Decadence in Central and Eastern European Music, c.1870-1920

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This research aims to fill the musicological gaps that remain in our understanding of how decadence as an idea, style, pose or topic functioned in Central and Eastern European music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When published it will be the first book-length study devoted to this topic. Indeed, in general, the role of decadence in these political/cultural contexts remains rather less explored than the French or British varieties which often, of course, functioned as models or stimuli for artists working in Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Czech lands, Poland and Russia. In the political climate of the final years of the Habsburg, Prussian, and Tsarist Russian Empires, decadence acquired new and crucial resonances. In turn, these Central and East European species of decadence interacted, influenced and resisted each other in complex ways. Music's role within this geographical dispersion and redefinition of decadence, as compositional artefact, medium, metaphor or inspiration, was often crucial. The research method involves close analysis of musical style and structure, hermeneutic interpretation, the reading of contemporaneous criticism and theory, and relating music to wider artistic trends. It covers repertory that is familiar (Wagner, Strauss, Wolf, Schoenberg, Scriabin), that whose profile is rising (Szymanowski, Schreker), the popular but musicologically neglected (Rachmaninov) and the obscure (Nietzsche's music, the Polish composer Karlowicz).