Review: Choral Fantasies: Music, Festivity, and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany by Ryan Minor

Ryan Minor's Choral Fantasies is one of the few monographs to turn a lens on the widespread phenomenon of choral music making in the nineteenth century. His is a thought-provoking book, and though it focuses on just a handful of works, it sheds light on the significant role choral singers had as representatives of the people's voice in reflecting the political philosophies of (in this case) German society. Its fundamental premise is that the chorus, through its collective choral voice, carries with it great power to reach others and to foster growth for the greater good—spiritual, political, cultural; the interior goals can be varied or shared—by virtue of its essential humanness, and its ability to communicate without needing anything as an intermediary.¹ 

In the opening pages of his introduction, Minor anchors his ideas to the early nineteenth-century philosophies of Hans Georg Nägeli and Gustav Schilling, both of whom believed...