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Though Louis Spohr’s Jessonda is primarily remembered for being an early attempt at a continuous opera, its portrayal of India presents an interesting perspective of orientalism in Biedermeier Germany. German orientalism in the early nineteenth century was not motivated by imperialism, and thus differed fundamentally from French and British orientalism. Jessonda presents a unique opportunity to study these varying motivations, due to the story’s frequent translation and adaptation to different national stages: France, Germany, England, and America. A comparison of these possible sources for the opera reveals the authors’ varying political and/or cultural motivations. Spohr’s and his librettist’s alterations to the story were motivated in part by Biedermeier values, but also by Spohr’s classicist aesthetics. Spohr believed that an opera’s story should appeal to the everyman but music should remain elevated, untainted by popular elements-- more in line with Mozart than Spontini. The women portrayed in Jessonda, however, are constructed to particularly cater to Biedermeier values: they are stripped of their agency, left with only passive loyalty to Brahma and to the male characters. Jessonda (the character) may visually represent the exotic but, in line with Spohr’s aesthetics, she acts and sings like a European. Spohr’s musical and dramatic constructions enhance the Indian-versus-European and male-versus-female binaries, and illustrate common German conceptions of both the Indian and female Other. / text

La première moitié du XIXe siècle germanique voit le sacré se déplacer de façon massive et multiple vers la sphère profane. Le vocabulaire, les schémas et les idéaux religieux se refondent dans le prisme historique pour pénétrer philosophie, littérature, arts visuels et musique. Dans un climat esthétique, politique et social tendu vers la Bildung, l’édification morale mais aussi religieuse de la société, la représentation communautaire devient l’objet privilégié de l’art. En témoignent le ressourcement architectural gothique, les tableaux d’activisme nazaréen, ainsi que des modalités de représentation grandioses dans l’opéra et l’oratorio. L’insertion plus insolite du religieux dans la symphonie trouve ici un champ de contextualisation qui permet d’élucider les mutations contradictoires du genre en plein essor. Engagée depuis le classicisme dans une vocation spirituelle récusant l’intelligible, la symphonie ne s’en trouve pas moins investie de représentations religieuses se focalisant sur l’image communautaire. Dans l’attraction de l’œuvre beethovénien, Mendelssohn et Schumann, parallèlement à Spohr, font dans leurs symphonies une place décisive aux topoï connotant ou dénotant le religieux, à commencer par les cantiques et les styles anciens. Leurs corpus symphoniques respectifs apparaissent singulièrement homogènes, non moins qu’en correspondance. Par l’amplification des représentations spirituelles via la technique cyclique, ils s’appréhendent dès lors dans une vocation religieuse d’accomplissement, en probable résonance avec les conceptions historicistes d’immanence ou de transcendance. / The first half of the Germanic Nineteenth Century saw the shift of the religious expression in a massive and multiple way towards the profane sphere. Vocabulary, patterns and religious ideals are recast in the historical prism to enter philosophy, literature, visual arts and music. In a tense aesthetic, political and social climate to « Bildung », the moral and religious edification of society, the community representation becomes the privileged aim of art. Evidence of this is found in the Gothic architectural renewal, the activism of Nazarene paintings and grandiose representation arrangements in historical-religious opera and oratorio. The more unusual religious penetration into the symphony finds a significant field of contextualization that allows to elucidate the contradictory mutations of the booming genre. Committed since classicism to a spiritual vocation rejecting the intelligible, it is nonetheless true that the symphony is invested with religious representations focusing on community image. In the attraction of the work of Beethoven, symphonies by Mendelssohn and Schumann, along with those of Spohr, give emphasis to topoï connoting or indicating the religious, starting with hymns and old styles. Their respective symphonic corpus appear remarkably homogeneous, no less than in retrospect correspondence. By amplifying the spiritual representations via the cyclic technique, they are subsequently grasped in a religious vocation of accomplishment, likely in resonance with the historicist conceptions of immanence and transcendence.

Great clarinet virtuosi have always been involved in the expansion of the repertoire for their instrument. In some cases they were themselves gifted composers--a good example being Franz Tauch--but their greatest contribution by far has been their ability to inspire other, better composers to devote the time and creative energy necessary to the composition of major works for an instrument not usually thought of as a major solo medium. Johann Simon Hermstedt's collaboration with Louis Spohr is a lesser known example of such composer-clarinet virtuoso partnerships which have included, among others, Mozart and Stadler, Weber and Baermann, and Brahms and Muehlfeld.