Sound, Sin, and Conversion in Victorian England

ISBN-13: 9781472410849 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 172 str.

Julia Grella O'Connell

Opis

The figure of the fallen woman was at the very forefront of the Victorian social and literary conscience. And the theme permeates the visual arts and music as well. Julia Grella O'Connell draws upon music iconography, patristic theology, and the social history of female fallenness in an investigation of historical perceptions of the states of sin and grace, the possibility of flux between them, and the manner in which these concepts were represented in Victorian art and literature, with particular reference to the role played in these representations by music. O'Connell seeks to locate what she calls the music-sin-redemption topos in the patristic era and to demonstrate its persistence into modern times. The reappearance of music symbolism in the socially-committed, quasi-religious paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites and their circle, especially in works that treat the theme of fallenness, provides evidence that vestiges of a pictorial language linking music with both sin and conversion survived at least as late as the nineteenth century, and that, more remarkably, this language translated fairly easily into the cultural lexicon - Protestant, positivist, and materialist - of Victorian Britain.

Spis treści

Introduction: Music, Sin, and Grace 1. Music, Magdalenes, and Metanoia in The Awakening Conscience 2. Music, Mirrors, and Marian Doppelgängers 3. Instruments of Change: Hearing and Belief 4. Musical Converts Conclusion: Seeing, Hearing, and Conversion

O autorze

Julia Grella O'Connell is the founder of the research-driven performance initiative the Risorgimento Project. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts degre from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2009, and has served on the faculties of Hunter College and The City College of New York. In addition to her international concert appearances with the Risorgiomento Project, she has performed as a soloist with Syracuse Opera, Opera at Caramoor, and ConcertOpera Philadelphia. She is currently a member of the music faculty at Broome Community College of the State University of New York.