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In this dissertation, I study Robert Schumann’s interaction with nineteenth-century album practice, in his own inscriptions and compositions, as a means of better understanding Romantic memory. Personal keepsake albums—in which people asked friends and family members to inscribe leaves through which they could be remembered—show the complex ways individuals interacted with and constructed memory. Current musicological research has addressed memory in music as a stylistic topos meant to be recognized by general audiences, and has also brought to light the burgeoning importance of public-facing sites of memory such as monuments throughout the nineteenth century.A study of albums—which focuses on personal and private memory practices—thus provides a necessary complement. The Romantics were concerned with both inner and outer worlds, and though albums foreground what may seem like the quotidian nature of everyday interpersonal relationships, they also demonstrate a profound acknowledgement of the poetic and imaginative power of memory and the ways in which everyday people could access it. Through a series of case studies, I engage with Schumann’s mementos as both cultural objects and musical texts, contextualizing them historically and biographically.I explore a period of time in which Schumann almost exclusively inscribed choral canons, constructing a private legacy which emphasized his status as a pedagogue and his affection for his choral society. I investigate the album Robert and Clara created for their student Emilie Steffens to commemorate her importance in their social circle and celebrate her identity as an up-and-coming musician. I show how some of the conventions of private album practice permeated the public sphere through Schumann’s contributions to published musical albums and anthologies.And lastly, I approach the Album für die Jugend through the lens of album practice, demonstrating how“Erinnerung,” written for Felix Mendelssohn after his death, stands in dialogue with several other private album leaves created by the Schumanns and their close friends, as well as with the so-called Star Pieces in the Album.My approach to Romantic memory and music thus explains how issues of aesthetics, Robert Schumann’s personal practices, and the very social considerations of album-keeping intersect. |
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