Book contents
- Beethoven Studies 4
- Beethoven Studies 4
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contents
- Music Examples
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 From the Chapel to the Theatre to the Akademiensaal: Beethoven’s Musical Apprenticeship at the Bonn Electoral Court, 1784–1792
- 2 Gracious Beethoven?
- 3 Beethoven’s Unfinished Symphonies
- 4 Beethoven as Sentimentalist
- 5 Beethoven’s Nature: Idealism and Sovereignty from an Ecocritical Perspective
- 6 (Cross-)Gendering the German Voice
- 7 Beethoven and Tonal Prototypes: An Inherited and Developing Relationship
- 8 Shared Identities and Thwarted Narratives: Beethoven and the Austrian Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 1817–1824
- 9 Composing with a Dictionary: Sounding the Word in Beethoven’s Missa solemnis
- 10 Deafly Performing Beethoven’s Last Three Piano Sonatas
- Index of Beethoven’s Works
- General Index
2 - Gracious Beethoven?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2020
Book contents
- Beethoven Studies 4
- Beethoven Studies 4
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contents
- Music Examples
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 From the Chapel to the Theatre to the Akademiensaal: Beethoven’s Musical Apprenticeship at the Bonn Electoral Court, 1784–1792
- 2 Gracious Beethoven?
- 3 Beethoven’s Unfinished Symphonies
- 4 Beethoven as Sentimentalist
- 5 Beethoven’s Nature: Idealism and Sovereignty from an Ecocritical Perspective
- 6 (Cross-)Gendering the German Voice
- 7 Beethoven and Tonal Prototypes: An Inherited and Developing Relationship
- 8 Shared Identities and Thwarted Narratives: Beethoven and the Austrian Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 1817–1824
- 9 Composing with a Dictionary: Sounding the Word in Beethoven’s Missa solemnis
- 10 Deafly Performing Beethoven’s Last Three Piano Sonatas
- Index of Beethoven’s Works
- General Index
Summary
Heroic activity, titanic struggle, visionary power and similarly exalted descriptions are familiar enough in Beethoven reception. This essay puts those aspects of the composer’s music to one side in order to examine a musical orientation that is derived from the eighteenth-century aesthetic of sociability. Focusing on the composer’s piano sonatas, the essay deals with the interplay between the traditional and the individual in Beethoven’s musical language, an interplay that reveals a versatility of thought that can appropriately be described as gracious.
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- Beethoven Studies 4 , pp. 24 - 43Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020