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POP MUSIC, CULTURE AND IDENTITY

On Popular Music
and Its Unruly
Entanglements

Edited by
Nick Braae · Kai Arne Hansen
Pop Music, Culture and Identity

Series Editors
Steve Clark
Graduate School Humanities and Sociology
University of Tokyo
Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Tristanne Connolly
Department of English
St Jerome’s University
Waterloo, ON, Canada

Jason Whittaker
School of English & Journalism
University of Lincoln
Lincoln, Lincolnshire, UK
Pop music lasts. A form all too often assumed to be transient, commercial
and mass-cultural has proved itself durable, tenacious and continually
evolving. As such, it has become a crucial component in defining various
forms of identity (individual and collective) as influenced by nation, class,
gender and historical period. Pop Music, Culture and Identity investigates
how this enhanced status shapes the iconography of celebrity, provides an
ever-expanding archive for generational memory and accelerates the
impact of new technologies on performing, packaging and global market-
ing. The series gives particular emphasis to interdisciplinary approaches
that go beyond musicology and seeks to validate the informed testimony
of the fan alongside academic methodologies.

More information about this series at


http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14537
Nick Braae • Kai Arne Hansen
Editors

On Popular Music and


Its Unruly
Entanglements
Editors
Nick Braae Kai Arne Hansen
School of Media Arts Department of Art and Cultural
Waikato Institute of Technology Studies
Hamilton, New Zealand Inland Norway University of Applied
Sciences
Hamar, Norway

Pop Music, Culture and Identity


ISBN 978-3-030-18098-0    ISBN 978-3-030-18099-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18099-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019


This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Brian Jackson / Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements

As with any book, there are a number of people deserving of our gratitude
for their contributions in making the publication of this collection possible.
First of all, thanks to Ralf von Appen, André Doehring, and Dietrich
Helms for organizing the summer school in popular music analysis where
the two editors first met, in the wake of which the idea for this collection
was conceived. Thanks also to the other lecturers and participants at that
event, several of whom are included in this volume.
We are grateful for the support we’ve received from our publisher,
Palgrave Macmillan. Particular thanks go to their editorial team, who have
been helpful and encouraging throughout this process. We are also appre-
ciative of the feedback we received from the anonymous reviewers of the
volume, which has contributed in many ways to improving the end result.
Many thanks to those who have aided us in assessing the quality of
individual chapters of the book: Eirik Askerøi, Stan Hawkins, and
Jeremy Mayall.
We are thankful to our colleagues, friends, and family for their encour-
agement and support.
And lastly, special thanks to all of our contributors. It has been a joy to
work with you on this project.
Nick Braae and Kai Arne Hansen

v
Contents

1 To Begin Untangling Popular Music  1


Kai Arne Hansen and Nick Braae

Part I Broad Strokes  13

2 Musicology Without Music 15


Kyle Devine

3 Narrativizing Recorded Popular Song 39


Alexander C. Harden

4 Taken by Strum: Ukuleles and Participatory Music-­


Making in Hamilton, Aotearoa/New Zealand 59
Matthew Bannister

5 Linearity in Popular Song 83


Nick Braae

vii
viii Contents

Part II Second Takes 101

6 War and Trauma in the Music of Bruce Springsteen:


“Born in the U.S.A.,” “Devils & Dust,” and “The Wall”103
Susanna Välimäki

7 Electric Affinities: Jimi Hendrix, Richard Wagner, and the


Thingness of Sound125
Erik Steinskog

8 Carpenter Brut and the Instrumental Synthwave Persona143


Andrei Sora

9 Empowerment in Rap Music Listening ft. Kendrick


Lamar’s “Backseat Freestyle”165
Steven Gamble

Part III Audiovisual Entanglements 187

10 Humor’s Role in Mashups and Remixes: Similarities


Between Humor Structure and Remix Structure189
Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen

11 Timbre, Genre, and Polystylism in Sonic the Hedgehog 3209


Megan Lavengood

12 It’s a Dark Philosophy: The Weeknd’s Intermedial


Aestheticization of Violence235
Kai Arne Hansen

13 Afterword257
Allan F. Moore

Index263
Notes on Contributors

Matthew Bannister is a musician and academic. He presently teaches at


Waikato Institute of Technology in Hamilton, New Zealand. He has pub-
lished two books, White Boys, White Noise: Masculinities and 1980s Indie
Guitar Rock (2006) and Positively George Street: A Personal History of
Sneaky Feelings and the Dunedin Sound (1999), and is presently working
on a book on NZ filmmaker Taika Waititi.
Nick Braae is an academic staff member in music at the Waikato Institute
of Technology in Hamilton, New Zealand. He has published widely on
the music of Queen, New Zealand popular music and cultural identity,
and issues of style and genre. Outside of teaching, Nick is involved in
musical theatre as a composer, arranger, musical director, vocal coach, and
pianist; and performs regularly as a classical, jazz, and rock keyboardist.
Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen is Associate Professor in Popular Music
Studies in the Department of Musicology and Research Fellow at the
Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion
(RITMO), at the University of Oslo, Norway. She has published articles
and book chapters on music production, digital media, remix- and mashup
culture, rhythm and groove, and sound studies. She is the co-author with
Anne Danielsen of the book Digital Signatures: The Impact of Digitization
on Popular Music Sound (2016).
Kyle Devine is an associate professor in the University of Oslo’s
Department of Musicology. His most recent publications are Decomposed:

ix
x Notes on
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Contributors

A Material History of Sound Reproduction (MIT Press, 2019) and Audible


Infrastructures: Music, Sound, Media (Oxford University Press,
forthcoming).
Steven Gamble is Head of Academic Studies at BIMM Institute,
Brighton. Following study at the Universities of Surrey and Oxford, he
received a PhD from Kingston University London. His research has been
presented at conferences such as IASPM (Europe and UK) and RMA, and
he is published in Popular Music and the Journal on the Art of Record
Production. He predominantly works on postmillennial metal and hip
hop music, focusing upon experiences of listening and fandom. His
current project examines hip hop in the Internet Age, drawing upon
his wider research interests including music and the Internet, recorded
music, and music analysis.
Kai Arne Hansen is Associate Professor of Music in the Department of
Art and Cultural Studies, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences.
He has published on issues pertaining to popular music, aesthetics, gender
and identity, contemporary media, and children’s audiovisual music cul-
ture. Hansen is currently editor-in-chief of Studia Musicologica
Norvegica: Norwegian Journal of Musicology.
Alexander C. Harden is a researcher in narratology and popular music
analysis. In 2018, he completed his doctoral thesis entitled “Narrativity,
Worldmaking, and Recorded Popular Song” at the University of Surrey
under the supervision of Professor Allan F. Moore. Harden has also
received an International Association for the Study of Popular Music (UK
& Ireland Branch) Andrew Goodwin Memorial Prize for his essay “A
World of my Own.” His research interests include the hermeneutics
of popular song, the art of record production, and narrativity across
musical media.
Megan Lavengood is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at George
Mason University, located outside of Washington, D.C. in Fairfax,
Virginia, USA, where she teaches the undergraduate and graduate music
theory curricula. Her research primarily focuses on timbre and the Yamaha
DX7 digital synthesizer. While these focuses have made it natural to study
1980’s pop music, the connection in the sound chips of the DX7 and
the Sega Genesis led her to begin cultivating a new interest in video
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi

game music research. She also performs regularly as a professional


Renaissance soprano. She maintains a website at www.meganlavengood.
com.
Allan F. Moore is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Music and
Media at the University of Surrey. His chief academic interest lies in under-
standing the capacity for meaningfulness in music.
Andrei Sora obtained his PhD at the University of Surrey, working on
issues of expressivity and personae in instrumental rock. He also holds an
MA in Musicology from the University of Oxford, where he teaches global
hip hop, scenes and subcultures, and the history of electronic music.
Erik Steinskog is Associate Professor of Musicology at the Department
of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He
earned a PhD in musicology from the Norwegian University of Science
and Technology (NTNU), with the dissertation “Arnold Schoenberg’s
Moses und Aron: Music, Language, and Representation.” He is the
author of Afrofuturism and Black Sound Studies: Culture, Technology, and
Things to Come (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
Susanna Välimäki is Senior Lecturer in Musicology, University of Turku,
Finland, and holds a title of docent in musicology at the University of
Helsinki. She is the author of Subject Strategies in Music: A Psychoanalytic
Approach to Musical Signification (2005), Miten sota soi? Sotaelokuva, ääni
ja musiikki [How Does a War Sound? War Films, Sound and Music]
(2008), Muutoksen musiikki: Pervoja ja ekologisia utopioita audivisuaali-
sessa kulttuurissa [Music of Transformation: Queer and Ecological
Utopias in Audiovisual Culture] (2015), and Syötävät sävelet: Vieraana
säveltäjien pöydissä [Tasty Tones: Culinary History of Classical Music]
(2017). She also works as a music critic and produces radio and tele-
vision programmes for Finnish Broadcasting Company.
List of Figures

Fig. 8.1 Overhead view of the proxemic zones 149


Fig. 8.2 Song analyses 153
Fig. 9.1 “Backseat Freestyle” basic beat 176
Fig. 11.1 Table 3.1 from Collins (2008, 41) 214
Fig. 11.2 A spectrogram of a signal from a single channel (a) versus a
signal from ten channels (b) 216
Fig. 11.3 YM2612 channel 1 (a) and the Yamaha DX7 BASS 1 preset (b) 223
Fig. 11.4 YM channel 4 spectrogram 224
Fig. 11.5 PSG channel 1 (a), PSG channels 1 and 2 combined (b),
YM2612 channel 2 (c), and all three channels combined (d) 226
Fig. 11.6 Spectrogram of channel 2 during the A section 229

xiii
CHAPTER 1

To Begin Untangling Popular Music

Kai Arne Hansen and Nick Braae

“To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself,
incredible and inconceivable,” wrote American composer and conductor
Aaron Copland in 1959. By wilfully misreading him, we can consider how,
60 years later, music flows unstoppably through our lives—and, indeed,
our lives flow unstoppably through music—in ways that would have been
unimaginable for Copland at the time. Music is ubiquitous on a day-to-­
day basis: it pervades urban spaces (cafés, restaurants, shops, street cor-
ners, and subway stations) and contemporary broadcasting channels
(radio, TV, web), and provides a soundtrack for our commutes, chores,
and exercise routines; it can be recorded and produced by “anyone” using
software pre-installed on our devices, and distributed freely through open
global platforms; and, it is organized in vast sonic libraries found on smart-
phones, tablets, and watches, tailored to our specific tastes via complex
algorithms. As clichéd as it may sound, music is instantly available with the

K. A. Hansen (*)
Department of Art and Cultural Studies, Inland Norway University of Applied
Sciences, Hamar, Norway
e-mail: kai.hansen@inn.no
N. Braae
School of Media Arts, Waikato Institute of Technology, Hamilton, New Zealand

© The Author(s) 2019 1


N. Braae, K. A. Hansen (eds.), On Popular Music and Its Unruly
Entanglements, Pop Music, Culture and Identity,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18099-7_1
2 K. A. HANSEN AND N. BRAAE

click of a button (and, often, a small monthly fee).1 Now more than ever
before, it is easy to see (yet, possibly, all the more difficult to fully grasp)
the myriad forms that musical experiences take.
On Popular Music and Its Unruly Entanglements presents a selection of
essays that aims to capture something of the way in which popular music
weaves into our society, culture, and lives. As already implied, one central
aspect of this relates to the implications of new media technologies.
However, as Henry Jenkins observes (2006, 2–3), our contemporary
media culture is defined not only by technological developments, but also
by changes in social and cultural practices, in modes of consumption and
listening, and in relations between artists and fans. As listeners today, we
grapple with making sense of music at a time when new musical forms
appear seemingly out of nowhere, bringing with them additional ques-
tions with regard to ethics and aesthetics; the boundaries between differ-
ent genres and styles can appear increasingly fluid, or even non-existent;
and music frequently, if not primarily, operates and develops meaning in
conjunction with other media and art forms. Put bluntly, the magnitude
and velocity of recent technological and cultural developments—in popu-
lar music practices and more generally in the Western world—challenge
our “ability to keep pace with meaning in our time” (Richardson and
Gorbman 2013, 32). This collection recognizes this issue not as an oppor-
tunity for singling out any one aspect or function of popular music that
necessitates further study, but, rather, as a platform for mobilizing popular
music as the focal point for a plurality of investigations into its various con-
nections, intersections, and entanglements. Yet, while current circum-
stances put into stark focus the ways in which popular music is entwined
with other cultural and social forms, this is not a new or technologically-­
dependent phenomenon. Many of popular music’s connections are, to be
sure, historical or abstract, as some of our authors demonstrate.
Popular music itself, both as a general category and as an object of
study, is notoriously difficult to pin down (Moore 2007, xi; Scott 2009,
5). Partly, this is because it never exists in isolation, cannot be encountered
outside of discourse, and is invariably produced and consumed in relation
to vast networks of meaningful connections and relationships. It follows
that, as Richard Middleton points out, the musical worlds that we inhabit
“are not clear sets, filled with autonomous entities which are foreign to

1
For more on the ubiquity of music in contemporary culture, see Kassabian (2013) and
Quiñones et al. (2013).
1 TO BEGIN UNTANGLING POPULAR MUSIC 3

each other and connected only via neutral ‘links’; rather, they are half-way
worlds, without clear boundaries, filled with transient knots of variable
meaning, practice and status” (2000, 10). Middleton’s argument sets the
stage for untangling popular music, by shedding light on its entwinement
with diverse historical, cultural, and social circumstances and practices,
and assessing how it intersects with other idioms and media forms. In
undertaking this task, we recognize that popular music is not any one
thing, but, rather, can be defined according to a broad range of (admit-
tedly unstable) criteria (see, for example, Tagg 2012, 43ff.).
Inquiring into the state, significance, and function of popular music, in
its many guises, On Popular Music and Its Unruly Entanglements explores
a wide range of music—both recent and older—with an aim to reflect the
plurality of potential meanings and understandings that underpins all musi-
cal encounters. As such, the collection is informed and shaped by the diver-
sity and eclecticism that has taken hold within the broad academic discipline
of popular music research. In following on from the strides made in previ-
ous decades by scholars within critical musicology and adjacent fields (see
Hawkins 2012; Moore 2007; Scott 2009), we would like to think that the
days of disciplinary hand-wringing and the almost-­apologetically or defiant
justifications of researching popular music are coming to an end. Indeed,
while earlier scholars had to grapple with popular music’s seemingly “low”
status as an object of academic study (Moore 1993, 9), the last few decades
have seen popular music gain recognition in numerous scholarly fields.2
There remains a strong interest in studying popular music’s relation to
different aspects of identity, including age (Bennett 2013; Bennett and
Hodkinson 2012; Jennings and Gardner 2012), gender and sexuality
(Hawkins 2016, 2017; Lee 2018), race and ethnicity (Maultsby and
Burnim 2016; Stoever 2016), and religion (Ingalls 2018; Partridge and
Moberg 2017). Recent collections have ambitiously aimed to tackle popu-
lar music in its breadth (Bennett and Waksman 2015), have elucidated its
articulation in music video (Burns and Hawkins 2019), or have expanded
analytical approaches (Burns and Lacasse 2018; Scotto et al. 2018; Spicer
and Covach 2010). Scholarship on the production aspects of popular
music is proliferating (Bennett and Bates 2018; Frith and Zagorski-­Thomas

2
This is not to say that the study of popular music, or the humanities more broadly, lack
for antagonists. Even within the broad field of popular music studies, battles are still being
fought for disciplinary boundaries, the validity of various approaches, and over the purposes
and obligations of music research. See Moore’s Afterword in this collection for further reflec-
tions on the significance of changing ontologies and paradigms for the study of music.
4 K. A. HANSEN AND N. BRAAE

2012; Zagorski-Thomas 2014). And, not least, popular music is increas-


ingly gaining prominence within the educational context, as evidenced by
recent publications (Moir et al. 2019; Smith et al. 2017) as well as the
launch of the Journal of Popular Music Education in 2017. Prompted by
this diversity of current popular music scholarship, On Popular Music and
Its Unruly Entanglements aims to present a range of co-existing and mutu-
ally supportive (even if apparently contradicting) approaches to the analy-
sis and study of popular music. By deliberately embracing eclecticism, we
hope to foster increased engagement between different specialized
approaches, thus countering a potential fragmentation of the field. The
chapters are underpinned by two primary objectives:

• To challenge, explore, or discuss some of the often taken-for-granted


ideas, assumptions, and conventions concerning researching particu-
lar repertoires and formats, thus illuminating the permeable and
negotiable boundaries between different idioms, media, art forms,
eras, and cultural spaces.
• To reach into hitherto underexplored musical domains, tease out
connections and entanglements that on the surface might appear
unlikely, and introduce rich dialogue between different spheres of
the musical (and nonmusical) world(s).

Both objectives are intended to function as launching pads for merging


analytical dexterity with ardent curiosity. This might be by way of demon-
strating wider methodological applicability, or through highlighting reso-
nances, parallels, or other such historical, musical, cultural, or media
connections. As such, the contributors of this collection join Allan
F. Moore in viewing the study of music as an invitation to engage with or
understand music in a particular way (2012, 3), well aware that such an
invitation should be dispersed both with careful consideration and with
great engagement: engagement with the reader, with the music in ques-
tion, and not least with the wide variety of discourses and contexts any
given musical example mobilizes. The most compelling invitation, then,
might well be the one that confronts some of the reader’s comfortable
assumptions and thus encourages new ways of thinking about and experi-
encing music.
On Popular Music and Its Unruly Entanglements is divided into three
parts: “Broad Strokes,” “Second Takes,” and “Audiovisual Entanglements.”
While there is some evident overlap between the issues taken up across
1 TO BEGIN UNTANGLING POPULAR MUSIC 5

chapters and sections, these distinctions serve to frame the individual con-
tributions vis-à-vis the central objectives of the collection. The first part of
the book, “Broad Strokes,” deals with the breadth of particular concepts
in relation to music, as well as issues of broad temporal, cultural, and theo-
retical significance. Kyle Devine’s chapter looks outside of the musical text
to explore questions about music in relation to matters of identity, infra-
structures, and industry, as well as the flows of media. In what might be
viewed as a bold move, he proposes the viability of a “musicology without
music,” not in an effort to discredit or oppose existing approaches to
music analysis, but rather as a way of opening up various “politics of exclu-
sion” in order to access some of the less investigated ways that music plays
a constitutive role in the world. Primarily concerned with what he calls the
“technosocial conditions” of music, Devine demonstrates how a mediatic
approach can unveil histories of ecology, industry, war, gender, and labor
exploitation. Moving from histories to stories, Alexander C. Harden adds
to the growing body of literature on narrative in popular music (Liu-­
Rosenbaum 2012; Negus 2012; Nicholls 2007; Watson and Burns 2010)
by accounting for the ways in which listeners narrativize popular music.
Bringing a cognitive conception of narrativization to bear on popular
song, Harden engages with a range of theories and methods to think
broadly about the sensemaking activities involved in interpreting musical
experiences. His chapter provides a starting point for adding further
nuance to understandings of musical narrativity, and encourages the con-
tinued systematic development of its study.
Matthew Bannister looks broadly at a practice that is under-represented
in popular music scholarship, namely amateur music-making. Bannister
brings an ethnographic survey of ukulele groups into contact with theo-
ries of musical participation, making new incursions into a sphere of music
that has received little scholarly attention.3 He raises questions regarding
the purposes of musical performance for its participants, and the connec-
tions between amateur musicians and broader social and musical worlds.
Furthermore, he provides us with a reminder that for many musicians,
there are a variety of ways of knowing a text, whether in terms of technical
details (structure, harmonic language), an experiential state, or simply
imitation of others, with all of these providing equal opportunities

3
Recent studies that address aspects of amateur music-making include Finnegan (2007),
Eisentraut (2013), and Turino (2008), the latter of which forms the impetus for Bannister’s
research.
6 K. A. HANSEN AND N. BRAAE

for participants to create personal and musical meanings. In the final chap-
ter of the section, Nick Braae investigates notions of temporality as per-
taining to popular music, with a specific focus on linear or goal-directed
time. These enquiries are prompted by discussions with contemporary
performance, songwriting, and composition students, in which such ideas
are often informally invoked, but with little precision as to how they relate
to musical techniques. This is unsurprising given scholars have been
divided over the articulation and relevance of linear time in a popular
music context, especially vis-à-vis the classical idiom, in which this tempo-
ral state has been extensively addressed. Braae’s chapter points to a variety
of different performance techniques that may foster a sense of linear nar-
ratives in popular music, thereby offering a fresh perspective on both the
nature of popular music, and indeed its underlying connections with the
practice of storytelling.
The chapters in the next part of the book, “Second Takes,” present
new perspectives on familiar material, or question commonly held
assumptions about researching particular idioms, genres, and texts. The
former approach is demonstrated by Susanna Välimäki’s investigation
into the representation of war and trauma in the songs of Bruce
Springsteen. Välimäki identifies, in existing research on Springsteen’s war
songs (Harde 2013; Neiberg and Citino 2016; Schneider 2014, 2018), a
lack of engagement with the musical elements that contribute to the rep-
resentation of trauma. She redresses the balance by focusing on the musi-
cal means that contribute to constructing a discourse of trauma in
Springsteen’s songs, illustrating that popular music can serve as a shared
sonic space of collective mourning. The following chapter, written by
Erik Steinskog, is also concerned with shared concepts and frames of ref-
erence, exploring connections between Richard Wagner and Jimi Hendrix
through the lens of the “thingness of sound.” Embedded in Steinskog’s
proposition that listening to Hendrix might teach us how to listen to
Wagner, is a statement about the significance of technologies and
resources for the production (and reception) of musical sound. In differ-
ent ways, Steinskog argues, Wagner and Hendrix contribute to sound
becoming material, which in turn facilitates new perspectives on music
and its place in the world.
The two remaining chapters of this section argue for alternative ways of
addressing the musical persona (Auslander 2006, 2009; Hansen 2019; Moore
2012), albeit with very different foci and outcomes. Engaging with the com-
plexities of musical expressivity, and providing an alternative to scholarship
1 TO BEGIN UNTANGLING POPULAR MUSIC 7

primarily studying the persona as articulated through vocals and lyrics


(e.g. Gelbart 2003; Moore 2012; Tagg 2012), Andrei Sora proposes a
model for assessing the persona in instrumental synthwave music. Building
on existing models, Sora prioritizes technique over meaning in unpacking
the musical means that construct the instrumental persona. Decentering
the role of the voice in popular music, his approach opens up new analyti-
cal avenues for investigating musical expressivity through the lens of the
persona. Contrasting Sora’s approach, Steven Gamble focuses on the
reception of the persona as a gateway for investigating empowerment in
music listening. Merging perspectives from the ecological approach to
perception and embodied cognition, Gamble applies psychological theo-
ries of power and empowerment to music analysis. He discusses a range of
empowering affordances which emerge through the listening process,
explicating new connections between popular music personae and
the listener.
In the final part, “Audiovisual Entanglements,” authors inquire into
the blurred boundaries between popular music and other media phe-
nomena. Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen turns her attention to new musical
forms afforded by digital technologies, more specifically what she charac-
terizes as user-generated audiovisual remixes, and the role of humor
within this domain. Applying humor theories developed within the fields
of philosophy, linguistics, and psychology to the study of audiovisual
texts, she navigates a range of interrelated aesthetic, ethical, and political
issues that are raised by remix culture. Ambiguity, Brøvig-Hanssen argues,
is a characteristic feature of remixes which results from their multiple func-
tions, and which opens up a space within which audiences can take plea-
sure in negotiating various meanings. In a chapter that analyzes the music
of the video game Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Megan Lavengood details the
intertextual associations afforded by the musical parameter timbre.4
Working from an understanding of the soundtrack as polystylistic (whereby

