Romanticizing the Rhine

We cordially invite you to the lecture from the cycle Dialogo della musica, which will be given by Maria Behrendt (Hannover) on the topic of Romanticizing the Rhine: Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda’s Musical Response to a Politicized Landscape.

The lecture will take place on Tuesday, March 17, 2026 at 5 pm in the Musicological library IAH, Puškinovo nám. 9, Prague 6.

Around 1840, Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda contributed two songs – Gisela and Des Kaisers letzte Rheinfahrt – to the German collection Songs and Legends from the Rhine. This anthology is emblematic of nineteenth-century German Romanticism and its fascination with the river Rhine as a powerful symbol of cultural identity. Following the border conflict with France in 1840, the Romantic idealization of the Rhine became increasingly politicized, a shift that also found expression in contemporary musical works. This lecture explores how Kalliwoda, himself a product of the Habsburg Monarchy, engaged musically with these Romantic and national discourses surrounding the Rhine. In this way, the lecture will also illuminate aspects of his song aesthetics that have thus far received little scholarly attention.

Maria Behrendt is a professor at the Hannover University of Music, Drama and Media, and Head of the Research Center Music and Gender (fmg). She specialises in the German Art Song, Music and Gender, and Film Music. Maria studied musicology, media and French studies in Berlin, Münster and Bangor (Wales). She completed her Doctoral Dissertation on “Romantic aspects in the German Lied of the 1830s” in 2018. She is a member of the editorial board of the Kiel Society for the research of film music and co-hosts several podcasts.