Beethoven after Napoleon: Political Romanticism in the Late Works / Edition 1

by Stephen Rumph

Overview

In this provocative analysis of Beethoven's late style, Stephen Rumph demonstrates how deeply political events shaped the composer's music, from his early enthusiasm for the French Revolution to his later entrenchment during the Napoleonic era. Impressive in its breadth of research as well as for its devotion to interdisciplinary work in music history, Beethoven after Napoleon challenges accepted views by illustrating the influence of German Romantic political thought in the formation of the artist's mature style. Beethoven's political views, Rumph argues, were not quite as liberal as many have assumed. While scholars agree that the works of the Napoleonic era such as the Eroica Symphony or Fidelio embody enlightened, revolutionary ideals of progress, freedom, and humanism, Beethoven's later works have attracted less political commentary. Rumph contends that the later works show clear affinities with a native German ideology that exalted history, religion, and the organic totality of state and society. He claims that as the Napoleonic Wars plunged Europe into political and economic turmoil, Beethoven's growing antipathy to the French mirrored the experience of his Romantic contemporaries. Rumph maintains that Beethoven's turn inward is no pessimistic retreat but a positive affirmation of new conservative ideals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520238558
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	08/15/2004
Series:	California Studies in 19th-Century Music , #14
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	1400L (what's this?)

About the Author

Stephen Rumph is Assistant Professor of Music History at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. A Kingdom Not of This World
2. The Heroic Sublime
3. Promethean History
4. 1809
5. Contrapunctus I: Prelude and Fugue
6. Contrapunctus II: Double Fugue
7. Androgynous Utopias
8. Vox Populi, Vox Dei
9. A Modernist Epilogue

Notes
Works Cited
Index