Research Catalog
The Beethoven syndrome : hearing music as autobiography
- Title
- The Beethoven syndrome : hearing music as autobiography / Mark Evan Bonds.
- Author
- Bonds, Mark Evan
- Publication
- New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020]
- ©2020
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | JME 20-93 | Performing Arts Research Collections - Music |
Details
- Description
- xii, 325 pages : illustrations; 25 cm
- Summary
- "The 'Beethoven syndrome' is the inclination of listeners to hear music as the projection of a composer's inner self. This was a radically new way of listening that emerged after Beethoven's death. Beethoven's music was a catalyst for this change, but only in retrospect, for it was not until after his death that listeners began to hear composers--and not just Beethoven--in their works, particularly in their instrumental music. The Beethoven syndrome: hearing music as autobiography traces the rise, fall, and persistence of this mode of listening from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present. Prior to 1830, composers and audiences alike operated within a framework of rhetoric in which the burden of intelligibility lay squarely on the composer, whose task it was to move listeners in a calculated way. But through a confluence of musical, philosophical, social, and economic changes, the paradigm of expressive objectivity gave way to one of subjectivity in the years around 1830. The framework of rhetoric thus yielded to a framework of hermeneutics: concert-goers no longer perceived composers as orators but as oracles to be deciphered. In the wake of World War I, however, the aesthetics of 'new objectivity' marked a return not only to certain stylistic features of eighteenth-century music but also to the earlier concept of expression itself. Objectivity would become the cornerstone of the high modernist aesthetic that dominated the century's middle decades. Masterfully citing a broad array of source material from composers, critics, theorists, and philosophers, Mark Evan Bonds's engaging study reveals how perceptions of subjective expression have endured, leading to the present era of mixed and often conflicting paradigms of listening"--Dust jacket flap.
- Subjects
- Genre/Form
- History.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [277]-306) and index.
- Contents
- Introduction : The instrumental self -- Part one : The paradigm of objective expression : 1770-1830. The framework of rhetoric ; Toward the perception of subjective expression ; Hearing composers in their work -- Part two : The paradigm of subjective expression : 1830-1920. The framework of hermeneutics ; First-person Beethoven ; After Beethoven -- Part three : Dul paradigms : since 1920. The return of objectivity ; The endurance of subjectivity -- Conclusion : Tracking comets.
- Call Number
- JME 20-93
- ISBN
- 9780190068479
- 0190068477
- LCCN
- 2019020718
- OCLC
- 1104214104
- Author
- Bonds, Mark Evan, author.
- Title
- The Beethoven syndrome : hearing music as autobiography / Mark Evan Bonds.
- Publisher
- New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020]
- Copyright Date
- ©2020
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [277]-306) and index.
- Research Call Number
- JME 20-93