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Library Search: great for scholarly books AND articles, as well as streaming music and video
Oxford Music Online: background information about artistic movements, composers and performers. Check the bibliographies at the end of each article for more info.
Oxford Art Online: background information about artistic movements and visual artists. Check the bibliographies at the end of each article for more info.
E-Books
Art Nouveau by
Ever since its triumph at the Paris Universal Exposition, Art Nouveau has continued to inspire artists. The movement offered an artistic response to the industrial revolution and the creative vacuum left in its wake, exerting a huge impact on the decorative arts. Art Nouveau spans all forms of expression - including design, painting and architecture - and covers artists such as Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Antoni Gaudí, Jan Toorop, and William Morris.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9781780421780Publication Date: 2011-07-01
Cubism by
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon: five young women that changed modern art forever. Faces seen simultaneously from the front and in profile, angular bodies whose once voluptuous feminine forms disappear behind asymmetric lines - with this work, Picasso revolutionised the entire history of painting. Cubism was thus born in 1907. Transforming natural forms into cylinders and cubes, painters like Juan Gris and Robert Delaunay, led by Braque and Picasso, imposed a new vision upon the world that was in total opposition to the principles of the Impressionists. Largely diffused in Europe, Cubism developed rapidly in successive phases that brought art history to all the richness of the 20th century: from the futurism of Boccioni to the abstraction of Kandinsky, from the suprematism of Malevich to the constructivism of Tatlin.Linking the core text of Guillaume Apollinaire with the studies of Dr. Dorothea Eimert, this work offers a new interpretation of modernity's crucial moment, and permits the reader to rediscover, through their biographies, the principal representatives of the movement.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9781780428000Publication Date: 2012-01-05
Dada 1916 in theory : practices of critical resistance by Call Number: ebookISBN: 1781386005Publication Date: 2014
Decadence and the Making of Modernism by Call Number: ebookISBN: 0585084262Publication Date: 1995-01-01
Decadent Image by
This book enquires into the problem of venerating artificiality and the inaccessibility of beauty associated with it whilst engaging in the sensuous, immediate experience as advocated by Walter Pater. It examines for the first time together poems by three protagonists of the 1890s: OscarWilde, Arthur Symons and Ernest Dowson. It sees their poems as sites where the self sensually collides with or is immersed in their artifice. This is understood through the shift from Aestheticism to Decadence, which is marked by a greater emphasis on heterodox erotic experience. This study examinesWilde's early poetry and its role in triggering this shift. It shows how the idea of an erotic encounter with artifice reaches its apex in Symons, and how in Dowson it ripens into vexed non-encounters.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780748690923Publication Date: 2015-05-01
Decadent Subjects by
Charles Bernheimer described decadence as a "stimulant that bends thought out of shape, deforming traditional conceptual molds." In this posthumously published work, Bernheimer succeeds in making a critical concept out of this perennially fashionable, rarely understood term. Decadent Subjects is a coherent and moving picture of fin de siècle decadence. Mature, ironic, iconoclastic, and thoughtful, this remarkable collection of essays shows the contradictions of the phenomenon, which is both a condition and a state of mind. In seeking to show why people have failed to give a satisfactory account of the term decadence, Bernheimer argues that we often mistakenly take decadence to represent something concrete, that we see as some sort of agent. His salutary response is to return to those authors and artists whose work constitutes the topos of decadence, rereading key late nineteenth-century authors such as Nietzsche, Zola, Hardy, Wilde, Moreau, and Freud to rediscover the very dynamics of the decadent. Through careful analysis of the literature, art, and music of the fin de siècle including a riveting discussion of the many faces of Salome, Bernheimer leaves us with a fascinating and multidimensional look at decadence, all the more important as we emerge from our own fin de siècle.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780801874642Publication Date: 2003-05-22
Details of Consequence: Ornament, Music, and Art in Paris by
