Last Class: Snowed Out

V.  Review: 
What is different about fin-de-siècle Viennese society is that it evolved into the 19th century without a dominant Protestant middle-class, with the Imperial court and Catholic aristocratic/liberal Jewish values dominating society.
•      Bürgerministerium (liberal bourgeoisie) not until last third of century and then short lived (1868-1897) until Lueger became mayor & parliament dissolved;
•      different values concerning democratic or representative governance, the dominance of man over nature, rationality, repression of sexual drives, the role of aesthetics & pleasure in everyday life, morality, & what constitutes masculinity or male authority;

Central (bourgeois) male control located in the vatious arts as the principle of establishing a focal center and creating a hierarchical (vertical articulation) structure that would reflect the social stratification of society:
•      Literature: omniscient narrator/author who structures the action, establishes a hierarchy of major & minor characters/ plot-counterplot, manages the timeframe of the narrative to distill out all unimportant occurrences, structures the piece according to the formal conventions of the genre, provides commentary, and insures a moral interpretation of the events;
•      Music (1600-1900):  the central organizing principles of tonality & consonance based on a vertical hierarchy (principles of harmony), the structural economy of the sonata allegro form, and the complementary distribution of voice in certain established patterns that signify a familiar order (e.g., soprano-tenor love duets; location of authority in the male voice, etc.);
•     Art:  the organizing principles of establishing a center to the picture (vanishing point) to which all perspective becomes subordinate, a certain symmetry & balance in establishing the horizon or planes of the picture, use of light & shadow, color complementarity to establish the illusion of a three-dimensional, mimetic representation of reality;
•      Architecture:  vertical articulation of buildings through use of columns or differentiated articulation of the various floors of a building to reflect the central hierarchal order of society.

Three Stages of Viennese Culture at Turn of the Century:
1. Ringstrasse Vienna:
•      characterized by adherence to principle of central male (bourgeois) control/authority but undermined because that didn’t evolve organically out of strict morality, austere life style, and sanctity of marriage:
Music:
•      waltz as the dominant dance form but despite tonality & strict musical composition, it was associated with intoxication and a sweeping, gliding horizontal flow = barely controlled chaos & association with sexuality, champagne, & adultery;
•      operettas like the Fledermaus (1874) posit Dr. Falke as a central male authority but the whole piece celebrates adultery & drunkenness, and Dr. Falke is not in control of the adulturous action of Rosalinde & Alfred, which threatens to turn the whole thing into tragedy —> here one also sees the beginnings of waning male authority in the aristocracy as Prince Orlofsky is a cross-dressed role played by a woman.
Art & Architecture:

  1. Representative institutions: art museum, theater, opera, parliament, university
  2. bourgeois apartment houses
  3. bourgeois realism: representative of historical development of the institutions, bourgeois society

Literature:

  1. Libretto for Fledermaus
  2. Poetic realism, omniscient narrator, structured drama, etc.

2. Young Vienna (Jung Wien)/ Impressionism/Secession/Middle Generation:
•      characterized by breakdown in the belief of the respective language of articulation —> crisis of “language” and experimentation within the formal structure of each medium, which usually takes the form of weaking the central authority structures or provisionally removing them.  Also influenced by psychology & desire to bring unconscious psychological phenomena (eros/thanatos) to the surface but in the form of a “new language” of symbols, leitmotifs, & signs.  Often characterized by a bipolar or double center that destabilizes the previous hegemonic central focus.
•      Literature:
      Schnitzler:  stream-of-conscious, removal of structuring narrator/dramatist: stringing together of individual scenes, exposes the adultery rampant under the surface of society, exposes anti-Semitism, language = only a beautiful facade: the real meaning = in the ---;
      Hofmannsthal:  crisis of language in Chandos letter + 2 parallel planes of experience (language of the heart for spiritual dimension); demonstrates what happens when the superego (control/repression function) is removed from the consciousness of Sgt. Anton Lerch —> chaos of sexuality, filth, & death + insurrection; Rosenkavalier treats topic of “true nobility” while acknowledging the adultery rampant in Vienna but not censuring it;
      Musil:  violence & aggression under the surface of society —> what happens when adolescents explore this aspect instead of repressing it = contained by omniscient narrator; crisis of language & representation & parallel realities that Törless can slip in and out of.

•      Music: 
      Mahler:  bipolarity through use of counterpoint (eros/life & death); progressive tonality in each song & use of chromaticism weakens location in 1 tonal center; voice & orchestra often doing different things; some emancipation of dissonance but still controlled; Chinoiserie;
      Richard Strauss:  heavy use of chromaticism destabilizes tonal center; progressive tonality; use of leitmotifs to bring in a psychological dimension and give the piece a more horizontal flow (not held together by traditional vertical harmonies); unrepressed erotic content of the music; abandons traditional voice complementarities and leaves a void in the center range of voice; soprano-soprano love duets; ranking male aristocrat = cross-dressed mezzo.

•     Art:  Klimt dissolves line in his landscapes and early portraits into an impressionistic pointilism or Whistler-type brushstroke; psychological “leitmotifs” developed in a symbolic language of male/female/sexual symbols; flattening of the frame into a certain 2-dimensionality; distortion of perspective in the asymmetrical distribution of space in the style of art nouveau or in the parallel planes & distortion of perspective in his landscapes; psychological chaos of University paintings; weakened & then progressively disappearing male bodies sublimated into sexual symbols & male gaze metamorphosed into monstrous creatures (ape, octopus); fascination with the interplay between eros/thanatos; orientalism.

•      Architecture:  Otto Wagner moves progressively away from Ringstrasse style toward more “horizontal” articulation, art nouveau ornamentation, and utility (form follows function); brings underpinnings to the surface & integrates them into the esthetic of a building.
     
3. Expressionism: