Josef Sawerthal´s Reisebericht as a Testimony to the Conditions and Functions of Military Bands in Hungary and Austria before 1848 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Ivana Tomić Ferić - Antonela Marić (eds.): Between Central Europe and the Mediterranean: Music, Literature and the Performing Arts., 2021
Among the musicians of Czech origin who worked along the Adriatic coast before the First World War, bandmasters of military and civil brass bands made a significant contribution. Their work contributed to the development of the still-living tradition of brass music, which is still an important common cultural heritage of Central European countries. However, in the millennial culture of Dalmatia and Littoral Croatia it is only one of many cultural layers. The Austrian (Austro-Bohemian) type of brass instruments and bands came from the military and naval music environment, but were gradually adopted by the emerging civic society. Along the Adriatic coast, this is reminiscent of the relatively short period of the Austrian government (1815–1918), when traditional relations with Venice were broken and cultural influences from the interior predominated. At the same time, cultural contacts between the Slavic peoples of Austria-Hungary developed at an unprecedented rate.
From the History of Military Music in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
2021
The subject of this paper is the work of Franz Jaksch (1851–1931), a versatile musician who served as the bandmaster of the Imperial and Royal Navy Orchestra in Pula, the main port of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in the period between 1899 and 1917. It was in Pula that he composed most of his pieces tailored for military orchestras, opera stages and bourgeois salons. During his bandmaster term, the Navy Orchestra performed some of the most significant orchestral pieces from the symphonic repertoire.
Musicological Annual, 57 (1), 2021
The subject of this paper is the work of Franz Jaksch (1851-1931), a versatile musician who served as the bandmaster of the Imperial and Royal Navy Orchestra in Pula, the main port of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in the period between 1899 and 1917. It was in Pula that he composed most of his pieces tailored for military orchestras, opera stages and bourgeois salons. During his bandmaster term, the Navy Orchestra performed some of the most significant orchestral pieces from the symphonic repertoire.
Wilhelm Wieprecht or on the Life of the Musician in the Sattelzeit
BRILL eBooks, 2023
Berlin, May 1838. A special kind of concert was in the offing at the Court Opera. A 'grand military music performance for the benefit of the distressed residents of the districts of East Prussia and Lithuania along the Polish border' had been announced.1 All infantry and cavalry bands of the Royal Guard Corps in Berlin were conducted by its director, Royal Chamber Musician Wilhelm Wieprecht; the military bands were augmented by the opera chorus and two actors from the local theatre. The programme featured a colourful mix of operatic overtures, including those to Christoph Willibald Gluck's Armide and Gioachino Rossini's Wilhelm Tell, various kinds of marching music and two declamations delivered by actors.2 The concert, which was attended by the very highest social circles-led by King Frederick William III and his guest of honour, Emperor Nicholas I of Russia-but also by an audience of common folk, met with an extremely positive response. The Berlinische Zeitung opined that 'the assurance and precision with which every piece of music was performed were testimony both to the performers' talent and to the diligence and meticulousness of the conductors presiding over them' .3 This was the second joint concert by all Berlin's military bands within a short period of time; the first had taken place four days earlier at the city's Schlossplatz to mark the Russian emperor's arrival. On that occasion, in contrast to the event in the opera house, Wieprecht had conducted 16 infantry and 16 cavalry bands plus 200 drummers simultaneously in the open airaround 1,200 military musicians are said to have followed the lead of this diminutive individual in his civilian clothes as they performed the Russian national anthem and a number of marches.4 In the shape of the 'monstre
2020
This book is the author’s contribution to marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of the bandmaster and composer Franz Lehár (1870-1948), and it is dedicated to his lesser-known life chapter in Pula. As Lehár’s activities as a bandmaster with the Imperial and Royal War Navy in Pula have been little researched, the book’s authors have principally focused on archive materials: articles in the daily press in Italian and German, as well as manuscripts and published compositions from this period of artistic creation. The aim was to review his total contribution to the cultural life of Pula in this period, through analytical insights into his military-bandmaster and composing activities. The reconstruction of the Navy orchestra’s repertoire when led by Lehár was especially challenging, as practically no programmes were preserved. By taking excerpt material from the local press, principally from the paper L’Eco di Pola, a list of performed compositions was made, which was later systematized and analysed in relation to the genre it belonged to. It was also of great significance to establish how Pula and its inhabitants left an influence on Lehár’s opus of compositions from that time, as well as determining the precise list of works he composed in Pula, given that contradictory information on this topic can be found in the literature.
“Boundlessly Different”: Popular Brass Music in Austria
Journal of Popular Music Studies, 2020
Brass music has become increasingly popular in recent years in Europe’s German-speaking regions, especially among young people, who attend brass festivals, such as Woodstock der Blasmusik, in great numbers. This article examines this phenomenon within the context of its historical weight. Particularly in Austria, brass music is intertwined strongly with local cultural activity and heritage, alpine folklore, and national identity, with the Habsburg Monarchy and the Nazi era as well as with the rise of Volkstu ̈mliche Music and Austrian popular music. The study pinpoints the initial spark of the current popularity to the early 1990s, when young brass musicians set new tones musically and culturally. It illustrates how bands such as Mnozil Brass and Innsbrucker Bo ̈hmische, and later Viera Blech and LaBrassBanda, renegotiated established conceptions, ideas, and attitudes, and how they have, or have not, overcome habitualized ways of performing and enjoying brass music. On a broader level, the article uncovers how narratives related to regionality, Heimat, community, institutionalization, virtuosity, internationality, openness, corporality, and hedonistic pleasure all come together, at times in contradictory ways, in the media and musicians’ ethical-aesthetic discussion about contemporary brass music. Ultimately, a close music-analytical reading of selected songs shows how the music fosters and reflects these interrelations.
Military Bands as Symbols in Pest-Buda in the 1850s
The years of 1848/49 had decisive eff ect both on Europe and on East-Central-European musical life. 2 A tense atmosphere and the experience of defeat pervaded cultural life, too, and determined its communication. After the suppression of the Hungarian revolution in 1849, the national language press employed a stronger nationalistic rhetoric in order to protect what they understood as a culture facing oblivion. That att itude even shaped later analyses of 1850s Hungary and its place in the Habsburg Monarchy, which until quite recently had a problematic reputation among historians. The period was defi nitely seen as a political »dead end«. 3 It can be observed that the primary sources drawn upon in these analyses, above all the national language press, dealt mainly with national music. Accordingly, the basic researches also focused on what was called national and neglected those which were not perceived as such; 4 the former phenomenon therefore became a reference of reality. 5 Perhaps that is one reason why only a few scholars have dealt in detail with the regional operation of multinational military orchestras; 6 however, these orches-1 The paper is an edited and extended version of the presentation given in Zagreb, October 2019. The paper was supported by the Zoltán Kodály Scholarship, Budapest, 2019. 2 See e.g. Barbara BOISITS (ed.