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1
Mathew, Nicholas. "Beethoven's Political Music, the Handelian Sublime, and the Aesthetics of Prostration." 19th-Century Music 33, no. 2 (2009): 110–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ncm.2009.33.2.110.
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Abstract This article argues for a number of hitherto unrecognized continuities——stylistic, aesthetic, and ideological——between Beethoven's marginalized ““political music”” from the period of the Congress of Vienna and his canonical symphonic works. It rereads his œœuvre against the background of the popularity and ubiquity of the ““Handelian sublime”” in early-nineteenth-century Viennese public life——that is, the aesthetics and social practice of grand choral singing, associated primarily with some of Handel's oratorios, but also with the late choral works of Haydn. Presenting new archival research into Vienna's politicized choral culture, the article argues that contemporary theorizing about the power of the musical sublime became the theoretical wing of music's changing social status, as it was mobilized by the state during the Napoleonic Wars more than ever before. These new, Handelian contexts for Beethoven's music lead to three conclusions. First, the choral aesthetic background to Beethoven's symphonies has been largely overlooked. With reference to original performance contexts as well as the topical character of Beethoven's symphonies, the article argues that the symphonies are often best understood as orchestral transmutations of the grand Handelian chorus. Against this background, the appearance of an actual chorus in the Ninth might be reconceived as a moment when the genre's aesthetic debt is most apparent, rather than a shocking generic transgression. Second, the distinction, commonly elaborated by Beethoven scholars, between the mere bombast of Beethoven's political compositions and the ““authentic,”” Kantian sublime of human freedom supposedly articulated in his symphonies cannot easily be sustained. Third, the cultural entanglement of choral and symphonic music in Beethoven's Vienna reveals something not only of the political origins but also of the continuing political potency of Beethoven's symphonies. With reference to Althusserian theories of power and subjectivity, the article speculates that the compelling sense of listener subjectivity created by Beethoven's most vaunted symphonic compositions (noted by Scott Burnham) comes about in part through the music's and the listener's transformation of external, choral reflections of political power into internal, symphonic ones——a transformation that leaves its mark on the topical character of the symphonies, which, especially in their most intense moments of subjective engagement, are replete with official topics and gestures: marches, hymns, and fugues. This might explain why the music has so often been heard as simultaneously browbeating and uplifting, authoritarian and liberating.
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Zhang, Xiaochen. "The Symphony of Bass in the Grand Narrative: On the Position and Function of Trombone in Beethoven's Symphonies." Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences 42 (December 9, 2024): 263–70. https://doi.org/10.54097/d3mgyh44.
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Trombone is an important brass instrument and plays an important role in modern symphony orchestra. Trombone is different from other brass instruments. In the history of the development of western Musical Instruments, the shape and playing mode of trombone have hardly changed. However, the position of the trombone in Beethoven's previous symphonies was radically different. Beethoven is recognized as the first composer to bring the trombone from sacred to secular music. This article will list three symphonies composed by Beethoven that include the trombone. Through the research of the creation background of these three works, this paper discusses the trombone and explore the reason why Beethoven used the trombone here. In addition, this paper also briefly lists the position of the trombone in each symphony, and analyzes its functional characteristics, function and status in each Beethoven symphony. Beethoven's influence on the trombone is profound, and this paper hopes to analyze these three symphonies to draw out Beethoven's influence on the use of trombone by later composers.
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Will, Richard. "Time, Morality, and Humanity in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony." Journal of the American Musicological Society 50, no. 2-3 (1997): 271–329. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/831836.
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While Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony exhibits the underlying four-movement framework and other familiar hallmarks of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century symphonies, in other respects it more closely resembles programmatic symphonies of the same period, particularly in the continuity between its concluding movements and the unusual structure of its storm. Its mixture of symphonic and programmatic practices serves to dramatize the effects of time on pastoral idylls and the role of morality therein. The work can be interpreted as a confrontation with these fundamentally human issues rather than-as many twentieth-century commentators have assumed-the representation of a mythical or prelapsarian paradise.
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Notley, Margaret. "Volksconcerte in Vienna and Late Nineteenth-Century Ideology of the Symphony." Journal of the American Musicological Society 50, no. 2-3 (1997): 421–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/831840.
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Late nineteenth-century journalistic criticism in Vienna offers many precedents for Paul Bekker's interpretation of the symphony. Beethoven's symphonies provided the model for an aesthetics of the genre-couched in metaphors connecting it to "the people"-that motivated the reception of works by Brahms and Bruckner. Activists who wished to inaugurate symphonic Volksconcerte in the city took the figurative utopian function of the genre literally. Though their efforts were confounded not only by institutionalized elitism but also by the preferences of the Viennese Volk for other kinds of music, their work bore fruit in the early twentieth century with the founding of the Wiener Konzertverein and the Arbeiter-Symphonie-Konzerte.
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Bandy, Dorian. "Beethoven's Rhetoric of Embellishment." 19th-Century Music 46, no. 2 (2022): 125–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ncm.2022.46.2.125.
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This article examines the communicative and interpretive significance of melodic embellishment in Beethoven's oeuvre, with a particular focus on multi-movement instrumental works from the period 1795–1824. Embellishment has received comparatively little attention in Beethoven studies; yet it formed a crucial part of his musicianship as both a performer and a composer. The article begins with a broad overview of Beethoven's embellishment practices, drawing examples primarily from his early piano trios and piano sonatas. It then goes on to examine a series of issues in more detail: first, the role of embellishments in the composition and performance of concertos (with a focus on the Piano Concertos Nos. 3–5); second, the role of embellishments in evoking musical character and expressive personae (with a focus on the Piano Sonata op. 31, no. 3, the Violin Sonata op. 30, no. 1, and the Cello Sonata op. 5, no. 1); and finally, the possibility of understanding embellishment as a musical topic in symphonic writing (with a focus on the slow movements of the Symphonies Nos. 4, 8, and 9). The article closes with reflections on the expressive function of embellishments in Beethoven's late style, arguing that melodic decorations, along with other rhetorical devices, provided a vehicle for the evocation of nostalgia and memory.
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Romashchuk, I. M. "BEETHOVEN IN THE MIRROR OF CENTURIES." Arts education and science 1, no. 4 (2020): 189–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.36871/hon.202004023.
