11 Jan Hans Christian Hagedorn, Don Quixote’s Adventures in the World of Jazz

“Take care, sir,” cried Sancho. “Those over there are not giants but windmills, and those things that seem to be arms are their sails, which when they are whirled around by the wind turn the millstone.”

This sentence, taken from chapter VIII of the first part of The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, is the perfect introduction to our next conference, which takes place on Wednesday 24 January at 6pm. On that day, we will have the pleasure of welcoming a giant, Dr Hans Christian Hagedorn; and what looks like arms to him will be nothing other than “jazz music turned by the wind, which will make the stone of our imagination walk”.

Believe it or not, the figure of Don Quixote has inspired the world of music: numerous studies attest to this, but few of them have focused on the world of jazz. And among these few studies is that of our very latest guest, Hans Christian Hagedorn, who in issue 54 of the journal Anales Cervantinos del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), (Anales Cervantinos, Vol. LIV, pp. 101-173, 2022) presents an innovative article on the considerable impact of Don Quixote on music. In his study entitled “Don Quixote’s Adventures in the World of Jazz: 200 Examples and a Few Remarks”, Cervantes scholar and Germanist Hans Christian Hagedorn, from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, shows that the profound imprint of Cervantes’s work can be traced back to the jazz world: 200 Examples and a Few Remarks), Cervantes scholar and Germanist Hans Christian Hagedorn, from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, shows that the profound imprint of Cervantes’ work on music is not limited to classical music, opera and ballet, but has also been very important in popular music, particularly jazz. . You can consult his study by clicking on this link.

Under the title “Un saxofón para el Caballero de la Triste Figura: la influencia de Don Quijote en el jazz” (“A saxophone for the Caballero de la Triste Figura: Don Quixote’s influence on jazz“), Hans Christian Hagedorn will talk about the enormous impact of Don Quixote on music, which has been the subject of much research in recent decades. In this context, however, little attention has so far been paid to popular music and jazz in its various stages, styles, currents and forms. In an exhaustive study recently published in the journal Anales Cervantinos – in the field of comparative literature and intermediality – Professor Hans Christian Hagedorn has presented an overview of the compositions and recordings inspired by Don Quixote that have been created worldwide in the field of jazz, from 1925 to the present day. The main aim of the quantitative and statistical analysis of this catalogue – a list of 200 examples of jazz or jazz-influenced compositions linked to the novel by Cervantes – was to broaden our knowledge of the influence of Don Quixote on music. But it also paves the way for further research into the traces of literary classics in jazz, a virtually unknown and unexplored subject until now: there are many studies on the influence of jazz on literature, but very few works analysing the influence of literature on jazz. At the conference organised by ELE USAL STRASBOURG, the Spanish-German researcher will present the most important results of this research, illustrated by several examples taken from the history of jazz.

Hans Christian Hagedorn is Professor of German Language and Comparative Literature at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Ciudad Real Faculty of Arts. Born in Bremen (Germany), he studied at the universities of Hamburg and Münster. In 2001 he obtained his doctorate in German philology from the Complutense University in Madrid. His main area of research is comparative literature, with a particular focus on Western narratives from the seventeenth century to the present day, reception studies and intermediality. He is the author of a monograph entitled La traducción narrada: el recurso narrativo de la traducción ficticia (2006) (Narrated translation: the narrative device of fictional translation) and several studies on authors such as Wilhelm Hauff, Thomas Mann and Emilia Pardo Bazán, among others. He is co-ordinating five monographs on the reception and influence of Don Quixote in world literature and culture: Don Quijote por tierras extranjeras (2007) (Don Quixote in foreign lands), Don Quijote, cosmopolita (2009) (Don Quixote, cosmopolitan), Don Quijote en su periplo universal (2011) (Don Quixote on his universal journey), Don Quijote en los cinco continentes (2016) (Don Quixote on the five continents) and Nuevas perspectivas cervantinas (2020) (New perspectives on Cervantes). He has published a dozen articles on the reception of Don Quixote in jazz, including “Don Quixote’s Adventures in the World of Jazz: 200 Examples and a Few Remarks”, (Anales Cervantinos, 2022 : link). This work has been reviewed in various Spanish and American media, cultural magazines and jazz portals such as All About Jazz, Caravan Jazz, Los latidos del jazz, The Arts Fuse, and La Lectura (El Mundo).

If you don’t want to miss this very interesting conference (in Spanish), we look forward to seeing you on Wednesday 24 January, at 6pm, at our school, located at 9 rue Saint-Aloïse (2nd floor), 67100 Strasbourg.

And don’t forget to reserve your place in advance by writing to info@strasbourg-eleusal.com with your first and last name.

Playlists:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBv2W5E8mFboJLNuBDdbN-KDHmiMChs5E (183 examples)

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Jq4mAj0FMSJRCYB3Fy6aW?si=26c1f55d7c7b41b6 (160 examples)

Spotify (short list): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/15Fakp35srdNmTEsiUq2fB?si=e161932def6e4101 (“Selected adventures of Don Quixote in the world of jazz”, 43 examples)