AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 32 (2007) Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Rezensionen Erik Alder / Dietmar Hauck, Music and Literature: Music in the Works of Anthony Burgess and E.M. Forster. An Interdisciplinary Study. Tübingen/ Basel: Francke, 2005. Werner Wolf The aim of this study, which purports to be “written primarily for the scholar and interdisciplinary specialist” (12), is “to show the complex interrelations of music and literature, viz. what kinds of functions music can have in a narrative work” (11). Alder and Hauck discuss Burgess’s classic A Clockwork Orange and his less well known novel Napoleon Symphony as well as numerous works by E.M. Forster (“The Celestial Omnibus”, “Co-ordination”, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread, Howards End, A Passage to India, Maurice and the libretto to Britten’s opera Billy Budd, but also several other texts (e.g. Tolstoy’s story “The Kreutzer Sonata”, de Moor’s novel Kreutzersonate and Ghedini’s opera Billy Budd). In their conclusion the authors mention “four main ways how music and fiction are connected” (183): (1.) “music [as] linked with the personality and psyche of the characters” (i.e. music as a shaping element on the story level), (2.) “[m]usic and society” (an odd way of referring to the meta-aesthetic function of some occurrences of music on the levels of story and theme, which the authors then reformulate as “criticiz[ing] different wrong attitudes towards and ways to understand music”), (3.) “adaption of thematic or formal elements from the area of music” (i.e. the employment of music as a shaping force on the discourse level), and (4.) mutual “inspir[ations]” of musical and literary works (i.e. intermedial transposition as in the “adaptation” of Melville’s “Billy Budd, Sailor” for a libretto and opera, and intermedial reference through thematization as in Tolstoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata”, where “a piece of music becomes the centre of a literary work”). The authors have the merit of knowing what they are speaking about when it comes to musicological details and thus qualify in principle for a truly interdisciplinary study (this can, e.g., be seen in ch. 2 in the expert critical discussion of the musicalization of fiction through formal analogies in Napoleon Symphony). In addition, the broad spectrum of works mentioned permits them to make some valuable additions to the texts usually discussed in the field, including literature-inspired Rezensionen 102 1 This is true of many of Scher’s studies, which the authors do not appear to know, and also, e.g., of the book series Word and Music Studies (published by Rodopi/ Amsterdam since 1999) as well as of Werner Wolf (1999). The Musicalization of Fiction: A Study in the Theory and History of Intermediality. Amsterdam: Rodopi, which, for instance, also contains a chapter on Burgess’s Napoleon Symphony. operas, in particular Ghedini’s neglected Billy Budd (in this context it is regrettable that the references in Forster’s Maurice to Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony are given such short shrift [see p. 130]). In other respects the book is a puzzle, to say the least. One is, for instance, puzzled why the authors thought it unnecessary to do proper research in relevant fields before starting to write their book. For a study mostly dedicated to narrative fiction such a relevant field would obviously have been narratology, of which the authors appear to be totally unaware but also, and in particular, intermedial, notably word and music studies. Alder and Hauck limit themselves to mentioning two texts in their remarkably concise bibliography: a book by Alex Aronson from 1980, and Steven Paul Scher’s Music and Text from 1992. All the succeeding research of this flourishing field has apparently been disregarded, although some of it would have been central to the author’s project 1 . To go about their business in this way may be courageous, especially in the face of long-established contrary scholarly practice, as well as liberating, as it gives the authors the opportunity, so to speak, to invent the wheel anew, but the result is expectedly problematic. Disregarding the wealth of concepts and terminology which have been developed in narratology as well as in word and music studies may have spared the reader some ‘jargon’ but has hardly increased the quality of the analyses and rather gives them a home-spun ring (as discernible in the formulations of the four aforementioned functions). A further point worth mentioning is the cavalier manner in which the authors free themselves from the fetters of formal correctness which have traditionally been respected in scholarly writings. To Alder and Hauck quoting a title correctly does not appear to be important (“Point Counterpoint” [63]), nor does a bibliographical reference omitting the author (15, note 8) and the incongruity of citing book titles both in italics and in Roman types (124, notes 210 and 213) seem to bother them. The unconventionality of Alder and Hauck’s way of writing can also be observed when comparing the works cited in their main text and notes with their bibliography, where many are not included (e.g. Tame, McNeil, and Portnoy, cf. pp. 32, 40, 121), and it is even more forcefully revealed when the authors promise a discussion of “Two Poems” in the title of ch. 7 (131), although only one occurs in the subsequent text. In the light of such non-conformism further deviations from standard practice as, for instance, when the publisher “Rowman and Littlefield” appears in the bibliography as part of a title, and Rose Tremain’s novel Music and Silence is listed under “Secondary Sources”, may be regarded as a playful means of testing the readers’ ability to create order for themselves (provided, of course, they still expect it in this work at this late point). After what has been said it hardly comes as a suprise that the authors extend their non-conformism from minor formal elements to the construction of their book as a whole. Its chapter titles partly employ musical metaphors, but one should avoid the connotation of a ‘through-composed’ text and rather regret that the overall title of the Rezensionen 103 book does not also employ a musical metaphor such as ‘rhapsody’, for this would best suit its structure, which one cannot but think is wilfully loose. Thus, the reader is to a