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The article is devoted to a significant date — the 250th anniversary of the birth of the great German composer Ludwig van Beethoven. The author examines some issues of the influence of Beethoven's work on Russian artists in various fields of art. Especially stands out the name of one of the leading representatives of the Soviet musical avant-garde of the XXth century, composer Gavriil Popov, who created "Heroic" and "Pastoral" symphonies, following in the steps of the outstanding German master and entering into a "dialogue at a distance" with him. Furthermore, the indirect parallels between Popov's work and Beethoven's art are considered. The article also touches on the role of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" in the legendary film "Chapaev" by the Vasilyev brothers.
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Knapp, Raymond. "A Tale of Two Symphonies: Converging Narratives of Divine Reconciliation in Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth." Journal of the American Musicological Society 53, no. 2 (2000): 291–343. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/832010.
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Owen Jander's recent observation that the concluding birdcalls in the second movement of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony reproduce the opening motive of his Fifth provides a starting point for considering the two symphonies together. Evidence derived from analysis, sketches, and compositional-biographical circumstances is used to establish and illuminate a process of modeling in which the Sixth Symphony adopts the procedural innovations of the Fifth while inverting their affective impact. Possible rationales for this modeling include Beethoven's preoccupation with transmutational variation and his desire to make the Pastoral more symphonic. More intriguingly, the modeling underscores parallel scenarios of divine reconciliation in the two symphonies, a theme shared more generally by the other works performed on the occasion of their public premieres in December 1808. In the Fifth, the struggle against Fate often heard in the first movement is resolved through the penitential march of the scherzo, while the "theophanic" storm movement in the Sixth (Richard Will's reading is extended here to account for the enigmatic birdcalls, whose "message" is echoed more pressingly in the scherzo) reorients secular appreciations of nature and country life toward thankful devotion. In each work, the celebratory finale rectifies an established schism between humanity and God.
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Proksch, Bryan. "Beethoven's Symphonies: An Artistic Vision by Lewis Lockwood." Notes 74, no. 1 (2017): 100–102. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/not.2017.0079.
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Simonton, Dean Keith. "Numerical Odds and Evens in Beethoven's Nine Symphonies." Empirical Studies of the Arts 33, no. 1 (January 2015): 18–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0276237415569980.
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Brown, Clive. "Historical performance, metronome marks and tempo in Beethoven's symphonies." Early Music XIX, no. 2 (May 1991): 247–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/earlyj/xix.2.247.
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Josephson †, Nors S. "Beethoven's Seventh and Eighth Symphonies: Dualistic Polarity and Eventual Unity." Musicologica Olomucensia 36, no. 1 (August 13, 2024): 24–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.5507/mo.2024.002.
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Saloman, Ora Frishberg. "Continental and English Foundations of J. S. Dwight's Early American Criticism of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony." Journal of the Royal Musical Association 119, no. 2 (1994): 251–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jrma/119.2.251.
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The reception history of Ludwig van Beethoven's symphonies in America offers striking evidence of multiple, previously unidentified, Continental and English connections to the musical thought of John Sullivan Dwight (1813–93), the first American-born critic of art music, and therefore to early American conceptions of the symphony in the 1840s. These direct links illuminate the history and criticism of the first performance in America of Beethoven's Symphony no. 9 in D minor, op. 125, which took place in New York in 1846. From the many sources associated with Dwight's musical learning and aesthetic education, I have chosen in this article to examine Dwight's literary interest in Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller's poem ‘An die Freude’ and in Thomas Carlyle's biography of Schiller, to document his knowledge of commentary on the symphony by the German critic Adolf Bernhard Marx, and to describe Dwight's response to the initial American performance of the Ninth Symphony.
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Pederson, Sanna, and Ora Frishberg Saloman. "Beethoven's Symphonies and J. S. Dwight: The Birth of American Music Criticism." American Music 15, no. 1 (1997): 99. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3052701.
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Bernhard, Winfred E. A., and Ora Frishberg Saloman. "Beethoven's Symphonies and J. S. Dwight: The Birth of American Music Criticism." New England Quarterly 69, no. 2 (June 1996): 327. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/366673.
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Knapp, Raymond. "A Tale of Two Symphonies: Converging Narratives of Divine Reconciliation in Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth." Journal of the American Musicological Society 53, no. 2 (July 2000): 291–343. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jams.2000.53.2.03a00020.
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Musser, Jordan. "Carl Czerny's Mechanical Reproductions." Journal of the American Musicological Society 72, no. 2 (2019): 363–429. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jams.2019.72.2.363.
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This article reassesses the “mechanical” style of playing featured in Carl Czerny's pedagogical works and keyboard arrangements—specifically, the Complete Theoretical and Practical Piano Forte School, op. 500 (1839), its supplementary text Letters to a Young Lady (ca. 1840), and the four-hand transcription of Beethoven's Symphony no. 9 in D Minor, op. 125 (the “Choral”). The first part of the article situates opus 500 within the larger pedagogical milieu of Biedermeier music culture and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi's progressivist educational reforms, exploring the way it tasked predominantly women amateurs with assembling basic finger sensations in an exercise-by-exercise—“progressive”—fashion. I propose that this cumulative logic reflects an early-century epistemic norm—what Friedrich Kittler dubs a “mechanical program” of assembly and augmentation. The second part considers Czerny's transcription of the finale of Beethoven's Ninth from the perspective of ludo-musicology and cultural techniques media analysis, outlining the reductive and replicative—“reproductive”—techniques by which Czerny accommodated his former teacher's work to the hands he shaped in the private sphere. I argue that his pedagogies and transcriptions were recursively interrelated. Czerny was simultaneously a mechanic of the hand pedagogically and a mechanical reproducer of symphonies transcriptively, creating a multivalent corpus that forces us to rethink the media-theoretical concept of “mechanical reproduction” vis-à-vis “Discourse Network 1800.”
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Martin-Castro, Almudena, and Iñaki Ucar. "Conductors’ tempo choices shed light over Beethoven’s metronome." PLOS ONE 15, no. 12 (December 16, 2020): e0243616. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243616.
