Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Research Publications

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    ‘Volk von Brüdern’: The German-speaking Liedertafel in Melbourne
    Murphy, K (Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2005-01-01)
    A Liedertafel concert at which the former Governor His Excellency Sir Henry Loch and Lady Loch were present was reported in the Illustrated Australian News and Musical Times of 1889 as follows: In the course of some remarks Lord Loch made the statement that the advancement of musical culture in Melbourne is to be attributed to the influence of Germans. Now although the community includes some excellent musicians of that nationality, the opinion expressed by our late governor is by no means in accordance with facts. It is only just that honour should be given where it is due and the untiring efforts of the English musicians in the colony in educating public taste ought to be thoroughly recognised.
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    Race and Identity: Appraisals in France of Meyerbeer on his 1891 Centenary
    Murphy, K (Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2004-01-01)
    This article examines the ways in which critics and music historians in the Third Republic wrote about Meyerbeer's national and racial identity focusing particularly on the period around the time of the centenary of his birth, the period just before the explosion of the Dreyfus affair. The centenary of Meyerbeer's birth was celebrated in November 1891, by a performance to a packed audience at the Paris Opéra. Critics marked the centenary by writing substantial articles about Meyerbeer. Although many of Meyerbeer's contemporary critics conferred honorary French citizenship on him, by 1891 a significant number saw him as lacking any national identity. This should be seen in the context of a period in which French composers were intensely debating the issue of their own national identity, and clearly since the Franco-Prussian war, they were no longer so complacent about welcoming a German as a Frenchman. Yet the perceptions of Meyerbeer's lack of national identity were also often motivated by negative associations of Meyerbeer as Jew. Derogatory stereotypes of the Jewish composer are present in Meyerbeer criticism from the July Monarchy onwards, but in the early days of the Third Republic they change slightly in focus and also, as might be expected, become more overtly stated. This article presents a brief overview of this change in focus and concentrates on a number of discrete topics: eclecticism, nationhood, originality and artistic capitulation. The examination of this last topic leads to a short discussion of the impact of Wagner on the musical world at this time, and the effect that this had on Meyerbeer reception. The centenary celebrations occurred only two months after the success ofLohengrinat the Opéra (16 September 1891) and the proximity of the two events caused many critics to ponder whether the celebrations marked the end of Meyerbeer's reign at the Opéra and the beginning of the reign of Wagner. The centenary event forced critics to take a position on Meyerbeer's current standing in the operatic world.
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    Berlioz, Meyerbeer, and the place of Jewishness in criticism
    MURPHY, KR ; BLOOM, PB (University of Rochester Press, 2003)