FOREWORD
Europe - a cradle of civilization with its sciences, arts, technology, universities and amazing cities – London, Rome, Athens, Madrid, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Stockholm, St. Petersburg, Warsaw and Paris, the old-world as it is called by those who do not live there, teeming with diversity and energy hardly known in any other parts of the world, then Vienna, Dublin, Milan, Lisbon, Geneva, Budapest, Moscow, Prague, Edinburgh. No wonder Shakespeare wrote that “all the world is a stage” in such place where every square inch reveals something meaningful about ourselves with a memorable piece of history about our forefathers and our ancestors.
The cities of Europe with their deep past connect us to all civilizations, and they do so not only with their sights, but with their diverse sounds and languages, with Czech, Hungarian, Portuguese, Romanian, German, Macedonian, Icelandic, Welsh, Bulgarian, French, Italian, Russian and Swedish languages spoken daily among families, among children, in schools and in businesses that are daily reminders who we are, and who were our ancestors and our forefathers.
The languages originated from the Proto-Indo European triumvirate of languages thousands of years ago and evolved over centuries into Germanic, Celtic, Anatolian, Tocharian, Hellenic, Slavic and Italic families of languages that later became Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian and Catalan from Latin; Greek, Albanian, and Armenian from Hellenic; Norwegian, Swedish, German, Danish and Icelandic from Germanic; Polish, Czech, Latvian, Croatian, Lithuanian and Bulgarian from Balto-Slavic; and English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Cornish, Manx, Brythonic and Gaelic from the Celtic roots whose people for centuries lived on a narrow strip of land near the Atlantic stretching along the diversified coasts of Europe.
In 19th century - Europe was the stage for the arts, music, languages, theater, sciences and higher learning in an area deeply steeped in history with enormous diversity of languages and tradition. Being non-European for Europeans living in Europe was tantamout to removing oneself from humanity, even if it was only done in the most remote fashion. Even travelling outside Paris, Milan, or Rome for most Europeans it would be like removing fish from water, especially for artists, musicians, writers and painters who were especially vulnerable and sensitive to the new era of change known as the long century.
An artist, whether an eccentric, a traditionalist, or ground-breaking icon must have a stage and his or her audience, but what kind of audience was it? Was the stage comprised of the masses, the educated elite, the ruling majority, the society, what type of society was it? Was this one particular group of individuals, or some undefined number of various individuals in many groups?
In 1830’s - Europe was going through a period of ongoing transitions and continuous change that first set pace by the French Revolution in 1792 and then by the Industrial Revolution that swept through the European continent and changed the European world forever.
In between those two revolutions taking place within relatively short periods of time - the French Revolution in 1792 and the Industrial Revolution in 1830’s and 1840’s it was the end of imperialistic Europe, the end of the ruling elites and the beginning of a long struggle to establish a modern world in which everyone would have the right to live in pursuit of happiness and according to their talent, not according to their birth, or privilege.
It was the time when a group of left-wing Dominicans known as the Jacobins, since their first convent bore the name of Saint Jacques, and Jacques is Jacobus in Latin introduced suffrage and democracy to the world in order to save the Revolution from its internal and external enemies, although suffrage was to the exclusion of women at first which came much later.
The Jacobins however worked very hard and closely together to harness the power of the masses, as they felt that in order for society to move further they needed to give the masses a stake in it so that the Revolution, as a whole would survive. A few years later the Revolution and the radical ideas of Jacobins flourished into the beginnings of democracy continued by Napoleon Bonaparte who preserved them in his Napoleonic code further empowering the masses with civil rights.
Before Jacobins, the society was a contract between the living and the dead, and those yet to be born; and if anyone made any changes and attempted to uproot the status quo of those in power, the aristocracy and the ruling elite who believed it would be utter chaos and anarchy if the masses had any access to anything, the ruling elite and their constituents quickly came to stop those who tried to change any particular aspect or order of their society and their world.
The French saw the Revolution as the universal proclamation of human rights in universalistic terms, and indeed their ideas flowed wherever the French went. With them it was the beginning of the modern world.
In Europe, this new democracy was called radicalism further promulgated by laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith, a Scottish philosopher, and one of the key figures of political economics in 1790’s - a friend and contemporary of David Hume who advocated free-trade, unrestrained by the power of the government, letting the economy flow and believing that such approach would in the end work out for all in the name of everyone’s self-interest.
But what kind of society was it? Was there a middle-class, a consensual agreement on what was good, moral, beautiful and important to human soul? It came in the form of longing that was coming across Europe like a storm. In fact the movement was called storm and longing – the Sturm und Drang, as it was referred to in German, and it was both a storm and an impulse taking over the arts and the mood of growing middle class in general.
In the arts it was a reflection of deep longing to express the public’s personal emotions and individual perspective on reality, what was felt and experienced away from the rational mind, the empiricism and the scientific thought. This longing was reflected in the need for more personal freedom and liberty and to get away from the patronage of the wealthy and privileged ruling classes while searching for more individual expression on all levels.
It began with Jean Jacques Rousseau who declared that man was born free, but that instead everywhere he was in chains, and that in particular the habits, values, rules and the standards that humanity was grounded in were imposed by reason, and that reason alone had to be counterbalanced if human beings were to be truly free.
This declaration set in motion forces beyond the wildest dreams even among the most liberal thinkers. It even freed the scientists from the self-imposed ostracism realizing that passion, creativity and individual self-expression were just as important as the calm, analytical monopoly of reason, and that it was the driving force of life.