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During most part of Western classical music history, tempo, the speed of music, was not specified, for it was considered obvious from musical context. Only in 1815, Maelzel patented the metronome. Beethoven immediately embraced it, so much as to add tempo marks to his already published eight symphonies. However, these marks are still under dispute, as many musicians consider them too quick to be played and even unmusical, whereas others claim them as Bethoven’s supposedly written will. In this work, we develop a methodology to extract and analyze the performed tempi from 36 complete symphonic recordings by different conductors. Our results show that conductor tempo choices reveal a systematic deviation from Beethoven’s marks, which highlights the salience of “correct tempo” as a perceptive phenomenon shaped by cultural context. The hasty nature of these marks could be explained by the metronome’s ambiguous scale reading point, which Beethoven probably misinterpreted.
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Horváth, Pál. "Untying the “Musical Sphinx:” Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in Nineteenth-Century Pest-Buda." Studia Musicologica 61, no. 1-2 (April 13, 2021): 33–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1556/6.2020.00003.
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It is well known that Beethoven’s Ninth was followed by a temporary crisis in the genre of the symphony: the next generation found it difficult to get away from the shadow of this monumental piece. The Ninth was first performed in Hungary in 1865, more than 40 years after the world-premiere. We should add, however, that during the first half of the nineteenth century, no professional symphonic orchestra and choir existed in Pest-Buda that would have coped with the task. Although the Hungarian public was able to hear some of Beethoven’s symphonies already by the 1830s – mainly thanks to the Musical Association of Pest-Buda – in many cases only fragments of symphonies were performed. The Orchestra of the Philharmonic Society, founded in 1853, was meant to compensate for the lack of symphonic concerts. This paper is about the performances of Beethoven’s symphonies in Pest-Buda in the nineteenth century, and it especially it focuses on the reception of Symphony No. 9 in the Hungarian press, which cannot be understood without taking into consideration the influence of the Neudeutsche Schule (New German School).
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Chao, Wu. "LI DELUN’S ROLE IN THE PRESERVATION OF CHINESE ORCHESTRAS." Arts education and science 2, no. 39 (2024): 77–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.36871/hon.202402077.
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Li Delun, an outstanding Chinese conductor, has made a huge contribution to the development and popularisation of Chinese symphonic music in Russia, Europe and the USA. Having received an excellent education at the Moscow Conservatory in the class of opera and symphony conducting, Li Delun has rightfully earned a place in the cohort of outstanding musicians of our time. In early 1956, Li Delun was commissioned by the Chinese political leadership to establish and lead the Central Orchestra. He formed the repertoire of the symphony orchestra, combining Western classics (symphonies by W. A. Mozart, L. Beethoven, R. Schumann) with new works by modern Chinese composers (Sytsong, Luo Zhongzhong). Li Delun considered his greatest achievement to be the Chinese premiere of J. Puccini’s opera “Madame Butterfly” (1958). However, this production, along with the performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony during the celebration of the Xth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China in 1959, became increasingly dissonant with the tense political atmosphere. The article reveals Li Delun’s role in preserving symphonic music-making during the difficult period of the “cultural revolution” in China.
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Nagina, Dana A. "The genre of concert symphony in the works of Haydn and Mozart." Contemporary Musicology, no. 3 (2019): 2–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.56620/2587-9731-2019-3-002-023.
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The article focuses on the concert symphony (fr. symphonie concertante, it. sinfonia concertata) – a classical music form which remains little studied in Russian musicology – as is exemplified in the works of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The study raises three questions crucial for the history and theory of the genre. First, the article analyses the development of ideas about concertante as well as relevant terminology. Reference books and scientific works of the 18th-early 21st centuries provide different points of view on the genre. Some highlight its symphonic nature, while others take a middle position or lean toward its concert-related aspects. Second, the article analyses different models of concert symphonies shaped in different regional traditions. The study has allowed to distinguish two mainstream lines of genre development – German and French (C. Stamitz and A. Stamitz, C. Cannabich, J.B. Davaux, G. Cambini, F. J. Gossec, and others), and Austrian (J. Haydn, C.D. von Dittersdorf, W.A. Mozart, I. Pleyel, F.A. Hoffmeister, L. van Beethoven, and others). In both traditions, concert symphonies are generally cyclic orchestral works with elaborated parts for two or more solo instruments. They are often marked by virtuoso cadences in one or several movements as well as a major tonality and cheerful festive mood. However, in many aspects Austrian concert symphonies differ from German and French ones. The article examines the features of Austrian concertante (the third aspect of the research) based on the evidence from concert symphonies and concerts for several solo instruments by Mozart and Haydn. The key features include a three- or four-part cycle, a variety of musical forms with sonata-like features as a backbone, thoughtful intonation patterns and thematic connections, equal standing of soloists and orchestra or, at times, the predominance of the latter. The study suggests that Austrian concert symphonies are closer to the symphonic interpretation in contrast to more concert-like German and French compositions written in this genre.
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Eichhorn, Andreas. "„Hauptthema” im ersten Satz von Beethovens Neunter Symphonie." Die Musikforschung 49, no. 1 (September 22, 2021): 2–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.52412/mf.1996.h1.1013.
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Der expositionelle Gehalt des Hauptthemenkomplexes der Neunten Symphonie Beethovens erschöpft sich nicht allein im thematisch-motivischen Material. Exponiert werden zugleich auch bestimmte Texturmodelle, die sich satzübergreifend ausbreiten und zur Werkeinheit beitragen. Als traditionelle Substanz ist dem Hauptthemenkomplex der dorische Ton eingeschrieben. Indem Beethoven an dem einzelnen Strukturelementen entlangkomponiert, wird das Dorische zu einem strukturellen Gerüst, das die äußerlich heterogene Syntax verklammert.
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Phillippo, Simon. "Symphonic Momentum and Post-tonal Dramas: Simpson's First Symphony." Tempo, no. 209 (July 1999): 2–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040298200014613.
