1st Edition
Painting the Cannon's Roar Music, the Visual Arts and the Rise of an Attentive Public in the Age of Haydn
From c.1750 to c.1810 the paths of music history and the history of painting converged with lasting consequences. The publication of Newton's Opticks at the start of the eighteenth century gave a 'scientific' basis to the analogy between sight and sound, allowing music and the visual arts to be defined more closely in relation to one another. This was also a period which witnessed the emergence of a larger and increasingly receptive audience for both music and the visual arts - an audience which potentially included all social strata. The development of this growing public and the commercial potential that it signified meant that for the first time it became possible for a contemporary artist to enjoy an international reputation. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the career of Joseph Haydn. Although this phenomenon defies conventional modes of study, the book shows how musical pictorialism became a major creative force in popular culture. Haydn, the most popular living cultural personality of the period, proved to be the key figure in advancing the new relationship. The connections between the composer and his audiences and leading contemporary artists (including Tiepolo, Mengs, Kauffman, Goya, David, Messerschmidt, Loutherbourg, Canova, Copley, Fuseli, Reynolds, Gillray and West) are examined here for the first time. By the early nineteenth century, populism was beginning to be regarded with scepticism and disdain. Mozart was the modern Raphael, Beethoven the modern Michelangelo. Haydn, however, had no clear parallel in the accepted canon of Renaissance art. Yet his recognition that ordinary people had a desire to experience simultaneous aural and visual stimulation was not altogether lost, finding future exponents in Wagner and later still in the cinematic arts.
Biography
Thomas Tolley
Prize: Winner of the Choice Outstanding Academic title Award (2002). ’This is a fascinating project, well conceived and of great interest not just to Haydnists but any who are interested in later eighteenth-century music.’ W. Dean Sutcliffe, Director of Studies in Music, St Catharine’s College, Cambridge '...this is the best book on 18th-century English culture to chart the course of a range of popular taste and the confluence of the arts.' The Art Newspaper 'This enterprising and imaginative book...' Early Music Review 'Well written and informative, this book delivers more than its title promises...an extremely thought-provoking examination...Tolley illumines several seldom-discussed aspects of 18th-century culture and gives the reader a fuller understanding of Haydn as composer, cultural icon, and synthesizing genius... All academic, public, and professional collections.' Choice '...draws on art and other aspects of cultural history, as well as displaying an impressive understanding and negotiation of the voluminous literature on Haydn. It produces a narrative that says new things abouth this much discussed composer, adding dimensions to the stories told by both musicologists and art historians about the period....This is a thought-provoking book, its musicology as well argued as its art history.' The Art Book '... Tolley's new study is all the more to be welcomed, both for its fresh thinking and courageous interdisciplinary approach... Tolley has not only provided a wonderfully rich and colourful portrait of the composer's career and fame, but he has also depicted the rich cultural network and interchange between music an the visual arts in the later 18th century.' Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History 'Tolley's book is an intriguing account of some of the major aspects of the topic, given the premise that music and the visual arts are being situated in the same cultural spaces.' Music in Art ’... this treatment of Haydn's life and mu
