Understanding Joachim's aesthetic as a composer of programme music in the early 1850s has proved challenging for scholars. The many dichotomies of his life and work have often blurred his contours as a composer. History has situated him between Leipzig (Moritz Hauptmann) and Weimar (Liszt), and between absolute (Brahms) and programme music (Liszt). There are also his two musical personae as violinist and composer, as well as conflicts between his German and Hungarian nationalities, and between the Jewish and Christian faiths (he converted to the latter in 1855). Borchard has offered a valuable start to understanding his Zerrissenheit (disunity):

This chapter will follow Borchard's method and investigate Joachim's Hamlet Overture by asking how Shakespeare's tragedy served as a mirror to a whole generation. It provides a window into Joachim's political and historical worldview. What was the cultural situation that elevated Weltschmerz? And how, specifically, was cultural and societal disunity an issue for Joachim? The following analysis of Joachim's Hamlet approaches his disunity from a musical perspective. It does so by positioning the work between a musical past and present, by acknowledging its programmatic and counter-Lisztian features, and by exploring how Joachim portrays the character Hamlet. Joachim closely followed the political events of the 1848–49 revolutions in Hungary and Germany. His letters written between March and October 1848 reflect the enthusiasm for Hungarian independence and subsequent frustration when the dream of independence was shattered.