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Robert Simpson died on 21 November 1997, leaving behind him an impressive body of works. At its core are 11 symphonies and 15 string quartets; also three concertos, two string quintets, sonatas, some choral music, even some much admired pieces for brass band. While a thoroughly individual, music-as-process modernism imbues all he wrote, the prevailing image of Simpson is that of the conservative classicist, clinging to the apparent certainties of antiquated forms and diatonic tonality – a view that begins to some extent with the composer himself. He is widely known for his influential writings on Beethoven, Nielsen, and Bruckner among others; writings that, along the way, fiercely and polemically extol the enduring virtues of symphonic composition, manifestly swimming against the tide of contemporary music of the mid-century. Simpson's symphonism was always ideologically opposed to the post-war trends towards total mechanization, as much as to the experiments with extreme irrationality and chance in the 1960s.
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DAVIES, J. Q. "Dancing the Symphonic: Beethoven-Bochsa's Symphonie Pastorale, 1829." 19th-Century Music 27, no. 1 (2003): 25–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ncm.2003.27.1.25.
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Abstract . On 22 June 1829, the legendary French harpist, convicted forger and escaped felon, Robert Nicolas Charles Bochsa performed his most infamous musical offense: a rendition of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony with stage action. Since Grove, this surprisingly early reworking of the Sixth as a ballet-pantomime has not gone down well in the literature. As the twentieth century unfurled, the moment steadily receded into obscurity, losing all cultural and contextual meaning to the point where it is now remembered (if at all) as a lesson in the rogue potential of performance——a pockmark on the historical map. This article will reverse the general slide into amnesia by first excavating this vanished but important moment of the musical past, and then recuperating its seriousness. Enough evidence from the 1820s and 30s suggests that Bochsa's Symphonie (performed at London's King's Theatre) was representative of much more than itself. Far from historically inexplicable, it can be read as an extreme manifestation of a strongly defined ballet-concert exchange that characterized the artistic trends of the late 1820s. By taking on abstract and ““musical”” forms, dance was becoming more concertlike. Concerts, meanwhile, were developing balletic traits in their increasing use of picturesque effects, and their growing fascination for the visual or bodily aspects of musical performance. A rapprochement took place that reshaped the nature of listening and figured the emerging concept of the musical work in a curiously plastic, objective way——as the case study exemplifies.
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Eggebrecht, Hans Heinrich. "Spätwerk Beethovens." Anuario Musical, no. 52 (January 24, 2019): 143. http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/anuariomusical.1997.i52.292.
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Das Spätwerk Beethovens ist gekennzeichnet durch das gesteigerte Hervortreten jenes Charakteristikum des Menschen und Komponisten, das als Beethovens ethische Mitte bezeichnet werden kann. In den Maße, wie Beethoven in den späten Klaviersonaten, der Neunten Symphonie, der Missa solemnis und den letzten Streichquartetten verschiedene Gattungstraditionen erfüllt, tritt die ethische Botschaft seiner Musik zwar altersbedingt bloßgelegt, jedoch jeweils andersartig in Erscheinung, weshalb von einem einheitlichen Sp Das Spätstil des Spätwerks nicht gesprochen werden kann. Die Botschaften, die der Aufsatz analytisch zur Sprache bringt, lauten: Geschenk der inneren Ruhe, Freude und Utopie der Versöhnung, Bitte um Frieden und Dank für das Leben.
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Rehding, Alexander. "Liszt's Musical Monuments." 19th-Century Music 26, no. 1 (2002): 52–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ncm.2002.26.1.52.
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The music topic of "apotheosis" is examined in the context of Liszt's artistic biography. While the effect of the final apotheosis is familiar as a standard procedure in his symphonic poems, a prominent critical strand suggests that the overwhelming effect of the apotheosis may merely conceal a fundamental vacuity. Nietzsche in particular develops an incisive critique of this kind of monumentality, which he links with a historiographic model of what he calls "monumental history." Nietzsche's historical model is probed against an episode from Liszt's career, in which the apotheosis topic first entered his orchestral music: the Cantata for the inauguration of the Bonn Beethoven monument (1845). In this cantata, Liszt chooses a quotation from Beethoven's "Archduke" Trio for the apotheosis. In this way, the cantata pits a musical kind of monumentality against the physical Beethoven movement, not dissimilar from attempts by Schumann and Jean Paul to theorize nineteenth-century monumentality. Moreover, with this "secular sanctus" Liszt forges an artistic link between the dead composer and himself. This episode, by means of which Liszt succeeded in consolidating his fame as Beethoven's rightful heir, turns out to be crucial for his subsequent career when he settled in Weimar as a self-consciously great composer (and wrote his symphonic poems). The events surrounding Liszt's engagement in the Beethoven monument are used as an exemplar of a notion of nineteenth-century musical monumentality that thrives on the interplay between the musical structure, the events amid which the performance took place, and the biographical background of the (genius-)composer.
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Simonton, Dean Keith. "Drawing Inferences from Symphonic Programs: Musical Attributes versus Listener Attributions." Music Perception 12, no. 3 (1995): 307–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/40286186.
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In classical music listening, program announcements both on radio and in concerts will usually introduce the performance of a symphony with the same minimal articles of information, such as the composer, the order of composition, the key, and the name, if any. But how much can a listener infer about the musical attributes of the work from these basic facts? Examination of 99 symphonies by 13 symphonists between Beethoven and Shostakovich showed that such rudimentary programmatic data can predict several subjective and objective features, including aesthetic significance, listener accessibility, repertoire popularity, melodic originality, originality variation, and playing time. Discussion follows about what these empirical relationships may imply about how composers create their symphonies and how appreciators perceive those musical products.
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Bogunović Hočevar, Katarina. "Beethoven’s Symphonies in the Musical Life of Nineteenth-Century Laibach." Studia Musicologica 61, no. 1-2 (April 13, 2021): 7–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1556/6.2020.00002.
