Goldsmiths - University of London

Barbara Eichner MA (Munich), DPhil (Oxon)

Barbara Eichner studied Musicology, Modern German Literature and Scandinavian Studies at the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität Munich and, during an exchange year with the Erasmus Programme, at the University of Southampton. She graduated in 2001 (Magister Artium) with a dissertation on the life and works of the composer Johann Rupprecht Dürrner. She did her doctorate at the University of Oxford, Jesus College, and received her DPhil in 2006 for a thesis entitled “Was ist deutsch?” Musical Solutions to Problems of National Identity (1848-c.1900). After teaching at Magdalen College and St Peter’s College, Oxford, she joined Goldsmiths as a Lecturer in Musicology in September 2007. Her teaching mainly revolves around the history of Western Music, with particular emphasis on the nineteenth century. She is also affiliated to Bangor University as an Honorary Research Fellow as a member of the research group Women and the Sacred and of the Centre for Research in Early Music (CREaM), both within the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS).

Academic qualifications

MA (Munich), DPhil (Oxon)

Teaching

Current PhD student:

Klimis Voskidis on Liszt's and Thalberg's piano transcriptions of Belcanto operas.

Research interests

In her research, Barbara Eichner aims to bring together both German and Anglo-American intellectual traditions. Her research interests broadly fall into two areas. Her thesis explored the role music played in the construction of a German national identity during the later nineteenth century, focusing on compositions that bring to life events from a glorified (and largely fictitious) national past. This also includes, but is not limited to, the works of Richard Wagner and their reception in Germany and Great Britain. Related areas of interest are the history and aesthetic dilemmas of the German male choir movement, the operas of Richard Strauss and the large body of “redemption operas” written during the fin de siècle.

The second main area lies within the realm of women and gender studies. Her latest research project explores music making as a gendered practice in Southern German monasteries and nunneries during the late medieval and early modern era. This study will afford a new perspective into the role of music in daily observances and special rituals, its relationship to education, spirituality and economics, and the introduction of vernacular song and polyphony to the cloister.

Selected publications

Articles
‘Gender und nationale Identität in der bürgerlichen Männerchorbewegung des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Kompendium Musik und Gender, ed. Rebecca Grotjahn and Sabine Vogt (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag 2008) (forthcoming).

‘In Schönheit sterben: Frederick Delius' A Village Romeo and Juliet’, in Frederick Delius, ed. Ulrich Tadday (Munich: edition text+kritik, 2008) (forthcoming)

Schwert und Schild und Dolch und Gift: Germanische Heldin und welsche Primadonna’, in Diva – Die Inszenierung der übermenschlichen Frau, ed. Rebecca Grotjahn, Dörte Schmidt, Thomas Seedorf (Schliengen: Argos, 2008) (forthcoming).

‘In träumerischer Entrückung auf pfadlosen Wegen: Verwandlungsmusiken in Der Ring des Nibelungen und Parsifal’, in Studien zur Wertungsforschung 48, ed. Andreas Dorschel (Vienna, London, New York 2007), 273-307.

‘Rose Oil and Pineapples: Julius Cyriax’s Friendship with Wagner and the Early Years of the London Wagner Society’, together with Guy Houghton, The Wagner Journal i/2 (July 2007).

‘Vier Hochzeiten oder ein Todesfall: Die Inszenierung des Kudrun-Epos als Nationaloper’, in Oper und Politik. Hochkultur und Macht im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Sven Oliver Müller, Jutta Toelle (Vienna & Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007) (= Die Gesellschaft der Oper. Die Musikkultur europäischer Metropolen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert 2).

‘Gottlieb Freiherr von Tuchers Kirchengesänge der berühmtesten älteren italiänischen Meister (1827/28) und die Wiederentdeckung der Alten Musik’, Musicologica austriaca 23 (2004), 57-80.

‘“Da der Musikzustand in Ansbach gerade wieder ein bißchen im Steigen ist“: Johann Rupprecht Dürrner und das Ansbacher Musikleben 1831 bis 1844’, Musik in Bayern 65/66 (2003), 33-60.

‘Singing the Songs of Scotland: the German Musician Johann Rupprecht Dürrner and Musical Life in Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh’, in Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies 3, ed. Peter Horton, Bennett Zon (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 171-191.

‘“Die Fahne ist des Sängers Braut”. Bilder von Männlichkeit und Weiblichkeit in der bürgerlichen Männerchorbewegung des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Geschlechterpolarisierungen in der Musik des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Freia Hoffmann, Rebecca Grotjahn (Herbolzheim: Centaurus, 2002), 31-49.

Articles in Encyclopedias
‘Zenger, Max’, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Zweite, neubearbeitete Auflage, ed. Ludwig Finscher (Kassel, Basel et al., 2007), Personenteil vol. 17, cols. 1432-1433.

‘Dürrner, Johannes (Rupprecht)’, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Zweite, neubearbeitete Auflage, ed. Ludwig Finscher (Kassel, Basel et al.: Bärenreiter, 2001) Personenteil vol. 5, cols 1700-1702.

‘Dürrner, Johann(es) Rupprecht’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Second Edition, ed. Stanley Sadie (London et al.: Macmillan, 2001) vol. 7, 757.

Reviews

Linda Maria Koldau, Frauen - Musik - Kultur. Ein Handbuch zum deutschen Sprachgebiet der Frühen Neuzeit (Cologne, Weimar et al. 2005) for H-German net, June 2007

Roger Hillman, Unsettling Scores: German Film, Music, and Ideology
(Bloomington/Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2005), for H-German net, published August 2006

Eva Rieger, Minna und Richard Wagner: Stationen einer Liebe (Düsseldorf & Zürich: Artemis & Winkler, 2003), published in Wagner 25/1 (2004), 48-52.