voice from the beyond—did more than merely tone-paint or express an Affekt. Rather, they invited audiences to experience something ‘that is not merely literal (e.g., thunder, birdcalls) and more than merely generic (e.g., anger, tenderness, grief)’: now they could go beyond the onstage action and experience a higher form of reality residing in the ineffable and infinite.145 Melodrama, the music of which contemporaries associated with the characteristic, thus paved the way for symphonic music, which would soon emerge as an autonomous genre comprising a power all its own to articulate the sublime without the aid of text and stage action. It is little surprise that the emerging category of characteristic symphonies that suggested pastoral idylls and military action grew increasingly popular during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.146 Indeed, such characteristic pieces—heroic battle symphonies above all others—laid the aesthetic foundations for later symphonic works that now occupy central positions in the Western musical canon, including Beethoven’s third and fifth symphonies.147 The years immediately following the premiere of Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos are crucial to understanding not only how melodramatic moments began making their way into opera, but also how instrumental music started to emerge as the most valued musical genre. Ariadne’s potent mix of emotive theatrics and instrumental music transcended Sturm und Drang literature and tempesta music: at the centre of both resided the sublime. And melodrama was more than a mere aesthetic experiment. Its novelty as operatic reform and practicality—remember, the handful of actors needed to stage Ariadne did not need to be singers—ensured its success and popularity among small and large theatres as well as amateur and professional actors alike. Indeed, it is not for nothing that performances of Ariadne across Europe extended well into the nineteenth century at a time when most other works might remain in repertories for a few years at most. But while Ariadne’s triumph in the late eighteenth century has led scholars to consider it the paradigmatic melodrama today, it has also obscured contemporary criticism that posited Benda’s work as only a starting point. And because Ariadne consists of little more than declaimed text that alternates with instrumental music, it is much easier to understand this style of melodrama as the archetype of an autonomous genre. But just after Ariadne’s premiere, melodrama composers began embracing vocal music, thus pushing melodrama’s generic boundaries ever closer to more established genres of music theatre. On the one hand, this reform movement forces reconsideration of the prevailing definition of melodrama—as a genre devoid of vocal music—or at least recognition of a mixed-genre variant located between early Bendaian melodrama and opera. On the other hand, it complicates perceptions of the melodrama model, including the intellectual and cultural contexts in which it first took shape. Well before Edelmann’s Ariane was produced in 1782, German intellectuals contemplated how to co-opt melodrama’s best features to the benefit of better-established genres of music theatre. Their suggestions were put into practice by composers like Neefe, Rust, Zimmermann, and even Benda himself, who turned to vocal music and concentrated scenes that combined through-composed music with pantomime and dramatic events at key junctures in the story to elicit the sublime. During these moments, instrumental music went beyond a purely mimetic function to assume a descriptive capacity that allowed audiences to imagine events in real time, which would then often yield to vocal music. By more closely examining the development of such localized scenes, we may better understand moments of the melodramatic sublime not only as the means through which melodrama as an autonomous genre was subsumed into opera, but also as a significant aesthetic intersection between operatic and symphonic music. But to do this, we need to look past Ariadne’s legacy and to the works its criticism inspired. I would like to thank Barbara Babić, Sarah Hibberd, Matthew Pritchard, Jacqueline