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Herder's Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2011

Philip V. Bohlman
Philip V. Bohlman
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University of Chicago
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Extract

I begin this essay epigrammatically with song, with a single song that came to tell an historical tale of the nineteenth century (Fig. 1, p. 3). We know this single song in many versions, though it is perhaps the second version that most musicians and scholars of the nineteenth century, more accustomed to playing or hearing the keyboard music of Johannes Brahms than singing Child ballads, know best (Ex. 1). In the Brahms setting, the first of his op. 10 Balladen for solo piano, it may perhaps no longer be a song at all, for its narrative has been stripped of words.

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Articles
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Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , June 2010 , pp. 3 - 21
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 In Johann Gottfried Herder, ‘Auszug aus einem Briefwechsel über Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker’, in idem, Von deutscher Art und Kunst: Einige fliegende Blätter, in Johann Gottfried Herder Werke, vol. 2, Johann Gottfried Herder Schriften zur Ästhetik und Literatur 1767–1781, ed. Günter E. Grimm (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993): 461–62. Unless otherwise indicated, I have used the modern edition of Herder's writings, Johann Gottfried Herder Werke, 10 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985–2000), throughout this article, which will be hereafter cited as JGHW. All translations in this article are my own.

2 Sharp, Cecil J., English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, Comprising Two Hundred and Seventy-Three Songs and Ballads with Nine Hundred and Sixty-Eight Tunes, Including Thirty-Nine Tunes Contributed by Olive Dame Campbell, ed. Karpeles, Maud, vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1932): 53.Google Scholar For the melodic variants of ‘Edward’ see Bronson, Bertrand, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, 4 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959–1972).Google Scholar

3 Originally published in two volumes of pamphlets gathered in anthology: ‘Stimmen der Völker in Liedern’ and Volkslieder, 2 vols (Leipzig: Weygandsche Buchhandlung, 1778 and 1779)Google Scholar; in JGHW, vol. 3, 69–430.

4 Macpherson, James, Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and Translated from the Galic or Erse Language (Edinburgh: G. Hamilton and J. Balfour, 1760).Google Scholar

5 For another German translation of Macpherson's Fragments in the immediate aftermath of their appearance in Edinburgh see Macpherson, James, Fragmente der alten Hochschottländischen Dichtkunst, nebst einigen andern Gedichten Ossians, eines Schottischen Barden, trans. Johann Andreas Engelbrecht (Hamburg: Michael Christian Bock, 1764)Google Scholar.

6 Herder, Johann Gottfried, Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769, JGHW, vol. 9Google Scholar (Band 9/2): 9–126, cited in Craig, Gordon A., ‘Herder: The Legacy’, in Herder Today: Contributions from the International Herder Conference, ed. Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1990)Google Scholar : 19. Herder never published his travel journal during his lifetime.

7 Tentatively entitled, Herder on Music and Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, in preparation).Google Scholar

8 Forster, Michael N., ‘Introduction’, in Johann Gottfried Herder, Herder: Philosophical Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): vii.Google Scholar

9 See, for example, Zammito, John H., Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).Google Scholar

10 The full intellectual range of disciplinary discourses that Herder was willing to explore during the final years of his life is easiest to survey in the writings he contributed to his own literary journal, Adrastea, the first volume of which appeared in 1801, the very threshold of Herder's nineteenth century. Many of Herder's contributions to Adrastea constitute the final volume of his complete works, JGHW, vol. 10, ed. Günter Arnold (2000).

11 See, for example, Ghosh, Pranabendra Nath, Johann Gottfried Herder's Image of India (Santiniketan: Visva-Bharati Research Publications, 1990)Google Scholar; Andraschke, Peter and Loos, Helmut, eds, Ideen und Ideale: Johann Gottfried Herder in Ost und West (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach Verlag, 2002)Google Scholar.

12 For the physicality of his encounter with culture and art see Herder, , Journal meiner Reise and Johann Gottfried Herder, Sculpture: Some Observations on Shape and Form from Pygmalion's Creative Dream, ed. and trans. Gaiger, Jason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Michael N. Forster, ‘Introduction’, in Herder, Herder: vii.