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Nineteenth-century concert life in Laibach (Ljubljana), capital of the Habsburg Carniola, was shaped and led by the local Philharmonic Society. Until the establishment of the Musical Society in 1872, it was the only musical institution in Carniola. Even after the establishment of the Musical Society, the Philharmonics remained the principal and representative leader of concert life. In the mid-nineteenth century, the main European centers had their own operatic and concert civil orchestras, however, Laibach did not have a concert symphony orchestra. In order to lead and perform regular symphonic concerts, the Philharmonic Society had to hire musicians from the military chapel, which also collaborated with the Opera and, at the end of the nineteenth century, participated in the concerts of the Music Society. The history of the Philharmonics exhibits not only a rich tradition but also illustrates the program endeavors of the artistic leaders, the musical trends of the time and social circumstances, which sometimes encouraged and at other times hindered its work. The first preserved program notes indicate that at that time (1816) challenging symphonic works were already played and in this regard Beethoven’s role was evident. In 1808 the Society already attempted to elect Beethoven as an honorary member of the society, but this happened only in 1819. A year before the local premiere of his Symphony No. 6, and for this opportunity, the composer sent a manuscript with his own corrections. Until then his Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 7 and probably 4 were already performed there. The program notes of the Society indicate that Beethoven’s works were played at least (but usually more than) once in a season. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the appeal and the interest in the composer’s creative output grew even stronger, alongside the appreciation of the memory of the composer. It is also significant to note that his chamber works became regularly performed in the chamber concerts of the Philharmonics. Even though from the very beginning the composer’s overtures had a stable and regular place within the repertoire, the first full performance of his Symphony No. 9 took place only in 1902 (the first three movements were already performed a decade earlier).
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Nonnenmann, Rainer. "Radierter Patriotismus." Die Musikforschung 76, no. 2 (June 15, 2023): 130–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.52412/mf.2023.h2.3087.
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In his late novel Doktor Faustus (1947) – written in exile in the USA during the Second World War – Thomas Mann has the fictional “German composer” Adrian Leverkühn “take back” Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with his last cantata “Dr. Fausti Weheklag”. The humanism of the “Ode to Joy” with its final exultation “Alle Menschen werden Brüder” had been discredited by dictatorship, terror, war and the Holocaust, and by patriotic and nationalistic appropriations by various political systems. In the course of Germany’s coming to terms with its past – the so-called “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” – from the mid-1960s onwards, a number of composers reacted to the scandal of the misuse of this major classical work of art and its liberating message with compositions whose direct reference to Beethoven’s Ninth can also be understood as “retractions” of this symphony. This article investigates different approaches to Beethoven’s controversial work in Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Requiem für einen jungen Dichter (1967–1969), Hans Werner Henze’s Sinfonia N. 9 (1995–1997), Andreas F. Staffel’s Beethoven off set – oder: ich nehme sie zurück die neunte Symphonie (2015–2019) and many other works.
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Reimer, Erich. "Nationalbewußtsein und Musikgeschichtsschreibung in Deutschland 1800-1850." Die Musikforschung 46, no. 1 (September 22, 2021): 17–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.52412/mf.1993.h1.1140.
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Im Zuge der deutschen Nationalbewegung setzten um 1800 Reflexionen über die historische Entwicklung der deutschen Musik ein. An einschlägigen Texten läßt sich zwischen 1800 und 1850 eine fortschreitende nationale Interpretation der Musikgeschichte nachweisen. Während es Johann Karl Friedrich Triest (1801) darum ging, unter Hinweis auf Bachs Kontrapunktik und Haydns Symphonik zur Entwicklung eines noch schwach ausgeprägten Nationalbewußtseins beizutragen, standen bei Amadeus Wendt (1831), der in Haydns, Mozarts und Beethovens Instrumentalmusik den Höhepunkt der deutschen Musik sah, nationales und kosmopolitisches Bewußtsein im Einklang. Demgegenüber zeichnet sich im Mozart- und Beethoven-Bild Franz Brendels (1852) die spätere chauvinistische Tendenz des deutschen Nationalismus ab. (Prof. Dr. Reimer, Erich)
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Berger, Karol. "Mahler and the Taking Back of the Ninth." Polski Rocznik Muzykologiczny 21, no. 1 (December 1, 2023): 44–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/prm-2023-0002.
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Abstract The last word of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, composed in 1901–02 and premiered in 1904, is ironic, mocking even, certainly not pompously triumphant. What is mocked here is the whole tradition of victorious symphonic scenarios epitomized by Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the “per aspera ad astra” tradition that had symphonists propose stories of suffering triumphantly overcome. The Finale also puts into question Mahler’s own past. For the first time, the composer writes here a symphony that does not aim at a transcendence and sublimity, but accepts the comic immanence of the earthly existence. The aspiration to transcendence fails, but is not forgotten, and neither are the negative aspects of human existence that gave rise to this aspiration
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Walz, Matthias. "Kontrastierende Werkpaare in Beethovens Symphonien." Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 46, no. 4 (1989): 271. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/930542.
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Leistra-Jones, Karen. "Hans von Bülow and the Confessionalization of Kunstreligion." Journal of Musicology 35, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 42–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jm.2018.35.1.42.
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Hans von Bülow often used pointedly religious rhetoric in his statements about music: “I believe in Bach the Father, Beethoven the Son, and in Brahms the Holy Ghost of music,” he famously proclaimed. Elsewhere, he called Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier the “Old Testament” and Beethoven’s sonatas the “New Testament” of piano music. Beginning in the 1870s, these types of pronouncements became a central aspect of Bülow’s public image. This occurred as he began to position himself as a Beethoven specialist, with his celebrated edition of Beethoven’s piano sonatas (1871) and his new practice of performing “cycles” of Beethoven’s sonatas and (beginning in the 1880s) symphonies. Critical responses to Bülow as both pianist and conductor began to mirror his religious rhetoric: critics described his concerts as a kind of preaching, a proclaiming of the musical “gospel,” or a scriptural exegesis, and his audiences as a devout congregation. Such accounts participated in the well-documented elevation of instrumental music as a Kunstreligion in the nineteenth century. Yet they moved beyond the mysticism and religious pluralism characteristic of early-Romantic Kunstreligion, and avoided calling the performer a “priest,” an epithet common in mid-century music criticism. Instead, Bülow and his critics positioned his activities within a more traditional German Protestantism by emphasizing the didactic nature of his performances, their focus on a strict “gospel” of canonic works, and their affinity with preaching and biblical interpretation. This article situates these developments within attempts to create a national culture in the new Kaiserreich of the 1870s and 1880s. This period saw numerous calls for new forms of religious experience free from the dogmas of organized religion, yet consistent with the Protestantism that was increasingly touted as a unifying force. In this context, Bülow was able to invest his role as performer with a prestige that drew on the interpretive practices and modes of authority associated with the Protestant church.