This was the end of ancient regime of reason as search for truth and beauty were thought to be paramount attributes of human heart and the guiding light toward fulfillment and happiness.
As a result, European society has began to realize that the life of reason and science was incomplete in and by itself, and that it was existence that was shallow and superficial in nature. Growing in the appreciative diversity and belief in man and nature the artists probed deep into the fantasy, intuition, instinct and emotions of man. It was the beginning of the human world, without the laws that attempted to explain man’s origins in vain that only confused the world with their endless theories and themselves with their pompous, confused wig-psychology convinced they could explain it all with their thinking.
Consequently, as the ancient idols of science fell and were abandoned, even though each nation state provided certain limits to the general assimilation of these clearly defined set of ideas characteristic only to them, it seemed that all nations agreed on one thing - freedom of the individual, including freedom from the constraints of limited, overly rational thinking, and freedom from bad taste.
This did not mean that literary hacks did not exist, nor that they did not produce popular pot-boilers for the masses. They did as they always do in every epoch, but back then there was a certain standard, an expectation that one could not easily ignore. People knew the difference between literary genius and a hack, and between a bad musician and a virtuoso.
Artists and intellectuals began to realize that they could no longer depend on the patronage of the aristocrats, and that their popularity now depended on the new and powerful middle-class who detested the unreceptive and philistine taste of bourgeoisie. As a result, a feeling of liberation was present, a mood that was exhilirating and invigorating which became the rite of passage for many artists looking to explore new forms of expression to satisfy their emotionally hungry audience while whole nations and individuals searched for more.
Who then were those people who undermined the traditional society to the point that it was never going to be the same, except those who resisted change?
The artists especially were sensitive to ongoing change responding to growing literate public that existed in all European cities. This was new. The classical period of music was primarily of German and Austrian origin, but with the birth of democracy, the arousal of new awareness focused on human emotions, individuality, truth, beauty and good taste, re-defining from scratch what the word elegance meant along with the arrival of the middle-class that was literary and aware of the social changes taking place; this approach had direct effect on instrumental and vocal music that began to change dramatically.
Gone were Beethoven’s long themes in tribute to Napoleon Bonaparte’s victories and Haydn’s static works. Music, and with it literature and painting looked into color, expression, feeling, individuality, emotion, into another dimensions in art that connected directly with the heart and strayed from the rational mindset of aristocratic regime that soon had no choice but to follow suit.
Artists were no doubt directly inspired and involved in the public affairs of the nation. Italian opera flourished as never before to the point that even some operas that were being written as political manifestoes have triggered, and directly contributed to revolutions in cities where they originally took place.
Milan was the official center of opera, but every city had an opera house that was connected to other cities in a network of elaborate opera houses constantly presenting new programmes: Verdi, Puccini, Belini, Rossini, Donizetti, Spontini were the most popular ones, but French operas were also popular - Rameau, Méhul, Berlioz and especially Germany’s Gluck.
Europe had six superpowers controlling its political structure – Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Prussia and Russia who were equally divided between their desire for order and the imminent forces of change equally seeking to preserve the political balance to ensure stability and peace and to prevent further outbreaks of revolutions and wars.
Even though France often sided with the British against the more conservative Austro-Prussian-Russian alliance of the Old Europe nothing could prevent change. Moreover, the expansion of the arts appealing to rapidly growing middle-class and literary public in practically all European cities made it nearly impossible to prevent change from manifesting itself in all aspects of European life.
Russia, including Poland that counted as separate province had 49 million people; Austria with Hungary and Lombardy 35 million; France had 33 million, and Great Britain with Ireland had 34 million. Germany had 14 million, then followed Spain, Portugal, Prussia and Turkey, including Romania, Kingdom of Naples, Sardinia, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark and Greece.
The political structure, however was far from orderly. France was a constitutional monarchy after Napoleon Bonaparte’s nearly sixteen-year domination as Emperor of France that ended abruptly with the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig in October 1813, and Napoleon Bonaparte’s subsequent abdication and his comfortable exile to the Island of Elba in the Meditarrean.
Leaving a legacy that represented the best in his era and in keeping with writers such as Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau who notoriously critiqued established institutions and traditions, the aristocracy, the church and the monarchy Napoleon Bonaparte has left France with careers-open-to-talent instead of birth, promulgated law, civil rights, administrative efficiency and religious toleration, essentially setting the stage for an open-society in France.
Britain in turn was a relatively well-governed and politically stable state. There was a widespread acceptance of Britain’s key institutions in the form of shared governance. The government was cheap, unobstrusive, favored expansionism, agriculture, commerce, manufacturing, and the country as a whole had well-developed financial and banking structure with high-level of trust in the stability and durability of the system.
Among all six powers Austria, Prussia, Germany, France and Russia, Britain was the most modern and advanced state based on its triumvirate of colonies, commerce and sea power that gave it economic advantage and powerful inducements.
Trade in Britain was perceived as status and there was a diverse middle-class with subsequent mobility even among the wealthy. British naval supremacy blocked all potential invasions, and finally, the invention of the steam engine linked with textiles and railroads sealed its fate.
By the middle of the century Britain has produced more coal and more steam power than the rest of Europe. There was also significant humanitarian reform that further increased productivity and better living conditions to all.
