Beethoven: The Relentless Revolutionary

by John Clubbe

Overview

A fascinating and in-depth exploration of how the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and Napoleon shaped Beethoven’s political ideals and inspired his groundbreaking compositions.

Beethoven imbibed Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas in his hometown of Bonn, where they were fervently discussed in cafés and at the university. Moving to Vienna at the age of twenty-one to study with Haydn, he gained renown as a brilliant pianist and innovative composer. In that conservative city, capital of the Hapsburg empire, authorities were ever watchful to curtail and punish overt displays of radical political views. Nevertheless, Beethoven avidly followed the meteoric rise of Napoleon.

As Napoleon had made strides to liberate Europe from aristocratic oppression, so Beethoven desired to liberate humankind through music. He went beyond the musical forms of Haydn and Mozart, notably in the Eroica Symphony and his opera Fidelio, both inspired by the French Revolution and Napoleon.

John Clubbe illuminates Beethoven as a lifelong revolutionary through his compositions, portraits, and writings, and by setting him alongside major cultural figures of the time—among them Schiller, Goethe, Byron, Chateaubriand, and Goya.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393242553
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/09/2019
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

John Clubbe, who holds three degrees from Columbia University, taught chiefly at Duke and the University of Kentucky. He has written books on nineteenth-century cultural history and numerous essays, primarily on Byron, Beethoven, and Napoleon. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he now lives, he has given pre-concert lectures for the Santa Fe Pro Musica and the Santa Fe Symphony.

Table of Contents

Overture xi

1 Beethoven in Bonn 1

2 Key Influences: Schiller and Schneider 17

3 Two Cantatas 30

4 The French Revolution 50

5 Brutus and the Egyptian Mysteries 76

6 Hapsburg Vienna 92

7 Beethoven's Vienna 115

8 Beethoven as Traveler and Composer 133

9 The Rise of Napoleon 147

10 Parallel Lives, Beethoven and Napoleon 162

11 The Rise of Beethoven 176

12 The Eroica: Meaning and Dedication 196

13 The Eroica in Its Literary and Artistic Contexts: Seume's Walk to Syracuse and Mahler's Portrait of Beethoven 222

14 Toward Beethoven's 1808 Akademie 247

15 Napoleon in Vienna in 1809; Beethoven Befriends Baron de Tremont 264

16 Composing Egmont 280

17 Bacchus Triumphant: The Seventh Symphony-the Eighth-Wellington's Victory 298

18 Fidelio 318

19 The Congress of Vienna and Its Aftermath 339

20 Beethoven Close Up, 1817-20 364

21 Napoleon's Death, Rossini's Rise 377

22 Beethoven and Grillparzer 389

23 The Missa solemnis and the Ninth Symphony 399

24 Music at the End 418

Acknowledgments 433

Notes 439

Index of Beethoven's Works 473

General Index 479

Editorial Reviews

08/26/2019

In this extensive work, historian Clubbe (The Beethoven Journal) expertly links Ludwig van Beethoven’s music with the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and Napoleon Bonaparte. Clubbe posits that Beethoven (1770–1827) was a lifelong revolutionary, growing up in the relatively liberal city of Bonn (now in Germany), where he became an avid follower of the Enlightenment and its revolutionary political idealism. As a young man Beethoven moved to Vienna, where he studied with Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn. In addition to being the center of the classical music world, Vienna was home to the capital of the Hapsburg Empire—a conservative city rife with censorship and political oppression. For Beethoven, the need to live in Vienna for his musical career made it impossible for him to give voice to his political views. Instead, Beethoven expressed his thoughts through his music, particularly his Eroica symphony (initially dedicated to Napoleon) and his only opera, Fidelio, both of which were revolutionary compositions for the time in subject matter and musical structure. This astute biography will appeal most to classical music fans, as well as those interested in the history of Enlightenment and revolutionary thinking in late 18th-century Europe. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"A thoughtful cultural history that takes into account the times in which Beethoven lived and worked—and they were times of revolution."

Tim Page

"Using historical, artistic, and literary sources in new ways, John Clubbe illuminates Beethoven’s political identity, particularly his attitude toward Napoleon. This vivid and passionate book will help anyone who cares about Beethoven’s music to understand the beliefs he had to hide from the Austrian authorities."

author of Polyphonic Minds Peter Pesic

"A thorough account of Beethoven’s inspirations, collaborators, and his turbulent times."

New Statesman - Emily Bootle

"In astonishing detail and breadth, Clubbe has—after a lifetime of study devoted to Beethoven and Napoleon—created a political biography of the composer that is unique and compelling. It has the potential to reshape our image of Beethoven as it reframes his works within the context of the revolutions and revolutionary figures the composer knew from his earliest days in Bonn. While focusing on the composer’s fascination with Napoleon, Clubbe vividly brings the entire era to life, weaving reformers, revolutionary ideals and literature, censorship and repression, and the ultimate failure of the grand revolutionary experiments into one rich fabric."

Dr. William Meredith

05/17/2019

That Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) was revolutionary as a musician and a composer, there can be no doubt. That the era's revolutionary fervor had a profound influence on him, as it did on all those who lived through it, is likewise well understood. Even so, it is an ambitious challenge to connect these two themes explicitly, to assert, for instance, that one can hear strains of fraternité in his cantata on the death of Emperor Joseph II. Clubbe (The English Romantic Poets; Froude's Life of Carlyle) eschews musicological and biographical analysis, rightly observing that Beethoven has already been subject to plenty of both. But the author's attempt to examine Beethoven's work through the lens of cultural history is overly reliant on speculation and incorporates a great deal of historical summary and description of other artistic developments of the period while failing to make evident implicit or explicit links between these and Beethoven's work. VERDICT A disjointed and often frustrating reading experience, with moments of real insight. For devoted Beethoven fans.—Genevieve Williams, Pacific Lutheran Univ. Lib., Tacoma

Library Journal

05/17/2019

That Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) was revolutionary as a musician and a composer, there can be no doubt. That the era's revolutionary fervor had a profound influence on him, as it did on all those who lived through it, is likewise well understood. Even so, it is an ambitious challenge to connect these two themes explicitly, to assert, for instance, that one can hear strains of fraternité in his cantata on the death of Emperor Joseph II. Clubbe (The English Romantic Poets; Froude's Life of Carlyle) eschews musicological and biographical analysis, rightly observing that Beethoven has already been subject to plenty of both. But the author's attempt to examine Beethoven's work through the lens of cultural history is overly reliant on speculation and incorporates a great deal of historical summary and description of other artistic developments of the period while failing to make evident implicit or explicit links between these and Beethoven's work. VERDICT A disjointed and often frustrating reading experience, with moments of real insight. For devoted Beethoven fans.—Genevieve Williams, Pacific Lutheran Univ. Lib., Tacoma

School Library Journal