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Hepokoski, James. "“Listen and Be Amazed!”: Odeon, Künneke, and the First Recordings of Complete Symphonies." Journal of the American Musicological Society 76, no. 1 (2023): 113–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jams.2023.76.1.113.
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Abstract Between 1911 and 1913, Odeon records, in Berlin, produced and made available for sale five complete, four-movement symphonies, the first complete symphonies ever recorded. They were Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies (August and November–December 1911), and then Haydn’s Symphony no. 94 (“Surprise”) and Mozart’s Symphonies nos. 40 and 39 (in that order, March and April 1913). Each was performed by members of the Odeon company’s orchestra, billed as the “Großes Odeon-Streich-Orchester.” While no conductor is identified on the labels, it was surely Eduard Künneke, Odeon’s house conductor at that time. (Arthur Nikisch’s Beethoven’s Fifth with the Berlin Philharmonic would follow, from Grammophon records, in November 1913.) Odeon’s decisions to record these five symphonies took place within two larger corporate contexts, 1907–13: first, that of what was becoming increasingly possible within the enabling yet constraining affordances of the era’s music-recording industry; second, that of how those affordances were giving rise to the more innovative plans and economic gambles of recording extended classical works—longer stretches of operetta and opera, high-prestige orchestral music, and, eventually, symphonies. Much of this history can be traced in reports, reviews, and advertisements in the contemporaneous German trade journal the Phonographische Zeitschrift. The whole is framed here within the contexts of recent media theory and varying views of the impact of sound recordings on twentieth- and twenty-first-century listening practices. As Antoine Hennion put it, “The disc has been powerful enough to introduce modern listeners to musical repertoires conceived with a different relationship in mind.”
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Avins, Styra. "Brahms, Beethoven, and a Reassessment of the Famous Footsteps." Nineteenth-Century Music Review 18, no. 2 (January 13, 2021): 269–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1479409820000270.
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To speak of Brahms and Beethoven in the same breath is almost a cliché: Brahms was intimately conscious of Beethoven's music from early youth. This article describes the details of his youthful involvement, the compositions he had in his repertoire as well as those other works which had a powerful effect on his development. By age 20, Brahms was frequently compared to Beethoven by people who met him or heard him play. My interest is in the way he was influenced by Beethoven and the manner in which he eventually found his own voice.The compositional history of his First Symphony provides the primary focus: its long gestation, and the alleged quote by Brahms given in Max Kalbeck's massive biography: ‘I'll never write a symphony, you have no idea what it feels like … to hear the footsteps of a giant behind one’. The reference is presumably to Beethoven, but there exists no corroborating evidence that Brahms ever said those words. They gained credence as one writer after another simply accepted Kalbeck's word. Yet substantial evidence exists that in writing his biography, Kalbeck distorted and even invented ‘facts’ when it suited his purposes, including a specific instance dealing with writing a symphony.An alternative view of the symphony's long gestation is based on a view of Brahms's compositional history. He wrote for musical forces he knew at first hand, and only from 1872 to 1875 did he have command of an orchestra. Intriguingly, while fulfilling the contemporary accepted demands of a symphony after Beethoven, Brahms devised an unusual strategy for the final movement, the basis of its great success.
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La Rue, Jan. "Harmonic Rhythm in the Beethoven Symphonies." Journal of Musicology 18, no. 2 (2001): 221–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jm.2001.18.2.221.
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Stefaniak, Alexander. "Robert Schumann, Serious Virtuosity, and the Rhetoric of the Sublime." Journal of Musicology 33, no. 4 (2016): 433–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jm.2016.33.4.433.
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In several essays from the first half of the nineteenth century, Robert Schumann and other music critics used the rhetoric of the sublime when describing select, unconventionally intense virtuosic showpieces and performances, evoking this category’s associations with overpowering, even fearsome experiences and heroic human qualities. These writings formed one strand of a larger discourse in which musicians and critics attempted to describe and identify instances of virtuosity that supposedly rejected superficiality and aimed at serious aesthetic values: in the nineteenth-century imagination, the sublime abnegated mere sensuous pleasure; inspired a mixture of attraction, admiration, and trepidation; and implied both masculinity and intellectual cultivation. It offered a framework for self-consciously elevating virtuosity rooted in the sheer intensity and, in some cases, perceived inaccessibility of particular works and performances. Schumann extended the mantle of sublimity to Liszt during the virtuoso’s 1840 Leipzig and Dresden concerts. Critics described three of Schumann’s own 1830s piano showpieces using the rhetoric of the sublime, comparing the finale of the Concert sans orchestre, Op. 14, to violent forces of nature to illustrate the way its virtuosic passagework disrupts and engulfs lyrical themes within an anomalous formal structure. They also linked the Toccata, Op. 7, and Etudes symphoniques, Op. 13, to Beethoven, hinting at the ways in which Schumann alluded to or modeled these showpieces on Beethoven symphonies. These episodes in Schumann’s career broaden our understanding of the contexts in which nineteenth-century writers on music evoked the sublime, showing how they described this quality not only in symphonies and large choral works but also in solo performances and showpieces. They illuminate the politics of the sublime, revealing its significance for nineteenth-century thinking about the cultural prestige that particular musical works and performances could attain.
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Grochulski, Michaela G. "Symphonie, Symphonie-Cantate / Symphoniecantate oder größerer, ausgearbeiteter Psalm?" Die Musikforschung 70, no. 3 (September 22, 2021): 243–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.52412/mf.2017.h3.343.
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Dies ist der Versuch, den "Lobgesang" nicht vom Finalcharakter her, sondern als Ganzes zu betrachten und sich vom Referenz-Werk "Neunte Symphonie" von Beethoven zu lösen. Ausgehend von einem Einblick in die Entwicklung von Mendelssohns Form- und Inhalts-Vorstellungen anhand einiger Briefzeugnisse wird der Inhalt des Werkes auf Basis eines Textvergleichs von Uraufführungs- und Druckversion in den Blick genommen und auf mögliche Konsequenzen für die Form hinterfragt. Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Inhalt ermöglicht zudem Erkenntnisse zum Einfluss Julius Schubrings und Rückschlüsse auf Mendelssohns Aussagen im Rahmen der Revisionsgeschichte.
