’You play exactly as if you came from America.’ Transatlantic Relations and Anti-American Bias in the Musical Life of the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy 1880-1915

1900年左右，反美偏见在讲德语的国家普遍存在。当“美国化”这个词被用来批评音乐生活的商业化时，反美偏见也出现在艺术实践本身的领域。例如，美国钢琴家被指责技术缺陷或纯粹机械演奏，缺乏深度和对音乐缺乏热爱，以及仅仅是对音乐的经济兴趣。这个项目的目的是阐明1880年至1915年间美国人进入德语国家的盛大旅行，突出弗朗茨·李斯特(魏玛)和西奥多·莱切蒂茨基(维也纳)等教师开创的跨大西洋网络，并分析德语中与音乐有关的话语，其中反美偏见变得明显。在这样做的过程中，该项目将音乐学的视角与历史学、语言学和美国研究相结合。时间框架一方面涉及19世纪80年代围绕李斯特的魏玛聚会的丰富资料，另一方面涉及莱切蒂茨基在维也纳的最后一年(1915)，当时他作为钢琴教师的国际声誉被无数的讣告所提及。在柏林，对美国钢琴家同样具有吸引力的地方，李斯特和莱切蒂茨基通过他们作为作曲家和钢琴家的工作，以及通过许多自己成为钢琴教师的学生。与此同时，美国周刊《音乐信使》在柏林的办公室开设了专门的柏林版面，为海内外的美国人报道首都的音乐生活。通过阅读这些文本，以及音乐会评论、教学礼仪、传记文学和其他来源，我试图描述那些年美国年轻钢琴家进行的盛大巡演的基本布局。其次，我想要讨论一下在柏林、魏玛和维也纳反复出现的德语话语中关于“美国人/S”的元素：美国钢琴家遇到了什么具体的偏见，这些偏见在当代关于技艺和内心的德语辩论、自主音乐的概念、音乐表演的经济学和不同的听音乐方式方面有什么作用？

Anti-American bias was widespread in German speaking lands around 1900. While the term 'Americanization' was used to criticize the commercialization of musical life, Anti-American bias also arose within the realm of artistic practice itself. For example, American pianists were accused of technical deficiencies or purely mechanical play, a lack of depth and a lack of love for music, as well as a merely economic interest in music. The aim of this project is to illuminate American grand tours into German speaking lands between 1880 and 1915, to highlight the transatlantic networks that were inaugurated by teachers like Franz Liszt (Weimar) and Theodor Leschetizky (Vienna), and to analyze the music-related discourse in German in which Anti-American biases became explicit. In doing this, the project combines perspectives of musicology with those of history, linguistics and American studies.The time frame relates to the rich array of sources on the Weimar gatherings around Liszt in the 1880s on the one hand and Leschetizky’s final year in Vienna (1915) on the other, when his international acclaim as a piano teacher was addressed by countless obituaries. In Berlin, an equally attractive destination for American pianists, Liszt and Leschetizky were present through their work as composers and pianists and through numerous students that had become piano teachers themselves. Meanwhile, the American weekly Musical Courier entertained a Berlin office with specific Berlin pages that covered musical life in the capital for Americans at home and abroad.Working with such texts as well as with concert reviews, teaching protocols, biographical literature and other sources, I seek to describe the basic layout of the grand tours young American pianists undertook in those years. Secondly, I wish to discuss recurring elements of the German-speaking discourse on ‘the American/s’ in Berlin, Weimar, and Vienna: What were the specific biases that American pianists met with, and what was the function of these biases with regard to contemporary German-language debates on virtuosity and inwardness, on the concept of autonomous music, the economics of musical performances, and different ways of listening to music?