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Beethoven's Political Music and the Idea of The BEETHOVEN’S POLITICAL MUSIC AND THE IDEA OF THE HEROIC STYLE A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Nicholas Louis Mathew August 2006 © 2006 Nicholas Louis Mathew BEETHOVEN’S POLITICAL MUSIC AND THE IDEA OF THE HEROIC STYLE Nicholas Louis Mathew, Ph. D. Cornell University 2006 Beethoven’s works of state propaganda date from the years leading up to and during the Congress of Vienna in 1814–1815—although he composed this kind of music throughout his career. Over the last hundred and fifty years, critics have marginalized these political compositions to the extent that the politics pervading Beethoven’s oeuvre are barely audible. This study reemphasizes the political dimension of Beethoven’s music by articulating the aesthetic, stylistic, and ideological continuities between his canonical works and his maligned political compositions. Chapter One explores the critical construction of Beethoven’s musical voice, which has come to be practically synonymous with what Romain Rolland dubbed the “heroic style”—the exhortative manner associated particularly with the odd-numbered symphonies from the Eroica onwards. It reveals the radically subtractive critical methods, encouraged in part by Beethoven himself, that sustain the perception of an “authentically Beethovenian” sound, and shows how Beethoven’s political compositions suggest a more complex vision of the composer’s voice as fundamentally collaborative and plural. Chapter Two examines the aesthetic assumption, supposedly instantiated by Beethoven’s heroic music and its immediate reception, that “works” transcend their own time while mere “occasional works” remain shackled to it. The aesthetic of heroic works such as the Eroica emerges as fundamentally ambivalent, constituted by a gesture in which political and historically localized meanings are ascribed to the music and withdrawn—much as Beethoven withdrew the initial dedication to Napoleon; meanwhile, works such as Wellingtons Sieg are shown to borrow the idealizing and transcendent rhetoric of contemporary aesthetics even as they articulate more overt connections to political figures and historical events. Chapter Three shows how analysts consider Beethoven’s overtly political music to be organized by external political programs rather than internal musical processes. For many critics, Beethoven’s political works are mere collections of contingent and disjunctive moments—works that are almost formless without an explanatory political program. Nevertheless, analysts have often explained away precisely such moments in Beethoven’s canonical works—disjunctive moments particularly susceptible to poetic interpretation and political appropriation. Formalist critical approaches thus conceal the routes through which politics enter Beethoven’s heroic masterworks. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Nicholas Louis Mathew was born in Norwich in Norfolk, England, in 1977. He was educated at his local comprehensive school and went on to read music at Oriel College, Oxford University, concurrently studying piano with Prof. Carola Grindea of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. From 1999, he worked for his masters and doctorate in musicology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, becoming an Olin Presidential Fellow in 2000. In the year 2002–3, he was an exchange scholar at the Freie Universität in Berlin. During his time in Ithaca, he studied piano and fortepiano with Prof. Malcolm Bilson. In 2004, Nicholas Mathew became Junior Research Fellow in Music at Jesus College, Oxford University. iii In memory of my mother Angela Ann Mathew 1941–2006 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Beethoven’s triumphs are entirely his own, whereas his mistakes are usually ascribed to the meddling of contemporaries. The very opposite is true of me: I am solely responsible for the shortcomings of my work, but share any credit for it with many others. Thanks must go above all to the members of my committee: professors Annette Richards (co- chair), Anette Schwarz, James Webster (co-chair), and David Yearsley. They remained closely in touch even when I was working overseas, and found time to read and discuss my work, as well as respond to it in print, even when they were at their busiest. Their wisdom, assiduousness, and professionalism were not only of incalculable help but also tremendously inspiring. Thanks must also go to other Cornell mentors and colleagues who have influenced this project: Dr. Emily Dolan, Prof. Art Groos, Prof. Peter Hohendahl, Dr. Thomas Irvine, Prof. James Brooks Kuykendall, Prof. Marianne Tettlebaum, and Prof. Neal Zaslaw. Among all my Cornell mentors, Prof. Malcolm Bilson deserves special thanks for keeping me constantly excited and refreshed by practical music making—without which I would never have completed this project. I was fortunate to have spent the year 2002–2003 as a visiting scholar at