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8 - Music, Magic, and the Supernatural

from Part II - Worlds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2021

By
Francesca Brittan
Edited by
Benedict Taylor
Benedict Taylor
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Summary

At the heart of Romantic supernaturalism was a newly ‘real’ or ‘material’ magic described by philosophers and aesthetic theorists including Friedrich Schlegel, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Théophile Gautier, Charles Nodier, and others. Rejecting the illusory marvels of the eighteenth century and recalling aspects of natural magic associated with Renaissance cosmology, Romantic fantasy reconciled science and enchantment, phenomena and noumena. This chapter explores how such a reconciliation happened, outlining the impact of post-Kantian Idealist thought, the role of pantheism, the social shifts initiated by eighteenth-century revolutionary and imperialist activity, and the emergence of Gothic culture. From these developments, a new magical mode emerged – a fantastic epistemology – with special implications for music. It allowed fairies to converge with insects, demons to merge into colonial Others, and supernatural spirits to enter the domain of the real. These ideas are fleshed out via close readings of Schubert’s Erlkönig, Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable.

Keywords

magicRomantic supernaturalismGothicfantasticenchantmentscience
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Music and Romanticism , pp. 127 - 145
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Abrams, M. H. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: Norton, 1971).Google Scholar
Austern, Linda Phyllis and Naroditskaya, Inna (eds.). Music of the Sirens (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Botting, Fred. Gothic, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2014).Google Scholar
Brittan, Francesca. Music and Fantasy in the Age of Berlioz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buch, David J. Magic Flutes and Enchanted Forests: The Supernatural in Eighteenth-Century Musical Theater (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).Google Scholar
Cruz, Gabriela. Grand Illusion: Phantasmagoria in Nineteenth-Century Opera (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, Christopher H. ‘“Komm, Geh’ Mit Mir”: Schubert’s Uncanny Erlkönig’, 19th-Century Music, 19/2 (1995), 115–35.Google Scholar
Gouk, Penelope. Music, Science, and Natural Magic in Seventeenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Hoffmann, E. T. A. E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings: Kreisleriana, The Poet and the Composer, Music Criticism, ed. Charlton, David, trans. Clarke, Martyn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).Google Scholar
Loughridge, Deirdre. Haydn’s Sunrise, Beethoven’s Shadow: Audiovisual Culture and the Emergence of Musical Romanticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malchow, H. L. Gothic Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Monleón, José. A Specter Is Haunting Europe: A Sociohistorical Approach to the Fantastic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richards, Annette. The Free Fantasia and the Musical Picturesque (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Howard, Richard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973).Google Scholar
Tomlinson, Gary. Music and Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).Google Scholar

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