Details of Consequence examines a trait that is taken for granted and rarely investigated in fin-de-siecle French music: ornamental extravagance. Considering why such composers as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Gabriel Faure, Igor Stravinsky, and Erik Satie, turned their attention to theseemingly innocuous and allegedly superficial phenomenon of ornament at pivotal moments of their careers, this book shows that the range of decorative languages and unusual ways in which ornament is manifest in their works doesn't only suggest a willingness to decorate or render music beautiful.Rather, in keeping with the sorts of changes that decorative expression was undergoing in the work of Eugene Grasset, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and other painters, composers also invested their creative energies in re-imagining ornament, relying on a variety of decorative techniques toemphasize what was new and unprecedented in their treatment of form, meter, rhythm, melody, and texture. Furthermore, abundant displays of ornament in their music served to privilege associations that had been previously condemned in Western philosophy such as femininity, sensuality, exoticism,mystery, and fantasy. Alongside specific visual examples, author Gurminder Kaur Bhogal offers analyses of piano pieces, orchestral music, chamber works, and compositions written for the Ballets Russes to highlight the disorienting effect of musical experiments with ornament. Acknowledging the willingness of listeners toborrow vocabulary from the visual arts when describing decorative music, Bhogal probes the formation of art-music metaphors, and studies the cognitive impetus behind tendencies to posit stylistic parallels. She further illustrates that the rising expressive status of ornament in music and art hadbroad social and cultural implications as evidenced by its widespread involvement in debates on French identity, style, aesthetics, and progress. Drawing on a range of recent scholarship in the humanities at large, including studies in feminist theory, nationalism, and orientalism, Details ofConsequence is an intensely interdisciplinary look at an important facet of fin-de-siecle French music.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780199795055Publication Date: 2013-10-09
Earthquakes and Explorations by
Like the earthquakes and explorations depicted on the covers of Gertrude Stein's notebooks, this study responds to artistic and linguistic fault lines and charts new territories. The author's concern is both with a general theoretical question - the relationship between painting and poetry, between the visual and the verbal - and with a specific period of artistic history - the early years of the twentieth century, when Cubism flourished. Rather than seeing any conflict or irreconcilable division between painting and poetry, Scobie proposes, as a model for their relation, the Derridean notion of 'the supplement.' This relation is grounded in the pervasiveness of language, in the ways in which language surrounds, imbues, structures, and supplements both verbal and non-verbal images. Working from the double focus of theory and history, this book does not attempt to develop a consecutive argument, but rather navigates around its topics, adopting a slightly different approach in each chapter. It begins with a general theoretical discussion of the role of language in painting and in art history, then moves to a series of specific discussions of aspects of Cubism, considering the paintings of Georges Braque, and the writings of Gertrude Stein and Guillaume Apollinaire. It concludes with an examination of the experimental form of concrete poetry, including sound and visual poetry, especially the Cubist-influenced work of Ian Hamilton Finlay. Earthquakes and Explorations will interest those studying art history, literary criticism, and critical theory.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9781442613201Publication Date: 1997-12-01
German Modernism by
In this pioneering, erudite study of a pivotal era in the arts, Walter Frisch examines music and its relationship to early modernism in the Austro-German sphere. Seeking to explore the period on its own terms, Frisch questions the common assumption that works created from the later 1870s through World War I were transitional between late romanticism and high modernism. Drawing on a wide range of examples across different media, he establishes a cultural and intellectual context for late Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and Arnold Schoenberg, as well as their less familiar contemporaries Eugen d'Albert, Hans Pfitzner, Max Reger, Max von Schillings, and Franz Schreker. Frisch explores "ambivalent" modernism in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as reflected in the attitudes of, and relationship between, Nietzsche and Wagner. He goes on to examine how naturalism, the first self-conscious movement of German modernism, intersected with musical values and practices of the day. He proposes convergences between music and the visual arts in the works of Brahms, Max Klinger, Schoenberg, and Kandinsky. Frisch also explains how, near the turn of the century, composers drew inspiration and techniques from music of the past--the Renaissance, Bach, Mozart, and Wagner. Finally, he demonstrates how irony became a key strategy in the novels and novellas of Thomas Mann, the symphonies of Mahler, and the operas of Strauss and Hofmannsthal.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780520940802Publication Date: 2005-07-25
History Derailed: Central and Eastern Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century by
