Nico Narrates Audiobooks: Beethoven after Napoleon

Political Romanticism in the Late Works

Available worldwide

Hardcover, 304 pages

ISBN: 9780520238558

August 2004

$60.00, £41.95

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In this provocative analysis of Beethoven's late style, Stephen Rumph demonstrates how

deeply political events shaped the composer's music, from his early enthusiasm for the

French Revolution to his later entrenchment during the Napoleonic era. Impressive in

its breadth of research as well as for its devotion to interdisciplinary work in music

history,Beethoven after Napoleon challenges accepted views by illustrating the influence

of German Romantic political thought in the formation of the artist's mature style.

Beethoven's political views, Rumph argues, were not quite as liberal as many have

assumed. While scholars agree that the works of the Napoleonic era such as the

Eroica Symphony or Fidelio embody enlightened, revolutionary ideals of progress,

freedom, and humanism, Beethoven's later works have attracted less political commentary.

Rumph contends that the later works show clear affinities with a native German ideology

that exalted history, religion, and the organic totality of state and society. He claims

that as the Napoleonic Wars plunged Europe into political and economic turmoil,

Beethoven's growing antipathy to the French mirrored the experience of his Romantic

contemporaries. Rumph maintains that Beethoven's turn inward is no pessimistic retreat

but a positive affirmation of new conservative ideals.