Hoffmann, E.T.A.

Hoffmann, E.T.A. – Undine, magic opera in 3 acts (vocal score) 

German libretto / Vocal Score by Hans Pfitzner

For more information about the piece:

Magic opera in three acts (1813-16)
on a libretto by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué

In a famous passage from his Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte (1977), the great German musicologist Carl Dahlhaus takes Hoffmann’s Undine as an example to illustrate the manner in which narrative historians construct music history:

“Suppose, for instance, that in a history of nineteenth-century music we were to mention the destruction of the décor for E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Undine during the burning of the old Berlin Schauspielhaus in 1817 and to follow this fact immediately and without further comment by referring to the use four years later of Weber’s Freischütz to inaugurate the new Schauspielhaus. This would suggest a music-historical connection as represented by the destruction and rebuilding of the theatre. And in fact the influence of Undine did come to an abrupt end with this catastrophe, and the opera figures in the history of German romantic opera as a ‘preliminary stage’ en route to Der Freischütz, as a tentative experiment whose aesthetic and historical significance was ‘sublated’ (as the Hegelians would say) into the later and more perfect work. […] The extrinsic correspondence between these two events lends itself to a narrative music history because it allegorises an intrinsic one.”1 …

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