the Freie Universität in Berlin, funded in part by the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst. My thanks go to the DAAD and Prof. Albrecht Riethmüller of the Freie Universität for supporting my research. v I am also grateful to other senior colleagues who have shared works in progress, answered queries, and given advice: Prof. Nicholas Cook, Prof. John Deathridge, and Prof. James Hepokoski. It is a pleasure to thank those who assisted my archival research: Dr. Otto Biba of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna and Dr. Helmut Hell of the Musikabteilung of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin both showed particular interest in my project and gave me valuable assistance. Thanks are also due to the staff of the Musiksammlung of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna; the Rare Books and Music Room of the British Library, London; and the Music Reading Room of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Lastly, it is with great sadness that I thank Prof. Lenore Coral of the Sidney Cox Library of Music and Dance—an irreplaceable presence at Cornell. Completing a Ph. D. is a personal milestone, and I am supremely fortunate to have passed it in the company of Penelope Betts—a loving partner, who endured the completion of this project like a true Beethovenian. My gratitude is beyond measure. My final acknowledgement must be to my parents—the source of my love of Beethoven and my politics. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH iii DEDICATION iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v LIST OF FIGURES ix LIST OF TABLES x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xi INTRODUCTION 1 1. BEETHOVEN AND HIS OTHERS: CRITICISM, DIFFERENCE, AND THE COMPOSER’S MANY VOICES 13 Naming Beethoven “Not These Tones” The Heroic Style and Its Others The Absent Heroic Style Resistance and Collaboration Beethoven’s Many Voices 2. MUSIC BETWEEN MYTH AND HISTORY: THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF THE HEROIC STYLE 78 The Monument The Hero in Music and War The Historical Death of the Heroic Style The Other Heroic Style “Nothing But an Occasional Piece” Writing Myth Over History Reading History Under Erasure The Historical Birth of the Heroic Style Music Between the Work and the Occasional Work Myth and Musical Architecture vii 3. BEETHOVEN’S MOMENTS: THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA AND THE POLITICS OF MUSICAL FORM 179 Operatic Moments Symphonic Moments “Praise Be the Day!” Self-Conscious Moments Visual Moments The Moment of Return Melodic Moments Moments in the Pastoral Symphony Moments in the Heroic Style Ideological Moments APPENDIX 251 BIBLIOGRAPHY 255 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Joseph Mähler’s portrait of Beethoven, c. 1804. 87 Figure 2. Jacques-Louis David’s portrait of Napoleon, 1801. 89 Figure 3. Heinrich Füger’s allegorical portrait of Kaiser Franz, 1814. 121 Figure 4. John Hoppner’s portrait of Haydn, 1791. 169 Figure 5. Hoppner’s portrait of Nelson, 1802. 170 Figure 6. Tableau from Fidelio depicted in the Wiener Hof-Theater Taschenbuch , 1815. 184 Figure 7. Engraving of the leaders assembled at the Congress of Vienna by Jean-Baptiste Isabey, 1814. 201 Figure 8. Frontispiece of Friedrich Starke’s Des Kaisers Wiederkehr , depicting the triumphal arch, 1814. 221 Figure 9. Frontispiece of Diabelli’s Glorreiche Rückkehr Franz des allgeliebten in seine Residenz , 1814. 222 Figure 10. “Gott erhalte Franz” quoted in Adalbert Gyrowetz’s Sieges- und Friedens-Fest der verbündeten Monarchen gefeyert im Prater und dessen Umgebungen am 18ten October 1814, als am Jahrstage der Völkerschlacht bey Leipzig , 1814. 226 Figure 11. An arrangement by Starke of the “Alexander” March. 227 Figure 12. Diabelli’s transformation of the “Alexander” March into a waltz. 227 ix LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Formal parsing of Beethoven’s “Germania,” WoO 94, from Friedrich Treitschke’s Die Gute Nachricht . 63 Table 2. Contributors and contributions to Friedrich Treitschke’s Die gute Nachricht and Die Ehrenpforten . 66 x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Albrecht I–III. Albrecht, Theodor, ed. and trans. Letters to Beethoven . 3 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. AMZ. Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung . Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1798–. Anderson I–III. Anderson, Emily, ed. and trans. The Letters of Beethoven . 3 vols. London: Macmillan, 1961. A-Wgm. Vienna, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Archiv. A-Wn. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung. Briefwechsel I–VII. Brandenburg, Sieghard, ed. Ludwig van Beethoven: Briefwechsel, Gesamtausgabe . 7 vols. Munich: Henle, 1996–1998. Clive. Clive, Peter. Beethoven and His World: A Biographical Dictionary . New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Contemporaries I–II. Senner, Wayne, ed. and trans.
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