Austria in turn, with Hungary annexed to its holdings have struggled to survive as a multinational empire, and Russia was faced with inadequate modernization leaving France and Britain at the helm of leadership. Even though contrastingly different in their approach, and in their philosophy, these great powers overlapped each other, and the gaps they left behind were responsible for the danger they have created on the European continent.
In fact, by the time the post-Napoleonic era of Metternich has come to an end in the second half of 19th century, Europe has become quite a dangerous place to live. How did those six superpowers – Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, Russia and Germany have come to power and dominated the entire European continent?
In 18th century Britain was the most powerful nation and the first world power. France was right behind it known as the great nation with strongest continental ties. Germany was last in the equation, a remnant of the Roman Holy Empire that was a counterweight to France’s presence in the West, and the Ottoman Empire in the East.
By the second half of 18th century Austrian empire swallowed by over three hundred Germanic states spread all over the Holy Empire opearating under Habsburg, and Prussia have became very powerful under Frederick the Great, a Hohenzollern who ruled for twenty-six years until 1786. At that point with those two powers in place and with Britain competing with France for dominance, or hegemony a modern, dynamic Europe has emerged where even greater change was virtually inescapable.
But nothing matched the French Revolution of 1792 that undermined the traditional society and enabled France to become the most powerful state on the continent both materially and culturally.
This was the most radical of all revolutions and officially the birth of democracy. In fact radicalism, as it was called then, democracy and the French Revolution were synomous as the divine rights of the monarch were uprooted irrevocably, and the concept of nationalism was given birth.
This in fact was the most important development in modern history as this dramatic change has freed humanity from the whims of the rigid structure of society that was open only to those with wealth and privilege. The French Revolution challenged everything – politics, ideas, social order, arts, culture, commerce, education, virtually every area of life, and with it the entire social structure. With the rise of the middle-class known as Jacobins and their keen social agenda to defend France from the wrath of aristocrats at any cost, the stage was set for democracy.
Widespread unemployment and hunger paralleled rural crisis, while governments still ruled by monarchs lived beyond their means falling deeply into debt.
In the course of a complex set of developments – lack of leadership on the part of the monarchy, the administration, ideological conflict, continued economic distress and financial instability, the ambivalent role of the church, urban and rural violence and foreign wars, the Revolution took on the leadership with the flight and capture of the royal family in June of 1791 leaving no question for any monarchical compromise.
Less than two years later, in January 1793 King Louis XVI was tried and executed, and nine months after him his wife Marie Antoinette was executed after a politically-motivated trial that lasted one day in which she was libeled and sacrificed under the official charge of treason furthering the cause of the revolution.
Marie Antoinette was the sacrificial lamb of the French Revolution that portrayed her as the most hated and despised figure in the eyes of the revolutionaries instead of popular, peninent Queen she was, and a sweet, caring mother with enormous courage facing this adversity.
With the execution of King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, France was free, and anyone hostile to freedom was sent to guillotine. As revolts against the revolution occurred frequently the nation as whole found itself at war with Austria, Prussia, Holland and Britain.
In 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power based on the opportunities presented to him by the French Revolution. His military talent, adventurous nature and outstanding political ambition brought France to the height of military power as empire continuing the legacy of the French Revolution in keeping with the ideology of the masses; the Englightenment and civil liberties of the Jacobins.
Towards the end of his reign, in order to bring Britain to its heels Napoleon gambled on the destruction of Russia in a fatal march on Moscow in 1812 and lost, bringing back home a handful of weather-beaten, annihilated survivors out of half a million soldiers.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s humiliating defeat gave Britain the hegemony that the other superpowers of 19th Century Europe have failed to prevent. The danger of hegemony, or “universal monarchy” as it was called threatening European balance of power is what warring states were keenly aware of and tried to prevent.
However Britain did not attain hegemony as it was referred to by the military ambitions that Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to achieve. Textiles were the beginning of Britain’s hegemony and the beginning of a powerful historical and political change of Europe’s new, political power structure.
Along with major agrarian improvements, ample natural resources and virtual monopoly over the colonial and European markets in terms of commerce, the world’s most powerful navy fleet, a large and continuously expanding middle-class coupled with enterpreneurial spirit that encouraged innovation and invention, Britain has opened the way for industrial revolution, and by enabling the process of national integration of its citizens it has began to evolve into a modern nation-state.
Britain’s industrial productivity, and with it transition from agrarian to modern-state brought disruptions into existing social order as well as wealth and power to those who followed suit.
Greed and ruthlessness were elevated to new heights as new era of selfishness has began with a notion that business had the same rights as individuals, and therefore it deserved as much attention as individuals. In many ways businesses were treated better than individuals who have become means to their ends with vast accumulation of riches and attaining of personal status.
A new class has risen out of this new order and approach to life, the bourgeoisie for whom nothing was more important than money and the pleasures it brought with its possession and accumulation.
In 1830 London had more than one million inhabitants, and Paris had more than half a million. There were also over twenty cities with more than hundred thousand each all over Europe.
With new opportunities presented in cities Europe has began experiencing massive exodus from farms and villages as working the land was no longer desirable to many who looked for better life away from working the land and peasantry.
As a result individualism has become predominant mode of thought as people were no longer forced to work the land with destiny that was carved out for them, and realized that they had a choice to either work in factories, start their own business and actively pursue their own personal ambitions that were limited only by their own talent and effort.
