Political Beethoven / Nicholas Mathew.
| Author/creator | Mathew, Nicholas |
| Format | Book |
| Publication Info | Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2013. |
| Description | xvii, 273 pages : illustrations, music ; 26 cm. |
| Subjects |
| Series | New perspectives in music history and criticism New perspectives in music history and criticism. ^A359753 |
| Contents | Introduction. Political collaborations -- Music between myth and history -- Beethoven's moments -- The sounds of power and the power of sound -- The inner public -- After the war. |
| Abstract | Musicians, music lovers, and music critics have typically considered Beethoven's overtly political music as an aberration - at best, it is merely notorious; at worst, it is denigrated and ignored. In this book, the author returns to the musical and social contexts of the composer's political music throughout his career - from the early marches and anti-French war songs of the 1790s to the grand orchestral and choral works for the Congress of Vienna - to argue that this marginalized functional art has much to teach us about the lofty Beethovenian sounds that came to define serious music in the nineteenth century. Beethoven's much-maligned political compositions, Mathew shows, lead us into the intricate political and aesthetic contexts that shaped all of his oeuvre, thus revealing the stylistic, ideological, and psycho-social mechanisms that gave Beethoven's music such a powerful voice - a voice susceptible to repeated political appropriation, even to the present day. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-265) and index. |
| LCCN | 2012024504 |
| ISBN | 9781107005891 (hardback : alk. paper) |
| ISBN | 1107005892 (hardback : alk. paper) |
| ISBN | 2206025000 |
| ISBN | 9782206025001 |
| Standard identifier# | 40022060250 |