Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792-1803

Abstract

Beethoven and Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792-1803. By Tia DeNora. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, [xvii, 232 p. ISBN 0-520-08892-1. $29.95. Beethoven and Construction of Genius attempts to explain how Ludwig van Beethoven achieved his particular between years 1792, his in Vienna, and around 1803, his arrival as an important musical personality. Tia De-Nora examines Viennese musical scene. Beethoven's music patrons, and current aesthetic issues of day that helped to shape composer's career. An adaptation and expansion of previously published articles, book devotes first three chapters to social context of music in Vienna beginning with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart around 1785. The author pays special attention to Vienna's aristocratic musical patrons, disbanding of their house orchestras, and gradual shift of musical tastes at end of eighteenth century to assert that major social changes welt underway in city favored and underlined Beethoven's successful career--what DeNora calls the sociology of Beethoven's reputation (pp. 5-8). The next five chapters focus on Beethoven's early career, with investigation of his social connections, derivation and manipulation of narratives that linked him to Mozart and Joseph Haydn, a chronicle of his early critical music notices, his piano duel with Joseph Wolfl (1799), and his role in reform of piano construction in Vienna. An interesting comparison of career paths and outputs of Beethoven with his contemporary Jan Ladislav Dussek further illustrates impact of social differences and opportunities afforded former. Very helpful at present juncture in Beethoven research are sorting out and summaries of many of newest lines of (primarily) English and American scholarship, which are cited copiously. Some of referent works are not yet published or generally available, making them difficult to evaluate. As a sociologist rather than a musicologist, DeNora offers new social paradigms to study of cultural history and new ways of looking at how societies define and treat genius. Her ambitious work strives to cut through still popular and mythic Beethoven image and to circumvent strictly musical-theoretical arguments that lead to rationales about Beethoven's greatness or value. Her focus is social dimension of composer's career. But therein lies a problem. By rarely even naming, much less discussing, stylistic details of music that Beethoven composed during period, she omits a powerful body of evidence that might support as well as refute her claims. Wisely, author avoids threadbare arguments about Beethoven's Classical or Romantic styles, but she coins her own problematic terminology of an emerging serious music culture--an ideology of learned masterpieces, of formal complexity, so-called higher genre (pp. 35, 25). But what is really meant by word serious? …