London has become the largest city in the world, and even though other cities such as Paris, Vienna and Milan were not too far behind London in particular was not ready for such massive population explosion.
As a result, daily life in London was tragic and pathetic for most. Besieged by crime, poverty, and disease with massive cholera outbursts where thousands died at the time due to lack of sanitation, dirty streets, bad air and lack of clean water, faced with unpaved roads, one sewer and darkness everywhere, as gas lights were not installed, and Westminster bridge was not lit until 1804 for the first time, daily existence in the City of London was far from the glamor and excitement of Parisian life.
In fact, most cities in Britain faced similar problems driven by massive population explosion, notorious lack of housing and decent working conditions for the masses that arrived there with heightened hopes for sustainable existence.
In Germany, the situation was slightly better because there weren’t that many people living in its cities, usually far below hundred thousand, and because social life in Germany was more united in tradition, localism and a sense of community - the Gemeinschaft that made the demands of industrial society, productivity and the cash nexus – the Gesellschaft easier to come to terms with.
Initially, German society in response to the dramatic events that lead to French Revolution of 1792 and the new era of modernization responded to change in its own way and attempted to create new form of art and science by looking to Middle Ages as prototype however, soon this movement evolved into full-blown cultural and literary movement known as the Weimar movement, or the Weimarer Klassik that originated from Goethe and Schiller who abandonding early Medieval-Age tendencies have turned back to the ideas of the Enlightment of 18th Century. Inspiring and deep it was a profound ideology that went far into the ideas of philosophy, science, psychology, art, literature and aesthetics.
It was Goethe who declared in Faust, ''Gefülte is Alles" - feeling is everything that set the tone for the beginning of a new era in Germany and in 1827 introduced the new concept of world literature – Weltliteratur that gave German writers recognition on the continent because of the cosmopolitan character of their writing that was widely favored by the European readers.
In Prussia, that for years has been known as the bread basket of Western Europe, the Komkammer or granary, as it was the biggest producer of wheat with vast properties stretching from Danzig and Riga to Koenigsberg, its population rose past twenty-four million and accounted for most of the German Empire’s population.
Although Prussia was largely dominated by protestant Germans, it contained several million Roman-catholics stretching through East Prussia to Warmia, Silesia, Kingdom of Poland, and the Austrian Empire.
Prussia has attained great importance in 18th century, and in 19th century the Kingdom of Prussia dominated large territories of Germany politically and economically under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck who has united many German provinces into one entity, and separated his principalities from Austrian Empire. As a result the Germans looked for leadership to Prussia as a modernizing state in all of Eastern territories that traditionally was German heartland.
The Austrian Empire - Kaisertum Österreich was a modern successor of the remnants of Holy Roman Empire founded in 1806 by a Habsburg monarch formally known as Franz II, the Emperor with a state consisting of his personal lands within and outside of the Holy Roman Empire. Situated deep in the Alps Austria was annexed by the Roman Empire in 15 BC during the reign of Marcus Aurelius who died near Vindobona which later became Vienna.
In 19th century, Vienna became the capital of an ethnically diverse Austrian Empire of Ferdinand II and leading, European cultural center. The musical style of Wienner Klassik, the Vienna School of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven steeped in neo-Gothic, neo-Baroque and neo-Classical traditions have also given rise to a movement known as Biedermeier - a distinctive and unique to Vienna style in literature, music, painting, architecture and interior design.
Biedermeier began in Vienna after The Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the Napoleonic wars. The movement was a reaction to the law-and-order sought by Austrian-Prussian government who feared change and would stop at nothing to prevent more revolutions and wars.
By 1815 all of Europe knew that the political structure would not be reconstructed back to the “old regime” and that that it could only be reformed with different degrees of success. Consequently, a series of diplomat meetings were set up in Vienna in 1815 known as The Congress of Vienna designed to prevent the threat of wars and to ensure stability.
Dominated by Prince Clemens von Metternich of Austria, Count Robert Castlereagh of Britain, Prince of Talleyrand in France and Tsar Alexander I in Russia, the great powers - Austria, Prussia and Russia were also joined by France and Britain seeking to restore order and peace on their territories.
These new forces of order were represented by Prince Clemens von Metternich in Austria and Prussia who dominated the government to protect the interests of the “old regime” – the aristocrats and the clergy and others who followed suit. Britain and France joined the postwar Concert of Europe, or the Congress System as it was called, and the powers formed a Holy Alliance championed by Tsar Alexander I. The French sided with the British against more conservative Austrian-Prussian alliance.
Unfortunately, the Congress of Vienna ignored the needs of other nations specifically the Belgians, Czechs, Serbs, Greeks and the Hungarians who were not even consulted. Silesia, Bohemia and the Rhineland were not included in the Congress of Vienna either. Moreover Austria, Prussia and Russia have agreed on the annexations of Polish territories without even consulting the Poles about it.
Finally, when Austria, Prussia and Russia agreed on the settlement with respect to the Polish territories without consulting the Poles, they also created a thirty-nine member Germanic league or federation of states known as Bund in order to reduce Germany’s vast holdings and the number of states to more manageable size.
The middle-class liberals as well as democrats for whom the French Revolution was the raison d’etre of this alliance were not included in the Congress of Vienna, and since Europe was essentially a diverse cluster of various socialist, liberal and nationalist groups any decisions made without them would have to have long reaching consequences.
