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23 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
She starts with her conclusion and then works backwards, December 21, 2001
This review is from: Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792-1803 (Hardcover)
It's tempting to start this review by saying sociologists should stay away from musical topics, at least if they can't appreciate music, and I mean *appreciate* rather than "enjoy." But maybe a fairer criticism would be if you're going to upset the apple cart this much, you'd really better have a sturdier theory than Tina DeNora has here. DeNora is a sociologist at the University of Exeter, and she thinks Beethoven's genius was constructed by society. She says Beethoven's place in the musical firmament was a result of certain aspiring elite aristocrats of the time having a predilection for Beethoven's "difficult" music in an attempt at social one-upmanship and wanting to use him to advance their own standing in Vienna. To put it simply, Ludwig was at the right place at the right time, he had the luck. There is no analysis of the music itself in this book, because she has decided it is irrelevant. I'm not kidding. DeNora would likely argue that our criteria for "greatness" have been pre-determined by the very elements that we then go into a "great work" looking for. The aesthetics of criticism are a social construct, and so is the music; therefore it's no wonder the two fit together so well. Music criticism is taste writ large, that's all. (Sociology, on the other hand, is not subject to these social tastes and trends, of course.) Actually, I felt upon approaching this book there may be something to her argument. As Michael Walsh jokingly and insightfully remarked in his book Who's Afraid of Classical Music, "Ludwig 'Rights o' Man' Beethoven was always sucking up to royalty in his dedications." It's hard to deny: he knew who buttered his bread. It's easy to view talent, especially when from the distant past, in a vacuum that we don't extend to the present. In today's world I find myself wondering, for just one example, if a fine but unremarkable actress such as Gwyneth Paltrow would be where she is were her mother not Blythe Danner and her father not a prominent TV producer who is good buddies with Steven Spielberg. Is it any coincidence that Gwyneth's first role was in a Spielberg film, Hook? So what does DeNora say? After several chapters on the state of the aristocracy and aristocratic taste of the time--chapters I enjoyed and am not prepared to defend or debunk--she focuses relentlessly on the famous quote about Beethoven from Count Waldstein, saying he would go forth to receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn. DeNora argues, repeatedly, (she seems to think that by repeating a groundless assertion she can make it stick) that this statement played a huge role in elevating Beethoven to greatness in the minds of the Viennese aristocracy. Of course this begs the question how did Mozart and Haydn achieve *their* reputations? Sure Beethoven understood how he could benefit socially from the patronage of Haydn--he'd have to be an idiot not to understand it--but seeing it solely on those simplistic terms ignores the fact that he was innovating, and that except for Mozart and Haydn, his rough contemporaries were not. DeNora seems to make a big deal out of this factoid, saying these other composers who have come down to us as "lesser lights" were thrown on their own as freelancers because they lacked Beethoven's connections (while giving us no real evidence that this is in fact the reason they "went commercial" and he succeeded as a serious artist). She conveniently ignores the fact that Schubert had no connections, yet has also come down to us as a "great composer" whose works have continuously endured. Hummel's sonatas, written around the same time as Beethoven's and Schubert's, show just how far ahead of their time Beethoven and Schubert were. But this is not mentioned. Since DeNora by her own admission cannot read or analyze music, there is no way she could talk intelligently about it. The next time I need an opinion on heart surgery or home repair, I'll be sure to talk to a sociologist instead of a physician or a contractor. Furthermore DeNora either underplays or seems unaware of the reputation of Mozart, of how his music--especially that which was later ranked as the greatest of his works--was also considered difficult well into the 19th century. Beethoven himself singled out the fifth "Haydn" quartet of Mozart and said that in this work Mozart was showing to the world what he could do if only they were ready for it. Of course, some of Beethoven's patrons had also been Mozart's, but this shows the idea of serious music did not begin with Beethoven, and this makes her thesis about changing tastes in the aristocracy weaker. But DeNora's argument spectacularly self-destructs on page 119. She describes the first time pianist Gelinek competed with a young Beethoven in a duel in 1793. Gelinek expressed confidence he would destroy Beethoven--make mincemeat of him by one account. The next day the father of the person telling the tale asks Gelinek how he did and the pianist admitted he was the one pulverized. Keep in mind he did not know of Beethoven or his reputation before the duel. You'd think DeNora would see this as a strike against her thesis, but she actually says (p. 121): "First, whatever Galinek thought of Beethoven is less relevant in this context [!!] than the ways his conversations were converted subsequently into topics in their own right--material for further discussion within the music world." Never mind that this person who never heard Beethoven before and was unaware of his reputation, by DeNora's own admission, was blown away and humbled, what matters is how the result elevated Beethoven's position, as though that were somehow a social injustice. It never occurs to her that perhaps it elevated his position because it was deserved! But she doesn't stop there: "Once again, we see that Beethoven's reputation *can be conceived of as the accumulation of a repertoire of recorded, publicized stories about his talent.* [emphasis mine, out of disbelief] She goes on: "In telling the story of Beethoven's talent, Gelinek positioned himself as subordinate to Beethoven (as a less talented but admiring colleague); thus Galinek testified to and helped to publicize a favorable view of Beethoven's talent by aligning his own abilities as inferior to Beethoven's." What is one to make of this idiocy? DeNora never for a moment considers that perhaps Gelinek simply **believed** what he said, that Beethoven was the greater artist. I think it's obvious she reached her conclusion before she began and worked backwards, determined to cram every fact she uncovered into her theory even if she had to pound the loose ends down with a sledgehammer. Musicologist and pianist Charles Rosen, in a rebuttal shortly after the DeNora book was published, commented that an ethnomusicologist once told him there surely must be hundreds of "Eroica" symphonies that we just don't know about, written by unknown geniuses galore. As Rosen points out, we do indeed know many if not most of the works of Beethoven's contemporaries; many have been analyzed, revived and recorded. They do not come close to Beethoven in originality, breadth of thought, or structural sophistication. But DeNora, like so many revisionists with an agenda, loses her finely-honed sense of skepticism when dealing with alternative interpretations to events. Then she really tips her hand: "While these programs [of cannonic revisionism] obviously vary in levels of ambition, they share a concern with the ways exclusive or 'high' cultural forms are both inaccessible and inappropriate to the lived experience of a large proportion of the people to whom they are upheld as inspirational." That astonishing remark could be interpreted in ways ranging from merely patronizing to racist, and it sets DeNora up as a sort of cultural arbiter herself. *Inappropriate?* Says who? Inappropriate to whom? And why? After all this, there is still one remaining gripe, and that is DeNora?s writing style. It is repetitious in the extreme. She really has a thin point, and takes well over 200 pages to make it. This book could have been a magazine article or two- or three-part series in a journal. It would have been just as stupid, but at the expense of fewer trees. As it is, this is literally one of the two worst books dealing with music I have ever read.