There is probably no greater authority on the modern history of central and eastern Europe than Ivan Berend, whose previous work, Decades of Crisis, was hailed by critics as "masterful" and "the broadest synthesis of the modern social, economic, and cultural history of the region that we possess." Now, having brought together and illuminated this region's storm-tossed history in the twentieth century, Berend turns his attention to the equally turbulent period that preceded it. The "long" nineteenth century, extending up to World War I, contained the seeds of developments and crises that continue to haunt the region today. The book begins with an overview of the main historical trends in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, during which time the region lost momentum and became the periphery, no longer in step with the rising West. It concludes with an account of the persisting authoritarian political structures and the failed modernization that paved the way for social and political revolts. The origins of twentieth-century extremism and its tragedies are plainly visible in this penetrating account.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780520245259Publication Date: 2005-01-17
Looking and Listening: conversations between modern art and music by
Looking and Listening: Conversations between Modern Art and Music invites the art and music lover to place these two realms of creative endeavor into an open dialog. Although the worlds of music and visual art often seem to take separate paths, they are usually parallel. Conductor and art connoisseur Brenda Leach takes unique pairings of well-known visual art works and musical compositions from the twentieth century to identify the shared sources of inspiration, as well as similarities in theme, style, and technique, to explore the historical and cultural influences on the great artists and composers in the twentieth century. Looking and Listening asks and answers: -What does jazz have in common with paintings by Stuart Davis and Piet Mondrian? -How did Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue affect the work of artist Arthur Dove? -How did painter Georgia O'Keeffe and composer Aaron Copland capture the spirit of a youthful America entering the twentieth century? -What did Kandinsky and Schoenberg share in their artistic visions? Leach takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the lives of these artists, surveying many of the key movements in the twentieth century by comparing representative works from the modern masters of the visual arts and music. Leach's refreshing and innovation approach will interest those passionate about twentieth-century art and music and is ideal for any student or instructor, museum docent, or music programmer seeking to draw the lines of connection between these two art forms.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 1442241314Publication Date: 2014-11-13
Palestrina and the German romantic imagination interpreting historicism in nineteenth-century music by
Focusing on the reception of Palestrina, this bold interdisciplinary study explains how and why the works of a sixteenth-century composer came to be viewed as a paradigm for modern church music. It explores the diverse ways in which later composers responded to his works and style, and expounds a provocative model for interpreting compositional historicism. In addition to presenting insights into the works of Bruckner, Mendelssohn and Liszt, the book offers fresh perspectives on the institutional, aesthetic and ideological frameworks sustaining the cultivation of choral music in this period. This publication provides an overview and analysis of the relation between the Palestrina revival and nineteenth-century composition and it demonstrates that the Palestrina revival was just as significant for nineteenth-century culture as parallel movements in the other arts, such as the Gothic revival.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 0511481799Publication Date: 2009-10-12
Reframing Decadence by
During his sojourn in England during the 1870s, a young Cavafy found himself enthralled by the aesthetic movement of cosmopolitan London. It was during these years that he encountered the canvases and personalities of Pre-Raphaelite painters, including Burne-Jones and Whistler, as well as works of aesthetic writers who were effecting a revolution in British literary culture and channeling influences from France that would gradually coalesce into an international decadent movement. In Reframing Decadence, Peter Jeffreys returns us to this critical period of Cavafy's life, showing the poet's creative indebtedness to British and French avant-garde aesthetes whose collective impact on his poetry proved to be profound. In the process, Jeffreys offers a critical reappraisal of Cavafy's relation to Victorian aestheticism and French literary decadence. Foremost among the tropes of decadence that captivated Cavafy were the decline of imperial Rome, the rise of Christianity, and the lingering twilight of Byzantium. The influence of Walter Pater on Cavafy's view of classical and late-antique history was immense, inflected as it was with an unapologetic homoerotic aesthetic that Cavafy would adopt as his own, making Pater's imaginary portraits an important touchstone for his own historicizing poetry. Cavafy would move beyond Pater to explore a more openly homoerotic sensuality but he never quite abandoned this rich Victorian legacy, one that contributed greatly to his emergence as a global poet. Jeffreys concludes by considering Cavafy's current popularity as a gay poet and his curious relation to kitsch as manifest in his ongoing popularity via translation and visual media.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9781501701252Publication Date: 2016-02-19
Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement by
An aesthetic, historical, and theoretical study of four scores, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement is a groundbreaking and imaginative treatment of the important yet neglected topic of Russian opera in the Silver Age. Spanning the gap between the supernatural Russian music of the nineteenth century and the compositions of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, this exceptionally insightful and well-researched book explores how Russian symbolist poets interpreted opera and prompted operatic innovation. Simon Morrison shows how these works, though stylistically and technically different, reveal the extent to which the operatic representation of the miraculous can be translated into its enactment. Morrison treats these largely unstudied pieces by canonical composers: Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, Rimsky-Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya, Scriabin's unfinished Mysterium, and Prokofiev's Fiery Angel. The chapters, revisionist studies of these composers and scores, address separate aspects of Symbolist poetics, discussing such topics as literary and musical decadence, pagan-Christian syncretism, theurgy, and life creation, or the portrayal of art in life. The appendix offers the first complete English-language translation of Scriabin's libretto for the Preparatory Act. Providing valuable insight into both the Symbolist enterprise and Russian musicology, this book casts new light on opera's evolving, ambiguous place in fin de siècle culture.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780520927261Publication Date: 2002-01-01
Shape of Fear by
During the last decades of the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley, Walter Pater and others changed the nature of thought concerning the human body and the physical environment that had shaped it. In response, the 1890s saw the publication of a series of remarkable literary works that had their genesis in the intense scientific and aesthetic activity of those preceding decades -- texts that emphasized themes of degeneration and were themselves stylistically decompositive, with language both a surrogate for physical deformity and a source of anxiety. Susan J. Navarette examines the ways in which scientific and cultural concerns of late nineteenth-century England are coded in the horror literature of the period. By contextualizing the structural, stylistic, and thematic systems developed by writers seeking to reenact textually the entropic forces they perceived in the natural world, Navarette reconstructs the late Victorian mentalité. She analyzes aesthetic responses to trends in contemporary science and explores horror writers' use of scientific methodologies to support their perception that a long-awaited period of cultural decline had begun. In her analysis of the classics Turn of the Screw and Heart of Darkness, Navarette shows how James and Conrad made artistic use of earlier "scientific" readings of the body. She also considers works by lesser-known authors Walter de la Mare, Vernon Lee, and Arthur Machen, who produced fin de siècle stories that took the form of "hybrid literary monstrosities." To underscore the fascination with bodily decay and deformation that these writers explored, The Shape of Fear is enhanced with prints and line drawings by Victor Hugo, James Ensor, and other artists of the day. This elegantly written book formulates a new canon of late Victorian fiction that will intrigue scholars of literature and cultural history.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780813147949Publication Date: 2015-01-13
The Symbolist Movement in Literature by
First published in 1899, The Symbolist Movement in Literature was a highly influential work of criticism and introduced the French Symbolists to an Anglophone readership. Arthur Symons’s interest in writers such as Verlaine and Mallarmé puts him at the heart of contemporary debates about Decadence and Symbolism in fin-de-siècle literature, but his work was also a formative influence on modernist writers such as James Joyce, George Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William Butler Yeats, helping to shape the role of the Image in modernist writing. This new critical edition makes available a key text that has been out of print for more than 50 years. It includes an introduction, chronology, and notes, together with appendices presenting the full text of Symons’ essay “The Decadent Movement in Literature” and a selection of his translations of French poetry.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 1847775454Publication Date: 2014-08-01