Waeber, and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their invaluable feedback on earlier versions of this article. This article was presented in various forms at conferences and colloquia during 2017 and 2018, including ‘Opera’s Canonic Entanglements’ held in Český Krumlov, Czech Republic, and the annual meetings of the Royal Musical Association and American Musicological Society. I am grateful to those who offered comments at these presentations, especially Estelle Joubert and Matthew Head. This research was generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Life dates are given where possible. All translations are my own. Footnotes 1Taschenbuch für die Schaubühne, auf das Jahr 1776 [more commonly published as Theater-Kalender auf das Jahr], ed. Heinrich August Ottokar Reichard (Gotha, 1776). 2 Johann Christian Brandes, Meine Lebensgeschichte, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1799–1800), ii. 206–7. Graff’s original is lost. In the two copies that remain, the background is a forest scene; the original seascape and cliffs were removed in a later restoration. Hans Ost, Melodrama und Malerei im 18. Jahrhundert: Anton Graffs Bildnis der Esther Charlotte Brandes als Ariadne auf Naxos (Kassel, 2002), 29–35. 3 See Ost, Melodrama und Malerei, 27; and ‘ An Madam Brandes als Ariadne auf Naxos’, Theater-Kalender, 2 (1776), 20. Bretzner is today remembered for his Belmont und Constanze, oder Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1781), which was reworked by Gottlieb Stephanie (1741–1800) as Die Entführung aus dem Serail and set to music by Mozart in 1781–2. 4 J.-J. Rousseau and Horace Coignet’s Pygmalion (written 1762, premiered 1770) is considered the first melodrama. See Jean-Jacques Rousseau[,] Horace Coignet: Pygmalion, Scène lyrique, ed. Jacqueline Waeber (Geneva, 1997), pp. viii–xxiv. Versions of Rousseau’s Pygmalion by Anton Schweitzer (1735–87) and Franz Asplmayr (1728–86) set in 1772 are the earliest known German-language melodramas. The music and text to Schweitzer’s Pygmalion are lost. The textbook of Asplmayr’s version was printed in French, German, and Italian (Pygmalion par M. J. J. Rousseau. Scène lyrique executé sur le Théatre imperial de Vienne avec la musique du Sieur Aspelmayer (Vienna, 1772; Vienna Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, A-101812)). Asplmayr’s autograph has yet to be found, though some scholars assume a score misattributed to Rousseau is that of Asplmayr. See Ellen Lockhart, Animation, Plasticity, and Music in Italy, 1770–1830 (Oakland, Calif., 2017), 173. 5 Jacqueline Waeber, En musique dans le texte: Le mélodrame, de Rousseau à Schoenberg (Paris, 2005), 9. 6 David Charlton, ‘Storms, Sacrifices: The “Melodrama Model” in Opera’, in David Charlton, French Opera 1730–1830: Meaning and Media (Aldershot, 2000), Essay X, 1–61 at 11. 7 Jörg Krämer, Deutschsprachiges Musiktheater im späten 18. Jahrhundert: Typologie, Dramaturgie, und Anthropologie einer populären Gattung, 2 vols. (Studien zur deutschen Literatur, 1; Tübingen, 1998), i. 295; and Alfred Winsor, ‘The Melodramas and Singspiels of Georg Benda’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1967), 20 and 22. 8 Thomas Bauman, ‘Benda, the Germans, and Simple Recitative’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 34 (1981), 119–31 at 119. 9 For example, Laurenz Lütteken, Das Monologische als Denkform in der Musik zwischen 1760 und 1785 (Tübingen, 1998), esp. 466–80. 10 See e.g. Daniela Kaleva, ‘Beethoven and Melodrama’, Musicology Australia, 23 (2011), 49–75; Jonathan Goldberg, ‘Fidelio: Melodramas of Agency and Identity’, Criticism, 55 (2013), 547–65; and Peter Branscombe, ‘Schubert and the Melodrama’, in Eva Badura-Skoda and Peter Branscombe (eds.), Schubert Studies: Problems of Style and Chronology (Cambridge, 1982), 105–41, esp. 105–8. 11 This distinction can be traced back to Jean van der Veen, who argued that French boulevard melodrama should be understood as a literary genre, while the German tradition should be considered musical. Jean van der Veen, Le Mélodrame musical de Rousseau au Romantisme: Ses aspects historiques et stylistiques (The Hague, 1955), 46. 12 See e.g. Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (New Haven, 1976), and Katherine Astbury, ‘Music in Pixerécourt’s Early Melodramas’, in Sarah Hibberd (ed.), Melodramatic Voices: Understanding Music Drama (Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera; Farnham, 2011), 15–26. On French melodrama and the meaning of the term between 1770 and 1800, see Emilio Sala, ‘Mélodrame: Définitions et métamorphoses d’un genre quasi-opératique’, Revue de musicologie, 84 (1998), 235–46. 13 Sarah Hibberd, ‘“Si L’Orchestre seul chantait”: Melodramatic Voices in Chelard’s Macbeth (1827)’, in Hibberd (ed.), Melodramatic Voices, 85–102. 14 For the latest work seeking to overcome this dichotomy, see Katherine Hambridge and Jonathan Hicks (eds.), The Melodramatic Moment: Music and Theatrical Culture 1790–1820 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). 15 Sarah Hibberd, introduction to Melodramatic Voices, 1–11 at 1. For more on the French theatrical and German concert melodrama traditions, see ibid. 1–8. 16 See Charlton, ‘Storms, Sacrifices’, and, on the melodramatic model and form more widely, see Lütteken, Das Monologische als Denkform, esp. 466–86. 17 Charlton, ‘Storms, Sacrifices’, 5–6. 18 Georg Benda, Ariadne auf Naxos (Copenhagen, Danmarks Nationalbibliotek, Musiksamlingen, mu 6309.2730), 116–17. 19 Ibid. 183–7. 20 On the sublime, see Robert Doran, The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant (Cambridge, 2015), esp. 1–23 and 141–70. 21 Ibid. 4. The sublime can be traced back to a 1st- or 3rd-c. Greek fragment on rhetoric attributed to Longinus. It was not until this text was translated into French by Nicolas Boileau (1636–1711), in 1674, that Longinus’ rhetorical–literary interpretation of sublimity was supplanted by one concerning philosophy and aesthetics. 22 See e.g. Lütteken, Das Monologische als Denkform, 478. 23 On Werther and the sublime, see Joyce S. Walker, ‘Sex, Suicide, and the Sublime: A Reading of Goethe’s Werther’, Monatshefte, 91/2 (1999), 208–23. 24 Ulrike Küster, Das Melodrama: Zum ästhetikgeschichtlichen Zusammenhang von Dichtung und Musik im 18. Jahrhundert (Europäische Aufklärung in Literatur und Sprache, 7; Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 153–83; see also Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London, 1757). 25 For the history of the Sturm und Drang as a musical topic, see Clive McClelland, Tempesta: Stormy Music in the Eighteenth Century (Lanham, Md., 2017), 1–4. 26 Ibid. pp. vii–xii. 27 Waeber, En musique dans le texte, 64–89. 28 Hibberd has further investigated just such a scene that melded the boundaries of opera and melodrama in the climax of the revolutionary opera Lodoïska (1791) by Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842). Sarah Hibberd, ‘Cherubini and the Revolutionary Sublime’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 24 (2012), 293–318. 29 By investigating the reception of melodrama in Italy between 1770 and 1790, Ellen Lockhart has recently argued that dramatists attempted to reform opera through the development of a new type of song modelled on pitches and rhythms of speech as heard in melodrama. Lockhart, Animation, Plasticity, and Music in Italy, 44–84. 30 ‘Der Mann, der diese Schrift ohne Vorurtheil liest, schlägt dabey eine laute Lache auf, und ruft: Hier ist attisches Salz!’ Joseph Milbiller, Der Zuschauer in Baiern, 4 vols. (Munich, 1780), ii. 555–6. 31 ‘Seit der Erscheinung dieser Schrift die Melodramen seltner auf unser Bühne aufgeführt worden.’ Ibid. 556. 32 ‘Je einfacher und ungekünstelter die Handlung ist, je besser ist das Stuck.’ [Otto Heinrich von Gemmingen zu Hornberg], Auch ein Melodram mit Chören und Tänzen untermischt der Tod der Dido (1780), 6. 33 ‘Da, so oft sie ein Gesicht geschnitten, und rechtschaffen geschrien haben, hat man dazu gegeigt; und alle Augenblick kamen Leute heraus die allemall alle zugleich den rechten Arm, oder den linken Fuß aufgehoben haben. Hinter dem Theater hab ich wohl des Gerichtschreiber seinen Sohn gesehn, der hat mit den übrigen gesungen.’ Ibid. 6. 34 ‘Ihr Excellenz, das war ein Melodram untermischt mit Musik, Gesang, Chören und Tanz. Es ist die neueste Mode.’ Ibid. 6. 35 Ibid. 7. 