The Creative Worlds of Joseph Joachim

Examines Joseph Joachim's vital legacy through a range of philological, philosophical and critical approaches.

Examines Joseph Joachim's vital legacy through a range of philological, philosophical and critical approaches.

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
Robert Whitehouse Eshbach
PART ONE: Identity
1. "Of the Highest Good": Joachim's Relationship to Mendelssohn
R. Larry Todd
2. Joseph Joachim and His Jewish Dilemma
Styra Avins
3. Joachim and Romani Musicians: Their Relationship and Common Features in Performance Practice
Mineo Ota
PART TWO: Joachim as Performer4. Joachim's Violins: Spotlights on Some of Them
Ruprecht Kamlah
5. (Re-)Enchanting Performance: Joachim and the Spirit of Beethoven
Karen Leistra-Jones
6. "Thou That Hast Been in England Many a Year": The British Joachim
Ian Maxwell
7. Joachim at the Crystal Palace
Michael Musgrave
8. "Music Was Poured by Perfect Ministrants": Joseph Joachim at the Monday Popular Concerts, London
Therese Ellsworth
9. "Das Quartett-Spiel ist doch wohl mein eigentliches Fach": Joseph Joachim and the String
Quartet
Robert Riggs
10. Professor Joachim and His Pupils
Sanna Pederson
11. Performers as Authors of Music History: Joseph and Amalie Joachim
Beatrix Borchard
12. At the Intersection of Performance and Composition: Joseph Joachim and Brahms's Piano
Quartet in A Major, Op. 26, Movement III
William P. Horne
PART THREE: Joachim as Composer
13. Re-considering the Young Composer-Performer Joseph Joachim, 1841-53
Katharina Uhde
14. "Franz Liszt gewidmet": Joseph Joachim's G-minor Violin Concerto, Op. 3
Vasiliki Papadopoulou
15. Drama and Music in Joachim's Overture to Shakespeare'sHenry IV
Valerie Woodring Goertzen
16. "So Gleams the Past, the Light of Other Days": Joachim'sHebräische Melodien for Viola and Piano, Op. 9 (1853)
Marie Sumner Lott
17. Tovey's View of Joachim's "Hungarian" Violin Concerto
Robert Riggs
Bibliography
Index