![]() ![]() ![]() How had they managed to sing like Germans? Often dubbed “negroes with white souls,” their performance style, elocution, and diction transformed them in their audiences’ minds from black entertainers into Germans with intimate knowledge of the most cherished works of the Austro-German musical canon. It focuses on African American performers in Germany and Austria in the twentieth century such as Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, and Roland Hayes who learned the music of Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, and others. ![]() This paper explores the ever-present tension between the transcendental powers of German art music and the (trans)national conversations that developed about who could perform it. At once for all and also authentically German, the Austro-German musical canon has served as a vehicle for national, racial, and gendered transformations. But the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms is also regional and local, an audible expression of the German sense of self. ![]() Western art music in particular has a reputation for transporting the listener to another realm, transcending national boundaries, and transforming social formations. If music is a universal language it has a strong German accent. ![]()
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May 2023
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