Philistinism-Lite

I'm a Dissertation Newbie

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Focusing the Scope, Claiming Territory



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I've been working through the volumes of the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung the past month and have now completed 1798–1816. Although my original plan was to continue up through 1825 or 1830, for the time being I'm going to stop and work with some of my material. I've filled a legal pad of any concert/opera criticism of German operas (neither including French and Italian operas translated to German nor other music-theatric genres). Additionally I've photocopied over a hundred pages of the more extensive reviews and essays on German opera and related topics and am ready to dive in. The time frame I've completed also relates to two significant details. For one, a major references source to my project gives the full index page by page of all the contents of three other major journals from 1801 to 1815, Zeitung für die elegante Welt, Freimüthigen oder Scherz und Ernst, and Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände. Another issue is a working dissertation I discovered on DDM on a similar topic, German criticism of French and Italian opera 1816-1840. Although the focus of the project is different, the similarities are enough to play into the temporary halt. I do think that if I decide not to expand my time frame, I'll still have plenty of material to talk about.