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Political Beethoven. By Nicholas Mathew. (New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. [xvii, 273 p. ISBN 9781107005891 (hardcover), $104.99; ISBN 9781139603188 (e-book), $84.] Music examples, illustrations, appendix, bibliographic references, index.
Ludwig van Beethoven's occasional works have long been the subject of derision, passed offas 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 oftendescribed 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...