14 See, for example, Adler, Hans, Die Prägnanz des Dunklen: Gnoseologie – Ästhetik – Geschichtsphilosophie bei Johann Gottfried Herder (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1990); Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt, ed.,Google ScholarHerder Today; Nufer, Wolfgang, Herders Ideen zur Verbindung von Poesie, Musik und Tanz (Berlin: Emil Ebering, 1929)Google Scholar.

15 Herder wrote extensively about the nature of history writing, weaving historiographic essays together with case studies. The set of essays that most extensively contains essays about different European and non-European peoples appeared between 1784 and 1791 as Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, published in a modern edition as JGHW, vol. 6, ed. Martin Bollacher (1989). For a summary of Herder's historical methods, see Heise, Jens, Johann Gottfried Herder zur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius, 1998): 65–82Google Scholar.

16 Letter from March 1801, in Hölderlin, Friedrich, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Beissner, Friedrich and Beck, Adolf (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1943–85): vol. 6, 419Google Scholar; for a modern translation, particularly of Hölderlin's fragmentary works, see Hölderlin, Friedrich, Poems and Fragments, trans. Michael Hamburger (London: Anvil Poetry Press, 2004).Google Scholar

17 Herder, Sculpture and Herder, ‘Stimmen der Völker’. For a collection of his theological writings, see Johann Gottfried Herder, Theologische Schriften, JGHW vol. 9 (Band 9/1), ed. Christoph Bultmann and Thomas Zippert (1994). See also Eva Schmidt, ed., Herder im geistlichen Amt: Untersuchungen/Quellen/Dokumente (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1956).

18 The ballad variants that constitute national repertories depend on language and dialect, but also on nation-specific formal distinctions. English-language ballads, for example, stretch across Scotland and England, and extend to North America, but they are relatively uncharacteristic of Ireland. German-language ballads circulate, or are at least collected, in High German, rather than in dialect, and accordingly they are relatively uncommon in Austria, where dialect is a primary determinant of folk-song style and repertory.

19 For a discussion of hybridity in Ossian, see Mary-Ann Constantine and Porter, Gerald, Fragments and Meaning in Traditional Song: From the Blues to the Baltic (Oxford University Press, 2003): 22–30Google Scholar.

20 Novalis, Schriften II: Das philosophische Werk I, ed. Samuel, Richard (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1965): 463.Google Scholar

21 Ginsburg, S.M. and Marek, P.S., Evreiskie narodnye pesni v. Rossii (St Petersburg: Voskhod, 1901):Google Scholar III. My German translation of this seminal text, originally in Russian, appears in Philip V. Bohlman, Jüdische Volksmusik – Eine mitteleuropäische Geistesgeschichte (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2005): 59–65.

22 For the analysis of multiple versions, see Bohlman, Philip V. and Holzapfel, Otto, The Folk Songs of Ashkenaz (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2001): 15–23Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., 313–14.

24 Wolf, Eric R., Europe and the People without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).Google ScholarPubMed

25 Multiple histories and historiographic methods make it hard to trace a single reception history; see Borsche, Tilman, ed., Herder im Spiegel der Zeiten: Verwerfungen der Rezeptionsgeschichte und Chance einer Relektüre (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2006)Google Scholar.

26 Published in JGHW vol. 4, ed. Jürgen Brummack and Martin Bollacher (1994), 9–107.

27 See especially Herder, Johann Gottfried, Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache, in JGHW vol. 1, ed. Gaier, Ulrich (1985): 695–810Google Scholar.

28 Nineteenth-century folk-song and folk-music scholars argued that individual songs and the style traits of repertories moved across linguistic, national and class borders, and we witness this in the German-language approaches to understanding folk music – for example, gesunkenes Kulturgut (fallen cultural commodity) or Kunstlied im Volksmund (art song in the mouths of the people), as well as in the pedagogical and social agendas of the English folk song and dance movement.

29 For his use of history to turn towards the future Herder deliberately, even prominently, chose to write in fragments, notably in his ‘Letters for the Advancement of Humanity’; see Herder, Johann Gottfried, Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität, JGHW, vol. 7, ed. Irmscher, Hans Dietrich (1991)Google Scholar.

