Enlightenment Orpheus: The Power of Music in Other Worlds (New Cultural History of Music)

The Enlightenment saw a critical engagement with the ancient idea that music carries certain powers - it heals and pacifies, civilizes and educates. Yet this interest in musical utility seems to conflict with larger notions of aesthetic autonomy that emerged at the same time. In Enlightenment Orpheus , Vanessa Agnew examines this apparent conflict, and provocatively questions the notion of an aesthetic-philosophical break between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Agnew persuasively connects the English traveler and music scholar Charles Burney with the ancient myth of Orpheus. She uses Burney as a guide through wide-ranging discussions of eighteenth-century musical travel, views on music's curative powers, interest in non-European music, and concerns about cultural identity. Arguing that what people said about music was central to some of the great Enlightenment debates surrounding such issues as human agency, cultural difference, and national identity, Agnew adds a new dimension to postcolonial studies, which has typically emphasized the literary and visual at the expense of the aural. She also demonstrates that these discussions must be viewed in context at the era's broad and well-entrenched transnational network, and emphasizes the importance of travel literature in generating knowledge at the time. A new and radically interdisciplinary approach to the question of the power of music - its aesthetic and historical interpretations and political uses - Enlightenment Orpheus will appeal to students and scholars in historical musicology, ethnomusicology, German studies, eighteenth-century history, and comparative studies. Ancient beliefs in the power of music gained urgency during the mid to late 18th century. The period saw an efflorescence of Orpheus-themed musical works, including operas by Gluck, Mozart, and Haydn. Orpheus as archmusician also emerged as a key trope in aesthetic, literary, critical, and historical thought. Yet this widespread interest in musical utility (called Orphic discourse) seems to conflict with the notion of aesthetic autonomy that emerged around the same time. The confluence of these apparently antithetical positions casts doubt on the widespread view that there was an aesthetic-philosophical break between the 18th and 19th centuries. Instead, this book exposes the hidden instrumentality that is typically disavowed by aesthetic disinterest and concludes that musical utility is a site of discursive continuity within modernity. Focusing on the English traveler and music historian Charles Burney's 1772 journey through the Netherlands and central Europe — soon to be the home of aesthetic autonomy — the book examines the scholarly discussions and social practices that characterize the Enlightenment as an age of Orpheus. It argues that aesthetic autonomy went hand in hand with the late 18th-century insistence on music's moral, social, and political utility. It argues that the foregrounding of alterity, like the new historicization of music, arose within the context of the late 18th century's increased mobility and its burgeoning cross-cultural encounters. The traveler's exposure to new listeners and new musical vernaculars posed critical challenges to classical ideas about what music could do. Understanding the broader function of Orphic discourse thus necessitates a transnational approach that coheres with the cosmopolitan character of serious music and music scholarship. Such an approach exposes the ways in which Orphic discourse made claims about music acting at the margins in order to promote specific class, professional, and national interests
The Enlightenment saw a critical engagement with the ancient idea that music carries certain powers - it heals and pacifies, civilizes and educates. Yet this interest in musical utility seems to conflict with larger notions of aesthetic autonomy that emerged at the same time. In Enlightenment Orpheus, Vanessa Agnew examines this apparent conflict, and provocatively questions the notion of an aesthetic-philosophical break between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Agnew persuasively connects the English traveler and music scholar Charles Burney with the ancient myth of Orpheus. She uses Burney as a guide through wide-ranging discussions of eighteenth-century musical travel, views on music's curative powers, interest in non-European music, and concerns about cultural identity. Arguing that what people said about music was central to some of the great Enlightenment debates surrounding such issues as human agency, cultural difference, and national identity, Agnew adds a new dimension to postcolonial studies, which has typically emphasized the literary and visual at the expense of the aural. She also demonstrates that these discussions must be viewed in context at the era's broad and well-entrenched transnational network, and emphasizes the importance of travel literature in generating knowledge at the time.

A new and radically interdisciplinary approach to the question of the power of music - its aesthetic and historical interpretations and political uses - Enlightenment Orpheus will appeal to students and scholars in historical musicology, ethnomusicology, German studies, eighteenth-century history, and comparative studies.

The Enlightenment saw a critical engagement with the ancient idea that music carries certain powers - it heals and pacifies, civilizes and educates. Yet this interest in musical utility seems to conflict with larger notions of aesthetic autonomy that emerged at the same time. This text examines this apparent conflict Frontmatter Illustrations (page xiii) Introduction (page 3) CHAPTER 1 Argonaut Orpheus (page 11) CHAPTER 2 Music's Empire (page 73) CHAPTER 3 Anti-Orpheus (page 121) CHAPTER 4 Conclusion (page 169) Notes (page 177) Bibliography (page 209) Index (page 245)