Celia Applegate, “Music and Work 01, Working at Music: The ‘Work-Play Dilemma’ in Modern German Musical Culture”
Monday, 5 December 2022, 18:00 IDT
Maiersdorf Faculty Club and Conference Center
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Mount Scopus
Jerusalem 9190501
ISRAEL
Chaired by Aya Elyada
Sponsored by:
George L. Mosse Program in History
Hebrew University Department of History
Koebner-Minerva Center for German History
Lecture Overview: Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) wrote in Homo Ludens (1938) that “culture arises in the form of play,” but what was the work that went into the play of culture, especially musical culture? The first lecture will consider the efforts of nineteenth- and twentieth-century cultural historians and musicologists, mostly German, to explain the work-play dilemma in the development of music-making. What functions did they think music fulfilled? What work did it do in society? How did it fit into Germans’ self-image as hard workers?
Celia Applegate studies the culture, society, and politics of modern Germany, with particular interest in the history of music, nationalism, and national identity. She is the author of A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990), the co-editor (with musicologist Pamela Potter) of Music and German National Identity (Chicago, 2000), the author of Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of the St. Matthew Passion (Cornell, 2005), winner of the DAAD/GSA Book Prize, and of The Necessity of Music: Variations on a German Theme (Toronto, 2017). She is currently working on comprehensive interpretation of musical life in Germany from the 17th century to the present, titled “Music and the Germans: A History.” She is Past President of the German Studies Association, Past President of the Central European History Society, and incoming chair of the AHA’s Modern European section. Professor Applegate teaches courses on modern European politics, society, and culture; the history of the Holocaust; and the history of European nationalism and ethnic conflicts.
This series of Jerusalem Mosse Lectures was originally scheduled for December 2020 but was postponed two years due to the COVID-19 global pandemic.