As a result tensions by various interest groups from within and outside the great powers of Europe immediately following the Congress of Vienna have triggered intense censorship and scrutiny by Metternich in the Austrian Empire who feared that the ractionary attitude of the age would prevent his policies to be sustained and give rise to bigger middle-class and bourgeoisie demanding more concessions from his government.
Metternich sought to restore order and to protect the interests of the “old regime” – the aristocrats and the clergy, and he used military and bureacratic powers to repress any forces of change by employing spies, the militias and the army. Metternich’s clandestine means used a vast network of control to keep everyone in check.
But Europe could not be controlled, or reconstructed back to the old regime by a series of diplomat meetings in Vienna, and the forces of change could not be prevented. In this way the 19th century rebelions that began with the bloody French Revolution in 1792, a few decades earlier have became the hallmark of change for modern European society.
But what really constituted European society at large? Was it one body, a segment, or a cluster of various interest groups looking for change?
Society at large is always an aggregation of various networks of people with their controlled co-existence driven by their customs and individuals determined by various niche groups within it.
On personal level even despite the fact that European society was strictly monogamic, it was a system of powers linked together in a transformable network of intimate relationships. Modernization itself changed the power relationship between classes and states, as change took on a momentum of its own.
However, it wasn’t modernization alone, but the heroic individualists and artists whose pioneering efforts struggled to elevate society to new heights of expression legitimized as individual imagination that permitted individual freedom on all levels of life.
The economic power of a class usually gives it extraordinary political influence where state, and government policies nearly always reflect the perceived interests of the class, but in this case the masses did not have the economic power, at least not yet.
Their power was point of view, a unique look at life and the world that they believed was the true reflection of what meant to be human. They wanted to view reality as full of color, sound, and flavor, full of qualities leaving them feeling rich and fulfilled, recognizing that this was a world of enormous diversity and beauty, versus the cold, gray, empty Universe pictured by modern science and the scientists trying to convince them humanity has lived in.
This was a powerful message, putting forward an ideology that life was meant to be lived and appreciated with passion being the norm as the basic ingredient of human reality, in fact the key to all of reality and to all human interactions, instead of accepting science’s approach to rationality and the trappings of reason on equal footing with politicians bullying them into their self-motivated interests.
Scientific speculations were ignored as intellectual game of the few in pursuit of their some imagined ends, and life was viewed to be lived in full in open universe that was contantly pressing us to live to our full potential.
This holistic approach send us a message across that life was meant to be lived to the fullest, and that this approach would always be better in the end, and always more satisfying than any logical, analytical, or experimental speculations.
Living life to the fullest and having all our needs fullfilled and embraced collectively as best as we could and following our own creativity that would take us toward fulfillment of our dreams, or epiphany, and to let us be who we are and who we can truly become was far better than embracing the scientific method available only to the few, and with questionable results.
It was because deep inside we all know that all our own experiences are purely subjective, and that we can never be really certain whether they are true, and as the status quo always changes with every second of our lives, this sort of "uncertainty principle" is actually good for us because it applies to everything - science, philosophy, psychology, art, music, literature, and our own personal philosophy of life that is constantly changing, hence what is left for us to do is to pursue our dreams and realize them to the fullest of our potential.
The underlying message spelled out clearly that scientific objectivity we were always looking at is a meaningless goal, because “true objectivity” could never be fully accomplished, or attained by anyone.
As a result of this awareness we could only say with full conviction that individual subjectivity was the only game in town.
Emotions and our own individual creativity were not something to stray away from, or eliminate to conform to the rules, or customs of the society, but they were there were for us in order to understand ourselves better and deeper, and to share, cherish and appreciate those experiences together as individual interpretations of life that were far superior to anything else in contrast to the objective reality of truth that could never be fully grasped.
This belief translated and carried over into private affairs and personal relationships, as well as to countless public and private liaisons. The game of capture and seduction, confrontation and reinforcement were played continuously. Pleasure and power did not cancel each other out but were linked together by a complex mechanism of excitation and incitement seeking to reinforce one another.
Literature, visual arts and music were concerned with re-organization and redirection of the emotions of their audiences that went from plain emotions to eroticism and to deepened arousal with channeling of sexual desire into the hidden world of eroticism and thought that were synonymous and complementary with one another.
In music the melodic lines teased and taunted the erogenous zones of its listeners with chromatic excesses and long, melodic lines as heroic, chivalric chords with their tonal stability and prolonged rhytmic chromatic modulations took the audience into the hightened world of fantasy, illusion, and dream-like states.
There were the sultry, progressive, seductive chords with unexpected twists and turns signifying femine nature, and although sex itself was not the object, everything that led towards deployment of sexuality and eroticism through music was used to achieve the desired end of seduction.
By and large music, both in opera and instrumental music were perceived to be erotic in nature. Reason and madness were dealt with on personal level, and genius was understood as both a hypersensitive, vulnerable personality of a female and the masculine tendencies of a madman.
Those were naturally rhetorical devices of speech because a madman could not produce music, or high-level prose that dealt with so much meaning and structural complexity that obviously had to be thought out thoroughly, created, written, rehearsed and performed on rational level, but an association of musical genius with a madman was a way of describe the transcendent and the sublime in the context of music that otherwise would not be possible to adequately express in rhetorical sense.
A genius also possessed the complete female in and of itself, as the female form and psychology were both worshipped and exploited in subtext, as music has become increasingly emotional, and by transgression sexual and erotic in nature.
