Political Beethoven by Nicholas Mathew (review)

Ludwig van Beethoven’s occasional works have long been the subject of derision, passed off as somehow beneath the composer–genius of such timeless works as the “Eroica” and Ninth symphonies. Nicholas Mathew’s Political Beethoven seeks to change our view of these maligned pieces and of the composer himself, noting that the “book’s primary task is to explore the ideological, musical, and psycho-social mechanisms that have allowed Beethoven’s music to collaborate with a succession of new historical actors—how it has perpetually lent itself to the next political context, from the nineteenth century until today” (p. 13).

Mathew challenges the reader to explore these works, as well as a number of more canonical compositions, through the lens of post-Napoleonic Vienna. Chief among the works explored are those associated with the festivities surrounding the 1814 Congress of Vienna, including Wellingtons Sieg (op. 91), Der glorreiche Augenblick (op. 136), and the 1814 version of Fidelio (op. 72). It is refreshing that Mathew neither apologizes for nor denigrates this music, instead contextualizing their often-described shortcomings through comparison with other works from the period. His inclusion of critical voices, both contemporary to Beethoven and recent, helps reveal additional layers of meaning.

The book’s introduction sets the author’s premise, namely, that Beethoven’s biographers have sought to describe the composer’s political works as anomalies, written for particular occasions and not up to his usual standards. As Mathew demonstrates through the ensuing chapters, Beethoven wrote political and occasional works during his entire career, from early cantatas commemorating the death of Joseph II (WoO 87) and the succession of Leopold II (WoO 88), the Congress of Vienna works, incidental music (Egmont, The Ruins of Athens), a piano sonata (op. 81a, “Les adieux”), symphonies (3, 6, 7, and 9), and choral works (Ninth Symphony, Choral Fantasy, and Missa Solemnis). Taking issue with the notion of Beethoven as isolated from Viennese society, Mathew notes “the evidence indicates simply that Beetho ven’s voice is plural. He adapted it to changing circumstances and musical genres and, even within single works, echoed the many voices of those around him” (p. 7). The notion of “Beethoven as collaborator” is referred to throughout the volume.

Chapter 1 (“Music between myth and history”) explores the concept of “heroic” in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century music. Musical architecture, especially in the guise of sonata form, is seen by many as the key to Beethoven’s “insulation against the contamination of history” (p. 57). In contrast, his occasional works (Gelegenheitstück) were received by some contemporary critics as coarse and imitative (“The issue of tone painting thus led . . . to the view that has dominated Beethoven scholarship ever since: Wellingtons Sieg is a debased, unmediated, and externalized version of Beethoven’s style,” p. 27). Mathew discusses the notion of musical heroics within musical rhetoric and gestures, as well as within the concept of composer-as-hero, detailing Joseph Haydn’s move from a famous court composer to an internationally-acclaimed figure through his travels to England. As patronage and other sociopolitical aspects of the world changed in the 1790s, so did the audience for art. Mythic heroes appeared within the trappings of war (Admiral Nelson), the aftermath of the French Revolution (Napoleon), and the monarchs that assembled in 1814 for the Congress of Vienna (chief among them, Kaiser Franz, who was immortalized not only through Haydn’s Gott erhalte, but also in sculpture, allegorical paintings, and a host of musical references). Seen in this light, Wellingtons Sieg, Der glorreiche Augen blick, the 1814 Fidelio revision (and even “Eroica”) transcend the notion of occasional-piece-as-musical-ruin and instead “[imply] a completely different vision of occasional works: they make a historical moment permanent” (p. 30).

“Beethoven’s moments” (chapter 2) frames Mathew’s view of a collaborative Beethoven through a detailed discussion of several types of works...