Prophets Looking Backwards: German Romantic Historicism and the Representation of Renaissance Music

Abstract

AbstractCrucial to understanding the reception of Renaissance music in nineteenth-century Germany is an appreciation of the contradictory components of Romantic historicism. The tension between subjective and objective historicism is fundamental to the historiographical reception of Renaissance music, epitomizing the interdependency of historical representation and modern reform. Protestant authors seeking to reform church music elevated two distinct repertories — Renaissance Italian music and Lutheran compositions from the Reformation era — as ideal archetypes: these competing paradigms reflect significantly different historiographical and ideological trends. Early romantic commentators, such as Hoffmann and Thibaut, elevated Palestrina as a universal model, constructing a golden age of old Italian church music by analogy with earlier narratives in art history; later historians, such as Winterfeld and Spitta, condemned the subjectivity of earlier reformers, seeking instead to revivify the objective foundations of Protestant church music. Both approaches are united, however, by the use of deterministic modes of narrative emplotment.