Who creates the history of music? Composers, of course, but also interpreters. Certainly, nineteenth-century performers such as Joseph Joachim and his wife Amalie Joachim saw themselves in this role: he in the domain of chamber music for strings, and she in the domain of song. The differing effects of their artistic work after their death can hardly be separated from questions of genre and gender, and the possibility of linking individual cultural activity with an institution.

Joseph Joachim's Authority

The photograph in Figure 11-1 shows Joseph Joachim in his capacity as director of the Akademische Musikschule für ausübende Tonkunst, in the full vestment and chain of office of the Preußische Akademie der Künste founded in 1696 and representing not only Prussia, but also the German “cultural nation.” He belonged to a group consisting exclusively of men: the Department of Music of the Akademie der Künste (Figure 11-2).

Joseph Joachim was not merely a brilliant violinist, an interesting composer, and the founder and head of the first state Musikhochschule in Germany; he was also one of the most influential figures in the German music world. For him, to be a German was not simply a question of birth, language, or nationality; it also brought with it an aspiration toward the universal.

How strongly the idea of nationalism shaped his contemporaries’ assessment of Joachim's artistic work is well demonstrated in a 1918 summary of the history of virtuosity by Adolph Weissmann: