If relatively modest in quantity, the chamber music of Amy Beach comprises a significant body of work that confronts meaningfully the churning countercurrents of her musical style. Chronologically, this repertoire falls into three groups, of which the first concentrates on works for violin and piano, culminating in the Violin Sonata, while in the second Beach explores a variety of other genres, including the piano quintet. The third and final group adds two late works, for piano trio and wind quintet. If this repertoire betrays clear enough references to Austro-Germanic traditions of chamber music, in particular to the music of Brahms (for example, Beach’s piano quintet exhibits examples of modeling from Brahms’s op. 34), it also reflects Beach’s ongoing efforts to expand the idea of American music, in part in answer to Dvorák’s “challenge” laid down in the “New World” Symphony. For Beach, the diversity of American music encouraged her to incorporate various popular sources, including Irish folk music and native Inuit music, into her own eclectic stylistic mixtures.

If not an idée fixe in scholarship, the notion of musical exchanges among intimates of the Schumanns’ circle probably counts at least as a Leitfaden. Clara Schumann’s wistful instrumental romances – and those composed by Robert Schumann, Joseph Joachim and Johannes Brahms – encourage a reconsideration of the role that ‘conversations’ played for her within the miniature genre. We begin with a chronology of the romances composed by this circle between 1829 and 1893 – predominantly for solo piano, but also for violin and piano, oboe and piano, string quartet, piano or violin and orchestra, orchestra, and cello and piano – and discuss how these ‘conversations’ could yield subtle allusions, performative physical memories and nostalgic recollections. Focusing on Clara Schumann’s Romances Opp. 21 and 22, this study brings forward aspects of formal and textural ambiguity, and virtuosity, all of which help reveal Clara Schumann’s contribution to the genre, while elucidating how her complex, multifaceted roles in the private and public spheres did not impede her from continuously challenging herself as a composer as she engaged in nuanced musical dialogues inspired by her circle.

In a short memoir appearing in The Musical Times in 1898, Joseph Joachim reminisced fondly about his relationship with Mendelssohn, who, the violinist recalled,

Mendelssohn had met the twelve-year-old violin prodigy around the middle of 1843, and promptly began addressing him alternatim as “Posaunenengel” (trombone cherub) and “Teufelsbraten” (devil's brat). For the next four years until Mendelssohn's death in 1847, the composer mentored the young musician, introducing him to Leipzig and Berlin audiences, as well as taking Joachim under his wing in England (where a special dispensation allowed the child prodigy to perform Beethoven's Violin Concerto at the Philharmonic Concerts in London in 1844) and encouraging him to compose.

Available now for the first time in a comprehensive twelve-volume edition, Mendelssohn's correspondence points to approximately post-June 1843 as the time when he first met the young prodigy, though another source from 1856 advances that event to the later months of 1842. In Beth-El: Ehrentempel verdienter ungarischer Israeliten, released by Ignaz Reich, we read of the eleven-year-old Joachim's participation in a musical Fest in Leipzig, organized by Mendelssohn, in which he kissed the boy on his forehead, a Weihekuss seemingly recalling a similar occasion when, a few decades earlier, Beethoven had reportedly encountered the young Franz Liszt in Vienna. Here we quote from Reich's account of Mendelssohn's introduction to Joachim:

In Carl Johann Arnold’s famous watercolour, Quartettabend bei Bettina von Arnim, Joseph Joachim appears as a faceless Rückenfigur that pulls us from behind into the space of an intimate musical performance. When this depicted scene may have occurred is unclear, although scholars generally assign it to 1854 or 1856. Similarly unclear is exactly which works were performed at Bettina von Arnim’s ‘Gesellschaften’ at her residence ‘Unter den Zelten’ in Berlin. Although Petra Wilhelmy has argued that in the strict sense of the word, Bettina did not direct a salon, contemporary reports of prominent Berliners such as Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, who described gatherings at ‘Unter den Zelten’ where music was performed for groups of culturally minded intellectuals, encourage us to consider further the involvement of one of Bettina’s most cherished musicians – Joseph Joachim. Wilhelmy concedes that if Bettina did not host a typical salon, she did entertain assembled house parties that were interesting, unconventional, and quite heterogeneous, with audiences that ranged from ‘Prussian princes’ to ‘democratic authors’. And, as Wilhelmy adds, music played a large role in the von Arnim house. Nor was Bettina’s ‘salon’ the only one frequented by Joachim. During the Bismarck era, the musician and his wife, Amalie (a mezzo-soprano whom he married in 1863), were guests at the Berlin salon of the Countess Marie von Schleinitz-Wolkenstein, an aristocrat who, much like Bettina and other salonnières, recruited musicians to enrich the cultural offerings of her private social gatherings.

If salon research aims, as one of its goals, to understand a cultural space typically inhabited by women whose voices were often not heard (partly explaining, in this instance, the sparse documentation for Joachim’s participation in von Arnim’s salon), this chapter proposes that Joachim’s relationships with members of this salon and his creative output between the years surrounding Arnold’s painting can shed light on the very concept on which Bettina von Arnim’s social gatherings were based – intimacy. By attempting a reading of correspondence and documents related to Joachim’s interaction with the von Arnims – including a composition – we examine what it meant for him to be involved with the von Arnims and, in turn, what it meant for the von Arnims to be so intimate with the Jewish-Hungarian musician, by then already hailed as one of Germany’s most distinguished violinists.

THE STORY of Beethoven's cellos begins with a magnanimous gift from Prince Karl Lichnowsky, without whose support Beethoven's own story likely would have turned out very differently. That gift came in the form of a string quartet of valuable instruments given to the composer by the prince, in whose residence an ensemble assembled by violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh held musical court. Though Schuppanzigh and his colleagues worked intimately with Beethoven on his early string quartets, the ensemble, which probably formed sometime around 1794, disbanded in 1799. According to Alois Fuchs, a former violinist in the imperial court orchestra, amateur musicologist, and autograph collector, around 1800 Schuppanzigh suggested to Lichnowsky that he give the set of string instruments to Beethoven - instruments that, we might reasonably assume, the prince had purchased and loaned out to the quartet members.

Beethoven's own words provide the earliest known reference to a string quartet of instruments in his possession: ‘I would like the instruments from Prince L[ichnowsky] to be preserved by one of you, but not to be the cause of strife between you, and as soon as they can serve you a better purpose, sell them.’ This passage comes from the Heiligenstadt Testament, the poignant document from 1802 that reads like a suicide note from Beethoven. As is well known, he preserved the document and mustered the strength to face down his deep depression and the deafness that threatened his life as a musician. Having come to terms with his irreversible hearing loss, Beethoven evidently never passed on ‘the instruments from Prince L’ to either of his brothers, the intended recipients of the document. On the contrary, a set of four instruments remained in the composer's possession until the time of his death. Then, with the disposition of his estate, confusion surrounding Beethoven's cello (and the other instruments) commenced in earnest. False labels and the suspected existence of a second cello were just two pieces of a riddle that consistently begged the question of whether what had come to be regarded as Beethoven's cello in fact was the instrument formerly owned by Lichnowsky and, subsequently, by the composer.

STRICTLY SPEAKING, Beethoven's cello music comprises five sonatas and three variation sets, though there is another substantial work that requires our attention because of the prominence accorded the instrument, albeit in an unusual way. It dates from 1804, about four years before he composed his third cello sonata, Op. 69. The singular Triple Concerto in C major Op. 56 for violin, cello, piano, and orchestra is a most curious outlier that has befuddled audiences since its creation. In 1841 Mendelssohn confessed that he could not fathom the work, and more recently Leon Plantinga has described it as ‘probably no one's favorite piece’. Here a piano trio, as if extracted from the intimate realm of chamber music, assumes the roles of three soloists pitted against the orchestra, and, one might suppose, against themselves, were it not for the most distinctive feature of the work: the unabashed privileging of the cello. Indeed, its very key signature - C major - suggests that Beethoven regarded the acoustic properties of the cello's open C string as the starting point for his concerto. Because the composition is so cello-centered, it calls for consideration here, before we take up the masterpiece for the instrument that followed, the Sonata in A major Op. 69.

First, some issues of generic identity. What the composer called a Konzertant and what has since been characterized as ‘an interlude in the French manner’ had clear ties to the French symphonie concertante, a hybrid genre from the eighteenth century that cast various solo instruments into the spotlight and was generally calculated to please audiences rather than challenge them. This form of symphonic entertainment remained popular throughout the first decade of the nineteenth century, even in musical centers beyond the French border that were affected by the rippling currents of French musical taste, such as Mannheim. But Beethoven had an ulterior design in creating a work that might appeal to French audiences: initially seduced by the idealism of revolutionary France, by 1803 he was determined to move to Paris. We need not reiterate the narrative of the ‘Eroica’ Symphony, with its initial Napoleonic pretensions and alternative Promethean formulations in the finale. Leonore, the composer's sole opera, was of course based on the model of the French rescue opera, another example of the power of French music on Beethoven's imagination.

FROM SEPTEMBER 1814 to June 1815, Vienna played host to Napoleon's conquerors - the King of Prussia, Tsar of Russia, Emperor of Austria, and ministers of the English and (restored) French Bourbon monarchs, accompanied by retinues of aristocrats, military commanders, and assorted dignitaries - all intent upon redrawing the European map and determining the continent's future. The Congress of Vienna, as this lavish spectacle was known, was effectively the first international summit of the major European powers. By day, royalty and diplomats crisscrossed Vienna's cobbled streets in tailored finery and handsome fiacres and convened at the Hofburg and nearby palatial residences, where the main players negotiated, bargained, and haggled as they began reconfiguring Napoleon's shattered empire. By night, the Habsburg capital thrummed with the ‘sparkling chaos’ of masked balls, sumptuous banquets, concerts and intrigue. In addition to foreign nobles, invited delegates, and self-appointed representatives, Vienna opened its gates to perhaps as many as one hundred thousand visitors. The composer whose name was on many of their lips, including those of royalty, was Beethoven.

Festivities celebrated at the congress included Beethoven's refashioned opera Leonore, now titled Fidelio, performed already that September 1814 before several heads of state, and another concert of his music presented on 29 November before a large, enthusiastic audience that included the King of Prussia, Empress of Austria, and Tsarina of Russia. This event, which featured Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, the patriotic, crowd-pleasing Wellingtons Sieg (‘Wellington's Victory’), and a new cantata, Der glorreiche Augenblick (‘The Glorious Moment’), with its triumphant orchestral opening and reassuring, massed chorus acclamation ‘Europa steht’ (‘Europe stands’), was repeated twice during the following month. Then, in January of the new year, Beethoven appeared before an illustrious audience to perform his song ‘Adelaide’. The concert, in honor of the tsarina, whose birthday was being fêted, proved to be among Beethoven's final public appearances as a pianist.

The composer was now at the height of his international fame. Indeed, in February 1815, London was treated to a performance of Wellington's Victory under Sir George Smart that was repeated three days later. Yet while Beethoven's reputa tion had spread well beyond the Habsburg realms, his private world was steadily shrinking on account of his deafness.