The persistence of voice : instrumental music and romantic orality

Abstract

This work, completed by Neubauer on the very eve of his death in 2015, complements both his benchmark 'The Emancipation of Music from Language' (Yale UP 1986) and his 'History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe' (John Benjamins, 2004-10). It thematizes Romantic interest in oral speech, its poetical usage in music and musical discourse, and its political usage in the national-communitarian cult of the vernacular community. Subtly and with great erudition, Neubauer traces in different genres and fields the many transnational cross-currents around Romantic cultural criticism and writings on music and language, offering, not only fresh analytical insights but also a rich account of the interaction between Romantic aesthetics and cultural nationalism.