The poetic “femine” excess along with high-level structural rigor in music compositions have become the hallmark of 19th century composers and performers, as transgressions from rational to emotional and into the realm of eroticism and madness were encouraged.
In fact the passage from rational to emotional have become the way of engagement with the private world of the artist, the composer and the performer, and have become the emotional palette for many artists in 19th Century society who believed that rarely, if ever someone accomplished anything on the strength of one’s reason, and that only by reaching into one’s intuitive self that one could truly find the sublime feeling of emotions that were described as jouissance and were beyond the erotic pleasure.
The transgressions from reason to emotions were not only emphasized and encouraged, but on most occassions went out of control, and exaggerated to the point of hysteria on ocassions that were common place everywhere whether musical or literary taking place in countless, intimate salon settings, private apartments, and artistic soirees that went long into the wee hours.
Music especially was a perfect medium, as music’s inherent four-dimensionality, its rhythm, pitch, tone, melody and harmony together lend themselves to transcendental experiences, and when performed and executed properly, on ocassion allowing the audiences a short glimpse into eternity.
Yet, the dilemma confronting the musical syntax of 19th century Europe was not solely an intellectual or a technical problem. It was inextricably tangled up with the anxieties over sexual identity and gender distinction between men and women.
Likewise, while characterizations of the male artist as madman were commonplace, women were explicitly excluded from the category of genius as images of feminine psychology, birth and re-generation sharply contrasted with the nineteenth-century idealized image of a genius coupled by male chauvinism that many artists believed presented an obstacle to female psychology.
Consequently, and consistent with the ideology of the epoch the man in effect became the female as the romantic ideal, a process that excluded the woman as genius and creator leaving her incomplete, vulnerable and alone, abandoned, yearning and always in waiting.
Was this an image that the romantics wanted? To keep her alone, incomplete and always in desire waiting for her romantic hero? Would calling a woman a genius eliminate her from the game of seduction, conquest and submission? What if the roles were reversed?
Music is almost always socially grounded, but the transgressive quality of music, its complexity and nomadic ability to attach itself to become part of any culture and become part of many social formations, through the presenter’s voice or hands vary its articulations and rhetoric and devices giving tremendous power to the male artist placing the female audience at his disposal.
Art on this level becomes a mediation point between the mind and the body with its effects on human psyche being immediately apparent, even though its deep, inner-working mechanisms are not immediately obvious and transparent.
To the Romantics science, like religion seemed to disguise the truth. For example, the Romantics knew that Newton did not really know how gravity worked and that he was being hailed as a genius who discovered gravity. They also knew that Darwin did not know how evolution actually worked, and that in their respective fields both Newton and Darwin claimed they did and made a clear impression on the public that they did.
The Romantics were against this bourgeois attitude toward life; not that they were particularly against science, but they were against the hypocrisy of reason, and the danger it represented in contrast to the arts that were direct and almost always revealed themselves with stark, naked truth trying to appeal directly to the heart.
The Romantics believed that science was taking humanity on the wrong path because it relied almost exclusively on reason, and on its scientific method which like religion excluded life itself focusing instead on their process driven methods and ideologies. Emotions in turn were pure, direct, immediately obvious and apparent that could not be disguised in rationalizations and misperceptions.
To the Romantics science did not permit any meaningful questions outside their own picture, denying, or limiting the extent of reason by connecting particular causes with particular consequences which they believed in and by itself was an illusory form of inquiry if it denied entry to meaningful questions outside the picture.
Even 19th century scientists themselves have become increasingly convinced that their laws and theories could not provide accurate image of Nature so complex, and incomprehensible in its design that the best they could come up were simple schematic representations refined and honed by minute observations and investigations, and that in the end they were only approximations subject to data derived from their subjective experiences and interpretations that could never in reality be fully completed, or finalized.
Knowledge by approximation was the mode of thinking, and as such this was not different from the workings of science and thus rejected by the Romantics for whom science was not doing anything different from the Romantics even though it claimed the notion of absolute observer by its methods, but in effect delivering nothing but approximations and half-truths disguised as truth which were usually false.
Similarly, in private the Romantics were not interested in “sexuality” on rational terms. They were interested in seduction, and because the art of seduction is not unreservedly free and confined within the bounds of the customs of a society, the Romantics catered to the customs of Victorian England and King Louis Phillippe’s Paris using gallantry with music as deployment for the game of seduction. The purpose of gallantry was to create and maintain open relationships rather than to start families.
It was the time where the allure of sex and the art of seduction took precedence over sex itself, and where music and gallantry were used to incite particular behavior in women. Likewise, women have used elaborate and conspicuous schemes to seduce their male objects of desire, and even though marriage was a sacred act, it was no sacred obligation.
Gallantry itself was a fairly new concept that replaced the medieval, chivalric customs of courtship; and the gallant, or a gentleman as it was called in Britain replaced the chivalric hero.
As Lady Montague, an insider in both Viennese and Parisian societies had stated – “every lady had to have two husbands, one that bore the name and the other doing the actual job of romance and courtship”.
Although the gallant age has initially originated as underground French phenomenon in the latter part of eighteenth century it eventually spread throughout Europe, and by 19th Century this form of courtship was systematized as philosophy of love, and became regularly practiced as part of the shared values of society in most Parisian, Viennese and London circles.