36 ‘Die gewöhnlichen Ingredienzien vom Melodram. Donner, Blitz, Gift, Rache, Dolch, Nacht, Chor, Tanz, Gräber, Geister, Blumenkränze.’ Ibid. 8. Nearly thirty years later, a French treatise satirizing melodrama included many of the same features listed here. See [Abel Hugo, Armand Malitourne, and Jean-Joseph Ader], Traité du mélodrame (Paris, 1817). 37 ‘Götter—Erde—Chaos—Natur—und was soll ich—Welten aufwiegendes noch anrufen!’ Ibid. 11. 38 Ibid. 14. 39 ‘Ihr alten Weiber habt’s gesehn / Nehmt keinen jungen Mann / Wer weis, was euch sonst kann geschehn.’ Ibid. 16. 40 Friedrich Satzenhofen, Die travestierte Ariadne auf Naxos, eine musikalische Laune oder Quotlibet als Drama in einem Aufzug (Vienna, 1798); Joachim Perinet, Ariadne auf Naxos travestirt (Vienna, 1803); August von Kotzebue, Ariadne auf Naxos: Ein tragi-komisches Triodrama (Vienna, 1804); and Paul Wranitzky, Medea: Ein travestirtes Melodrama (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (hereafter A-Wn), Mus. Hs. 10230). 41 Branscombe, ‘Schubert and the Melodrama’, 107. 42 Ibid. 43 Christoph-Hellmut Mahling, ‘Original und Parodie: Zu Georg Bendas Medea und Jason und Paul Wranitzkys Medea’, in Christine Heyter-Rauland and Christoph-Hellmut Mahling (eds.), Untersuchung zu Musikbeziehungen zwischen Mannheim, Böhmen und Mären im späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert (Mainz, 1993), 244–95, and John Rice, Empress Marie Therese and Music at the Viennese Court, 1792–1807 (Cambridge, 2003), 155–7. 44 Ibid. 155. 45 ‘Die Narren haben bisher geglaubt, man müßte die Musik nach den Worten einrichten. Aber das ist eine offenbare Thorheit, denn daran denkt man nicht einmal in einer großen welschen Oper. Nur müßen sie etwas auf die Hauptworte, Blitz, Donner, Todt, Lieb, Finster, und dergleichen Acht geben; und dann zum Exempel, wenn ich meiner Dido im größten Schmerz sagen lasse: “Alle Freude ist von mir entflohn” so muß die Musik ja nicht traurig seyn, denn auf das Wort Freude gehört immer ein lustiger deutscher Tanz.’ Gemmingen, Auch ein Melodram, 8. 46 On Rousseau and melodrama as operatic reform, see Jacqueline Waeber, ‘Rousseau’s Pygmalion and the Limits of (Operatic) Expression’, in Maria Gullstam and Michael O’Dea (eds.), Rousseau on Stage: Playwright, Musician, Spectator (Oxford, 2017), 103–15. 47 Ibid. 113. 48 See e.g. Martin Nedbal, Morality and Viennese Opera in the Age of Mozart and Beethoven (Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera; Abingdon, 2017), 3–8; Francien Markx, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Cosmopolitanism, and the Struggle for German Opera (Internationale Forschung zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 192; Leiden, 2016), 21–5; and Michael J. Sosulski, Theater and Nation in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Studies in European Cultural Transition, 37; Abingdon, 2007), 45–7. It is unclear how Pygmalion made its way to the Empire’s stages. The Mercure de France published reports concerning Pygmalion in Nov. 1770 and Jan. 1771. It is possible that in Weimar Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813), who would model his Teutsche Merkur on the French journal, read these articles. Rousseau’s piece would have intrigued Wieland, who believed that plots needed to be simple so as to allow the drama to focus on the characters’ inner emotions. More importantly, such a composition constituted a possible model for future German-language works (Wieland was at the time working on such a potential model, the serious German-language opera Alceste, set by Schweitzer and premiered in 1773). Within days of the publication of this report, Wieland envisaged a German version of Pygmalion, writing to Johann Georg Jacobi (1740–1814): ‘I have already long had the idea in my head of a little lyric Schauspiel, Pygmalion, an idea which would become something beautiful, very beautiful, if I could execute it as it lies in my imagination’ (Ich habe schon lange die Idee von einem kleinen lyrischen Schauspiel, Pygmalion, im Kopfe, eine Idee, aus welcher etwas Schönes, sehr schönes werden müßte, wenn ich so ausführen könnte, wie sie in meiner Einbildung liegt). Ausgewählte Briefe von C. M. Wieland an verschiedene Freunde in den Jahren 1751. bis 1810. geschrieben, und nach der Zeitfolge geordnet, 4 vols. (Zurich, 1815–16), iii. 21. His concept was realized when the acting company of Abel Seyler (1730–1801) performed Wieland and Schweitzer’s Pygmalion a year later in 1772. This setting appears to be, together with that of Vienna-based Franz Asplmayr, among the first melodramas performed in the Empire. 