Hebrew Melodies: Music and the Bible in Nineteenth-Century Europe

Description

For registration, please email bible@crassh.cam.ac.uk for information.

The idea that nineteenth-century composers and performers drew inspiration from the Bible is uncontroversial. Yet insufficient attention has been paid to the relationship between the contemporary transformations in religion, music, history, archaeology and biblical scholarship in nineteenth-century Europe.

While new historical sciences called into question the historicity of the Bible, controversies raged over the performance, publication and censorship of new and old musical forms. From oratorio to opera, from parlour song to pantomime, and from hymn to broadside, nineteenth-century Europeans encountered elements of the biblical past in musical form. Music, both elite and popular, played an important role in the formation, regulation and contestation of religious and cultural identity and became a way of addressing questions of class, nation and race. At the same time, new intellectual formations, including the beginnings of ethnomusicology, were often underpinned by a sense of biblical and musical history. This conference will initiate an interdisciplinary discussion between scholars of music, cultural history, literature, theology and biblical scholarship, with the aim of revealing points of intersection and exchange between these disciplines and activities in the long nineteenth century.

Convenors:

• Dr James Grande, King's College London
• Dr Brian Murray, University of Cambridge

Administrative assistance: bible@crassh.cam.ac.uk

Further information

We are unable to arrange or book accommodation for delegates (other than the invited speakers), however, the following websites may be of help:

Visit Cambridge

Cambridge Rooms

University of Cambridge Accommodation

​This event is supported by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH)at the University of Cambridge; King’s College London; the CRASSH Bible and Antiquity in 19th-century Culture project (funded European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/European Research Council grant number 295463); and the King’s College London Music in London 1800-1851 project (European Research Council RCN 106939)

     

This event is a collaboration between the ERC-funded research projects ‘The Bible and Antiquity in Nineteenth-Century Culture’ at the University of Cambridge and ‘Music in London, 1800-1851’ at King’s College London.