Scholarly Research//Publication//Future Work
Dissertation: “Hearing Noreia: Landscape, Memory, and Identity in Carinthian song, 1870-1920”
Carinthia, a region roughly the size of the American state of Connecticut, has a name which predates that of its parent country (Austria) by several hundred years. As a people, however, the historically mixed Alpine communities of Carinthia predate the Roman Republic and share a heritage that supersedes nationality, religion, and even language—a heritage tied to landscape and cultural memory. My research in this area examines a specific choral music style from the late 19th century that was tied to ‘Carinthian-ness,’ how it was popularized and used by Slovene and Italian composers at the turn of the century, and represents an idealized, supranational ‘sound of home’ for a people who, by 1920, were at their most fractured. This music connects to a united perception of landscape and lifestyle at a time when outside forces were insisting on division. Given the social history of the region, this music becomes a time machine—a view to simpler time for these heterogeneous communities. It both concerns and is landscape, uses and becomes memory, and reflects and shapes identity. It is heimatklang, the very sound-essence of a people beyond borders.
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Carinthia has always been a region en route to somewhere else. Romans built roads over its mountain passes to connect to their outposts at Vindobona (Vienna) and Juvavum (Salzburg), the Holy Roman Empire used Carinthian valley systems as a battleground, and the it was shuffled among the many controlling arms of the Habsburg Empire for over 500 years before gaining a modicum of autonomy in the 19th century. In many ways, since the establishment of Roman colonies, Carinthia was under the authority of outside forces for over 1800 years.
When a decree for greater visibility of regional culture arrived in the early 19th century, visual art and literature emerged that embraced a supranational Carinthian identity. Poetry by Johann Gottfried Kumpf and paintings by Markus Pernhart were not bound by borders or language, but by a consistent sensorium. Scholars gathered local poems and songs in the mid-19th century that blended Germanic, Italianate, and Slavic words, syntax, and meter, speaking of landscape and lifestyle in way that defied growing nationalist tensions of that time. This complicated the narrative of mostly Germanic or Slavic national groups seeking to align Carinthia with what would eventually become Austria or Yugoslavia. The conflict between these groups simmered until after World War I, when a civil war forced a referendum on how Carinthia would be divided.
People who had farmed together, traded together, lived together for millennia were again asked by outsiders to divide themselves and were split by a hard border in 1920. Behind these factious times, however, is another narrative. Around 1870 music composed in Carinthia or in a Carinthian style slowly finds its way to publishing houses. Thomas Koschat, a bass singer working in Vienna, began writing part songs in “Kärntner Volkston.”
What set this style apart from, say, actual Carinthian folk songs transcribed at the time was its popular nature. Koschat was a native of Viktring, which is now district of Carinthia’s capital, Klagenfurt. He was raised during this upwelling of Carinthian culture and trained in Vienna during the late 1860s. Koschat wrote songs in this ‘folk style’ and arranged extant compositions to include Romantic chromaticisms (especially in the middle voices and at cadences). The tuneful nature of various Carinthian dialects coupled with a rich harmonic texture captivated audiences seeking an understanding of the rural 'other.' Koschat and his ensembles toured extensively and, eventually, his music developed patterns that seemed to correspond to the very landscape that was so ubiquitous in his works.
Koschat was taking part in what Henri Lefebvre called the 'production of space.' In this model, a subject has a general perception of a space, acts upon or within that space--changing the previous perception, and produces a new spatial concept based on action and interpretation. Koschat, and those who followed in this style, was using the dramatic Carinthian landscape as a backdrop for musical storytelling while, unconsciously, uniting people who experienced life similarly: Germanic, Slavic, and Italianate Carinthians. All of this happened concurrently to the most trying sociopolitical years in modern Carinthian history. In the music of Arturo Zardini and Jakob Aljaž we hear Koschat's style and can aurally experience how supranational or 'beyond borders' these communities truly were.
Listen here for Koschat
Listen here for Zardini
Listen here for Aljaž
“‘Heidenröslein’: Evolving Interpretations of Goethe’s Alsatian Romance.” Ars Lyrica, 2019.
This research examines several uses of two ‘Heidenröslein’ texts, one from Johann Gottfried Herder’s Von Deutscher art und kunst [1773] and one from Johann Gottfried von Goethe’s Sessenheimer Lieder [1771]. Both poems are projected against Paul von der Aelst’s ‘Sie gleicht wohl einem Rosenstock’ [1602] and against Goethe’s Alsatian affair with Fredericke Brion [1770-71] in discussion of how the Herder and Goethe poems diffused into popular musical use. Herder, whose work was in great demand in the 1770s, 80s, and early 90s
La production de l’espace sonore “The Production of Sound Space”
A play on Henri Lefebvre’s 1974 monument to social theories of space, this title will explore how humans have ‘produced’ or, in some cases, ‘reproduced’ places and spaces via musical intersections with geographies of belonging—rural, urban, digital, past, future, and imagined. Featuring my past research in Kärntnerlieder, Argentine Malambo, and the sonic landscapes of Sigur Rós, this book will also include the work of other scholars on discussions of music in Tuva, Portuguese Fado, theatricality in Heavy Metal, transplanting American country music in Australia, mashups and the non-human, and much more!