49 For Rousseau’s views on mimesis in instrumental music, see Jacqueline Waeber, ‘ Alkans Stücke mit Titel: Eine Poetik des Vagen und des Gemeinplatzes’, in Charles Valentin Alkan (Musik-Konzepte, 178, ed. Ulrich Tadday; Munich, 2017), 83–102 at 85–6. 50 ‘ Aber diese Mahlereyen sind dem wahren Geist der Musik entgegen, die nicht Begriffe von leblosen Dingen geben, sondern Empfindungen des Gemüths ausdruken soll.’ Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Gemähld. (Musik.)’, in Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1771–4), i. 455. 51 Richard Will, The Characteristic Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Beethoven (New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism; Cambridge, 2002), 130. 52 Ibid. 154. 53 Matthew Pritchard, ‘“The Moral Background of the Work of Art”: “Character” in German Musical Aesthetics, 1780–1850’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 9 (2012), 63–80 at 78. 54 ‘die, welche das Gemüthe durch bestimmte Empfindungen rühren, wie die Lieblichkeit einer stillen ländlichen Scene, wenn nur die Musik die Poesie zur Begleiterin hat, die uns das Gemähld, dessen Würkung wir durch das Gehör empfinden, zugleich der Einbildungskraft vorstellt. … . Der Dichter erinnert sich ofte in der angenehmesten Gemüthslage eines Sturms, der ihn ehedem beunruhiget hat, und thut seiner Erwähnung: aber unsinnig ist es, wenn der Tonsezer bey dieser Erwähnung mit seinen Tönen stürmet. … Der Tonsezer muß sich schlechterdings dergleichen Kindereyen enthalten, es sey denn, da wo er wirklich poßirlich seyn muß.’ Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Mahlerey. (Redende Künste; Musik.)’, in Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste, ii. 739. 55 ‘wolkingendes Geräusch’. Ibid., i. 559. 56 Johann Jakob Engel, ‘Über die musikalische Malerei’, in J. J. Engel’s Schriften, 12 vols. (Berlin, 1801–6), iv. 323–4. 57 Pritchard, ‘Character in German Musical Aesthetics’, 71. 58 Augustus Frederic Christopher Kollmann (1756–1829), for example, considered Ariadne auf Naxos’s instrumental music an example of a characteristic symphony. August Frederic Christopher Kollmann, An Essay on Practical Musical Composition according to the Nature of that Science and the Principles of the Greatest Musical Authors (London, 1799), 15–16; and Will, The Characteristic Symphony, 6. 59 ‘Wer das Langweilige der einfachen Recitative und das Unangenehme der bey Arien unvermeidlichen Unverständlichkeit des Textes gefühlt hat, wird schon darinn einen großen Vorzug finden, daß hier der Schauspieler seine ganze Stärke im Deklamiren, das ganze Feuer seiner Aktion anbringen, sich, ohne Rücksicht auf das Orchester, ganz … dem Gott, der ihn begeistert, überlassen kann.’ Gothaische gelehrte Zeitungen, 34 (29 Apr. 1775), 274. 60 Richard Hodermann, Geschichte des Gothaischen Hoftheaters, 1775–1779 (Theatergeschichtliche Forschungen, 9; Leipzig, 1894), 146. 61 The autograph to Schweitzer’s Polyxena is preserved in Frankfurt am Main Universitätsbibliothek, Abteilung Musik, Theater, und Film, Mus Hs 445. Wolf’s Polyxena can be found in Stockholm, Musik- och teaterbiblioteket, T-R. 62 See Wolfgang Schimpf, Lyrisches Theater: Das Melodrama des 18. Jahrhunderts (Palaestra: Untersuchungen aus der deutschen, englischen, und skandinavischen Philologie, 282; Göttingen, 1988), 25. 63 Jacqueline Waeber, ‘The Voice-Over as Melodramatic Voice’, in Hibberd (ed.), Melodramatic Voices, 219. 64 Katherine Hambridge has identified later examples of this type of lyric melodrama, including Bernhard Anselm Weber’s Hero (1800) and Sulmalle (1802). Katherine Hambridge, ‘Melodramatic Histrionics: Bernhard Anselm Weber, “Ich bin geliebt” (Sulmalle), Sulmalle’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 28 (2016), 141–4. 