Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination (review)

Abstract

Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination. By Maynard Solomon. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2003. [xi, 327 pp. ISBN 0-520-23746-3. $29.95.] Index, bibliography, music examples. How Beethoven's intellectual concerns affected the creative work of his last 15 years is the underlying issue in Maynard Solomon's Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, a collection of 13 essays comprising both previously published and new contributions on the composer's outlook and the spiritual resonance of his music. In the conviction that Beethoven's later music explores different worlds than his earlier works, Solomon draws on an impressive array of sources to suggest ways in which the composer's increased accessibility and receptivity to a broad repertory of highly imaginative conceptions(p. 10)-including ancient and Eastern ideas about the nature of Divinity, Masonic ideals of spiritual progress, and Romantic imageryfacilitated the expansion of Beethoven's imaginative faculties and led him to pursue increasingly ambitious aims in his music. book divides more or less evenly into chapters concerned with biographical and historical contexts and those focused on the interpretation of works. essays of the first category, mature fruit of one of the great biographers of our time, posit various ways in which the ageing Beethoven regarded himself, the world, and his art differently than he did as a young man. Prologue: A Sea Change expounds one of the book's basic theses: that Beethoven experienced in his forties an existential crisis, documented in the diary that he kept from 1812 to 1818, that led him to read Classical, Eastern, and contemporary sources, to explore religious and philosophical questions as to ultimate meanings, and to rededicate himself, martyr-like, to his art, as a consequence of which his later work experienced a remarkable expansion of intellectual and emotional scope. Chapter 5, Reason and Imagination: Aesthetic Dimension, cautiously advances another provocative thesis: that Beethoven's aesthetics-such as they can be reconstructed from scattered utterances-evolved over the course of his career from moral and rationalist concepts about art rooted in Enlightenment notions to views that enriched (but did not supplant) those of his youth by granting greater privilege to the prerogatives of creative fantasy. Two chapters devoted to Freemasonry make a compelling case for Beethoven's familiarity with Masonic symbols, language and rituals, although Solomon finds no evidence that Beethoven actually ever joined the order, having arrived on the scene after the lodges had been suppressed in the Hapsburg lands for political reasons. The Masonic Thread (chapter 7) impressively documents that many of Beethoven's most important contacts in Bonn and Vienna, including teachers, patrons, publishers, and dedicatees, had been active Masons and/or Illuminati during the heyday of Josephinian Freemasonry; through such people, the composer would have gained some knowledge of Masonic aims and symbols (although Solomon concedes that many of these ideas were not exclusive to Masonry). In chapter 8, The Masonic Imagination, Solomon strengthens the case for Beethoven's awareness of secret societies by relating the diary of 1812-1818 to the journals required of members of the Illuminai! to chart their spiritual progress through confessional statements and extracts of significant passages from literature, philosophy and religious writings. That a number of the entries in Beethoven's diary can be tied to Masonic ideals of self-betterment, initiation and purification, and to Eastern religious conceptions (which held a particular importance for Masons) seemingly seals the argument for Beethoven's sympathy for, and receptivity to, Masonic thought. More ambiguous is the case for Beethoven's openness to the influence of Romanticism, a topic that Solomon pursues in chapters 3 and 4. …