This dissertation explores the influence that nineteenth-century tenets of Kunstreligion exerted on Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's aesthetic thought. Widely defined as the merging of religious and aesthetic notions in writings about the arts, Kunstreligion has frequently been interpreted as a manifestation of spiritual beliefs and a movement with which Mendelssohn was not affiliated. The aid of this thesis is to challenge these claims, and to establish the rootedness of sacralised conceptions of music in non-religious inspirations and particulars of language use. Placing Mendelssohn's fascination with church worship, religious morality as well as the human and the divine in the context of wider philosophies of art and religion, the dissertation explores how the composer availed himself of art-religious vocabulary in his correspondence, examining his use of language both in terms of his own religious upbringing and the intellectual discourse of his age. Mendelssohn's Kunstreligion was very practically oriented. reflecting his belief that music was a religious language of feelings and proclamation, his performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion and subsequent compositions manifested a concern to serve educative purposes related to historicism as well as religious edification and instruction. An analysis of how he viewed these activities in his correspondence reveals that comparisons of concerts with church sermons were not only meant metaphorically but point to objectives that he hoped to accomplish as a man and an artist. His reflections on attributes oft he 'human' and the 'divine' elsewhere suggest a belief that artists were blessed by God and that superior works of art were either God's creation or deserved to be described as 'divine' in the sense of 'excellent.' As these overlapping religio-aesthetic concepts and meanings indicate, in Mendelssohn's writings, Kunstreligion could be both a form of religion that was associated with Schleiermacher's theology and an eclectic verbal language that was creative, often qualitiative, sometimes irons, and, to that effect, typically Mendelssohnian.

This dissertation explores the influence that nineteenth-century tenets of Kunstreligion exerted on Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s aesthetic thought. Widely defined as the merging of religious and aesthetic notions in writings about the arts, Kunstreligion has frequently been interpreted as a manifestation of spiritual beliefs and a movement with which Mendelssohn was not affiliated. The aim of this thesis is to challenge these claims, and to establish the rootedness of sacralised conceptions of music in non-religious inspirations and particulars of language use. Placing Mendelssohn’s fascination with church worship, religious morality as well as the human and the divine in the context of wider philosophies of art and religion, the dissertation explores how the composer availed himself of art-religious vocabulary in his correspondence, examining his use of language both in terms of his own religious upbringing and the intellectual discourse of his age. Mendelssohn’s Kunstreligion was very practically oriented. Reflecting his belief that music was a religious language of feelings and proclamation, his performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and subsequent compositions manifested a concern to serve educative purposes related to historicism as well as religious edification and instruction. An analysis of how he viewed these activities in his correspondence reveals that comparisons of concerts with church sermons were not only meant metaphorically but point to objectives that he hoped to accomplish as a man and an artist. His reflections on attributes of the ‘human’ and the ‘divine’ elsewhere suggest a belief that artists were blessed by God and that superior works of art were either God’s creation or deserved to be described as ‘divine’ in the sense of ‘excellent.’ As these overlapping religio-aesthetic concepts and meanings indicate, in Mendelssohn’s writings, Kunstreligion could be both a form of religion that was associated with Schleiermacher’s theology and an eclectic verbal language that was creative, often qualitative, sometimes ironic, and, to that effect, typically Mendelssohnian.

Die Konstruktion nationaler Identität durch Musik ist ein Phänomen, das im 19. Jahrhundert in einigen Genres und Gattungen zu beobachten ist. Im vorliegenden Buch wird diese Bedeutsamkeit anhand des protestantischen Chorals in der Konzertouvertüre untersucht. Michael Florian Müller legt im ersten Teil seiner Studie die Entstehungsgeschichte und Theorie der Konzertouvertüre sowie die Choralrezeption der relevanten protestantischen Choräle, insbesondere die teilweise Überschreibung eines religiösen Paradigmas durch ein nationales, dar. Im Hauptteil der Arbeit beleuchtet er dann alle auffindbaren Konzertouvertüren, die sich eines protestantischen Chorals bedienen. Relevante Werke schufen dabei einerseits Komponisten, die – von Zeitgenossen wie von der Musikgeschichtsschreibung – als „bedeutend“ eingeschätzt wurden oder werden, andererseits aber auch lediglich regional bekannte Komponisten. Zusammenfassend stellt der Autor im dritten Teil des Buchs die Bedeutung des protestantischen Chorals für die Konzertouvertüre dar. In einem 'Ausblick'-Kapitel geht er auf – für die Thematik bedeutsame – Konzertouvertüren im 20. Jahrhundert sowie auf einsätzige Instrumentalkompositionen, die nicht als 'Ouvertüren' bezeichnet wurden, ein. Im Anhang der Studie sind unter anderem etliche Briefeditionen bzw. -transkriptionen – vor allem im Zusammenhang mit Sir William Sterndale Bennett – zu finden.

Recent developments in today’s art music reflect a general trend of cultural globalisation: It can be characterised as an oscillation between a standardisation of compositional idioms (usually following standards established in the West) and claims for sustainable forms of cultural difference. Even though it is obviously necessary to counterbalance and criticise an academically established »avant garde’s« ethnocentrism and its tendency to dominate a worldwide discourse of new music, references to cultural difference can prove to be naïve or self-deceiving, since they are often linked to essentialist, post-nationalist concepts of (musical) culture. A critical discussion of paradigms and paradoxes in the aesthetics of cultural difference is opened with an analysis of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s universalist Telemusik (1966) as a main example showing how compositional processes can easily eradicate those »cultural« peculiarities in musical styles that the composer claims to preserve. Whereas such processes are often due to a fundamentally mono-cultural discourse and – in Stockhausen’s case – can be traced back to the 19th century Western universalist concept of »art religion«, the three remaining case studies introduce works from Asian contexts that exemplify a dense interpenetration of political, historical and aesthetical strata of both Asian and Western origins. While José Maceda’s Pagsamba (1968), Ge Ganru’s Yi Feng (1983) and Yuji Takahashi’s Sojo Rinzetsu (1997) all use highly idiosyncratic »Asian« material, their works remain informed by key principles of Western modernity, namely incommensurability and the deconstruction of cultural or stylistic stereotypes. This allows for the conclusion that the »space« in which their musical art evolves is a globalised cultural memory that reflects the inner contradictions and the historicity of music as a »cultural« technique.