Loyola University Chicago:


Books, Etc.
Online Links to Faculty Publications

Beethoven in German Politics, 1870-1989 -
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Beethoven in German Politics, 1870-1989 - Amazon

"Beethoven At Large: Reception in Literature, the Arts, Philosophy, and Politics" in The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven

"The Most German of all German Operas": Die Meistersinger Through the Lens of the Third Reich in Wagner's Meistersinger Performance, History, Representation


"Brahms's Requiem eines Unpolitischen," in Searching for Common Ground

"Honor Your German Masters: The Use and Abuse of 'Classical' Composers in Nazi Propaganda" Journal of Political and Military Sociology, (Winter) 2002

"Crying 'Wolf'? A Review Essay on Recent Wagner Literature German Studies Review, February 2001

Review Essay on Recent Literature about Music and German Politics German Studies Review, October 1997

David B. Dennis

Ph.D. UCLA, 1991

Modern European Intellectual and Cultural History

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

  • Modern European Intellectual and Cultural History
  • Modern German History
  • Music and History
  • Beethoven Studies

OFFICE PHONE with Voice Mail: (773) 508-2234

E-MAIL ADDRESS: dennis@luc.edu

OFFICE ADDRESS: Crown Center 513

OFFICE HOURS: MWF 11:15-12:15; Wednesday afternoons by appt.

COURSES:

These are descriptions and syllabi for earlier versions of these courses. Changes may be made for subsequent sessions.

Loyola Students may visit course sites on Blackboard as "guests." Log into Blackboard. Click "Courses." Click "History" under Course Catalogue. Find available course.

History 101 Western Civilization: The Evolution of Western Ideas and Institutions to the 17th Century

History 102 Western Civilization: The Evolution of Western Ideas and Institutions since the 17th Century

History 106 Modern Western Civilization: The Humanities in Context since the 17th Century

History 300 Germany in the 19th Century

History 300 Modern Europe and The Arts

History 321 Nineteenth-Century Europe

History 336 Germany in the 20th Century

History 327 Europe Since 1945

History 433: Modern German History and Historiography

History 436 Cultural and Intellectual Histories of Modern Europe

History 436 Culture and Politics in 20th-Century Europe

History 436 The Novel and 19th-Century German History

History 436 Cultural Studies and Modern German History

History 436 The Art and Practice of Historical Writing

History 540 The Novel and 20th-Century Europe

 

A FAIRLY RECENT VERSION OF MY CV: Curriculum Vitae

BOOK: Beethoven in German Politics, 1870-1989. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Reviews of Beethoven in German Politics, 1870-1989:

  • James R. Oestreich, "Beethoven as Idealist, Militarist, Whatever," The New York Times, 6 March 1996
  • "Beethoven's slippery politics give a sharp twist to musical history," The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (6 March 1996)
  • Peter Aspden, "Purist strike wrong note," The Financial Times (London), 28/29 March 1996
  • Maria Chiare Bonazzi, "Le mani su Beethoven,"La Stampa (Turin),1 April 1996
  • Ian Buruma, "Hijacking Beethoven," The Sunday Telegraph (London), 26 May 1996
  • "An Ode Response: Alle Menschen werden Brueder?" The Guardian (London), 27 May 1996
  • Patricia Elliot, "Books for the General Reader," The Beethoven Journal (Spring 1996, vol. 11, no. 1)
  • Clive Davies, "Ode, dear, Ludwig pays the penalty," The Yorkshire Post, 6 June 1996
  • Nicholas Till, "Tunes of Glory," New Statesman and Society, 7 June 1996
  • Jeroen Koch, "Het gebruik van een genie," NRC Handelsblad (Amsterdam), 20 July 1996
  • Barry Cooper, "Beethoven's political uses," BBC Music Magazine (August 1996)
  • R. R. Smith, Choice (September 1996)
  • Steven R. Cerf, "Books" Opera News (October 1996, vol. 61, No. 4)
  • Eugen Weber, "Recommended Reading," The Key Reporter (Autumn 1996)
  • Dennis Bartel, "Cover to Cover," Chamber Music (December 1996, vol. 13, no. 6)
  • Michael H. Kater, "Hitler in der Oper?" Kurt Weill Newsletter (vol. 14, no. 1, 1996)
  • "Bücher von unsern Lesern," DAAD (No. 4, December 1996)
  • Michael H. Kater, American Historical Review, October 1997
  • Peter Pulzer, Music & Letters, May 1997
  • William Weber, Notes, vol. 53, no. 4, June 1997)
  • David Imhoof, Weimar Listservice, February 1997
  • Matthias Alexander, "Beethoven als Titan, Revolutionär und nordischer Speer, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14 February 1997
  • Celia Applegate, Central European History (vol. 30, no. 1, 1997)
  • Sanna Pederson, Journal of the American Musicological Society (Summer-Fall, 1997, vol. 50 no. 2)
  • Nicholas Vazsonyi, German Studies Review (vol. 20, no. 3, October 1998)
  • Mark Evan Bonds, The Journal of Modern History (vol. 70, no. 1, March 1998)
  • Christian Berger, Das historisch-politische Buch (no. 45, Nov/Dec 1998)

Texts of some reviews of Beethoven in German Politics, 1870-1989

  • Globe-Mail (Toronto)
  • New Statesman & Society
  • Notes
  • Central European History
  • The American Historical Review
  • Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

ARTICLES AND REVIEWS

"The Most German of all German Operas": Die Meistersinger Through the Lens of the Third Reich: book chapter for Nicholas Vazsonyi, ed. Wagner's Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation (University of Rochester Press), 2003.

