Download or read book Beethoven s Critics written by Robin Wallace and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1990-01-26 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1990 book is a survey of the critical reaction to Beethoven's music as it appeared in the major musical journals, French as well as German, of his day, and represents the first published history of Beethoven reception. The author discusses the philosophical and analytical implications of these reviews and reassesses what has come to be the accepted view of a nineteenth-century musical aesthetics rooted in Romantic Idealism. Wallace sees Beethoven's critics as in fact providing a link between two apparently antithetical approaches to music: the eighteenth-century emphasis on expression and extra-musical interpretation and the nineteenth-century emphasis on 'absolute' music and formal analysis. This book thus provides, in addition to a carefully documented study of Beethoven's critical reception, a re-evaluation of his oeuvre and its significance in music history. An index of all reviews cited is provided, and a further appendix contains the quoted material in its original language.
Download or read book Beethoven Hero written by Scott Burnham and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2000-04-30 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together reception history, music analysis and criticism, the history of music theory, and the philosophy of music, Beethoven Hero explores the nature and persistence of Beethoven's heroic style. What have we come to value in this music, asks Scott Burnham, and why do generations of critics and analysts hear it in much the same way? Specifically, what is it that fosters the intensity of listener engagement with the heroic style, the often overwhelming sense of identification with its musical process? Starting with the story of heroic quest heard time and again in the first movement of the Eroica Symphony, Burnham suggests that Beethoven's music matters profoundly to its listeners because it projects an empowering sense of self, destiny, and freedom, while modeling ironic self-consciousness. In addition to thus identifying Beethoven's music as an overarching expression of values central to the age of Goethe and Hegel, the author describes and then critiques the process by which the musical values of the heroic style quickly became the controlling model of compositional logic in Western music criticism and analysis. Apart from its importance for students of Beethoven, this book will appeal to those interested in canon formation in the arts and in music as a cultural, ethical, and emotional force--and to anyone concerned with what we want from music and what music does for us.
Download or read book The Critical Reception of Beethoven s Compositions by His German Contemporaries Volume 2 written by Wayne M. Senner and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volumes in The Critical Reception of Beethoven's Compositions by His German Contemporaries bring to light contemporary perceptions of Beethoven's music, including matters such as audience, setting, facilities, orchestra, instruments, and performers as well as the relationship of Beethoven's music to theoretical and critical ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These documents, most of which appear in English for the first time, have been compiled from German-language periodicals published between 1783 and 1830. They present a wide spectrum of insights into the perceptions that Beethoven's contemporaries had of his monumental music. This is the second in a projected four-volume series. It begins with Opus 55, the Eroica, and ends with Opus 72, Fidelio.
Download or read book Political Beethoven written by Nicholas Mathew and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political Beethoven explores Beethoven's music as an active participant in political life from the Napoleonic Wars to the present day.
Download or read book Beethoven and the Construction of Genius written by Tia DeNora and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It was high time that someone tried to explain more fully, and on the basis of the known documents, the course of Beethoven's meteoric rise to fame in Vienna at the end of the eighteenth century. . . . I would consider this cleverly written and authoritative book to be the most important about Beethoven in twenty-five years. No one considering the subject will be able to overlook DeNora's research."—H.C. Robbins Landon, author of Beethoven: His Life, Work, and World "This is a study with the power to reshape our perceptions of Beethoven's first decade in Vienna and substantially refine our notions of the creation and foundations of Beethoven's career."—William Meredith, Ira Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, San Jose State University "Professor DeNora's achievement in placing Beethoven, and the reception of Beethoven's music, in social context is all the more impressive because it goes so much against the grain of conventional habits of thought. In illuminating how changing social institutions created opportunities for Beethoven to gain contemporary and posthumous recognition, and, in so doing, created new forms for thinking and talking about musical achievement—the author at once provides fresh insights into the institutional origins of 'classical' music and offers an exemplary contribution to the sociological study of the arts."—Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University "An important landmark in our understanding of the relationship of the creative musician to society, and a vital contribution to debates about the central phenomenon which distinguishes Western music from other musical traditions: the phenomenon of the Great Composer."—Julian Rushton, University of Leeds "This original book argues that Beethoven's high reputation was created as much by the social-cultural agendas of his aristocratic Viennese patrons in the 1790s as by the qualities of his music. DeNora's persuasive reading of this momentous cultural-artistic event will be welcome to sociologists for its successful contextualization of a hero of 'absolute music,' as well as to musicologists and music-lovers who wish to move beyond the myth of Beethoven as 'the man who freed music.'"—James Webster, Cornell University "Lucid, well-researched, and theoretically informed, Beethoven and the Construction of Genius is one of the best works yet published in the historical sociology of culture. DeNora makes important contributions not only to our knowledge of Beethoven and of the social construction of genius but to the general problems of how identities are created, shaped, and sustained and of how aesthetic claims gain authority."—Craig Calhoun, University of North Carolina
Download or read book The Critical Reception of Beethoven s Compositions by His German Contemporaries written by Wayne M. Senner and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1999-05-25 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compiled here are reviews, reports, notes, and essays found in German-language periodicals published between 1783 and 1830. The documents are translated into English with copious notes and annotations, an introductory essay, and indexes of names, subjects, and works. This volume contains a general section and documents on specific opus numbers up to opus 54, with musical examples redrawn from the original publications. ø The collection brings to light contemporary perceptions of Beethoven?s music, including matters such as audience, setting, facilities, orchestra, instruments, and performers as well as the relationship of Beethoven?s music to theoretical and critical ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These documents, most of which appear in English for the first time, present a wide spectrum of insights into the perceptions that Beethoven?s contemporaries had of his monumental music.
