This final OCEH Lunch Seminar of the semester will also serve as our informal end-of-year julegløgg social. Join us for Sadie Menicanin’s presentation while enjoying non-alcoholic gløgg, pepperkaker, and other seasonal treats. Feel free to bring your lunch as usual - coffee will also be served.
About the talk
In this presentation, Sadie Menicanin discusses repeated references to the air of the Wienerwald (Vienna Woods) in turn-of-the-century popular song and music-related journalism, framed against the backdrop of poor air quality in Vienna around 1900. Considering that the Vienna green belt - initiated in 1905 with the protection of 6000 hectares of woodland and meadowland next to the city - was envisioned primarily as an air reservoir (Luftreservoir) for residents, poetic motifs of whispering breezes, rustling leaves, and fresh air take on timely subtexts.
Complaints about industrial smog and a “dust plague” were common in late nineteenth-century Vienna, where public green space was limited and repeated attempts to line the Ringstraße with thriving trees famously failed. As recreation in the nearby woods grew around 1900, the Wienerwald became an important suburban retreat and cultural symbol. Attending to the Wienerwald’s constitutive urban conditions as Vienna’s “complementary landscape” (Békési and Doppler 2021) nuances these musical and poetic references.
This talk draws on Menicanin’s ongoing postdoctoral research project, Musical-Material Encounters with the Vienna Woods, c. 1870–1920.
Bio
Sadie Menicanin is a postdoctoral fellow in music and nature at the University of Oslo’s Department of Musicology. She specializes in music and place, parks and gardens, and Vienna around 1900. Her work combines historical and interpretive approaches, informed by sound studies and visual culture. She is involved with the Oslo Center for Environmental Humanities as a member of the Environmental Art Working Group and as project lead for the collaborative Junior Research Team Soundshed. Her research has been published in Music & Letters and The Musical Quarterly. She earned her PhD in historical musicology in 2023 from the University of Toronto, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Jackman Humanities Institute.