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Playing with art: musical arrangements as educational tools in van Swieten's Vienna

Playing with art: musical arrangements as educational tools in van Swieten's Vienna
Playing with art: musical arrangements as educational tools in van Swieten's Vienna
Art played a significant part in the educational ideal promoted by German intellectuals in the late eighteenth century. Gottfried van Swieten, President of the Court Commission for Education in Vienna and librettist for The Creation, was instrumental in developing and promoting the role of art in the moral education of the individual. His encouragement of active engagement with art sheds new light on the common practice of arranging musical "classics"—in particular large-scale vocal works—for smaller instrumental forces around 1800. Van Swieten's writings suggest that such arrangements may be understood not merely as entertaining trifles but as the product of the sociopolitical mores of the Enlightenment.

Inviting the direct, interactive experience of art, the arrangement of Joseph Haydn's Creation for string quintet was particularly suited to the moral and social education of the individual. Grounded at least in part in archaic compositional practices, it demonstrated an artwork's adaptability to different circumstances of performance and to the different levels of education of its performers. Moreover, the act of playing the arrangement, one to a part, allowed for the honing of an individual's inner sociable sentiment through collaboration with fellow performers.
1357-0951
342-376
Thormahlen, Wiebke
646fcd72-09dd-4f7b-9878-92e5687b3507
Thormahlen, Wiebke
646fcd72-09dd-4f7b-9878-92e5687b3507

Thormahlen, Wiebke (2010) Playing with art: musical arrangements as educational tools in van Swieten's Vienna. The Journal of Musicology, 27 (3), 342-376. (doi:10.1525/jm.2010.27.3.342).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Art played a significant part in the educational ideal promoted by German intellectuals in the late eighteenth century. Gottfried van Swieten, President of the Court Commission for Education in Vienna and librettist for The Creation, was instrumental in developing and promoting the role of art in the moral education of the individual. His encouragement of active engagement with art sheds new light on the common practice of arranging musical "classics"—in particular large-scale vocal works—for smaller instrumental forces around 1800. Van Swieten's writings suggest that such arrangements may be understood not merely as entertaining trifles but as the product of the sociopolitical mores of the Enlightenment.

Inviting the direct, interactive experience of art, the arrangement of Joseph Haydn's Creation for string quintet was particularly suited to the moral and social education of the individual. Grounded at least in part in archaic compositional practices, it demonstrated an artwork's adaptability to different circumstances of performance and to the different levels of education of its performers. Moreover, the act of playing the arrangement, one to a part, allowed for the honing of an individual's inner sociable sentiment through collaboration with fellow performers.

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Published date: August 2010
Organisations: Music

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 352245
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/352245
ISSN: 1357-0951
PURE UUID: 9b0b186b-8726-4dbf-99e4-4e4f85debeee

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Date deposited: 08 May 2013 11:02
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 13:49

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Author: Wiebke Thormahlen

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