4
Intertextuality has long been a central concept for popular music analysts: there exist
many studies that richly demonstrate how artists frequently reference previous works through
lyrical, compositional, and sonic qualities, whether for purposes of critique and commentary,
alignment with musical traditions, or creating a web of aesthetic associations (Butler 2003;
Covach 1995; Holm-Hudson 2001; Middleton 2000; Spicer 2009, 2018). Such investiga-
tions have expanded outwards to place further emphasis on visual and extramusical media as
part of the intertextual equations, with authors revealing the richly layered artistic meanings
that can emerge from a confluence of audiovisual references (Burns and Woods 2018;
Hawkins 2018; Williams 2018).
8 K. A. HANSEN AND N. BRAAE

diverse and seemingly incongruous styles are juxtaposed), she demon-


strates how the varied choices of musical style relate to the different set-
tings of the game’s levels through a rich web of genre associations that
pertain to both musical and cultural factors. Lavengood demonstrates that
such intertextual associations stem primarily from manipulations of tim-
bre, thereby adding to the fledgling number of studies of popular music
that examine this parameter in close technical detail.5 Ultimately, her study
shows that the integration and juxtaposition of musical and visual codes
can function to communicate complex meanings.
In the final chapter of the section, Kai Arne Hansen employs an inter-
medial approach to investigate the identity politics entailed in representa-
tions of violence in popular music. Supplementing scholarship on the role
of music and sound in violent contexts (Daughtry 2015; Gilman 2016;
Pieslak 2009), he addresses the audiovisual aestheticization of violence.
Casting a wide net, Hansen demonstrates that the representation of vio-
lence in music video is entangled with the aesthetic conventions of other
media, as well as a broader cultural fascination for taboo themes. Closing
the collection, Allan F. Moore reflects on some of the broader issues raised
by the contributors and the collection as a whole. Given that many of the
chapters implicitly or explicitly tell stories about people, one of Moore’s
concerns is with musical narratives. He also raises issues of sonic quiddity,
and ponders the purposes of studying popular music. The collection thus
closes with a contemplation of the philosophies and objectives that under-
pin popular music scholarship.
For many of us as writers, teachers, and practitioners, our lives are inter-
twined in different types and contexts of music, each cascading from the
other. From a scholarly, institutional, and, indeed, personal perspective, it
would appear that we increasingly are engaged with “music” as a multifac-
eted, multidimensional, and malleable concept. While the singular chap-
ters, in and of themselves, cannot adequately document the richness of
these experiences, we hope that the collection, as a whole, will capture
some of this spirit and mode of engagement with music that frequently
brings us so much enjoyment and stimulation. At the very least, we hope
that readers of On Popular Music and Its Unruly Entanglements will dis-
cover a new appreciation for an area of the musical landscape that had
previously eluded their scholarly grasp, whether in terms of the people or

5
See Blake (2012), Heidemann (2016), Van Elferen (2018), and Zagorski-Thomas
(2018).
1 TO BEGIN UNTANGLING POPULAR MUSIC 9

materials involved in creating music, the connections between idioms, or


the complementary relationships between music as represented in differ-
ent media forms. And this may, in turn, encourage readers to reflect on
their own entanglements—socially, culturally, virtually, technologically,
musically—with the sounds around them.

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PART I

Broad Strokes
CHAPTER 2

Musicology Without Music

Kyle Devine

Whosoever is able to hear or see the circuits in the synthesized


sound of CDs … finds happiness.
—Friedrich Kittler

Musicology is supposed to be deep. The goal is to discover how meaning-


fully patterned sounds work in relation to one another (formally), to
expose how these patterns are articulated to senses of self and community
(socially), to unearth how these patterns arise as coefficients of particular
times and places (historically). The assumption is that paying close atten-
tion to patterned sounds—digging deeply into their textual and contex-
tual associations—is an effective way of understanding how music works,
what it means, why it matters.
This chapter is not about such patterns of sound—whether those
sounds exist as notes printed on a page or as sound waves stored in a play-
back medium. Nor is it about those patterns as conceived in the mind of a
composer, realized in the interpretation of a performer, or received in the
ears of a listener. In place of these sound patterns and instead of textual
analysis, I address the textured surface noises of recording formats: the

K. Devine (*)
Department of Musicology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
e-mail: kyle.devine@imv.uio.no

© The Author(s) 2019 15


N. Braae, K. A. Hansen (eds.), On Popular Music and Its Unruly
Entanglements, Pop Music, Culture and Identity,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18099-7_2
16 K. DEVINE

sizzle of shellac, the crackle of vinyl, the slosh of MP3. These textures stem
from the technical capacities and limitations of a given recording format
and its media channels. Such textures are of course themselves patterned
in particular ways, while their characteristics can certainly be made mean-
ingful in both listening experiences and production practices.1 Yet these
textures also exist as pre-textual conditions of possibility that underwrite
all of a given format’s musically patterned sounds. The argument in this
chapter is that we can learn as much from seemingly meaningless textures
as from evidently meaningful texts.
Attending to the textures and surfaces of recording formats—regardless
of the meaningfully patterned sounds they contain—does not invalidate or
replace existing analytical approaches to music. It is as essential as ever to
analyze the forms, meanings, and politics of representation and identity in
self-evidently musical texts and contexts. It is as necessary as ever to
research the political economies and cultural policies that define recogniz-
ably musical practices of leisure and labor. But these are not the only ways
of approaching music as an object of study, and they do not access all of
the ways that music plays a constitutive role in our world. This chapter
highlights how meaningless surface noises index broader and apparently
unmusical technosocial conditions that actually function recursively as
both the grounds of and fellow actors in more apparently musical efforts
to shape sounds in meaningful ways. I define these technosocial conditions
in terms of a mediatic approach to music—a term and an approach that I
will explain more fully below. For now, the important thing to note is that
mediality informs the ways that texts are created as well as heard (even
though mediatic conditions are not dependent on experiential revelation
or meaningful interpretation). This means that an understanding of

1
Surface noises and textures, in the senses I am discussing them here, are not equivalent to
the “sonic signatures” discussed by Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen and Anne Danielsen (2016).
These authors develop their notion by outlining, for example, how “the sonic signature of
the phonograph” arises from a “combination of characteristic background noise” (i.e. “the
physical contact between stylus and cylinder”) and “limited sonic range” (Ibid., 63, 64).
Brøvig-Hanssen’s and Danielsen’s main interest is in how such sonic signatures work as
experiential properties in musical consumption as well as aesthetic imperatives in musical
production. I am speaking of the distinctive textures of formats in terms of their nonherme-
neutic and nonphenomenological mediatic conditions (a perspective from which observers
and horizons of shared meaning are irrelevant but where such conditions do index broad
social frictions; cf. Tsing 2005). It is also worth noting that the perspective developed here
participates in a broader attention to surfaces that is emerging in cultural theory (e.g.
Coleman and Oakley-Brown 2017).
2 MUSICOLOGY WITHOUT MUSIC 17

music’s mediatic conditions can also inform the ways that texts are inter-
preted and analyzed (even if such conditions are not normally observed
and are not normally understood to be “musical”). While the ultimate
payoff of such a perspective may be to discover “new stories about music
and its many allies” so that “‘the music itself’ returns with a difference”
(Piekut 2014, 212, 213), this chapter pursues a musicology without music
as an initial step toward that goal.
The phrase “musicology without music” is not a call to abandon music
or musicology. Rather, it is a call to expand and multiply those domains by
highlighting the ways that they are not only necessarily tied to but also
constituted by a variety of distributed and ostensibly non-musical condi-
tions. Indeed, a musicology without music suggests that researchers
should not be so sure that they know in advance what counts as a “prop-
erly” musical practice or a “properly” musicological object of study. The
word without, then, here connotes less its everyday prepositional meaning
as lack than its archaic adverbial meaning as outside—although, as I show
in this chapter, the latter (musicology that begins from a position that is
exterior to “music”) authorizes the former (musicology that proceeds in
the absence of “music”). The point is to develop a version of music
research that does not begin as a musicology of music—that does not
begin in a tautology whereby the force of pre-constructed definitions of
either music or musicology delimit what music or musicology can be or
should do. Antoine Hennion clarifies the reflexivities and recursions at
play here:

[W]e will have a much better understanding of what [music] can do and
cause to be done … if we do not start from the hypothesis that music … is
‘already there.’ … [I]f, on the contrary, we advance the hypothesis that we
do not know what music is, and if we adopt as objects of study the variable
mechanisms through which it appears at different times … it becomes clear
that the previous position is an anachronism, for it evaluates musical reality
retrospectively using the very criteria that music history has created. …
[M]usic and taste should not be the resources of our analysis, but its topics.
They have written the history which is our source for claiming to write
theirs. (2007, 330–31, italics preserved)

In this way, a musicology without music is something like a sociology


without the social. Whereas conventional sociological wisdom suggests
the need to provide social explanations for various facts of life and forms
18 K. DEVINE

of public order, other sociologists say that this approach confuses question
and answer. It is not “the social” that explains a phenomenon. Rather, it is
precisely “the social” that needs to be explained as a phenomenon.2 The
parallel proposition of a musicology without music is that we should not
begin our research projects with the assumption that we know what music
is or what counts as musical. Instead, we should observe those actions and
conditions that allow something called music to emerge.
From these perspectives, a chapter that is not about “music” as conven-
tionally understood is also inherently suspicious of the category of “popu-
lar music” as a starting point for musical thought and scholarship. This is
not to deny the fact that, as a cultural form, popular music has arisen from
historically specific conditions of possibility. It is not to deny that, as a
label, popular music clearly serves as a compass for vast areas of musical
practice. Nor is it to deny that it was necessary, admirable, and enormously
productive (politically, intellectually, institutionally) for a generation of
scholars to work to put the field of popular music studies on the map. The
point here is that the term “popular music,” like music more generally, can
be seen less as a group of already linked practices than an act of grouping
that performs the category (cf. Piekut 2011, 10). The broader point is
that there is no pre-existing domain called popular music that then gets
tangled up with other domains. Rather, popular music—as with all music—
consists only in its performative entanglements. The act of grouping per-
forms certain delimitations, which carry political and epistemological
consequences. As Patrick Valiquet notes: “Genre, like gender, is not a
property of things but a complex political apparatus that uses bodies,
behaviours and machines to construct relations of belonging” (2018, 97).
Valiquet goes on to detail the work that genre categories do to create poli-
tics of exclusion in relation to a variety of others—other forms of music,
other means of making music, other people who make music. If Valiquet
stands as a representative of some of the subtlest thinking on genre today
(cf. Drott 2013; Brackett 2016; Born and Haworth 2017), I want to push
this scholarship further by understanding the work of “music” as itself a
kind of meta-generic political apparatus that relies on ideological distinc-
tions between “properly” musical and apparently non-musical practices
that are, in reality, constitutive of music. A musicology of music, which
assumes a certain definition of its object of study in terms of categorical

2
I am here offering a simplified summary of Latour (2005). For a helpful application of
Latour’s actor-network-theory in music research, see Piekut (2014).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
1899:

"German economists are not exaggerating when they say this


Empire's people and capital are operating in every part of the
world. Not only Hamburg, Bremen, Stettin, Lübeck, and Kiel—i.
e., the seaport cities—but towns far inland, have invested
millions in foreign enterprises. In the Americas, North and
South, in Australia, in Asia, in a large part of Africa,
German settlements, German factories, German merchants, and
German industrial leaders are at work. Nor is it always in
settlements under the Empire's control that this influence is
strongest. In Senegambia, on the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast,
in Zanzibar and Mozambique, in Australia, Samoa, the Marshall
Islands, Tahiti, Sumatra, and South and Central America, there
are powerful commercial organizations aiding the Empire. From
Vladivostock to Singapore, on the mainland of Asia, and in
many of the world's most productive islands, the influence of
German money and thrift is felt. In Central America and the
West Indies, millions of German money are in the plantations;
so, too, in the plantations along the Gold Coast. In
Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba,
Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Venezuela, Brazil, etc., German capital
plays a very important part in helping to develop the
agricultural and in some cases the manufacturing and
commercial interests. A consequence of this development is
seen in the numerous banking institutions whose fields of
operation show that German commerce is working more and more
in foreign parts. These banks look after and aid foreign
investment as well as the Empire's other commercial relations.
They help the millions of Germans in all parts of the world to
carry on trade relations, not only with the Fatherland, but
with other countries.

"These are the links in a long and very strong chain of gold
uniting the colonies with the Mother Country. Quite recently,
large quantities of German capital have been invested in
various industries. The Empire's capital in United States
railroads is put down at $180,000,000. In America, Germans
have undertaken manufacturing. They have used German money to
put up breweries, hat factories, spinning, weaving, and paper
mills, tanneries, soap-boiling establishments, candle mills,
dye houses, mineral-water works, iron foundries, machine
shops, dynamite mills, etc. Many of these mills use German
machinery, and not a few German help. The Liebig Company, the
Chilean saltpeter mines, the Chilean and Peruvian metal mines,
many of the mines of South Africa, etc., are in large part
controlled by German money and German forces. Two hundred
different kinds of foreign bonds or papers are on the Berlin,
Hamburg, and Frankfort exchanges. Germany has rapidly risen to
a very important place in the financial, industrial, and
mercantile world. Will she keep it? Much will depend on her
power to push herself on the sea."

United States Consular Reports,


September, 1899, page 127.

{248}

GERMANY: A. D. 1899.
Military statistics.

A report presented to the Reichstag showed the total number of


men liable for service in 1899, including the surplus from
previous years, was 1,696,760. Of these 716,998 were 20 years
of age, 486,978 of 21 years, 362,568 of 22 years, and 130,216
of more than 22 years. The whereabouts of 94,224 was unknown,
and 97,800 others failed to appear and sent no excuse; 427,586
had already undertaken military duties, 579,429 cases were
either adjourned or the men rejected (for physical reasons),
1,245 were excluded from the service, 43,196 were exempt,
112,839 were incorporated in the naval reserve, 226,957 were
called upon to join the colors, leaving a surplus of 5,187;
there were 23,266 volunteers for the army and 1,222 for the
navy. Of the 226,957 who joined the colors 216,880 joined the
army as combatants and 4,591 as non-combatants, and 5,486
joined the navy. Of the 5,486 the maritime population
furnished 3,132 and the inland 2,354. There were 21,189 men
who entered the army before attaining the regulation age, and
1,480 under age who entered the navy; 33,652 of the inland
population and only 189 of the maritime were condemned for
emigrating without leave; while 14,150 inland and 150 maritime
cases were still under consideration at the end of the year.

GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (February).


Chinese anti-missionary demonstrations in Shantung.

See (in this volume)


CHINA: A. D. 1899.

GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (February).


Purchase of Caroline, Pelew and Marianne Islands from Spain.

See (in this volume)


CAROLINE AND MARIANNE ISLANDS.

GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (May-July).


Representation in the Peace Conference at The Hague.

See (in this volume)


PEACE CONFERENCE.

GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (May-August).


Advice to the South African Republic.

See (in this volume)


SOUTH AFRICA (THE TRANSVAAL):
A. D. 1899 (MAY-AUGUST).

GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (June).