30 See Bohlman, Jüdische Volksmusik.

31 Final strophe of the 31st romance in Der Cid, Geschichte des Don Ruy Diaz, Grafen von Bivar, nach spanischen Romanzen, in JGHW, vol. 3, ed. Ulrich Gaier (1990), 599.

32 Title page of ibid., 545.

33 See, for example, his various studies of Homeric epic, particularly those that connected Mediterranean to northern European epic, such as ‘Homer und Ossian’, in JGHW, vol. 8, ed. Hans Dietrich Irmscher (1998), 71–87.

34 He referred to Homer as a ‘favourite of all times’ in ‘Homer, ein Günstling der Zeit’, in ibid., 89–115.

35 Herder, ‘Homer und Ossian’.

36 The oral-formulaic theory of improvisation and composition, for example, takes the line of Balkan epics as its prototypical unit. The classic study of the oral-formulaic theory is Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960).

37 For a modern edition, with translations of Serbian epic songs into English, see Karadžć, Vuk Stefanović, Songs of the Serbian People: From the Collections of Vuk Karadžć, trans. and ed. Holton, Milne and Mihailovich, Vasa D. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

38 The best modern edition in English translation is Lönnrot, Elias, The Kalevala: An Epic Poem after Oral Tradition, trans. Keith Bosley (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

39 Thomas A. DuBois examines the use of smaller lyrical forms in the epic in his Lyric, Meaning, and Audience in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006): 37–64.

40 See, e.g., Buber, Martin, Die Rede, die Lehre und das Lied: Drei Beispiele (Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1920).Google Scholar

41 The case for the persistence of epic traditions today, however, is convincingly made by the essays in Margaret Beissinger, Tylus, Jane and Wofford, Susanne, eds, Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World: The Poetics of Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

42 The standard collection of Hegel's essays on universal history is Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956)Google Scholar.

43 Liszt, Franz, The Gipsy in Music, trans. Edwin Evans (London: William Reeves;1926; original French edition published 1859).Google Scholar

44 See, for example, Nemtsov, Jascha, Die Neue Jüdische Schule in der Musik (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004).Google Scholar

45 This concept comes from Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

46 Letter 114 in Johann Gottfried Herder, Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität; published as JGHW, vol. 7, 671. In this letter Herder not only discusses cultural and, especially, racial difference, but includes four poems, Neger-Idyllen (Idylls on Black People), on the encounter between Europeans and Africans; ibid., 674–83.

47 ‘Die Brüder’ (Brothers), from Neger-Idyllen, in ibid., 679.

48 JGHW, vol. 6.

49 Ghosh, Johann Gottfried Herder's Image of India.

50 Jones, William, ‘On the Modes of the Hindoos’, in Sourindro Mohun Tagore, ed., Hindu Music from Various Authors (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series, 1964): 88–112;Google Scholar original published in Asiatick Researches (1784). See also Farrell, Gerry, Indian Music and the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Martin Clayton, ‘Musical Renaissance and Its Margins in England and India, 1874–1914’, in Gerry Farrell and Bennett Zon, eds, Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s–1940s: Portrayal of the East (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007): 71–93.

51 For essays on the forms assumed by reflexivity and response in colonialism and imperialism see Said, Edward D., Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993): especially 191–281Google Scholar.

52 ‘Trauet den Weißen nicht’, in Herder, ‘Stimmen der Völker’. The appendix, ‘Zu den Liedern der Madagasker’ (On the Songs of the People of Madagascar), from Herder's Nachlaß (literary estate) appears in a modern, paperback edition (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1975): 391–98.

53 See the essays in Schneider, Jost, ed., Herder im ‘Dritten Reich’ (Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 1994)Google Scholar.

54 ‘Todtenklage, um des Königs Sohn’, in Herder, ‘Stimmen der Völker’, 393. See also Philip V. Bohlman, ‘Becoming Ethnomusicologists: On Colonialism and Its Aftermaths’, Ethnomusicology Newsletter 41/1 (2007): 4–5.