65 ‘Medea, eine in hiesigen Gegenden ganz neue, noch nie gesehne Gattung von Schauspielen’. Heinrich Leopold Wagner, Briefe die Seylerische Schauspielergesellscahft und Ihre Vorstellungen zu Frankfurt am Mayn betreffend (Frankfurt am Main, 1777), 111. 66 Ibid. 111 and 119–20. 67 Up until this point Ariadne auf Naxos had received five performances in Gotha, five in Leipzig, and one in Altenburg. Polyxena was staged in Gotha once. Medea was presented five times in Leipzig, twice in Gotha, and once in Altenburg. Hodermann, Geschichte des Gothaischen Hoftheaters, 145–50. 68 Gotha, Landesarchiv Thüringen, Staatsarchiv Gotha, YY X 46 Acta die Errichtung, Erhaltung und Aufkündigung des herzogl. Hoff Theaters betreffend. Vom Julius 1775 bis October 1779, fo. 2v. 69 Heinrich August Ottokar Reichard, ‘ An das Publikum’, Theater-Kalender, 1 (1775), [Ir–IIr]. 70 ‘Verzeichniß der jezt lebenden, deutschen Theater-Schriftsteller’, ibid. 117. 71 ‘Merkwürdige Zeitpunkte’, Theater-Kalender, 2 (1776), 103–4. 72 ‘heilsame Revolution’. Ibid. 103. 73 Ibid. 74 August Gottlieb Meißner, Sophonisbe: Ein musikalisch Drama, mit historischem Prolog und Chören (Leipzig, 1776), 8. 75 ‘dunkel bleiben muß, bis endlich Ariadne selbst, schon gegen das Ende des Stücks, auf eine Erzählung kömmt’. Ibid. 76 Ibid. 6. 77 ‘Sophonisbe. Ein Monodrama, von dem Verfasser der Skizzen. In Musik gesetzt und für das Klavier eingerichtet von Christian Gottlob Neefe. Leipzig, im Schwickertschen Verlage’, in Friedrich Nicolai (ed.), Anhang zu dem sieben und dreysigsten bis zwey und funfzigsten Bande der allgemeinen deutsche Bibliothek, 4 vols. (Berlin and Stettin, 1785), iii. 1515–16 at 1516. A manuscript copy of this keyboard version of the work is preserved in the Fürstlich Fürstenbergische Hofbibliothek (hereafter D-DO), now located in the Badische Landesbibliothek, Musikabteilung, Don Mus.Ms.1420. 78 Christian Gottlob Neefe, ‘Ueber des Herrn Benda’s Arbeiten fürs deutsche Theater’, Theater-Journal für Deutschland, 1/1 (1777), 74–6 at 74. 79 ‘Ohne den enthusiastischen Lobsprecher zu machen, muß ich sagen: daß Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht meine ganze Seele einnehmen, so oft ich nur eine Partitur von Benda vor mich nehme, oder eine seiner Arbeiten aufführen höre. Seine Ariadne—welche glühende, hochstrebende Phantasie und reiche Erfindungskraft! wie so tief alles überdacht! wie so tief alles im Innersten empfunden! welche Bekanntschaft mit den verborgensten geheimnissen der Harmonie! welche eindringende Melodie! welch ein glücklicher gebrauch aller Instrumente eines vollen Orchesters! Bald geht die Musik voraus, bald mit der Deklamation zugleich, bald hinter der Deklamation, um die Leidenschaft und die daraus entspringende Handlung vorzubereiten, zu unterstützen und zu erhöhen, oder fortzuführen, wenn der Schauspieler oder die Schauspielerinn den innern Drang selbst nicht mehr auszudrücken vermochte. Wie alles so neu und doch so wahr! so mannichfaltig, und doch so übereinstimmend!’ Ibid. 74–5. 80 ‘merkwürdige Revolution’. ‘Uebersicht der Geschichte der französischen Bühnen vom Jänner, Februar und März 1777’, Theater-Journal für Deutschland, 1/2 (1777), 139–54 at 143. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid. 83 ‘das erste deutsche Duodrama, Ariadne’. Georg Benda, ‘Fürs Theater-Journal’, Theater-Journal für Deutschland, 1/3 (1777), 87–8 at 87. 84 Ibid. 85 ‘jämmerlich verhunzt’. Ibid. 87–8. A French libretto was printed in 1776 for a performance before Prince Henry of Prussia (1726–1802). This version of Ariadne began with a prologue that praised the Prince and concluded with a ballet, Le Sacrifice de l’amour à l’Amitié. Arianne à Naxe. Drame, avec accompagnement de musique pour etre represente devant S. A. R. Monseigneur le Prince Henri frere du Roi (Berlin, 1776). 86 Benda, ‘Fürs Theater-Journal’, 88. Divided into six acts, Reichardt’s Prokris und Cephalus includes a significant proportion of moments that set spoken text over musical accompaniment. Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung Mus.ms.autogr. Reichardt, J. F. 6. 87 ‘Recensionen praktischer Werke. Ariadne auf Naxos. Ein Duodrama. In Musik gesetzt von Georg Benda. Clavierauszug. Leipzig, im Schwickertschen Verlage. 1778. Und: Medea. Ebenfalls ein Duodrama, in eben dem Verlage, und auch im Clavierauszug. 