Beethoven: The Relentless Revolutionary (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

Description

Beethoven imbibed Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas in Bonn, where
they were fervently discussed in cafés and at the university. At the age of
twenty-one, he moved to Vienna to study with Haydn, gaining renown as a
master pianist and innovative composer. In that conservative city, capital of the
Hapsburg Empire, authorities were ever-watchful to curtail and punish overt
displays of radical political views. Nevertheless, Beethoven avidly followed the
meteoric rise of Napoleon and his republican reforms. As Napoleon had liberated
Europe from aristocratic oppression, Beethoven desired to liberate both
music and humankind itself. He broke with traditional musical forms, especially
in the Eroica symphony, which he wrote as an enthusiastic response to the
French Revolution and Napoleon’s achievements. Through Beethoven’s letters,
portraits, and other personal papers, and by setting him alongside the major
artists of the time—Schiller, Goethe, Goya, and Byron—John Clubbe illuminates
Beethoven’s role as a lifelong revolutionary.