Beethoven's Ninth : a political history / Esteban Buch ; translated by Richard Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Buch, Esteban, 1963-

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Standardized Title:

Neuvième de Beethoven. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827. Symphonies--no. 9, op. 125--D minor.

Beethoven, Ludwig van.

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827--Influence.

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827.

Music--Political aspects.

Music.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

327 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Language Note:

Translated from the French.

Summary:

While many artists merely claim that their works have universal appeal, Beethoven, with his Ninth Symphony, is perhaps the only artist to earn that distinction. Throughout nearly two centuries, radically different groups have appropriated Beethoven's Ninth -- especially the "Ode to Joy" -- to promote themselves and their ends. German nationalists and French republicans, communists and Catholics have all embraced the piece. It was performed under the direction of Leonard Bernstein at a concert to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall, yet it also serves as a ghastly and ironic leitmotif in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Hitler celebrated his birthdays with it, yet it was played by prisoners in German concentration camps. And though the racist government of Rhodesia made it their anthem, today it is the anthem of the European Union.

In his remarkable history, Esteban Buch traces such complex and contradictory uses -- and abuses -- of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the "Ode to Joy" since their premiere in 1824. Buch shows that Beethoven consciously drew on the tradition of European political music, with its mix of themes, sacred and profane, military and religious, when he composed his symphony. But while Beethoven obviously had his own political aspirations for the piece -- he wanted it to make a statement about ideal power -- he could not have imagined that his last symphony would become arguably the most politicized musical piece of all time. In showing us how the symphony has been "deployed" for nearly two hundred years, Buch offers here not only the story of a work of art but also what was described by one French reviewer as "a fundamental examination of the moral value of art." Sensitive and fascinating, this unusual book traces the tangled political career of a cultural masterpiece as its meaning has shifted through time, realigned by the currents of history. Or, in Pierre Boulez's words, "Your/my B. is not mine/yours."

Contents:

Introduction : The states of joy

The birth of modern political music. God save the King and the Handel cult ; La Marseillaise and the "Supreme Being" ; The Ode to joy and the Emperor's anthem ; Beethoven and the Concert of Europe ; The Ninth symphony

Political reception of the Ode to joy ; The romantic cult ; The 1845 ceremony at Bonn ; The Ninth in the era of nationalist movements ; The 1927 centenary ; Beethoven as Führer ; From year zero to the European anthem ; From apartheid's anthem to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall

Conclusion : Criticism and future of a dream.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [305]-318) and index.

ISBN:

0226078124

OCLC:

50604853