Project Details
Projekt
Subproject 4: Spiritual Drama in Lübeck and Venice in the Eighteenth Century. Continuities, Discontinuities, and New Deployments
Subject Area
German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
Musicology
Musicology
Term
since 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 435118611
This subproject is the continuation of a project from the first phase of funding. It focuses on Venetian and Lübeck oratorios at the turn from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, extending the subject matter to include the Catholic sphere. The aim is to use two examples to examine the production of spiritual drama in the eighteenth century with regard to the question of new deployments and continuities of spiritual intermediality. Lübeck and Venice were chosen as examples since these cities had a consistent tradition of performances throughout the entire century and also had a maximum variety of forms and an exceptionally broad base of sources. This diversity includes both older traditions of plot-bound dramatic oratorio as well as new forms of lyric oratorio. Research into the cultivation of oratorio in the two cities also seems particularly rewarding because specific forms of spiritual intermediality can be found here which do not exist elsewhere, such as the retention of sacral performance venues, as opposed to the contemporary trend towards oratorio performances in the concert hall. The investigation of the production of oratorios in Lübeck and Venice will be accompanied by studies that contextualize these works. In the case of Lübeck, this would include the German theoretical debates surrounding the oratorio in the eighteenth century as well as the somewhat isolated attempts by Klopstock, for example, to reestablish a spiritual form of spoken theater in the Protestant area. In the case of Venice, this would include the theoretical discourse in general and, using Benedetto Marcello as an example, a metapoetic reflection within the oratorio itself. The aim is to reconstruct the outlines of a European debate on the role of the body, of sensuality, and sensations in their specific spiritual dimension. The research of this subproject is intended to find answers to questions about the interaction of the arts and the conception of art in the eighteenth century in the spiritual sphere, which in previous research (for example in the case of Lessing’s Laokoon) have been interpreted exclusively in a secular context.
DFG Programme
Research Units
