Molly Barnes
The Other Otto Dresel: Public and Private Musical Identities in a German-American ‘Forty-Eighter’ and his Family, c1860–1880
Barnes, Molly
Authors
Abstract
This essay explores the musical life of a German-American “Forty-Eighter” and his family, with particular attention to their domestic musical preferences as reflected in five surviving sheet-music albums. Otto Dresel, easily confused with the far more prominent German musician of the same name who settled in Boston, was a gifted amateur whose public musical activities, both choral and instrumental, typified those of many German arrivals of that generation. This was a largely male realm of affirmative, expansive ideals; here the stress was on civic virtues, happy fraternal bonds, and the celebration of German musical culture as an elevating force in America. The family albums suggests that the music he shared with his wife and children at home in Columbus, Ohio served quite different purposes. It was performed intimately, in an often melancholy and even mournful mode that reflected the need for personal consolation and was thus more in keeping with typical Victorian attitudes toward the domestic, womanly sphere. Evidence about the troubled course of Dresel’s life helps us understand his growing need to take refuge in his home and family as well as in music that helped him and his loved ones deal—for a time, at least—with deepening feelings of regret, failure and loss. This marked contrast between the public and private sides of the Dresels’ musical lives points to a need for greater attention to the distinctive character and functions of intimate family music making in nineteenth-century America, especially during the years of widespread disillusionment and cultural reorientation that followed the Civil War.
Citation
Barnes, M. (2022). The Other Otto Dresel: Public and Private Musical Identities in a German-American ‘Forty-Eighter’ and his Family, c1860–1880. Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 19(3), 481-513. https://doi.org/10.1017/s147940982100015x
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Online Publication Date | Nov 29, 2021 |
Publication Date | 2022-12 |
Deposit Date | Nov 12, 2021 |
Publicly Available Date | Nov 12, 2021 |
Journal | Nineteenth-Century Music Review |
Print ISSN | 1479-4098 |
Electronic ISSN | 2044-8414 |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 19 |
Issue | 3 |
Pages | 481-513 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1017/s147940982100015x |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1222265 |
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Copyright Statement
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by
Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which
permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited.
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