Alfred Schnittke was a prolific and nuanced musical figure of the twentieth-century, contributing significantly to the fields of musical philosophy and composition. One of his most researched contributions, that bridges both disciplines, is his definition and implementation of the compositional technique, polystylism. His 1971 essay, "Polystylistic Tendencies in Modern Music," served as the first serious discussion of the term, providing a narrower definition, differentiating it from other techniques, and discussing its importance in the oeuvre of twentieth-century artists. Schnittke is also known for his fervent desire to overcome the gap between Ernstmusik (serious music) and Unterhaltung (music for entertainment). This lifelong pursuit, combined with polystylism, lead him to create an eclectic catalogue that championed the ideas it was pioneering. However, there is little research done on the 1947 literary work that served as a creative catalyst to all these ideas: Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus: The Life of German Composer Adrian Leverkühn as told by a Friend. In contrast to other telling's of the Faust legend, Mann's version features a composer-protagonist, Adrian Leverkühn, who sells his soul for twenty-four years of creative musical-genius. During this time, Leverkühn composes numerous successful works, even developing a new system of musical composition. Mann's telling regularly goes into lengthy detail when describing these musical works, compositional techniques, and extramusical associations. To ensure that these musical topics were technically and theoretically sound, Mann chose the philosopher and music critic, Theodore Adorno, to be the primary editor and consultant when writing Doctor Faustus. Exploring and unpacking these connections to Mann's Doctor Faustus exposes numerous hidden layers, even codes, within Schnittke's compositions. Through a close examination of Schnittke's first completed composition, Fuga (1953), many of these Mann influences and hidden layers can be observed and analyzed.

No description available.

No description available.

By taking into account various published fragments, concepts and the final 'Volksstuck' this thesis attempts to show how the playwright Odon von Horvath developed the characters of his commercially successful 'Volksstuck' "Tales From The Vienna Woods". Chapter one of this thesis includes a brief biography of Horvath. The second chapter comprises a short history of the 'Volksstuck', Horvaths interpretation of the genre and its implications for his plays as well as a summary of the final version "'Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald.' Volksstuck in drei Teilen." The thesis further attempts to recreate a genealogy of the dramatic characters Zauberkonig, Alfred, Marianne and Oskar and to give possible reasons for their dramaturgical changes up to the development of the final version. In addition the thesis concerns itself with one example for the development of stage directions. Political as well as religious implications are considered alone and in connection with the characters.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Some German text and bibliographies. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-63). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Some German text and bibliographies. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-63). Also available on the Internet.

Acting the Child examines the ways in which adult male characters in film and literature from Europe and America can use the role of the child to their political and emotional advantage. As childhood became an increasingly powerful cultural concept, adult men accessed that power to define themselves and organize social relationships. The thesis proposes “infantilization” as a term to describe how these characters act like children or force other characters into the role of the child. The thesis analyzes key moments in the development of infantilization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first chapter explores the uses of infantilization, which produce strong effects in Honoré de Balzac's Le Père Goriot and Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes. These novels demonstrate the ways in which infantilization creates surrogate families in Parisian society. These roles can define and justify extramarital affairs or same sex relationships, which have no legitimate expression. The second chapter demonstrates how H. G. Wells' criticisms of Victorian culture and politics often revolve around male identity such as the scientist-adventurer. As the concepts of boyhood and girlhood solidified, they could describe individual adults or entire social groups. Infantilization was already part of the political discourse, and my thesis demonstrates how Wells challenged these categories. The third chapter extends the analysis of aggressive, masculine characters by examining D. W. Griffith's The Avenging Conscience (1914) and Broken Blossoms (1919) in conjunction with a selection of American recruitment posters for World War I. The analysis shows that World War I had a profound impact on infantilization. Griffith's satirical representation of the man-child subtly criticizes World War I and echoes Wells's attack on Empire. The last chapter explores the effects of the war on infantilization by analyzing three delayed responses: Bernward Vesper's The Trip, Alfons Heck's A Child of Hitler, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's In a Year of Thirteen Moons. Like Fassbinder, I find German adults acting like children in order to cope with a troubled present.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis re-evaluates the work of the neglected Austrian novelist Franz Nabl. Nabl’s reputation has long been overshadowed by the prestige of Jung-Wien, denigrated by inaccurate association with the Heimatroman, and even unjustly tarnished by his appropriation during National Socialism. My work aims to correct these misconceptions, demonstrating that his best fiction merits rehabilitation not only in its own right, but also for the important questions it raises about conventional narratives of Austrian literary history. Structured chronologically, the five chapters of this thesis provide fresh analyses of Nabl’s texts, many of which have previously received only scant scholarly attention. These close readings are located in a range of relevant literary-historical and cultural contexts, illustrating that Nabl’s writing not only belongs in surprising literary company, but also that his works fit into important, yet often overlooked patterns in Austrian literary history which are often obscured by a tradition of criticism which values ‘modernism’ over ‘realism’, and privileges the aesthetically progressive over the apparently conservative. The first chapter investigates Nabl’s earliest fiction in the literary and cultural context of fin-de-siècle Vienna, revealing unexpected connections between Nabl and acknowledged modernists, such as Schnitzler and Kafka. The second and third chapters engage with Nabl’s novels, Ödhof and Das Grab des Lebendigen, establishing his status as a significant critical realist within a long tradition of Austrian works exploring unhappy family life. The fourth chapter focuses on the misleading view of Nabl as a regionalist, demonstrating that, while not all Heimat novels deserve critical condemnation, Nabl’s narratives of rural life invoke the conventions of the Heimatroman only to disappoint them. In the last chapter, I explore Nabl’s complicated relationship to National Socialism, showing that, although his involvements with the Nazis were ill-judged, Nabl was not committed to their politics and wrote only politically innocuous fiction during the regime.