Download or read book Beethoven in America written by Michael Broyles and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines America's early reception to Beethoven, the use of his work and image in American music, movies, stage works, and other forms of popular culture, and related topics.
Download or read book Beethoven written by Edmund Morris and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was a genius so universal that his popularity, extraordinary even during his lifetime, has never ceased to grow. It now encircles the globe: Beethoven's most famous works are as beloved in Beijing as they are in Boston. Edmund Morris, the author of three bestselling presidential biographies and a lifelong devotee of Beethoven, brings the great composer to life as a man of astonishing complexity and overpowering intelligence. A gigantic, compulsively creative personality unable to tolerate constraints, he was not so much a social rebel as an astute manipulator of the most powerful and privileged aristocrats in Germany and Austria, at a time when their world was threatened by the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. But Beethoven's achievement rests in his immortal music. Struggling against progressive, incurable deafness (which he desperately tried to keep secret), he nonetheless produced towering masterpieces, such as his iconic Fifth and Ninth symphonies. With sensitivity and insight, Edmund Morris illuminates Beethoven's life, including his interactions with the women he privately lusted for but held at bay, and his work, whose grandeur and beauty were conceived "on the other side of silence."
Download or read book Beethoven s Symphonies An Artistic Vision written by Lewis Lockwood and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-10-26 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Beethoven’s] music never grows old— and, enjoyed alongside Mr. Lockwood’s expert commentary, it sparkles with fresh magic.”—Wall Street Journal More than any other composer, Beethoven left to posterity a vast body of material that documents the early stages of almost everything he wrote. From this trove of sketchbooks, Lewis Lockwood draws us into the composer’s mind, unveiling a creative process of astonishing scope and originality. For musicians and nonmusicians alike, Beethoven’s symphonies stand at the summit of artistic achievement, loved today as they were two hundred years ago for their emotional cogency, variety, and unprecedented individuality. Beethoven labored to complete nine of them over his lifetime—a quarter of Mozart’s output and a tenth of Haydn’s—yet no musical works are more iconic, more indelibly stamped on the memory of anyone who has heard them. They are the products of an imagination that drove the composer to build out of the highest musical traditions of the past something startlingly new. Lockwood brings to bear a long career of studying the surviving sources that yield insight into Beethoven’s creative work, including concept sketches for symphonies that were never finished. From these, Lockwood offers fascinating revelations into the historical and biographical circumstances in which the symphonies were composed. In this compelling story of Beethoven’s singular ambition, Lockwood introduces readers to the symphonies as individual artworks, broadly tracing their genesis against the backdrop of political upheavals, concert life, and their relationship to his major works in other genres. From the first symphonies, written during his emerging deafness, to the monumental Ninth, Lockwood brings to life Beethoven’s lifelong passion to compose works of unsurpassed beauty.
Download or read book Listening Well written by Ora Frishberg Saloman and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2009 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelve essays in Listening Well illuminate aesthetic, educative, and evaluative strategies utilized by writers in Paris, Boston, and New York to guide listeners in confronting the challenges of musical modernity between 1764 and 1890. They interpret criticism from treatises, journals, and newspapers for its importance in cultural history and consider the reception of major works by Beethoven and by Berlioz. The essays explore contrasting responses to new operas and symphonies by composers, librettists, authors, critics, and conductors as well as by writers including Chabanon, Lacépède, Berlioz, Urhan, D'Ortigue, Dwight, Fuller, Watson, and Hassard. Readers interested in perceptions of Classicism and Romanticism in music as they relate to French, German, and American literature and criticism will discover how audiences on both sides of the Atlantic were encouraged to listen attentively to the new and controversial in music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Download or read book Beethoven Hero written by Scott Burnham and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together reception history, music analysis and criticism, the history of music theory, and the philosophy of music, Beethoven Hero explores the nature and persistence of Beethoven's heroic style. What have we come to value in this music, asks Scott Burnham, and why do generations of critics and analysts hear it in much the same way? Specifically, what is it that fosters the intensity of listener engagement with the heroic style, the often overwhelming sense of identification with its musical process? Starting with the story of heroic quest heard time and again in the first movement of the Eroica Symphony, Burnham suggests that Beethoven's music matters profoundly to its listeners because it projects an empowering sense of self, destiny, and freedom, while modeling ironic self-consciousness. In addition to thus identifying Beethoven's music as an overarching expression of values central to the age of Goethe and Hegel, the author describes and then critiques the process by which the musical values of the heroic style quickly became the controlling model of compositional logic in Western music criticism and analysis. Apart from its importance for students of Beethoven, this book will appeal to those interested in canon formation in the arts and in music as a cultural, ethical, and emotional force--and to anyone concerned with what we want from music and what music does for us.
