Essays by the noted authority on nineteenth-century music, the topics ranging from Beethoven and Schubert to comic opera to Scriabin and Janácek. In Beethoven's Century: Essays on Composers and Themes, world-renowned musicologist Hugh Macdonald draws together many of his richest essays on music from Beethoven's time into the early twentieth century. The essays are here revised and updated, and some are printed in English for the first time. Beethoven's Century addresses perennial questions of what music meant to the composer and his audiences, how it was intended to be played, andhow today's audiences can usefully approach it. Opening with a revealing analysis of Beethoven's not always generous regard for his listeners, the essays probe aspects of Schubert's musical personality, the brief friendshipbetween Berlioz and Schumann, Liszt's abilities as a conductor, and Viennese views of Wagner as expressed by Hugo Wolf. Essays on comic opera and trends in French opera libretti in the late nineteenth century reflect the author's long-standing sympathy for French music, and strikingly eccentric personalities in the world of music, such as Paganini, Alkan, Skryabin, and Janácek, are brought to life. Beethoven's Century concludes with a wrylook at some startling developments in early twentieth-century music that have often been overlooked. Hugh Macdonald has taught music at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, and Glasgow, and since 1987 has been Avis H. Blewett Distinguished Professor of Music at Washington University, St. Louis. He has written books on Skryabin and Berlioz, and is a regular pre-concert speaker for the Boston and St. Louis Symphony Orchestras.

Introduction : audiovisual histories -- From mimesis to prosthesis -- Opera as peepshow -- Shadow media -- Haydn's Creation as moving image -- Beethoven's phantasmagoria -- Conclusion : audiovisual returns

Examines America's early reception to Beethoven, the use of his work and image in American music, movies, stage works, and other forms of popular culture, and related topics.

Few genres of the last 250 years have proved so crucial to the course of music history, or so vital to public musical experience, as the symphony. This Companion offers an accessible guide to the historical, analytical and interpretative issues surrounding this major genre of Western music, discussing an extensive variety of works from the eighteenth century to the present day. The book complements a detailed review of the symphony's history with focused analytical essays from leading scholars on the symphonic music of both mainstream composers, including Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and lesser-known figures, including Carter, Berio and Maxwell Davies. With chapters on a comprehensive range of topics, from the symphony's origins to the politics of its reception in the twentieth century, this is an invaluable resource for anyone with an interest in the history, analysis and performance of the symphonic repertoire.

Leading scholars re-evaluate the opposition between Beethoven and Rossini, the great symbolic duo of early nineteenth-century music.

With basic assumptions shared and (new) facts evolving over time, Lockwood claims, the Beethoven biographer's role has remained highly personal.

How did Ludwig van Beethoven help overthrow a tsarist regime? With the establishment of the Russian Musical Society and its affiliated branches throughout the empire, Beethoven's music reached substantially larger audiences at a time of increasing political instability. In addition, leading music critics of the regime began hearing Beethoven's dramatic works as nothing less than a call to revolution. Beethoven in Russia deftly explores the interface between music and politics in Russia by examining the reception of Beethoven's works from the late 18th century to the present. In part 1, Frederick W. Skinner's clear and sweeping review examines the role of Beethoven's more dramatic works in the revolutionary struggle that culminated in the Revolution of 1917. In part 2, Skinner reveals how this same power was again harnessed to promote Stalin's campaign of rapid industrialization. The appropriation of Beethoven and his music to serve the interests of the state remained the hallmark of Soviet Beethoven reception until the end of communist rule. With interdisciplinary appeal in the areas of history, music, literature, and political thought, Beethoven in Russia shows how Beethoven's music served as a call to action for citizens and weaponized state propaganda in the great political struggles that shaped modern Russian history.