1778’, Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek, ii (Gotha, 1779), 250–85. 88 ‘gewiß schon viel zu bekannt’. Ibid. 250 and 251. 89 ‘erste Versuche einer ganz neuen Gattung betrachtet, wahre Meisterstücke sind’. Ibid. 255, 257, and 260. 90 ‘Der Zuhörer erhält den Vortheil, am Texte einen immerwährenden Leitfaden zu haben, der ihm jederzeit sagen kann, was die bey Ruhepunkten einfallenden musikalischen Sätze bedeuten und eigentlich sagen sollen.’ Ibid. 259. 91 ‘genauern Vereinigung’. Ibid. 92 Johann Friedrich Schink, ‘Ueber das musikalische Duodrama, mit und ohne Gesang’, Theater-Kalender, 4 (1778), 60–9 at 60–1. 93 Ibid. 65. 94 Ibid. 64. 95 ‘wohl den Welschen lassen könnten’. Ibid. 67. 96 Christian Heinrich Schmid, ‘Verzeichniß von Melodramen (Monodramen, Duodramen) in verschiednen Sprachen, und von denen über diese Art von Schauspielen erschienenen Abhandlungen’, in Monatsschrift für Deutsche: Zur Veredlung der Kentnisse, zur Bildung des Geschmacks, und zu froher Unterhaltung, 1 (1800), 68–76 at 70–2. 97 Schink, ‘Ueber das musikalische Duodrama’, 69. A much later copy of this song, ‘Stilles Grab umschwebt von seinen Schatten’, is preserved in Washington, Library of Congress, Music Division, M1613.R92 Case. 98 ‘Ihre Worte kommen aus den Herzen, und müssen auch das Herz fühllen, nicht die Ohren.’ Schink, ‘Ueber das musikalische Duodrama’, 69. 99 Johann Karl Wezel, Zelmor und Ermide: Ein musikalisches Schauspiel (Leipzig, 1779), fo. 2r. 100 Ibid. 101 ‘bloßen Tönen’. Ibid., fo. 2v. 102 ‘beym Himmel! so schweig doch, Orchester! daß sie endlich einmal sterben kann!’ Ibid., fo. 3r. 103 On the relationship between melodrama and Singspiel aesthetics, see Thomas Betzwieser, Sprechen und Singen: Ästhetik und Erscheinungsformen der Dialogoper (Stuttgart, 2002), 293–312. 104 Wezel, Zelmor und Ermide, fo. [5v]. 105 Ibid., fo. [6r]. 106 To help the would-be composer, Wezel marks such moments in the published text with corresponding symbols. Ibid., fos. 3r–4r. 107 ‘blos das einzelne Bild, die Idee, wo er steht, malen wollen’. Ibid., fo. [8r–v]. 108 See Schimpf, Lyrisches Theater, 234. 109 Ibid. 110 Zimmermann’s score is preserved in D-DO, Don Mus.Ms. 2081. 111 ‘Die Musik … wird allmälig kühner und entschloßner.’ Wezel, Zelmor und Ermide, 20. 112 Hibberd, ‘“Si L’Orchestre seul chantait”’, 97–8. 113 On Ombra, see Clive McClelland, Ombra: Supernatural Music in the Eighteenth Century (Plymouth, 2012). 114 Ibid. 13. 115 Küster, Das Melodrama, 264–8; Charlton, ‘Storms, Sacrifices’, 5–6. 116 ‘Bey diesen Worten fliegt er mit offnen Armen auf sie zu; als er die Arme um sie schlingen will, erhebt sich Donner, Blitz, und Sturm; Nacht umgiebt Ermiden; Zelmor sinkt betäubt zurück. Die Nacht wird dichter, der Palast verschwindet mit Ermiden, und ein düstrer Wald erscheint. Zugleich mit dem Sturme fängt auch die Musik stürmend und brausend an. Zelmor liegt betäubt in dem düstersten Walde. Der Sturm der Musik verliert sich in ein auslöschendes Piano, und tritt in ein ernstes Grave bey Zelmors Erwachen. Er staunt; er sieht sich schauernd um, wird sich seines Verlustes bewußt, und sinkt verzweifelnd zurück.’ Wezel, Zelmor und Ermide, 19. 117 D-DO, Don Mus.Ms. 2081, 86–90. 118 Küster, Das Melodrama, 266. 119 Compare, for instance, the use of ‘Donner’ in D-DO, Don Mus.Ms. 2081, 87 and 89. 120 Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry, 130. 121 Charlton, ‘Storms, Sacrifices’, 59. 122 Ibid. 123 Benda’s score is preserved in A-Wn, Mus.Hs. 18521. 124 Despite his central role in the creation of Philon und Theone, outlined below, it was Johann Ludwig Röllig's absence that led to the production's cancellation. Röllig worked to prepare the piece with the theatre director Johann Heinrich Friedrich Schrötter (1738–1815), known as Müller, who performed in the Kärntnertortheater with his ‘Kindertheater’ between 1779 and 1781. Just before the scheduled premiere, Röllig departed on a concert tour that was so successful that he did not need to risk staging the work. He returned to Philon und Theone years later and revised it to bring it even closer to Wezel’s model; he added spoken dialogue, included new characters, and composed a solo song. A-Wn, Sammlung