By Karen Flores, Staff Writer
Mark Pottinger, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Communication, Sound and Media Arts, has been awarded the Richard Sussman Essay Prize for his article entitled “Ritter’s Musical Esthetics, Der Freyschütz, and the Certainty of Nature in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany.”
Pottinger was sent an email from Heidi Schlipphacke, the vice president of the Goeth Society of North America, to congratulate him for being chosen as recipient.
Prize for his academic research.
MARK POTTINGER / COURTESY
“I am writing in my capacity of Vice President of the Goethe Society of North America (GSNA) and as chair of this year’s essay prize committee to give you the good news that we have chosen your article.. as the winner of the Richard Sussman Essay Prize,” Schlipphacke wrote. “The essay prize committee found your essay to offer an elegant and original analysis of the linkages between Ritter’s scientific findings and the aesthetics of ‘Der Freyschütz’.”
Schlipphacke also wrote that the essay portrayed an elegant and original analysis. Recipients for the award are chosen annually based on their ability to discuss Goethe’s contributions to the sciences and his role in the history of science.
According to Schlipphacke, “The Richard Sussman Essay Prize is awarded annually for the best essay published on Goethe’s contributions to the sciences and on Goethe in the history of science.” The guidelines also state that the essay must be written by a North American scholar or a current member of the GSNA.
In Pottinger’s abstract, it states that his article is about Johann Wilhelm Ritter, a German physicist, philosopher and chemist, and his musical aesthetics with regard to the opera “Der Freischütz.”
“This article presents Ritter’s musical aesthetics in relation to the sound of nature in Carl Maria von Weber’s romantic opera Der Freischütz, which premiered in 1821 at the newly-built Königliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin,” Pottinger’s article states. “By connecting Ritter’s musical aesthetics with that found in Der Freischütz, the opera can be seen as something more than a simple light work for entertainment or even a mere German nationalist text: an imaginative way of perceiving the inner workings of nature as a space of renewal and life-affirming certainty.”
Pottinger spoke to The Quadrangle about how he uses the acoustics of nature to understand how an opera such as “Der Freischütz” reflects ideas across different fields of studies.
“I try to understand how music, sound and ideas of nature all relate to one another in the nineteenth century, and I center that around opera, because opera is an amalgam, a combination of the visual, the literary, the sonic, as well as the haptic forces that allows us to define meaning in the world,” Pottinger said. “I use those forces as understood in opera to act as sort of a mirror of what’s going on in terms of the world, of perspectives on nature, perspectives on science, and also perspectives on sound.”
Pottinger explained the role that romanticism has played in his research and how it is connected to the sciences.
“I’ve always been fascinated by romanticism, which is a belief that there are unseen and unknown forces in our world that are more powerful and more real than what we see,” Pottinger said. “William Herschel had a prism with white light, sunlight coming through, and he actually had a mercury thermometer on the outside. And that’s how we discovered infrared, and realized that it is actually more powerful than the visual spectrum. This idea that this is not just some sort of literary or fantastical artistic expression, but that scientists are realizing that there is an invisible space that is more real than the visible space that we have and it continued with other discoveries.”
Pottinger has a book coming out next year titled “Science and The Romantic Vision in Early 19th Century Opera,” where he delves into four other operas and explains why he is passionate about it.
“I’m passionate about it because I want to believe that there is a world that is unseen, that is more real than what we believe and some might say it’s kind of revolutionary though because all revolutions start with ‘what I see in front of me’,” Pottinger said. “In this belief, I think there’s hope, there’s a sense of desire and one for possibility, and I want to live in that kind of world.”