Defining Deutschtum : Political Ideology, German Identity, and Music-Critical Discourse in Liberal Vienna

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Defining Deutschtum: Political Ideology, German Identity, and Music-Critical Discourse in Liberal Vienna offers a nuanced look at the intersection of music, cultural identity, and political ideology in late-nineteenth-century Vienna. Drawing on an extensive selection of writings in the city's political press, correspondence, archival documents, and a large body of recent scholarship in late Habsburg cultural and political history, author David Brodbeck argues that Vienna's music critics were important agents in the public sphere whose writings gave voice to distinct, sometimes competing ideological positions. These conflicting positions are exemplified especially well in their critical writings about the music of three notable composers of the day who were Austrian citizens but not ethnic Germans: Carl

David Brodbeck is Professor of Music at the University of California, Irvine. He has published widely on nineteenth-century topics ranging from the dances of Schubert and the sacred vocal music of Mendelssohn to various aspects of Brahms's music and the musical culture of Liberal Vienna. His article "Hanslick's Smetana and Hanslick's Prague" won the 2010 H. Colin Slim Award of the American Musicological Society.