Articles by Sarah Waltz
The Bottle Imp, 2022
How Germans learned about Scots song during its eighteenth-century vogue: literature, tune public... more How Germans learned about Scots song during its eighteenth-century vogue: literature, tune publications (rare in German-speaking lands), travelogues (coming up short musically), and traveling virtuosi capitalizing on the vogue for Scottish tunes. Concludes the difficulty of Germans recognizing Scots song in the period 1765-1830.
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The Beethoven Journal, 2024
Attributes the anonymous 1826 Berliner allegemeine musikalische Zeitung (BamZ) review of the Leip... more Attributes the anonymous 1826 Berliner allegemeine musikalische Zeitung (BamZ) review of the Leipzig performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which suggests removal of the choral finale and inspires A.B. Marx to a passionate defense, to the critic Amadeus Wendt. The career of Wendt as a philosophy professor is firmly established, as is his criticism for the Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (BamZ), Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (AmZ), Cäcilia, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung mit besonderer Rucksicht auf den österreichischen Kaiserstaat (WamZ), and other journals. Wendt’s Hoffmannesque opinions of instrumental music are contextualized via his extensive criticism of opera and vocal music, highlighting themes such as inappropriate virtuosity, (im)proper text-setting, and instruments’ tendency to overpower voices. His Beethoven criticism is also briefly examined with reference to his aesthetics, including Kantian ideas on mannerism. While specific verbiage and viewpoints are highlighted as Wendtian in the 1826 review, the attribution of the review (eventually signed Das musikalische Correspondent aus Leipzig) also rests on the very strong likelihood that Wendt is that musical correspondent from Leipzig, based on tracing references in other signed work for the journal. As the critic was a well-known writer on aesthetics, the attribution helps elevate his side of the debate with Marx on the validity of the choral finale for the ninth––a position which foresaw the crushing burden of the originality imperative and the identity crisis for symphonic music that acceptance of the ninth would bring.
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SECM 2021: Courts, Colonies, and Cosmopolitan Exchange, ed. Beverly Wilcox (Steglein), 2023
Herschel, who discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, actually discussed gravitation with respect t... more Herschel, who discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, actually discussed gravitation with respect to music in his unfinished music theory treatise of the mid 1760s. This suggests that he was thinking about gravity well before his turn to astronomy in the 1770s, but also provides a window into his ideas about modulation and musical expression - his theory being that the greater distance between pitches on the circle of fifths, the greater their "gravity" and the more expressive they are. This also has practical implications for his works, particularly his symphonies, which actually reduce their number of modulations from their early empfindsamer stil.
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Beethoven Journal, Jul 2011
"Whereas Scots song is very familiar to us, and central to our image of Scotland, in the late eig... more "Whereas Scots song is very familiar to us, and central to our image of Scotland, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Germans did not have this familiarity. Ideas of Celtic bands, not bagpipes, formed their images of Scotland, and the general reader was often encouraged by unclear writings to associate both Highland and Lowland music indiscriminately--and even English, Welsh, and Irish song--with the ancient bards. It can be difficult for Anglo-Americans to unlearn all that they know about Scots song, but the attempt to do so will cast the reactions to Beethoven's settings in a different light. This article will examine some of the ways in which intense German interest in Scottish music and Celtic antiquity, paradoxically, confused the reception of Beethoven's Twenty-Five Scottish Songs, Opus 108. In particular, it will address the remarks of Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, a critic with a comparatively high degree of knowledge about Scottish music, and posit him as the critic who first intuited the true origin of Beethoven's songs." (p. 13)
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(Auto)biography as a Musicological Discourse, 2010
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Beethoven Forum, 2007
There are several reasons for giving the 'Moonlight' title of Beethoven's piano sonata op. 27, no... more There are several reasons for giving the 'Moonlight' title of Beethoven's piano sonata op. 27, no. 2, more serious consideration than Wilhelm von Lenz allotted it in his 1852 Beethoven et ses trois styles. One is that composers before and after Beethoven employed similar characteristics, mainly borrowed from serenade and pastoral styles, for works with moon-related texts, such that a 'moonlight convention' is discernible. Second, Ludwig Rellstab did indeed describe Beethoven's sonata in the terms Lenz had attributed to him (a moonlit lake voyage), but earlier than has been thought (in Theodor: Eine musikalische Skizze, 1823–1824), and in a thoroughgoing contextualization of Beethoven's whole output as romantic, described in terms of the moon (as against Mozart's, described in terms of the sun). Third, 19th-century interpretations of moonlight were often linked to imagery such as the Aeolian harp, which was also implicated in Rellstab's description and has been linked independently to Beethoven's sonata. Finally, both Aeolian harp and moonlight imagery were tied to the fantasia, bearing on Beethoven's title Sonata quasi una fantasia. Rellstab's imagery has greater complexity and relevance than has been ascribed to it, and provides a window into the contemporary view of Beethoven as a Romantic composer.
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Papers by Sarah Waltz
databases listing works influenced by Ossian, Burns, Scott, or Scotland or using Scottish folkson... more databases listing works influenced by Ossian, Burns, Scott, or Scotland or using Scottish folksong or texts.
This data was used for the "London Variation Sets and Building the Canon of Scottish Folksong" paper but has been updated since then.
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Talks by Sarah Waltz
Collects and analyzes data [shortly to be posted] showing instances of Scots-song borrowing in co... more Collects and analyzes data [shortly to be posted] showing instances of Scots-song borrowing in composition, looking at the contributions of visiting pianists to London and their role in spreading London trends in Scottish tunes to the continent; also a comparison of today's well-known tunes with the top tunes of the 19th and 18th centuries.
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Blog Posts by Sarah Waltz
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Romantic National Song Network, 2019
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Drafts by Sarah Waltz
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Book Reviews by Sarah Waltz
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2024
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Articles by Sarah Waltz
Papers by Sarah Waltz
This data was used for the "London Variation Sets and Building the Canon of Scottish Folksong" paper but has been updated since then.
Talks by Sarah Waltz
Blog Posts by Sarah Waltz
Drafts by Sarah Waltz
Book Reviews by Sarah Waltz
This data was used for the "London Variation Sets and Building the Canon of Scottish Folksong" paper but has been updated since then.