5 - Music History and the Comparative Method: Gluck and the Opera, 1895

Summary

GLUCK and the Opera, published in 1895, was Newman's first book and the first biography of the composer to be published in English. By employing the comparative method, Newman wrote what he considered to be a pioneering work of music history. Even though the book's methodology suggests the influence of many writers, Newman seems to have drawn mostly on the work of Hippolyte Taine. Taine's History of English Literature was published in 1864, translated into English in 1871, and was regarded for more than a generation afterwards as a model use of the comparative method. The critical reception of Gluck and the Opera reveals much about Newman's grasp of the comparative method and his familiarity of its application across a range of European literature. The book's critical reception shows that Newman was highly regarded by his peers as a promising music historian and biographer.

Genesis of Gluck and the Opera

Newman began the research for Gluck and the Opera some time in the late 1880s. He later wrote about the difficulties he encountered while writing it:

There is one person … for whom I always feel the greatest sympathy—the young student who, anxious to do original music research, finds himself checked at every turn by the difficulty of getting the necessary material. This was my own case when I was writing Gluck and the Opera. Gluck affected me as powerfully in those days as Wagner and Brahms, Elgar and Wolf … Had I been free I would gladly have devoted my whole time to research in the Continental libraries. But not much research of that kind is possible to a young man who is cooped up in business all day for eleven and a half months of the year: it was impossible even for me to visit the British Museum … I did the best I could under the circumstances. I had a fair amount of material at my disposal in the Picton Library, Liverpool, and I bought all the books and music I could.

Newman did not explain why he chose to write on Gluck in favour of other composers whose works he admired. Henry George Farmer suggested that the motivation for the book came after Newman attended a performance of Iphigenia in 1888, which fits neatly into the timeframe when the research was undertaken.