The Viennese Waltz: Decadence and the Decline of Austrias Unconscious

(Hardback)

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Satirically utilized by Strauss II to highlight the deceptive aristocratic class, under Lehr, Schoenberg, Mahler, and Weberns pens the waltz became the pivot between the conscious and unconscious, forcing the music into a paralytic second state analogous with the stagnation of the Habsburg Empire. The Waltz: The Decadence and Decline of Austrias Unconscious shows how over the hundred years between the Vienna Congress and the dissolution of the Empire, the waltz altered from signifier of upper-class artificecovering with glitz and glamour the poverty and war central to the timeto the link between the three classes, between man and nature, and between Viennese and Other. Danielle Hood wields the Freudian concepts of the uncanny and the doppelgnger to explain this revolution from the simple signification of a dance to the psychological anxiety of a subjects place in society.

Reviews

The Waltz is bound to become an indispensable contribution to the musical analysis of fin-de-sicle Vienna and particularly the waltz and its symbolic signification. Masterful use of topical and narratological procedures, but also of psychoanalysis as it is provided by the cultural context under scrutiny. Taking into account and relating to each other both art music (Schnberg, Webern, Mahler) and functional genres such as dances and operetta reveals itself a fruitful, clever operation.

-- Joan Grimalt Santacana, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Drawing on topic theory, along with psychology and philosophy, Danielle Hood makes a compelling argument for reading the waltz as an uncanny narrative and tying the meaning to music as early as Johann Strauss II and Die Fledermaus rather than fin-de sicle Vienna. The case studies are detailed and incorporate tonal, atonal, and serial music and illustrate that the Viennese traditions did not fade away with World War I. The well-known Symphonie of Anton Webern receives a treatment far beyond the row structure and canonic properties typically discussed. The waltz and the Lndler have always been connected, and Hood demonstrates how the opposition between the two grows into an uncanny narrative.

-- Erik Heine, Oklahoma City University

Danielle Hoods examination of the waltz in fin-de-siecle Vienna offers, on the one hand, a corrective to the relative absence of analytical accounts of music of this time in terms of topic and on the other, psychologically informed readings that tease out hitherto unexplored connections between diverse repertoires and composers. To achieve this, Hoods interpretative strategy is appropriately wide ranging, touching on the musical application of Freudian theory, narratology, and hermeneutics. Readers interested in musics multiple significations and the interrelationships between musical topics and narrative, culture, and the unconscious will find much food for thought in Hoods lively account.

-- Edward Venn, University of Leeds

Author Bio

Danielle Hood received her PhD in musicology from the University of Leeds.