Intimacy, Performance, and the Lied in the Early Nineteenth Century

"Jennifer Ronyak's primary interest in this important new book is in the power of performance, and her radical insistence is that the social contexts of performance generate meanings often quite different from those we find by examining text-music relationships. Zelter and Goethe, Mignon, Anna Milder-Hauptmann, the origins of Die schöne Müllerin—Ronyak focuses on a fascinating gallery of characters fictive and real and on songs we will hear differently from now on. "—Susan Youens, author of Heinrich Heine and the Lied

"Through a series of carefully selected case studies [Ronyak] recontextualises the many ways in which an ideology of intimacy became significant in the interpretation of early nineteenth-century German song."—Laura Tunbridge, author of Singing in the Age of Anxiety: Lieder Performance in New York and London between the World Wars

"In this erudite and eminently readable book, Ronyak rescues the Lied from its sentimental image as an expression of artistic isolation and melancholy, chronicling a vital world of conversation and social exchange around the performance of Lieder. Tracing a graceful arc from Goethe's and Schiller's thoughts on intimacy through playful performances in Berlin salons to the exhibitionism of Beethoven's 'Adelaide,' Ronyak traces the motions through which the deeply private sentiments of lyric poetry could be rendered in public, and the key role played by music in this translation of intimacy into the marketplace."—Mary Ann Smart, editor of Siren Songs : Representations of Gender and Sexuality in Opera

"Ronyak's intricate methodology, and especially the central position of women in this book, will be an invaluable model for future performance-centric song scholarship that continues to challenge and complement text^music hermeneutics. All in all, this debut monograph is a significant and innovative addition to the study of the early nineteenth-century lied."—Music & Letters

"As a musicologist who has studied rather extensively text-music relations in German Lieder, I have long been aware of some important voices in the field. Certain of their writings have provided eye-opening and ear-opening jolts to interdisciplinary studies, generally within the world of musical scholarship. . . . I may be accused of hyperbole, but I consider Jennifer Ronyak's Intimacy, Performance, and the Lied in the Early Nineteenth Century as having a similar jolt-providing nature. . . . Her rich interdisciplinary approach is indeed a model for others to follow."—Jrgen Thym, Revue de Musicologie

"In privileging historical perspectives on subjectivity and performance, Ronyak's monograph offers a rare glimpse into the private, semiprivate, and public contexts that shaped nineteenth-century sociability and concert programming. . . . Ronyak's stimulating study will be welcomed by all who continue to explore the rich expressive potential of poetry and music in the nineteenth-century lied."—Loretta Terrigno, Juilliard School, NOTES: QTLY JRL MUSIC LIB ASSN