more information - www.cambridge.org/9781107005891 Political Beethoven 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 Political Beethoven Nicholas Mathew 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. Nicholas Mathew is a professor in the Department of Music at the University of California, Berkeley. He was educated at his local comprehensive school in Norwich, England, and went on to study music at Oriel College, Oxford and piano at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. After earning his doctorate from Cornell University, where he also studied period pianos with Malcolm Bilson, he was a Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. He is editor, with W. Dean Sutcliffe, of the journal Eighteenth-Century Music, and has published on matters relating to Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, music aesthetics, and musical performance in, among others, the Musical Quarterly, Eighteenth-Century Music, Nineteenth-Century Music, Current Musicology, and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. He is a contributor to the volume Engaging Haydn (ed. Richard Will and Mary Hunter, 2012). New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism General editors: Jeffrey Kallberg, Anthony Newcomb, and Ruth Solie This series explores the conceptual frameworks that shape or have shaped the ways in which we understand music and its history, and aims to elab- orate structures of explanation, interpretation, commentary, and criticism which make music intelligible and which provide a basis for argument about judgements of value. The intellectual scope of the series is broad. Some investigations will treat, for example, historiographical topics; others will apply cross-disciplinary methods to the criticism of music; and there will also be studies that consider music in its relation to society, culture, and politics. Overall, the series hopes to create a greater presence for music in the ongoing discourse among the human sciences. Published titles Leslie C. Dunn and Nancy A. Jones (eds.), Embodied Voices: Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture Downing A. Thomas, Music and the Origins of Language: Theories from the French Enlightenment Thomas S. Grey, Wagner’s Musical Prose Daniel K. L. Chua, Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning Adam Krims, Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity Annette Richards, The Free Fantasia and the Musical Picturesque Richard Will, The Characteristic Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Beethoven Christopher Morris, Reading Opera between the Lines: Orchestral Interludes and Cultural Meaning from Wagner to Berg Emma Dillon, Medieval Music-Making and the ‘Roman de Fauvel’ David Yearsley, Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint David Metzer, Quotation and Cultural Meaning in the Twentieth Century Alexander Rehding, Hugo Riemann and the Birth of Modern Musical Thought Dana Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt Bonnie Gordon, Monteverdi’s Unruly Women: The Power of Song in Early Modern Italy Gary Tomlinson, The Singing of the New World: Indigenous Voice in the Era of European Contact Matthew Gelbart, The Invention of Folk Music and Art Music: Emerging Categories from Ossian to Wagner Olivia A. Bloechl, Native American Song at the Frontiers of Early Modern Music Giuseppe Gerbino, Music and the Myth of Arcadia in Renaissance Italy Roger Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani Gundula Kreuzer, Verdi and the Germans: From Unification to the Third Reich Holly Watkins, Metaphors of Depth in German Musical Thought: From E. T. A. Hoffmann to Arnold Schoenberg Davinia Caddy, The Ballets Russes and Beyond: Music and Dance in Belle-Époque Paris Brigid Cohen, Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora Nicholas Mathew, Political Beethoven Political Beethoven Nicholas Mathew CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107005891 © Nicholas Mathew 2013 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2013 Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Mathew, Nicholas. Political Beethoven / Nicholas Mathew. p. cm. – (New perspectives in music history and criticism) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-107-00589-1 (hardback) 1. Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770–1827–Criticism and interpretation. 2. Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770–1827–Appreciation. 3. Music–Political aspects–History. I. Title. ML410.B42M33 2013 780.92–dc23 2012024504 ISBN 978-1-107-00589-1 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. For Penny “Ah, sir, you are under some mistake there,” said Klesmer, firing up. “No man has too much talent to be a musician. Most men have too little. A creative artist is no more a mere musician than a great statesman is a mere politician. We are not ingenious puppets, sir, who live in a box and look out on the world only when it is gaping for amusement. We help to rule the nations and make the age as much as any other public men. We count ourselves on level benches with legislators. And a man who speaks effectively through music is compelled to something more difficult than parliamentary eloquence.”