State of German colonies.
The following report on German colonies for the year ending
June 30, 1899, was made to the British Foreign Office by one
of the secretaries of the Embassy at Berlin:

"The number of Europeans resident in the German African


Protectorates, viz., Togoland, Cameroons, South-West Africa,
and East Africa, at the time of the issue of the latest
colonial reports in the course of 1899 is given as 4,522 men,
women, and children, of whom 3,228 were Germans. The expense
to the home government of the African colonies, together with
Kiao-chao in the Far East, the Caroline and Samoa Islands in
the South Seas, and German New Guinea and its dependencies, is
estimated at close upon £1,500,000 for 1900, the Imperial
Treasury being asked to grant in subsidies a sum nearly double
that required last year. Kiao-chao is included for the first
time in the Colonial Estimates, and Samoa is a new item. The
Imperial subsidy has been increased for each separate
Protectorate, with the single exception of the Caroline
Islands, which are to be granted £5,000 less than last year.
East Africa receives about £33,000 more; the Cameroons,
£10,000; South-West Africa, £14,000; Togoland, £800; New
Guinea, £10,000; and the new items are: £489,000 for Kiao-chao
(formerly included in the Naval Estimates), and £2,500 for
Samoa. A Supplementary Vote of £43,265 for the Protectorate
troops in the Cameroons is also now before the Budget
Committee. …

"Great efforts have been made to encourage German trade with


the African colonies, and it is shown that considerable
success has been attained in South-West Africa, where the
total value of goods imported from Germany amounted to
£244,187, as against £181,961 in the previous year, with an
appreciable falling-off in the value of imports from other
countries. In East Africa the greater part of the import trade
still comes from India and Zanzibar—about £450,000 worth of
goods out of the gross total of £592,630, having been imported
thence. The export trade is also largely carried on through
Zanzibar."

Great Britain, Parliamentary Publications


(Papers by Command: Miscellaneous Series,
Number 528, 1900, pages 3-5).

GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (August).


Defeat of the Rhine-Elbe Canal Bill.
Resentment of the Emperor.
An extraordinary edict.

Among several new canal projects in Germany, those of "the


Dortmund-Rhine Canal and the Great Midland Canal (joining from
the east to west the rivers Elbe, Weser, and Rhine) are the
most important. The first involves an expenditure of over
£8,000,000 altogether, and the second is variously estimated
at from £10,000,000 to £20,000,000, according to its eventual
scope. The latter is intended to amalgamate the eastern and
western waterways of the nation and to join the Dortmund-Ems
Canal to the Rhine system, in order to give the latter river
an outlet to the sea via a German port, instead of only
through ports in the Netherlands. It will also place the
Rhine-Main-Danube connection in direct communication with all
the streams of North Germany."

United States Bureau of Statistics,


Monthly Summary of Commerce and Finance,
January, 1899.

The Rhine-Elbe canal project is one which the Emperor has


greatly at heart, and when, in August, 1899, a bill to promote
it was defeated in the Prussian Landtag by the Agrarians, who
feared that canal improvements would promote agricultural
competition, his resentment was expressed in an extraordinary
edict, which said: "The royal government, to its keen regret,
has been compelled to notice that a number of officials, whose
duty it is to support the policy of His Majesty the King, and to
execute and advance the measures of His Majesty's government,
are not sufficiently conscious of this obligation. … Such
conduct is opposed to all the traditions of the Prussian
administration, and cannot be tolerated." This was followed by
an extensive dismissal of officials, and excited strong
feeling against the government in a class which is nothing if
not loyal to the monarchy.

GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (November).


Railway concession in Asia Minor, to the Persian Gulf.

See (in this volume)


TURKEY: A. D. 1899 (NOVEMBER).

GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (November).


Re-arrangement of affairs in the Samoan Islands.
Partition of the islands with the United States.
Withdrawal of England, with compensations in the Tonga
and Solomon Islands and in Africa.

See (in this volume)


SAMOAN ISLANDS.

GERMANY: A. D. 1900.
Military and naval expenditure.

See (in this volume)


WAR BUDGETS.

GERMANY: A. D. 1900.
Naval strength.

See (in this volume)


NAVIES OF THE SEA POWERS.

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (January).


Introduction of the Civil Code.
On the first day of the year 1900 a great revolution was
effected in the laws of Germany, by putting into operation the
new German Civil Code. "Since the close of the fifteenth
century Germany has been the land of documentary right. The
Roman judicial code was recognized as common law; while all
legal procedure distinctly native in its origin was confined
to certain districts and municipalities, and was, therefore,
entirely devoid of Imperial signification in the wider sense.
The Civil Code of the land was represented by the Corpus Juris
Civilis, a Latin work entirely incomprehensible to the layman.
{249}
This very remarkable circumstance can be accounted for only by
the weakness of mediæval German Imperialism. In England and
France royalty itself had, since the fourteenth century,
assumed control of the laws in order that a homogeneous
national code might be developed. German Imperialism of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, was incapable of
such a task. …

"An incessant conflict has been waging in Germany between the


Roman Law of the Empire and the native law as perpetuated in
the special enactments of the separate provinces and
municipalities. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
the preponderance of power lay with the Roman system, which
was further supported by the German science of jurisprudence—
a science identified exclusively with the common law of Rome.
Science looked upon the native systems of legal procedure as
irrational and barbarous; and as Roman judicature exercised
complete dominion over all legislation, the consequence was
that it steadily advanced, while native and local law was
gradually destroyed. Only within the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries has the native law of Germany been aroused to the
defence of its interests, … the signal for the attack upon
Roman Law being given by King Frederick William I, of Prussia.
As early as 1713 this monarch decreed that Roman law was to be
abrogated in his dominions, and replaced by the native law of
Prussia. The movement became general; and the era of modern
legal codes was ushered in. The legal code of Bavaria was
established in 1756; Prussia followed in 1794; France, in 1804
(Code Civil); Baden, in 1809; Austria, in 1811 (Das
Oesterreichische Buergerliche Gesetzbuch); and finally Saxony,
in 1863 (the designation here being similar to that adopted by
Austria). Everywhere the motto was the same; viz.,
'Emancipation from the Latin Code of Rome.' The native code
was to supplant the foreign, obscure, and obsolete Corpus
Juris. But the success of these newly established codes was
limited; each being applicable to its own particular province
only. Moreover, many of the German states had retained the
Roman law; confining their reforms to a few modifications. …

"The reestablishment of the German Empire was, therefore,


essential also to the reestablishment of German law. As early
as 1874 the initial steps for the incorporation of a new
German Civil Code had already been taken; and this work has
now at last been completed. On August 18, 1896, the new
system, together with a 'Law of Introduction,' was promulgated
by Emperor William II. It will become effective on January 1,
1900, a day which will ever be memorable as marking the climax
of a development of four centuries. At the close of the
fifteenth century Roman law was accepted in Germany; and now,
at the end of the nineteenth, this entire system is to be
completely abolished throughout the Empire. As a means of
education, and solely for this purpose, the Roman Code will be
retained in the universities. As a work of art it is immortal;
as a system of laws, perishable. The last relic of that grand
fabric of laws, which once dominated the whole world, crumbles
to-day. The national idea is victorious; and German law for
the German Empire is at last secured."

R. Sohm,
The Civil Code of Germany
(Forum, October, 1800).
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (January-March).
The outbreak of the "Boxers" in northern China.

See (in this volume)


CHINA: A. D. 1900 (JANUARY-MARCH).

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (February).


Adhesion to the arrangement of an "open door" commercial
policy in China.

See (in this volume)


CHINA: A. D. 1890-1900 (SEPTEMBER-FEBRUARY).

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (February-June).


Increased naval programme.

With much difficulty, and as the result of strenuous pressure,


the Emperor succeeded in carrying through the Reichstag, in
June, a bill which doubles the programme of naval increase
adopted in 1898.

See (in this volume)


GERMANY: A. D. 1898 (April).

"After the way had been prepared by a speech of the Emperor to


the officers of the Berlin garrison on January 7, 1900, and by
a vigorous Press agitation, this project was brought before
the Reichstag on February 8. In form it was an amendment of
the Sexennate, or Navy Law of 1898, which had laid down a six
years' programme of naval construction. By the new measure
this programme was revised and extended over a period of 20
years. Instead of the double squadron of 10 battleships, with
its complement of cruisers and other craft, it was demanded
that the Government should be authorized to build two double
squadrons, or 38 battleships and the corresponding number of
cruisers. The Bill also provided for a large increase in the
number of ships to be employed in the protection of German
interests in foreign waters. The Centre party, both through
its speakers in the Reichstag and through its organs in the
Press, at first took up a very critical attitude towards the
Bill. Its spokesmen dwelt especially upon the breach of faith
involved in the extension of the programme of naval
construction so soon after the compromise of 1898 had been
accepted, and upon the difficulty of finding the money to pay
for a fleet of such magnitude. The Clerical leaders, however,
did not persist in their opposition, and finally agreed to
accept the main provisions of the Bill, with the exception of
the proposed increase in the number of ships employed in
foreign waters. They made it a condition that the Government
should incorporate with the Bill two financial projects
designed to provide the money required without burdening the
working classes. Both the Stamp Duties Bill and the Customs
Bill were adopted by the Government, and the Navy Bill was
carried with the aid of the Centre."