von Handschriften und alten Drucken (hereafter HAN), Cod.Ser.n. 218, fos. 64r–65v. For multiple versions of the text in French and German, see ibid., fos. 1r–63v. 125 The score is preserved in A-Wn, Mus.Hs. 18522. On the revised version, see Schimpf, Lyrisches Theater, 233, and David J. Buch, Magic Flutes and Enchanted Forests: The Supernatural in Eighteenth-Century Musical Theater (Chicago, 2008), 281–2. At the dawn of the next century the Journal des Luxus und der Moden published an article entitled ‘ Almansor und Nadine, a Still Unknown Melodrama by G. Benda’. The anonymous contributor believed that the name of the composer alone would attract the attention of music lovers and theatre directors alike, and that Almansor und Nadine deserved to be considered alongside Benda’s ‘masterworks’ Ariadne and Medea. This was because the melodrama included arias and choruses, which Benda composed ‘not only to make this genre of music more appropriate, but also to make its overall effect more powerful for our sentiment’ (um den Endzweck der Musik in dieser Gattung der Tonkunst nicht nur anpaßender, sondern auch ihre Wirkung überhaupt mächtiger auf unser Gefühl zu machen). ‘ Almansor und Nadine, ein noch ungekanntes Melodrama von G. Benda’, Journal des Luxus und der Moden, 15 (1800), 592–3 at 593. 126 A-Wn, HAN, Cod.Ser.n. 218, fos. 65r–66r. 127 Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek (hereafter D-LEu), Kestner/I/C/III/N1/Schm/Nr.13, fo. 2v. 128 ‘einer Opernmusik für das K. K. Kärntnerthortheater’. A-Wn, HAN, Cod.Ser.n. 218, fo. 65r. 129 D-LEu, Kestner/I/C/III/N1/Schm/Nr. 13, fo. 2v. 130 A-Wn, HAN, Cod.Ser.n. 218, fo. 65r. 131 Ibid., fo. 65v. 132 Ibid., fos. 64r–v and 65v. 133 Ibid., fo. 64v. 134 ‘Reiße mich aus diesem Labyrinthe der Verzweiflung. — Sieh! Wie unter mir die Erde berstet, — Indem meinem Schritte Verderben droht! — Rings um mich her welche Kette von Abgründen! — Heere von Ungeheuren wüten auf mich los — Hier! — Hier! — Sie verschlingen mich! — Was für ein plötzliches Licht zerteilet diese Finsternisse? — Himmlische Gestalten! — Auch du, Theone, auch du erscheinst mir nochmals mit offenen Armen! — Dein holder Blick weckt, daß ich dir folge soll! — Zu dir in den Aufenthalt der Schatten, ins Elysium — Wohl ich eile’. A-Wn Mus.Hs. 18521, fos. 40v–44r. 135 ‘ Auf dem Theatre wäre es gut zu gebrauchen, wenn man etwa eine himmlische Musik der Engel oder in den elisäischen Feldern nachahmen will.’ Neue Auszüge aus den besten ausländischen Wochen- und Monatsschriften, 2, no. 39 (27 Sept. 1765), 219–24 at 222. 136 On the glass harmonica, see Annette Richards, ‘Ghost Music: or, The Otherworldly Voice of the Glass Harmonica’, Keyboard Perspectives: Yearbook of the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies, 8 (2016), 1–41; and Heather Hadlock, ‘Sonorous Bodies: Women and the Glass Harmonica’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 53 (2000), 507–42. 137 Benda writes: ‘Here a harmonica is heard’ (Hier läßt sich Harmonica hören). A-Wn Mus.Hs. 18521, fo. 36v. 138 Ibid., fo. 51v. 139 Hadlock, ‘Sonorous Bodies’, 508. 140 Richards, ‘Ghost Music’, 25. 141 For example, Wezel, Zelmor und Ermide, 5; and A-Wn Mus.Hs. 18521, fo. 25r. 142 ‘ästhetisch unmöglich’. Johann August Eberhard, Neue vermischte Schriften (Halle, 1788), 22. 143 On the emergence of idealism in music aesthetics, see Mark Evan Bonds, ‘Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 50 (1997), 387–420. 144 Pritchard, ‘Character in German Musical Aesthetics’, 71. 145 Bonds, ‘Idealism’, 413. 146 See Will, The Characteristic Symphony, esp. 156–241. 147 See Nicholas Mathew, Political Beethoven (Cambridge, 2013), esp. 1–16 and 22–45; Nicholas Cook, ‘The Other Beethoven: Heroism, the Canon, and the Works of 1813–14’, 19th-Century Music, 27 (2003), 3–24; and Will, The Characteristic Symphony, 191–239. © The Author(s) (2019). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - The Legacy of ‘ Ariadne’ and the Melodramatic Sublime
JF - Music and Letters
DO - 10.1093/ml/gcy116
DA - 2019-05-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-legacy-of-ariadne-and-the-melodramatic-sublime-UWDK3L4FQs
SP - 233
VL - 100
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -