Topography of Imaginations. Johann Friedrich Rochlitz's Musical Italy around 1800 (2014–2017)

Dissertation project (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes)

The ambivalent image of music and musicians from Italy was of fundamental importance for the historiography of music in the German-speaking world around 1800. However, although numerous cultural contacts and exchange processes between German-speaking countries and Italy are well known and have been discussed time and again, this has hardly been systematically researched until recently. Against this background, the aim of this research project is to exemplify the extent to which German music historiography and public discourse on music were already influenced by the turn towards Italy in the early phase of nation-building. Starting from this transnational perspective, this research project will examine a broad spectrum of writings and documents relating to the well-known Leipzig music writer, narrator, librettist, critic and editor Johann Friedrich Rochlitz, who was central to German music historiography. Situated in the culturally and historically diverse context of his time, Rochlitz's oeuvre opens up a multifaceted discursive field that exhibits not only aesthetic but also confessional, nationally charged and often polemical attitudes towards musical Italy. Central actors (and a few female actors), infrastructures and institutions, 'old' and 'new' music, painting, opera, church and instrumental music are examined in this study, as are media dissemination strategies in the pursuit of the primacy of German musical art. The research project contributes to the transnational reflection of a dialectically exacerbated relationship between German and Italian music and cultural history, which extends to the present day and is supported by numerous generalizations, clichés and stereotypes and whose roots can be traced back to the Goethe era and sometimes beyond.

Further information: Interview on the project and publisher's information on the resulting book

Project Leader: Carolin Krahn