Download or read book Beethoven s Symphonies and J S Dwight written by Ora Frishberg Saloman and published by UPNE. This book was released on 1995 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Sullivan Dwight (1813-1893), the first American critic of art music and the founder of Dwight's Journal of Music, set a new standard for musical criticism in the 1840s by fostering the American reception of Ludwig van Beethoven's then unfamiliar symphonies. Drawing upon extraordinary and painstaking research, Ora Frishberg Saloman details the progressive and influential musical vision of the young Dwight, offering a dramatic and long overdue corrective to the conservative image of the critic that has prevailed for most of this century.
Download or read book The First Four Notes written by Matthew Guerrieri and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A TIME Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2012 A New Yorker Best Book of the Year Los Angeles Magazine's #1 Music Book of the Year This revelatory book of music history examines what is perhaps the best known and most-popular symphony ever written—and its famous four-note opening. Reaching back before Beethoven’s time, Matthew Guerrieri uncovers premonitions of the opening notes in the rhythms of ancient Greek poetry and the music of the French Revolution. He discusses the Fifth’s impact when it premiered, tracing the artistic, philosophical, and political reverberations across Europe to China, Russia, and the United States, from Romanticism to ring tones, from propaganda to pop. This fascinating piece of musical detective work is a treat for music lovers of every stripe.
Download or read book Beethoven Forum written by Beethoven Forum and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collecting the best of international Beethoven studies, Beethoven Forum promotes and sustains the high level of scholarship inspired by Beethoven's extraordinary works.
Download or read book Beethoven Forum written by Glenn Stanley and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Glenn Stanley opens Beethoven Forum 6 with a consideration of the “piano sonata culture” of the late eighteenth century and how Beethoven’s sonatas influenced this culture. Lawrence Kramer explores the "Tempest" sonata and the way it exemplifies "one of the leading intellectual projects of the Enlightenment, the project of speculative anthropology or 'universal history.'" Elaine R. Sisman examines the "lyrical," "small-scale" sonatas of Beethoven’s middle period in relation to his renewed preoccupation with the idea of "fantasia." Nicholas Marston concludes the volume’s consideration of the piano sonatas with a study of the development of a musical idea in the "Hammerklavier" sonata. Birgit Lodes examines the relationship between the human and the divine as they are represented in the Gloria of Beethoven’s great mass, the Missa solemnis. In a second article on this late masterpiece, Norbert Gertsch describes a subscription copy of the Missa solemnis—a copy that Beethoven had corrected—and its significance for a future scholarly edition of the work. Maynard Solomon offers a commentary, transcription, and translation of a papal document concerning the marriage of Beethoven’s great-uncle Cornelius. In a review article, Nicholas Marston discusses the recent edition of the Landsberg 5 sketchbook and future prospects for sketchbook editions. Robert Levin concludes the volume with a review of Performing Beethoven, edited by Robin Stowell.
Download or read book Wagner and Beethoven written by Klaus Kropfinger and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991-07-04 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the lifelong impact of Beethoven's music on Wagner and its importance for his conception of music drama. Kropfinger charts and scrutinizes Wagner's early responses to the composer and considers his experience as a conductor of Beethoven's music. A discussion of the Romantic "Beethoven image" leads to a careful study of Wagner's aesthetic writings, including his "programmatic explanations," the text "Concerning Franz Liszt's symphonic poems," and his Beethoven centenary essay. The penultimate chapter addresses Wagner's theory and practice of music drama, which he came to regard as the preordained successor to the Beethoven symphony. By analyzing special terms--such as "Leitmotiv"--Wagner's structural view of musical drama comes to the fore; it is a view that deepens not only our understanding of musical drama as a "hybrid" genre of art but also of purely musical structure and forms that Wagner sought to outdo.
Download or read book Beethoven in Russia written by Frederick W. Skinner and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2022-11 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Ludwig van Beethoven help overthrow a tsarist regime? With the establishment of the Russian Musical Society and its affiliated branches throughout the empire, Beethoven's music reached substantially larger audiences at a time of increasing political instability. In addition, leading music critics of the regime began hearing Beethoven's dramatic works as nothing less than a call to revolution. Beethoven in Russia deftly explores the interface between music and politics in Russia by examining the reception of Beethoven's works from the late 18th century to the present. In part 1, Frederick W. Skinner's clear and sweeping review examines the role of Beethoven's more dramatic works in the revolutionary struggle that culminated in the Revolution of 1917. In part 2, Skinner reveals how this same power was again harnessed to promote Stalin's campaign of rapid industrialization. The appropriation of Beethoven and his music to serve the interests of the state remained the hallmark of Soviet Beethoven reception until the end of communist rule. With interdisciplinary appeal in the areas of history, music, literature, and political thought, Beethoven in Russia shows how Beethoven's music served as a call to action for citizens and weaponized state propaganda in the great political struggles that shaped modern Russian history.