Berlin Correspondent, London Times.

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (May).


The Lex Heinze.

The Socialists won a notable triumph in May, when they forced


the Reichstag to adopt their views in the shaping of a measure
known as the Lex Heinze. This Bill, as introduced by the
Government, gave the police increased powers in dealing with
immorality. The Clericals and the Conservatives sought to
extend its scope by amendments which were denounced by the
Radicals and Socialists as placing restrictions upon the
"liberty of art and literature." After a prolonged struggle,
in which the Socialists resorted to the use of obstruction,
the most obnoxious amendments were withdrawn.

{250}

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (May).


Passage of the Meat Inspection Bill.

A much discussed and sharply contested bill, providing for a


stringent inspection of imported meats, and aimed especially
at the obstructing of the American meat trade, was passed by
the Reichstag on the 23d of May. It prohibits the importation
of canned or sausage meat entirely, and imposes conditions on
the introduction of other meats which are thought to be, in
some cases, prohibitory. The measure was originally claimed to
be purely one of sanitary precaution. It "had been introduced
in the Reichstag early in 1899, but the sharp conflict of
interests about it kept it for more than a year in committee,
When the bill finally emerged for discussion in the Reichstag,
it was found that the Agrarian majority had distorted it from
a sanitary to a protective measure. Both in the new form they
gave the bill and in their discussions of it in the Reichstag,
the Agrarians showed that it was chiefly the exclusion of
foreign meats, rather than a system of sanitary inspection,
that they wanted. As finally passed in May the bill had lost
some of the harsh prohibitory features given it by the
Agrarians, the latter contenting themselves with the exclusion
of canned meats and sausages. To the foreign student of German
politics, the Meat Inspection Law is chiefly interesting as
illustrating the tendency of the general government to seize
upon functions which have hitherto been in the hands of the
individual states and municipalities, as well as of bringing
the private affairs of the people under the control of
governmental authority. It is another long step of the German
government away from the principle of 'laissez-faire.' The
task undertaken by the government here is itself a stupendous
one. There is certainly no other great government in the world
that would endeavor to organize the administrative machinery
for inspecting every pound of meat that comes upon the markets
of the country."

W. C. Dreher,
A Letter from Germany
(Atlantic Monthly, March, 1901).

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (June).


Opening of the Elbe and Trave Canal.

"The new Elbe and Trave Canal, which has been building five
years and has been completed at a cost of 24,500,000 marks
($5,831,000)—of which Prussia contributed 7,500,000 marks
($1,785,000) and the old Hansa town of Lübeck, which is now
reviving, 17,000,000 marks ($4,046,000)—was formally opened by
the German Emperor on the 16th [of June]. The length of the
new canal-which is the second to join the North Sea and the
Baltic, following the Kaiser Wilhelm Ship Canal, or Kiel
Canal, which was finished five years ago at a cost of
156,000,000 marks ($37,128,000)-is about 41 miles. The
available breadth of the new canal is 72 feet; breadth of the
lock gates, 46 feet; length of the locks, 87 yards; depth of
the locks, 8 feet 2 inches. The canal is crossed by
twenty-nine bridges, erected at a cost of $1,000,000. The span
of the bridges is in all cases not less than 30 yards and
their height above water level about 15 feet. There are seven
locks, five being between Lübeck and the Möllner See—the
highest point of the canal—and two between Möllner See and
Lauenburg-on-the-Elbe."

United States, Consular Reports,


September, 1900, page 8.

A memorandum by the British Charge d'Affaires in Berlin on the


Elbe-Trave Canal says that the opening of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Canal injuriously affected the trade of Lübeck. This was
foreseen, and in 1894 a plan was sanctioned for the widening
of the existing canal, which only allowed of the passage of
vessels of about thirty tons. The direction of the old canal
was followed only to some extent, as it had immense curves,
while the new bed was fairly straight from Lübeck to
Lauenburg, on the Elbe above Hamburg. The memorandum states
that the undertaking is of great importance to the States
along the Elbe, as well as to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and
Russia. It will to some extent divert traffic from Hamburg,
and possibly reduce somewhat the revenue of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Canal.

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (June-December).


Co-operation with the Powers in China.

See (in this volume)


CHINA.

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (September).


Government loan placed in America.

Great excitement and indignation was caused in September by


the action of the imperial government in placing a loan of
80,000,000 marks (about $20,000,000) in the American money
market. On the meeting of the Reichstag, the finance minister,
Dr. von Miquel, replying to attacks upon this measure,
explained that in September the state of the German market was
such that if they had raised the 80,000,000 marks at home the
bank discount rate would have risen above the present rate of
5 per cent. before the end of the year. In the previous winter
the bank rate had been at 6 per cent, for a period of 90 days,
and during three weeks it had stood at 7 per cent. The
government had been strongly urged to do everything in its
power to prevent the recurrence of such high rates of
discount. The London rate was rapidly approaching the German,
and there was reason to fear that there would be a serious
flow of gold from Germany. It was therefore urgently desirable
to attract gold from abroad, and there was no country where money
was so easy at the time as in the United States. This was due
to the extraordinarily favorable balance of American trade and
the remarkable increase in exports out of all proportion to
the development of imports. Another reason was the American
Currency Law, which enabled the national banks to issue as
much as 100 per cent. of their capital in loans, whereas they
formerly issued only 90 per cent. There was no doubt that the
80,000,000 marks could have been obtained in Germany, but the
public must have been aware that other loans of much greater
extent were impending. There was going to be a loan of about
150,000,000 marks for the expedition to China, and it was
certain that before the end of the year 1901 considerable
demands would be made upon the public.

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (September).


Proposal to require leaders of the Chinese attack
on foreigners to be given up.

See (in this volume)


CHINA: A. D. 1900 (AUGUST-DECEMBER).

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (October).


Anglo-German agreement concerning policy in China.

See (in this volume)


CHINA: A. D. 1900 (AUGUST-DECEMBER).

{251}

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (October 9).


Lèse-majesté in criticism of the Emperor's speech to soldiers
departing for China, enjoining no quarter and commending the
Huns as a military example.
Increasing prosecutions for Lèse-majesté.

On the 9th of October, a newspaper correspondent wrote from


Berlin: "The Berlin newspapers of yesterday and to-day
chronicle no fewer than five trials for 'lèse-majesté.' The
most important case was that of Herr Maximilian Harden, the
editor of the weekly magazine 'Zukunft.' Herr Harden, who
enjoyed the confidence of the late Prince Bismarck, wields a
very satirical pen, and has been designated 'The Junius of
modern Germany.' In 1898 Herr Harden was convicted of
lèse-majesté and was sentenced to six months' incarceration in
a fortress. In the present instance he was accused of having
committed lèse-majesté in an article, 'The Fight with the
Dragon,' published in the 'Zukunft' of August 11. The article
dealt with the speech delivered by the Emperor at Bremerhaven
on July 27, 'the telegraphic transmission of which, as was
asserted at the time, had been forbidden by Count von Bülow.'
The article noted as a fact that the Emperor had commanded the
troops who were leaving for China to give no quarter and to
make no prisoners, but, imitating the example of Attila and
the Huns, to excite a terror in East Asia which would last for
a thousand years. The Emperor had added, 'May the blessing of
God attend your flags and may this war have the blessed
result that Christianity shall make its way into China.' Herr
Harden in his comments on this speech had critically examined
the deeds of the historic Attila and had contrasted him with
the Attila of popular story in order to demonstrate that he
was not a proper model to set up for the imitation of German
soldiers. The article in the 'Zukunft' had also maintained
that it was not the mission of the German Empire to spread
Christianity in China, and, finally, had described a war of
revenge as a mistake." No publicity was allowed to be given to
the proceedings of the trial. "Herr Harden was found guilty
not only of having been wanting in the respect due to the
Emperor but of having actually attacked his Majesty in a way
that constituted lèse-majesté. The Court sentenced him to six
months' incarceration in a fortress and at the same time
directed that the incriminated number of the 'Zukunft' should
be destroyed.

"The 'Vossische Zeitung' remarks:—'We read in the newspapers


to-day that a street porter in Marburg has been sentenced to
six months' imprisonment for insulting the Empress, that in
Hamburg a workman has been sentenced to five months'
imprisonment for lèse-majesté, that in Beuthen a workman has
been sentenced to a year's imprisonment for lèse-majesté, and
that in Dusseldorf a man who is deaf and dumb has been
sentenced to four months' imprisonment for the same offence.
The prosecutions for lèse-majesté are multiplying at an
alarming rate. We must emphatically repeat that such
proceedings appear to us to be in the last degree unsuited to
promote the principles of Monarchy. … The greater the number
of political prosecutions that are instituted the more
accustomed, under force of circumstances, does the Press
become to the practice of writing so that the reader may read
between the lines. And this attitude is to the advantage
neither of public morals nor of the Throne. … We regret in
particular that the case of yesterday (that of Herr Harden)
was tried 'in camera.' … It has justly been said that
publicity is more indispensable in political trials than in
prosecutions against thieves and murderers. … If there is no
prospect of an improvement in this respect the Reichstag will
have to devote its serious attention to the question how the
present administration of justice is to be dealt with, not
only in the interest of freedom of speech and of the Press,
but also for the good of the Crown and the well-being of the
State.'"

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (October 18).


Change in the Imperial Chancellorship.

On the 18th of October it was announced in the "Imperial


Gazette" that" His Majesty the Emperor and King has been
graciously pleased to accede to the request of the Imperial
Chancellor, the President of the Ministry and Minister for
Foreign Affairs, Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Prince of
Ratibor and Corvey, to be relieved of his offices, and has at
the same time conferred upon him the high Order of the Black
Eagle with brilliants. His Majesty has further been graciously
pleased to appoint Count von Bülow, Minister of State and
Secretary of State to the Foreign Office, to be Imperial
Chancellor and Minister for Foreign Affairs." Count von Bülow
is the third of the successors of Prince Bismarck in the high
office of the Imperial Chancellor. The latter was followed by
Count von Caprivi, who gave way to Prince Hohenlohe in 1894.
Prince Hohenlohe had nearly reached the age of 82 when he is
said to have asked leave to retire from public life.

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (November).


Withdrawal of legal tender silver coins.

"Germany has lately taken a step to clear off the haze from
her financial horizon by calling in the outstanding thalers
which are full legal tender, and turning them into subsidiary
coins of limited legal tender—a process which will extend
over ten years. At the end of that time, if no misfortune
intervenes, she will be on the gold standard as surely and
safely as England is. Her banks can now tender silver to their
customers when they ask for gold, as the Bank of France can
and does occasionally. When this last measure is carried into
effect the only full legal-tender money in Germany will be
gold, or Government notes redeemable in gold."

New York Nation,


November 29, 1900.

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (November-December).


The Reichstag and the Kaiser.
His speeches and his system of personal government.

In the Reichstag, which reassembled on the 14th of November,


"the speeches of the Kaiser were discussed by men of all
parties, with a freedom that was new and refreshing in German
political debates. Apart from the Kaiser's speeches in
connection with the Chinese troubles, the debates brought out
some frank complaints from the more 'loyal' sections of German
politics, that the Kaiser is surrounded by advisers who
systematically misinform him as to the actual state of public
opinion. It has long been felt, and particularly during the
past few years, that the present system of two cabinets—one of
which is nominally responsible to the Reichstag and public
opinion, while the other is merely a personal cabinet,
responsible to neither, and yet exercising an enormous
influence in shaping the monarch's policies—has been growing
more and more intolerable. This system of personal government
is becoming the subject of chronic disquietude in Germany, and
even the more loyal section of the press is growing restive
under it. Bismarck's wise maxim, 'A monarch should appear in
public only when attired in the clothing of a responsible
ministry,' is finding more and more supporters among
intelligent Germans."

W. C. Dreher,
A Letter from Germany
(Atlantic Monthly, March, 1901).

{252}

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (December).


Census of the Empire.
Growth of Berlin and other cities.
Urban population compared with that in the United States.

A despatch from Berlin, February 26, announced the results of


the census of December, 1900, made public that day. The
population of the German Empire is shown to have increased
from 52,279,901 in 1895 to 56,345,014. Of this population
27,731,067 are males and 28,613,947 females. Over 83 per cent.
of the whole population is contained in the four kingdoms; of
these Prussia comes first with (in round figures) 34,500,000
inhabitants, and Bavaria second with 6,200,000. The figures
for Saxony and Würtemberg are 4,200,000 and 2,300,000
respectively. More than 16 per cent. of the population is
resident in the 33 towns of over 100,000 inhabitants. Of these
33 towns the largest is Berlin, while the smallest is Cassel,
of which the inhabitants number 106,001.
The Prussian Statistical Office had already published the
results of the census, so far as they concern Berlin and its
suburbs. It appears that the population of the German capital
now amounts to 1,884,151 souls, as against 1,677,304 in 1895
and 826,3!1 in 1871. The population of the suburbs has
increased from 57,735 in 1871 and 435,236 in 1895, to 639,310
in 1900. The total population of the capital, including the
suburbs, is given as 2,523,461 souls, as against 2,112,540 in
1895, an increase of over 19 per cent. Some figures relating
to other cities had previously appeared, going to show "an
acceleration of the movement of population from the country
toward the great cities. The growth of the urban population in
five years has been astonishing. The population of Berlin, for
example, increased more than twice as much in the last five
years as in the preceding five. The fourteen German cities now
having a population of above 200,000 have increased more than
17 per cent since 1895. … No other European capital is growing
so fast in wealth and numbers as Berlin; and the city is rapidly
assuming a dominant position in all spheres of German life."

W. C. Dreher,
A Letter from Germany
(Atlantic Monthly, March, 1901).

The percentage of growth in Berlin "has been far outstripped


by many other cities, especially by Nuremberg; and so far as
our own census shows, no American city of over 50,000
inhabitants can match its increase. In five years it has grown
from 162,000 to 261,000—60 per cent increase. That would mean
120 per cent in a decade.

"But though Germany has only one city of more than one
million, and one more of more than half a million, and the
United States has three of each class, Germany has, in
proportion to its population rather more cities of from 50,000
to 100,000 inhabitants, and decidedly more of from 100,000 to
500,000, than the United States. In the United States
8,000,000 people live in cities of over 500,000 inhabitants,
against some 3,000,000 in Germany; yet in the United States a
larger percentage of the population lives in places which have
under 50,000 inhabitants."

The World's Work,


March, 1901.

GERMANY: A. D. 1901 (January).


Celebration of the Prussian Bicentenary.

See (in this volume)


PRUSSIA: A. D. 1901.

GERMANY: A. D. 1901 (January).


Promised increase of protective duties.

In the Reichstag—the Parliament of the Empire—on the 26th of


January, the Agrarians brought in a resolution demanding that
the Prussian Government should "in the most resolute manner"
use its influence to secure a "considerable increase" in the
protective duties on agricultural produce at the approaching
revision of German commercial policy, and should take steps to
get the new Tariff Bill laid before the Reichstag as promptly
as possible. In response, the Imperial Chancellor, Count von
Bülow, made the following declaration of the policy of the
government, for which all parties had been anxiously waiting:
"Fully recognizing the difficult situation in which
agriculture is placed, and inspired by the desire effectively
to improve that situation, the Prussian Government is resolved
to exert its influence in order to obtain adequate protection
for agricultural produce by means of the Customs duties, which
must be raised to an extent calculated to attain that object."

GERMANY: A. D. 1901 (January).


The Prussian Canal scheme enlarged.

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