In this environment every interesting subtext of music would trigger a transition from reason to madness in the minds of listeners many of whom considered it a desirable trait, and the audience participating in the act of agony and ecstacy with the artist identifying with the act of creation.
In 17th and 18th centuries sex was not something that was practiced. It was simply administrated. Governments and administrations understood that if the future and fortune of their countries were to be upheld and cultivated then the sexual conduct of society had to be converted into some form of political and economic behavior.
Therefore, the application of sex as an instrument to further populate the country was closely prescribed by the government and by the religious institutions.
There was a moral discourse, and a religious discourse, the usual prescriptive modes of norms of what one “ought to do”, and the moral mode of what one “had to do” both working equally, with the moral mode being ethical and with the religious being both prescriptive and incitive - both working equally well on the country’s populace and its administration of sexual practices at one time or another.
However, since then and precisely because of those activities this has characteristically opened sexual behavior to various interpretations and began to be codified by the moral and religious discourse taking place on both government and church levels.
As a result, by the end of 18th century no one could actually agree on “proper norms” of sexuality, so instead a series of taboos were erected that have became permanent feature in the garlands of discourse on sexuality.
What followed was massive censorship imposed by the Age of Reason with various constraint mechanisms in place where no one could actually speak openly about sex without one form of repercussion or another.
Adultery was condemned, as churches got involved in conjugal sexuality and rejection of “frauds” as enemies of procreation. There was a whole new dialoge on the aberration of sexual instict, moral folly, degenerescence, or moral imbalance, transgressors were punished, sometimes criminally, as children who were wise beyond their years, precocious little boys and girls were under intense surveillance being treated as the scourge of the society, and ramblers, or maniacal husbands with bizarre impulses were haunted in the houses of corrections, penal colonies, tribunals and asylums as perverts.
Educators and doctors began combating children’s masturbation as if it were a disease to be eradicated and the whole secular campaign of sex around children was created, traps and surveillance devices were installed, and children testimonies were the dividing line in the prosecution against perverts. Homosexuality has become a symbol of aberration, a form of perverse hermaphrodism of the soul as the homosexual has become a species that needed to be eradicated.
The result of those repercussions in the 18th century’s Age of Reason two separate worlds have been created and evolved from this unspeakable mess in 19th century – the world of marriage and the world of desire as the natural laws of matrimony and the rules of sexuality have been separated, and since then they have never been one and the same again.
From those two separate worlds, a third and completely unkown model has emerged - the overly romanticized model of Don Juan, a rouge and a liberal who enjoyed seducing women and fighting for their cause, as well as fighting those who were his rivals.
Since then Don Juan has become synonymous with being a “womanizer,” or seducer, a prototype of Romantic age that has accepted this model as their banner that eventually has become subject of many stories that were told by countless authors, musicians and artists.
With Don Juanism as the movement has become known, the age of chivalry has been replaced by the age of seduction and 19th century London, Paris, Vienna, Rome, Venice and Milan in fact nearly every European city with more than a hundred thousand inhabitants have become the world stage for the art of seduction.
We rarely grasp the human individual and what humanity in fact signifies except in a delusive way because humanity as a whole constantly contradicts itself as it goes suddenly from goodness to base cruelty, from extreme modesty to extreme immodesty, and from the most attractive to the most odious.
We also often speak of the world as one world, as one humanity, as if humanity had one unity of some sort, and instead we find that in reality there is no such thing; that there is no one world, and that humanity forms worlds, not one world seemingly inter related as a whole, and that those worlds are actually alien to one another.
But in 19th century this fact was not so transparent and obvious to everyone and there was one world that was wholly united and closely interrelated in one way – the world of seduction, the world of the pursuer and the pursued, as the surrendering oneself to the power of love and seduction was not just a noblesse oblige, a ritual of some sort, or symbolic act on the way to procreation, or a way of starting a family. It was the only game in town.
Ecstasy, excitement, rumor and transgressions were in fact shared values and were the traits of the Romantic spirit, the zeitgeist that was in and of itself a wholly separate thing from what anyone believed was the norm.
Control and the power of seduction have reached state of the art. They have become as refined and subtle as evaluating and appraising of music, as in music “A” being better than “B” consisting of enormous variety of modes of discourse, accompanied by the privilege of appraisal and authority with critical judgment that gained supremacy on levels that have never been experienced, or practiced before.
With the art of seduction came rumor, the speculative logic by which people try to make sense of life and of themselves with suspicious worries armed with consciousness that dominates and pervaded peoples lives and their private life experiences around them.
Rumor had a whole different meaning, as society’s moral reasoning about the circulation of rumor and the infinitessimal tales they displayed whether sacred, beautiful or profane have become status quo and where ethics and morality have attained a whole new level of understanding and perception.
Combine this with the power of confession that for centuries has been established in Western society as means of producing truth, provisional truth as it may, but functioning as a public ritual and a spectacle guaranteeing one’s acknowledgement of actions and thoughts leading to private settlements in the event of transgressions, and we have a perfect stage for quite unique time in people’s lives.
Public confessions were emblematic of one’s status and value granted from one person to another in 19th century salons filled with intimacy, music and poetry buzzing with social life, and excitement and with enormous variety of individuals where rumor and transgressions were commonplace.