Reviews of Wagner's Meistersinger:

  • BBC Music Magazine (text)

"Honor Your German Masters: The Use and Abuse of 'Classical' Composers in Nazi Propaganda": Journal of Political and Military Sociology, special issue on classical music and politics, Volume 30, No. 2 (Winter) 2002. Using heretofore untranslated materials, I have detailed the terms by which Nazi propagandists incorporated the tradition of eighteenth-century German music into their system of cultural symbolism. Specifically, this article surveys the Völkischer Beobachter's reception of Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart. Above all, National Socialist reception exaggerated the proto-Romantic components of the eighteenth-century music. In their view, everything led to the "Iron Romanticism" they conceived as the cultural basis for uniting the volkish community and girding it for battle against enemies both internal and external. Implicitly, this outlook constituted a rejection of the ideals of the Enlightenment-but it was nonetheless communicated in terms designed to salvage the music greats of the period for National Socialist propaganda use.

"Crying 'Wolf'? A Review Essay on Recent Wagner Literature: Lydia Goehr, The Quest for Voice: Music, Voice, and the Limits of Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Stephen McClatchie, Analyzing Wagner's Operas: Alfred Lorenz and German Nationalist Ideology. (University of Rochester Press, 1998), and Joachim Köhler, Wagner's Hitler: The Prophet and his Disciple, trans., Ronald Taylor (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2000) for the German Studies Review, February 2001, 145-158.

Review Essay on Recent Literature about Music and German Politics, Paul Lawrence Rose, Wagner: Race and Revolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992); Marc A. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1995); Frederic Spotts, Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994); Michael Meyer, The Politics of Music in the Third Reich (New York: Peter Lang, 1991); Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (New York: St. Martin's, 1994); for the German Studies Review, October 1997, 429-432.

"Beethoven At Large: Reception in Literature, the Arts, Philosophy, and Politics" in Glenn Stanley, ed., Cambridge Companion to Beethoven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, May 2000), 292-305. Other contributers include Roger Kamien, Barry Cooper, William Kindermann, and Scott Burnham. This chapter discusses Beethoven reception by non-musicians, whose potrayals of the composer and his music in belletristic criticism, in poetry and fiction, in philosophy, and in the visual arts have had a far greater impact on the establishment of an image of the composer and the work in general culture than the work of musicans and professionally trained music analysts and critics. Both high and popular reception and dissemination are treated, including the use (or misuse) of the man and the music for ideological and commercial purposes.

"Brahms's Requiem eines Unpolitischen," for Nicholas Vazsonyi, ed., Searching for Common Ground: Diskurse zur deutschen Identität 1750-1871 (Weimar and Wien, Böhlau, 2000), 283-298. This article addresses what precisely is "German" about Johannes Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem. Should it be considered an icon of late nineteenth-century German nationalism? What does it tell us about Brahms's identity and the extent to which it was "German"? As is so often the case with Johannes Brahms-not everything is as simple as appears. After reviewing the scholarly debate over his Requiem's "German nationalist" or "Liberal humanist" significance, this paper suggests that Thomas Mann's notion of a "non-political man," applied retrospectively, can help us better apprehend the paradoxical nature of Brahms's national identity.

Review of Pamela M. Potter, Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler's Reich (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998) for the German Studies Review, February 2000, 222-224.

Review of Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and their Music in the Third Reich (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) for the German Studies Review, May 1998, 376-378.

Review of Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: North Carolina U.P., 1996) for the American Historical Review, June 1997, 841-842.

Review of Michael H. Kater, "Carl Orff im Dritten Reich" Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 43, 1 (Januar 1995)1:35, for H-German Listservice, 25 January 1996

Review of Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (1994) in The Historian, vol. 58, no. 1, Autumn 1995, 177-178.

"Preparing for Graduate Studies in History" (a guide for undergraduate students) Chicago: Loyola University Center for Instructional Design (LUCID), September 1994

WORK IN PROGRESS: Ehrt eure deutschen Meister

 

OTHER DOCUMENTS:

Map to DePaul Concert Hall

Map to Northwestern Pick-Staiger Concert Hall

Directions to Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier

More directions to and information about Navy Pier

NOTE: For those interested in experiencing real websites, see my brother's work at www.johndennisdesign.com.

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Faculty Office Hours

 

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