Raymond Knapp

Brahms and the Anxiety of Allusion

Abstract Given his anxieties about Beethoven and his frequent musical allusions, Brahms has seemed ripe for a musical application of Harold Blooms theories, advanced in The Anxiety of Influence. Yet such an application does scant justice to Brahmss compositional situation and practice (examined here primarily in the First and Third Symphonies), where establishing a relationship to the past was subordinate to other concerns. While Brahmss foregrounding of non‐referential musical discourse—which allows his allusions to operate primarily on a subliminal level—does reflect anxiety, it is less an “anxiety of influence” than an “anxiety of allusion,” a phrase that places his anxiety between the past and his audience rather than primarily with the past.

Making light : Haydn, musical camp, and the long shadow of German idealism

Author(s): Knapp, Raymond | Abstract: In Making Light Raymond Knapp traces the musical legacy of German Idealism as it led to the declining prestige of composers such as Haydn while influencing the development of American popular music in the nineteenth century. Knapp identifies in Haydn and in early popular American musical cultures such as minstrelsy and operetta a strain of high camp—a mode of engagement that relishes both the superficial and serious aspects of an aesthetic experience—that runs antithetical to German Idealisms musical paradigms. By considering the disservice done to Haydn by German Idealism alongside the emergence of musical camp in American popular music, Knapp outlines a common ground: a humanistically based aesthetic of shared pleasure that points to ways in which camp receptive modes might rejuvenate the original appeal of Haydns music that has mostly eluded audiences. In so doing, Knapp remaps the historiographical modes and systems of critical evaluation that dominate musicology while troubling the divide between serious and popular music.