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24 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
An astonishing thesis that disregards the music!, October 10, 1998
Are we really to believe that the music of this man does not speak for itself? Was it really his "political connections" and "who he knew" that led to his success in 19th century Vienna? Are there really other Beethovens running around out there who just haven't gotten a break. A nice parlor exercise perhaps, but really.....how about a serious listen to what he actually wrote down! What I am suggesting is a serious listen. Why, for example, does his work seem to have a much higher density of sheer thought (form if you like) than that of any other composer? Why are his thematic constructs so intellectually exhilarating as well as emotionally moving? Why does he exemplify the most startling development of style of almost anyone you can think of in the arts? What is it about his almost extra-material universal appeal? Listen to the music. Maybe the answers are found there.
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8 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Yes, genius alone is not enough., April 3, 2004
If it was true for Michelangelo and the Medicis, why not for Beethoven and the Lichnowskys, Lobkowitz and other "Medicis" of his time? In fact it's odd that a book like this one, about so obvious a fact should be written at all. The underlying thesis is super-well known in the N.T. (Matthew 13:4): "And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.." As clearly expressed by historian Arnold Toynbee society is not made by human beings but by the RELATIONS between them. For a collection of people is only a crowd, not a society. Jacob Bronowski applied this same thesis in explaining the social essence of modern science, where individual discovery is framed - fostered and checked - by social dynamics. If "revelation" takes place in science is only because it makes sense to the scientific community in being a proved representation of reality. On the other hand, discovery of factual reality is eagerly pursued by every member of it. "Quest" and "production" of knowledge go hand in hand in science, we know that; we only have to add that such quest and production is a SOCIAL phenomenon. Otherwise scientific products would be "filling the walls", like pictures in a museum, where "everything is valid" or "beautiful", being the quest and production of mere individuals that might not need to address or fulfill any social demand or inspiration. This is the problem of Art when regarded as a strictly individual task, where every quest or production can be beautiful and /or useless at the same time. That modern Art is indivitualistic to the extreme, there can be no doubt about it. But what about Beethoven? And what about Beethoven's society? This is a book that PROVES - yes, no speculation, full of fresh DATA about performance, audiences, and general musical activity in 18th and beginning of 19th century Vienna - how SOCIALLY bound was Beethoven's art,with no downplaying of Beethoven EVER -if you've followed my argument. For if you think, like me, that Beethoven'art is GREAT, then it must have necessarily been meaningful to the society of his time. But on the other hand, it must have been the end and succesful result of a SOCIAL QUEST or demand (therefore it's social meaning). The highly disturbing fact for us, today, is that such high aspirations that led to such a great art could not come from "everyone". They were, as in 15th century Florence the aspiration of a MINORITY of men, like the creative minorities of Toynbee's theory of civilizations. Of course, to talk like this is nowadays political incorrect. We like, for instance, to picture the French Revolution as a popular, people-led social movement, when in fact it was really started, ironically, by the French avant-garde intellectual aristocracy. Same with Beethoven: who has not heard, even once, the ode-to-joy tune or the beginning of the Fifth Symphony? That's "popular" Beethoven. Then add to this the Christ-like, rejected-by-society - romantic, to be precise - image of the lone creator guided by his sole divine inspiration and you have the whole picture we like to hang on our walls. This is the artist as the crucified and yet savior of humanity. In the "classic" (Greek), more real picture, the most excellent men (aristoi) achieve the most excelent deeds. As wonderfully stated by Ortega y Gasset: "Nobility is conquered, not inherited." Classical Greece, Renaissance Florence and Beethoven's Vienna are three magnificent examples of how sublime greatness in man is factually achieved through history. Make no mistake, don't miss the point. This is not a book about music or "sociology". It's sheer fact that, probably, will open your eyes!
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