Yet it wasn’t all about lust. People were in love and they were constantly looking for love. Confessions of betrayal and transgressions usually lead to private settlements between couples at the discretion of both parties, as well as leading to confrontations resulting in duels between rivals whenever the perceived offenders were unwilling to come to terms with one another that were usually resolved at dawn and often ended with death, or serious injury of one offended party, or both.
The stage was set and all one could say was that this game was played, and that it was played continuously and especially well in the Parisian circles on the cusp of third decade of nineteenth century.
So who was this young man who arrived on a cloudy day of September 27, 1831 by coach after exhausting journey from Stuttgart in passenger-filled cabin on its last overlay from Strasbourg put down his suitcase on the cobbled street of Montmartre and obviously fatigued looked down with bewilderment at the vast Parisian landscape below?
TO BE CONTINUED....
(11/29/2010)
Excerpts from the forthcoming book in hardcover, digital and audio editions.
Copyright © 2010 by John Mark.
In medias res - Chapters I thru XV -
Chapter I
Europe - The Long 19th Century
We begin with historic introduction to 19th Century Europe. After reading this chapter the reader will know everything there is to know about the Romantic Age, its historical context, how it began and its characters.
Chapter II
The Industrial Age
This chapter focuses on the horrors and triumphs of the Industrial Age that with Napoleonic Code, The French Revolution and the outpouring of arts and sciences had become the nemesis of aristocratic Europe.
Chapter III
Canaletto’s Warsaw
Warsaw in 19th Century was one of the most magical cities in Europe and although Caneletto dies here a few years before Chopin family moved to the center of Warsaw, this chapter is a guided tour of Warsaw during Caneletto’s times. It is where we meet Chopin family and young Frédéric for the first time.
Chapter IV
Chopin’s Home
Chopin family is explored on personal level with young Frédéric growing up in one of the most magical cities in Europe, with an intimate look into the beginning of his life as evolving musician and young composer.
Chapter V
The Grand National Theater
This chapter focuses on Frédéric Chopin’s young private life,his teenage years, his time with friends and how he thought, felt and perceived his environment, teachers, parents, siblings and fans ending with him falling in love and with his performance at the Grand Theater and Opera in Warsaw before he leaves Warsaw forever.
Chapter VI
Journey to Paris
Chopin’s departure from his hometown on his long trip to Paris - The City of Lights from which he is never to return to his homeland, and never to see his family again.
Chapter VII
Paris - The City of Lights
When Chopin arrives in Montmartre for the first time, getting off the coach that brought him there from Stuttgart to Paris after exhausting journey across Europe, young Chopin fully realizes now he is entirely on his own at twenty and that life has manifested itself to him on a level he would never suspect, and he moves on.
Chapter VIII
Early Days
Frédéric’s darkest days, at least from his point of view what he thought at that time as he begins his life in a city that has no idea who he is, what he wants and what he is attempting to accomplish.
Chapter IX
Encounter with Franz Liszt
Chopin meets Franz Liszt, a year young than him and already a superstar in Paris. This encounter changes his life forever even though he doesn’t immediately realize this, as he enters the inner circle of Liszt’s friends in the heart of the Romantic Age.
Chapter X
Circle of Friends
This chapter is about the secret life of Paris and the inner circle of friends that Chopin has entered into; it is a tour de force of the intimate moments of the greatest personalities and icons of modern times from literature, science, arts and politics, their daily lives, drama, daily successes and failures closely intertwined together into the greatest romantic story ever told.
Chapter XI
George Sand
When Chopin meets Sand we have already met some of the amazing characters and their intimate encounters in salons of Paris, homes, apartments, on the streets, in publishing houses, restaurants and concerts halls ready for the greatest encounter ever between George Sand and Chopin.
Chapter XII
In London
Chopin and his friend Camille Pleyel, a wealthy impressario and piano mogul go on exciting excursion together to London. Considered to be the most contemporary city in the world London becomes the focal point of this chapter.
Chapter XIII
The Later Years
The relationship between Chopin and Sand comes to an end and Chopin’s career takes a dramatic turn. Liszt in the meantime has a liaison with a number of women, one of them being the richest in Russia – Princess Caroline von Wittgenstein.
Chapter XIV
Spring of Nations
The entire European continent is at war as revolutionary waves springs across France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy all across Western and Central Europe. Paris is burning as the French Revolution immobilizes the city. Chopin goes to London, this time for a long time. Liszt flees to Geneva.
Chapter XV
Farewell To King
Return to Paris at the height of The Romantic Age – a different world from what both Chopin and Liszt have left. Chopin dies and the world pays tribute to the greatest icon of modern music, the poet, the musician, the pianist, the ultimate Romantic hero, inspiration and love to all.
Epiloque/Afterword
The end of the era, as Liszt accepts his position in Weimar and goes on to resolve his love affair with Princess Caroline. The Long 19th Century continues well into 20th Century until it unofficially ends with World War I.
Notes on Chapters/Sections - Above outline presents general format intended as sections/guideposts in various chapters leading us to the exciting inner world of Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, their friendship, rivalry, careers and the inner-circle in their milieu.
Please click on this link to hear recordings for LISZT & CHOPIN IN PARIS
http://www.myspace.com/johnmarkclassicalmusic
As well as at this link -http://www.myspace.com/johnmarkpianist
Also, read full Synopsis of the screenplay at this link -
Summary at this link -http://johnmarkscreenwriterfilmmaker.blogspot.com/2009/11/liszt-chopin-in-paris_9165.html
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2010 by John Mark. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission.
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