Georg Philipp Telemann and the Invention of 'the Polish Style': Musical Polishness in the Early Modern German Imagination
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation explores the history and cultural significance of Polish-style music and dance across early modern German lands, focusing on the composer Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), who was regarded by his contemporaries as a leading practitioner of ‘the Polish style’ of composition. Although references to ‘Polish’ music and dance are abundant in German-language sources from the sixteenth century onwards, it is rarely clear what early modern subjects meant when referring to music as being ‘in a Polish style’. The historical record seems rife with contradiction and ambiguity concerning the origins, musical features and – most importantly – socio-cultural connotations of these repertoires. In some sources, Polish-style music is associated with the splendour of courtly ceremony, while in others, it is linked with peasant musicians and dancing bears. Likewise, some writers viewed Polish-style music as the paragon of masculinity, while others decried its effeminate qualities. And for some witnesses, Polishness in music was understood in terms of on-the-page musical elements; for others, it was manifest in the sounds of certain instruments and performance practices. I resolve these apparent contradictions by deconstructing the idea of a single well-defined concept of Polish-style music. I show that several different traditions of music and dance were considered ‘Polish’ for different reasons by different early modern communities. Far from representing a long-standing and widely recognised mode of music-making, ‘the Polish style’ is, I argue, best understood as the invention of Telemann and his Hamburg circle. This ‘new’ style was a synthesis of pre-existing traditions, which Telemann applied creatively to a host of novel compositional contexts. Exploring these traditions separately allows us to situate individual instances of what I term ‘musical Polishness’ (that is, music described as ‘Polish’ by non-Poles) within the daily lives of the early modern Germans wh…
abstract: This dissertation explores the history and cultural significance of Polish-style music and dance across early modern German lands, focusing on the composer Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), who was regarded by his contemporaries as a leading practitioner of ‘the Polish style’ of composition. Although references to ‘Polish’ music and dance are abundant in German-language sources from the sixteenth century onwards, it is rarely clear what early modern subjects meant when referring to music as being ‘in a Polish style’. The historical record seems rife with contradiction and ambiguity concerning the origins, musical features and – most importantly – socio-cultural connotations of these repertoires. In some sources, Polish-style music is associated with the splendour of courtly ceremony, while in others, it is linked with peasant musicians and dancing bears. Likewise, some writers viewed Polish-style music as the paragon of masculinity, while others decried its effeminate qualities. And for some witnesses, Polishness in music was understood in terms of on-the-page musical elements; for others, it was manifest in the sounds of certain instruments and performance practices. I resolve these apparent contradictions by deconstructing the idea of a single well-defined concept of Polish-style music. I show that several different traditions of music and dance were considered ‘Polish’ for different reasons by different early modern communities. Far from representing a long-standing and widely recognised mode of music-making, ‘the Polish style’ is, I argue, best understood as the invention of Telemann and his Hamburg circle. This ‘new’ style was a synthesis of pre-existing traditions, which Telemann applied creatively to a host of novel compositional contexts. Exploring these traditions separately allows us to situate individual instances of what I term ‘musical Polishness’ (that is, music described as ‘Polish’ by non-Poles) within the daily lives of the early modern Germans wh…
author: Newton-Jackson, Paul
language: eng
keywords: Early Modern History, Georg Philipp Telemann, German-Polish Relations, Early Music, Dance Music
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2022-04-29
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:00Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.89102