When Machines Play Chopin: Musical Spirit and Automation in Nineteenth-Century German Literature (Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies)

When Machines Play Chopin: Musical Spirit and Automation in Nineteenth-Century German Literature (Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies)

by KatherineHirt (Author)

Synopsis

When Machines Play Chopin brings together music aesthetics, performance practices, and the history of automated musical instruments in nineteenth-century German literature. Philosophers defined music as a direct expression of human emotion while soloists competed with one another to display machine-like technical perfection at their instruments. When Machines Play Chopin looks at this paradox between thinking about and practicing music to show what three literary works say about automation and the sublime in art.

$211.52

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 180
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter & Co
Published: 20 May 2010

ISBN 10: 3110232391
ISBN 13: 9783110232394

Media Reviews
Densely written and diligently researched, When Machines Play Chopin interweaves literary history, aesthetics, performance history, and the history of technology in new and unexpected ways. [...] By focusing on the literary life of music machines, Hirt presents a compelling narrative on music aesthetics and the mechanical from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, one with important consequences for a contemporary discussion of the place of the human vis-a-vis technologies of sound. Mary Helen Dupree in: Monatshefte 104/1 2012
Author Bio
Katherine Hirt, Seattle, USA.