large extent saved the tedium of comparisons between the two main authors discussed - otherwise a sine qua non of any ordinary seminar paper at undergraduate level -, and the two-page conclusion is written in a manner which does not really detract from the previous looseness of construction. As a consequence, the book gives the impression of being a collection of more or less independent essays, which at least has the benefit of not straining the reader’s memory too much with criteria of comparison, or a thesis to be followed. The overall impression of a rhapsody is corroborated by the fact that no reasons are given why the main authors appear in the non-chronological sequence Burgess - Forster, and the model of a rhapsody also seems to have encouraged Alder and Hauck to dispense with criteria that would have explained why the author-centred main chapters are prefaced by a “Prelude” on two stories dealing with wunderkinder, why they are separated by an “Interlude” on various works inspired by Beethoven’s “Kreutzer Sonate” and why they are followed by a baffling “Postlude” on literary texts that foreground the performative aspect of music under ‘extreme conditions’. The most noteworthy non-conformism of the book is, however, its avoidance of the pedantry of a clear focus as well as the fact that the authors obviously did not intend to trespass on the reader’s attention with general, systematic aspects of word and music relationships. The bulk of the study is dedicated to summaries of the respective works, which do not really contribute to research and even frequently lose track of the intermedial subject but are at least easy to read. The reader-friendliness of the text is at times enhanced by interspersed anecdotes, and digressions that are only marginally related to the book’s subject (e.g. on “whizz kids” [13] or on the problem of human evil [179]) also contribute to avoiding the tedium of tightly woven arguments. The same holds true of the fact that remarks on some functions, in particular of musical elements on the story level, are kept to a well digestible minimum (while the thornier question why some texts try to imitate musical forms is happily not even asked). In a scholarly work on word and music interrelations one would perhaps have expected discussions that are centred on the main issue of forms and functions of these relationships, and instead of the many impressionistic remarks and rare conclusions some readers may have wished for more systematic explorations on the basis of existing research - but these are obviously inappropriate expectations in the present case. One should therefore not be too disappointed that in spite of the initial promise of focussing on functions of word and music interrelations interesting questions concerning the cultural and historical context, e.g., why in twentieth-century literature references to music appear to be on the increase, are not even raised. Nor should one expect that another intriguing phenomenon, namely the question as to why Beethoven figures so prominently in the texts discussed, only receives a partial and on the whole unsatisfactory treatment, since the larger context does not come into focus: the circumstance that on the one hand as well as in tendency in much modern and more recent fiction to privilege references to Beethoven are part of a music, while on the other hand there are also numerous novels which focus on popmusic, as recently emphasized by Claus-Ulrich Viol in Jukebooks. Contemporary British Fiction, Popular Music, and Cultural Value (2006). Rezensionen 104 All in all, the book provides an easily readable access to parts of an innovative field, is written in fluent English and constitutes a mine of material most of which is indeed interesting for the “interdisciplinary specialist” (12). Yet so much has been done which regrettably prevents its becoming a substantial contribution to the current debate on the relationships between literature, music and other media that one of the main puzzles of this study is the kind of “scholar” (12) the authors and the renowned publisher Francke had in mind when publishing this book. Werner Wolf Institut für Anglistik Universität Graz Heike Paul und Katja Kanzler (Hg.), Amerikanische Populärkultur in Deutschland: Case Studies in Cultural Transfer Past and Present. Leipzig: Universitätsverlag, 2002. Karin M. Schmidlechner Intention der Beiträge dieses Bandes ist die Untersuchung der Aneignung US-amerikanischer Populärkultur in Deutschland in unterschiedlichen historischen und zeitgenössischen Kontexten. Als dafür richtungsweisend galten den beiden Herausgeberinnen Katja Kanzler und Heike Paul die Arbeiten von zwei Experten der Thematik, einerseits Reinhold Wagnleitner, mit seinem Konzept der Eigenständigkeit von KonsumentInnen im Prozess des Kulturtransfers, andererseits Kaspar Maase, der die Vorstellungen vom westlichen Kulturbegriff neu konzipiert, indem er die Hybridität als kulturelle Norm begreift. In ihrer Einleitung weisen die beiden Herausgeberinnen darauf hin, dass die Beiträge dieses Bandes die Aufnahme amerikanischer Populärkultur in einem speziell deutschen Kontext nachvollziehen wollen, wobei es um die Behandlung von unterschiedlichsten Phänomenen - wie etwa die deutschen Reaktionen auf den amerikanischen Humor - in unterschiedlichen Zeiten - die Beiträge behandeln das 19. und das 20. Jahrhundert - und aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven - historischen oder literaturwissenschaftlichen - geht. Die ersten vier Beiträge stellen eine Aufarbeitung aus historischer Perspektive dar. Heike Paul beschäftigt sich mit der deutschen Rezeption von Harriet Beecher Stowes Roman Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Diese wird dabei als zentrales Beispiel für die Verbreitung amerikanischer Populärkultur im Deutschland des 19. Jahrhundert analysiert. Paul weist auf zwei dominante Interpretationsstränge hin. Zum einen auf die Tendenz deutscher Rezensenten, die Aussagen des Buches auf deutsche Verhältnisse zu übertragen und dazu zu nutzen, soziale und ökonomische Missstände im eigenen Land zu thematisieren. Zum Zweiten ist das Buch wichtig für die Wahrnehmung und Betrachtung Amerikas in einer Zeit, als die deutsche Immigration in die USA einen neuen Höhepunkt erlebte. Paul sieht hier einen Einfluss des Romans bezüglich der Beschreibung deutscher und deutsch-amerikanischer Identitä- AAA Band 32 (2007), Heft 1