'The real idealism of history': Historical consciousness, commemoration, and Johannes Brahms's 'years of study' (Germany)

This study of historical consciousness in nineteenth-century German musical culture will focus on three central issues. First, I develop the idea of "historical idealism" to highlight the extent to which historicized ideals framed German music-aesthetic discourse. Second, I outline a model of commemoration that I use to examine how the culture of art music functioned as a form of commemorative practice in nineteenth-century Germany. And third, focusing on Brahms's early career, I explore the ways in which collective memory shaped individual and cultural identities.; Part one will probe the dialectic of "Classical" and "Gothic" aesthetic ideals and the discursive relationship between music and architecture. A backdrop of this discussion will be the nineteenth-century reception of Johann Sebastian Bach, who was unequalled as an object of the German music-historical imagination. The three chapters comprising part one will describe how the memory of Bach was perpetuated through cultural texts and institutional discourse that situated his music in relation to both "Classical" and "Gothic" ideals.; Part two will focus on Brahms's "years of study," the period between roughly 1854 and 1859 when Brahms ceased to publish new works and embarked upon his first and most intensive study of the music of the past. Especially formative during these years were Robert Schumann's philosophy of history and Vereinwesen, or "associational life." German associations collectively functioned as one of the most efficient conduits through which historical knowledge and political consciousness was transmitted among the middle classes and played a central role in solidifying Brahms's historical consciousness during his years of study.; Finally, I consider Brahms's years of study in relation to the rise of professionalism and the flourish of interest in history in Germany at mid-century. Even as historical knowledge functioned as a concrete means of confirming professionalism, the practice of history in Germany in the 1850s, like the practice of art music, facilitated a distinctive dialogue between idealist and materialist modes of understanding in an attempt to reify historical forces and access the "real idealism of history."...