Beethoven's Symphonies Arranged for the Chamber

Sociability, Reception, and Canon Formation

Nancy November

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781108831758
• eBook ISBN: 9781108934831
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Early nineteenth-century composers, publishers and writers evolved influential ideals of Beethoven's symphonies as untouchable masterpieces. Meanwhile, many and various arrangements of symphonies, principally for amateur performers, supported diverse and 'hands-on' cultivation of the same works. Now mostly forgotten, these arrangements served a vital function in nineteenth-century musical life, extending works' meanings and reach, especially to women in the home. This book places domestic music-making back into the history of the classical symphony. It investigates a largely untapped wealth of early nineteenth-century arrangements of symphonies by Beethoven - for piano, string quartet, mixed quintet and other ensembles. The study focuses on three key agents in the nineteenth-century culture of musical arrangement: arrangers, publishers and performers. It investigates significant functions of those musical arrangements in the era: sociability, reception and canon formation. The volume also explores how conceptions of Beethoven's symphonies, and their arrangement, changed across the era with changing conception of musical works.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontispiece
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• List of Music Examples
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 'A Fruitful Age of Arrangements'
• 2 Arrangers and Authority
• 3 Selling Arrangements, Constructing the Canon
• 4 Beethoven and Steiner's Plan
• 5 Musical Arrangements and Musical Works
• 6 'Completely Absorbed by the Piano'
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index