The Creative Worlds of Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), violinist, composer, teacher, and founding director of Berlin's Royal Academy of Music, was one of the most eminent and influential musicians of the long nineteenth century. Born in a tiny Jewish community on the Austro-Hungarian border, he rose to a position of unsurpassed prominence in European cultural life.

This timely collection of essays explores important yet little-known aspects of Joachim's life and art. Studies of his Jewish background, early assimilation into Christian society, Felix Mendelssohn's mentorship, and the influence of Hungarian vernacular music on the formation of his musical style elucidate the roots of Joachim's identity. The later chapters focus on his personal and creative responses to the contentious and rapidly evolving cultural milieu in which he lived: his choice of instruments as his musical "voice," his performances as sites of (re)enchantment in the modern age, his pathbreaking British career, his calling and sway as a quartet player, his pedagogical legacy, his influence on the establishment of the musical canon, and several of his most distinctive and original compositions.

With a wide variety of approaches-analytical, philological, archival, philosophical, and critical-this collection will prove enlightening to scholars, performers, and others interested in this brilliant artist and the musical aesthetics, culture, and styles of his time.



Introduction: The Creative Worlds of Joseph Joachim


1. "Of the Highest Good": Joachim's Relationship to Mendelssohn

2. Joseph Joachim and His Jewish Dilemma

3. Joachim and Romani Musicians: Their Relationship and Common Features in Performance Practice

4. Joachim's Violins: Spotlights on Some of Them

5. (Re-)Enchanting Performance: Joachim and the Spirit of Beethoven

6. "Thou That Hast Been in England Many a Year": The British Joachim

7. Joachim at the Crystal Palace

8. "Music Was Poured by Perfect Ministrants": Joseph Joachim at the Monday Popular Concerts, London

9. "Das Quartett-Spiel ist doch wohl mein eigentliches Fach": Joseph Joachim and the String
Quartet

10. Professor Joachim and His Pupils

11. Performers as Authors of Music History: Joseph and Amalie Joachim

12. At the Intersection of Performance and Composition: Joseph Joachim and Brahms's Piano
Quartet in A Major, Op. 26, Movement III


13. Re-considering the Young Composer-Performer Joseph Joachim, 1841-53

14. "Franz Liszt gewidmet": Joseph Joachim's G-minor Violin Concerto, Op. 3
u
15. Drama and Music in Joachim's Overture to Shakespeare's

16. "So Gleams the Past, the Light of Other Days": Joachim's for Viola and Piano, Op. 9 (1853)

17. Tovey's View of Joachim's "Hungarian" Violin Concerto

Bibliography
Index
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