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Petroudi, Georgia. "The Cypriotization of Beethoven or Beethoven’s Cypriotization: The Composer’s Traces Throughout the Foundation of the “Westernized” Cypriot Music Scene." Studia Musicologica 61, no. 1-2 (April 13, 2021): 149–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1556/6.2020.00011.
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The focus of this paper is the reception of Ludwig van Beethoven’s works at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from the establishment of symphony orchestras and other cultural institutions. These works include symphonic and chamber music, performed in the framework of symphonic concerts as presented by the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra and chamber music as presented by chamber music festivals. This paper will shine a light onto the preserved concert programs of the orchestras, as well as other concerts that can be traced in newspapers and other printed magazines, in order to demonstrate how Beethoven’s compositions became part of the concert programming. The rapid but simultaneously abrupt growth of the cultural scene in the twentieth century, was interweaved with what kind of compositions and what composers could be included in concert programs, taking into consideration the restrictions that governed large performances such as performers’ numbers and the diversity of instrumental players, who would support the staging of certain works. The reception of Beethoven’s works is studied in the changing local political, historical, social and cultural context.
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Peattie, Thomas. "The Expansion of Symphonic Space in Mahler's First Symphony." Journal of the Royal Musical Association 136, no. 1 (2011): 73–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2011.562721.
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This article explores the treatment of space in Gustav Mahler's First Symphony from the perspective of the composer's experience as a conductor of opera. It considers the ‘theatrically’ located offstage utterances in the work's introduction in light of passages from Beethoven's Fidelio (Act 2, scene ii) and Tristan und Isolde (Act 2, scene ii), and against the backdrop of Mahler's controversial attempt to assign the Alla marcia section from the Finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to a small offstage orchestra. By considering in turn the implications of Mahler's treatment of offstage space on the work's overall structure, specifically with respect to the moment of ‘breakthrough’ in the first and last movements, I suggest that Mahler ultimately re-establishes the vitality of the symphony as genre at the intersection between the waning symphonic tradition and the immediacy of operatic convention.
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Любимов, Данила Вадимович. "L. van Beethoven and F. V. Lopukhov: The Fourth Symphony () on the Ballet Stage." Научный вестник Московской консерватории, no. 4(47) (December 30, 2021): 128–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.26176/mosconsv.2021.47.4.07.
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Статья приурочена к 135-летнему юбилею со дня рождения русского танцовщика, хореографа, педагога Федора Васильевича Лопухова (1886-1973). В работе представлен круг вопросов, связанных с разработкой танцсимфонии - нового музыкально-пластического жанра балетного театра XX века. Лопухов сформулировал теоретические положения танцсимфонии, выразившиеся в обращении к «чистому» жанру симфонии, свободной работе хореографов с музыкой сонатно-симфонического цикла, идее бессюжетного балета. Эти принципы найдут оригинальное воплощение в спектаклях последователей Лопухова, выдающихся танцовщиков-балетмейстеров XX столетия - Л. Ф. Мясина, И. Д. Бельского, Дж. Баланчина. В статье представлена история создания спектакля «Величие мироздания» на музыку Четвертой симфонии Бетховена. Рассмотрена взаимосвязь хореографических решений Лопухова и музыки симфонии. Абстрактные подзаголовки, которые Лопухов дает частям симфонии в ее хореографическом воплощении, близки эстетике русского авангарда 1920-х годов. The article is dedicated to the 135 anniversary of the birth of the Russian dancer, choreographer, teacher Fyodor Lopukhov (1886-1973). The paper presents a wide range of issues related to the development of dance symphony - a new musical and plastic genre of ballet theater of the XX century. Lopukhov formulated the theoretical provisions of dance symphony, expressed in an appeal to the ‘pure’ genre of symphony, the free work of choreographers with the music of the sonata-symphonic cycle, the idea of plotless ballet. All these principles will find an original embodiment in the performances of Lopukhov’s followers - outstanding dancers-choreographers of the 20 century Léonide Massine, Igor Belsky, George Balanchine. The work also examines the history of the creation of a unique performance The Greatness of the Universe, set to the music of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony and an extraordinary reading of the masterpiece of the Viennese classic on the ballet stage. According to Lopukhov’s choreographic plan, the four movements of Beethoven’s symphony were named: the first part - Life in death and death in life, the second - Thermal Energy, the third - The Joy of existence and the fourth - Eternal Movement. These subheadings are close to the aesthetics of the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s. The article also touches on the structural features of Lopukhov’s ballet production: instead of the traditional four-part cycle of Beethoven, the choreographer’s script and performance began to include five parts (Lopukhov separated the introductory Adagio from the Allegro vivace material and designated it as an independent part). The article considers the connection of Lopukhov’s stage decisions with the musical form of the parts of Beethoven’s symphony. Keywords: L. van Beethoven, F. V. Lopukhov, P. Goncharov, Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, ballet, dance symphony, The Greatness of the Universe
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Willner, Channan. "Beethoven Symphonies on Period Instruments: A New Tradition?" Musical Times 131, no. 1764 (February 1990): 88. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/966398.
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Cook, Nicholas. "Beethoven's Unfinished Piano Concerto: A Case of Double Vision?" Journal of the American Musicological Society 42, no. 2 (1989): 338–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/831659.
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During 1814-15 Beethoven sketched the first movement of a piano concerto, writing out a considerable proportion of it in full score. Some of the curious stylistic features that have been ascribed to this movement are the consequence of a faulty reading of MS Artaria 184, in which open-score sketches have been bound in with the autograph score. One curious feature, however, remains: the symphonic nature of the materials. There is some reason to believe that, because of this, Beethoven considered deleting the tutti exposition, resulting in a symphonic work with obbligato piano. Such indecision at a late stage in the compositional process could explain why Beethoven abandoned the work.
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Hailey, Christopher, and Andreas Eichhorn. "Beethovens Neunte Symphonie: Die Geschichte ihrer Auffuhrung und Rezeption." Notes 51, no. 3 (March 1995): 937. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/899310.
