Division of Music History, Theory, and Ethnomusicology

Timothy L. Jackson

Fall 2004

This course will examine the oppositions, tensions, and contradictions between “modernist” and “neo-Romantic” tendencies in the symphonic music of famous as well as “lost” composers of the period from the turn of the century to the ascendancy of Nazism in Europe in 1933. The music to be explored includes the work of famous composers such as Richard Strauss, Mahler, Elgar, Sibelius, and Hindemith, but also relatively unknown contemporary figures from this period.

In this seminar, we will consider the music of “Conservative” German composers active between the world wars such as the influential teacher Arnold Mendelssohn and his students Reinhard Oppel, Josef Knettel, Guenter Raphael, Kurt Thomas, and Hermann Zilcher, as well as more “avantgarde” composers such as Paul Hindemith (also a student of Mendelssohn), and Paul Kletzki.