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This title in other formats:Beethoven's Ninth: A Political Historyby Esteban Buch
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Who hasn't been stirred by the strains of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? That's a good question, claims Esteban Buch. German nationalists and French republicans, communists and Catholics have all, in the course of history, 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, and the government of Rhodesia made it their anthem. And played in German concentration camps by the imprisoned, it also figured prominently at Mitterand's 1981 investiture. In his remarkable history of one of the most popular symphonic works of the modern period, Buch traces such complex and contradictory usesand abusesof Beethoven's Ninth Symphony since its premier in 1824. Buch shows that Beethoven consciously drew on the tradition of European political music, with its mix of sacred and profane, military and religious themes, when he composed his symphony. But while Beethoven obviously had his own political aspirations for the piecehe wanted it to make a statement about ideal powerhe could not have had any idea of the antithetical political uses, nationalist and universalist, to which the Ninth Symphony has been put since its creation. Buch shows us how the symphony has been "deployed" throughout nearly two centuries, and in the course of this exploration offers what was described by one French reviewer as "a fundamental examination of the moral value of art." Sensitive and fascinating, this account of the tangled political existence of a symphony is a rare book that shows the life of an artwork through time, shifted and realigned with the currents of history. Book News Annotation:Buch (<'E>cole des Hautes <'E>tudes en Science Sociales, Paris) has
written a fascinating account of the political origins, impact, and
later uses of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, particularly its familiar
Ode to Joy. Initial chapters delve into the political and
musical context of the work, with treatment of the genesis of
political hymns, especially Handel's God Save the King. The rest
of the book is devoted to the reception and uses made of the Ode to
Joy in contexts that include the 1845 ceremony commemorating a
monument to Beethoven in Bonn, the 1927 centenary of the composer's
death, Nazi Germany, and as the European Anthem.
Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Synopsis:In this remarkable history of one of the most popular symphonic works of the modern period, Buch traces the complex and contradictory uses and abuses of Beethoven's Ninth since its premiere in 1824. Illustrations. Synopsis:Includes bibliographical references (p. [305]-318) and index.
About the AuthorEsteban Buch is the director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author of Histoire d'un secret: À propos de la Suite lyrique d'Alban Berg. Richard Miller has translated more than seventy books and articles from the French, including Roland Barthes's The Pleasure of the Text and Brassaï's The Secret of the Thirties. Table of ContentsIntroduction: The States of JoyPart I. The Birth of Modern Political Music1. God Save the King and the Handel Cult2. La Marseillaise and the "Supreme Being"3. The Ode to Joy and the Emperor's Anthem4. Beethoven and the Concert of Europe5. The Ninth SymphonyPart II. Political Reception of the Ode to Joy6. The Romantic Cult7. The 1845 Ceremony at Bonn8. The Ninth in the Era of Nationalist Movements9. The 1927 Centenary10. Beethoven as führer11. From Year Zero to the European Anthem12. From Apartheid's Anthem to the Dismantling of the Berlin WallConclusion: Criticism and the Future of a DreamAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
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