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Rovelli, Federica. "Revisionsprozesse in Beethovens Niederschriften der achten Symphonie op. 93." Editio 31, no. 1 (December 20, 2017): 90–116. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/editio-2017-0007.
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Burnham, Scott. "Beethoven’s Symphonies: Nine Approaches to Art and Ideas. By Martin Geck." Music and Letters 100, no. 4 (November 1, 2019): 730–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ml/gcz070.
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Гаврилова, Н. А. "From Beethoven to Martinů: Approaching the Problem of the Spiritual and Style Traditions in European Music." Научный вестник Московской консерватории, no. 4(43) (December 24, 2020): 8–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.26176/mosconsv.2020.43.4.001.
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Классик чешской музыки ХХ века Богуслав Мартину создал свою стилевую концепцию в опоре на национальную и общеевропейскую традиции искусства; одной из отправных точек его творчества, содержащего прозрения в будущее, послужило наследие Людвига ван Бетховена, особенно его поздние произведения. Воздействие музыканта такого масштаба, как Бетховен, на творчество Богуслава Мартину в данной статье рассматривается в трех аспектах: героико-драматическая и лирико-жанровая концепции симфонизма как основа музыкальной драматургии; феномен позднего стиля; «звездное небо над нами и нравственный закон внутри нас» (Кант) как творческое кредо. Девятая симфония, вершинное достижение Бетховена-симфониста, обобщила основные идеи названных концепций и послужила ориентиром для музыкантов двух следующих столетий. Поздний стиль Бетховена стал предтечей стилевых реалий в искусстве XX века. В статье отмечаются черты преемственности с творчеством венского классика и вместе с тем новизна интерпретации классической модели в условиях искусства XX века. The classic of Czech music of the 20th century Bohuslav Martinu created his own stylistic concept based on national and European art traditions. One of the starting points of his work, containing anticipations into the future, was the legacy of Ludwig van Beethoven, especially his late works. The influence of a musician of such a scale as Beethoven on the work of Bohuslav Martinů is considered in this article in three aspects: heroic-dramatic and lyric-genre concepts of symphony as the basis of musical drama; “The starry sky above us and the moral law within us” (Kant) as a creative Credo; phenomenon of late style. The Ninth Symphony, the summit achievement of Beethoven as a symphonist, summarized the main ideas of these concepts and served as a reference point for musicians for the next two centuries. Beethoven’s late style became the forerunner of stylistic realities in 20th-century musical art. The article notes the traits of continuity with the work of the Viennese classic and at the same time the novelty of the interpretation of the classical model in the art of the twentieth century.
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Chua, Daniel K. L. "Adorno's Symphonic Space-Time and Beethoven's Time Travel in Space." New German Critique 43, no. 3 129 (November 2016): 113–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/0094033x-3625397.
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Stollberg, Arne. "Mit Beethoven auf "Weltentdeckungsfahrt"." Die Musikforschung 62, no. 2 (September 22, 2021): 128–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.52412/mf.2009.h2.281.
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In Wagners Zürcher Reformschriften wird Beethoven mehrfach mit Christoph Columbus verglichen, da er sich weiter als jeder andere auf das "Meer" der absoluten Musik vorgewagt und schliesslich - im Finalsatz der Neunten Symphonie - gegen seinen Plan das Amerika der Kunst entdeckt habe: die erneute Verbindung von Wort und Ton als Voraussetzung für das zukünftige Musikdrama. Die kuriose Metaphorik, mit der Wagner seine Idee vom Fortgang der Musikgeschichte sprachlich gestaltet, lässt sich auf eine frühe Komposition beziehen, die vor diesem Hintergrund als das eigentliche Schlüsselwerk für die Argumentation der Zürcher Reformschriften erscheint, auf die 1834/35 entstandene "Columbus-Ouvertüre" WWV 37a.
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McBurney, Gerard. "Brian Elias's recent music." Tempo, no. 174 (September 1990): 12–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040298200019392.
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In the past ten years a remarkable change has come over Brian Elias. He has turned from being a miniaturist to being a composer on a symphonic scale and with symphonic aspirations. Not that he has written any work with so self-conscious a title as ‘symphony’ – at least, not yet. But in these few years he has given us two extended cycles for voice and symphony orchestra, a large-scale single-movement orchestral work that must certainly be called symphonic, a set of 49 Variations for piano inspired by Beethoven's set of 32 in C minor, and now an orchestral ballet in progress for Kenneth Macmillan and the Royal Ballet. All these, and some impressive chamber works too, have come from a composer whose earlier reputation was based on a tiny scattering of compositions including a rarified solo soprano piece (based on a particularly obscure bit of Browning), a piece for solo violin, and the microscopic Five Piano Pieces for right hand alone.
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Rovner, Anton А. "Vocal and Choral Symphonies and Considerations on Text Representation in Music." ICONI, no. 2 (2020): 26–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.33779/2658-4824.2020.2.026-037.
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The article examines the genres of the vocal and the choral symphony in connection with the author’s vocal symphony Finland for soprano, tenor and orchestra set to Evgeny Baratynsky’s poem with the same title. It also discusses the issue of expression of the literary text in vocal music, as viewed by a number of influential 19th and 20th century composers, music theorists and artists. Among the greatest examples of the vocal symphony are Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Lyrische Symphonie. These works combine in an organic way the features of the symphony and the song cycle. The genre of the choral symphony started with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and includes such works as Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony, Scriabin’s First Symphony and Mahler’s Second, Third and Eighth Symphonies. Both genres exemplify composers’ attempts to combine the most substantial genre of instrumental music embodying the composers’ philosophical worldviews with that of vocal music, which expresses the emotional content of the literary texts set to music. The issue of expressivity in music is further elaborated in examinations of various composers’ approaches to it. Wagner claimed that the purpose of music was to express the composers’ emotional experience and especially the literary texts set to music. Stravinsky expressed the view that music in its very essence is not meant to express emotions. He called for an emotionally detached approach to music and especially to text settings in vocal music. Schoenberg pointed towards a more introversive and abstract approach to musical expression and text setting in vocal music, renouncing outward depiction for the sake of inner expression. Similar attitudes to this position were held by painter Wassily Kandinsky and music theorist Theodor Adorno. The author views Schoenberg’s approach to be the most viable for 20th and early 21st century music.