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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.

Romanticism in music. --- Musical romanticism --- Romanticism (Music) --- Style, Musical --- Neoromanticism (Music) --- Beethoven, Ludwig van, --- Bītʹhūfin, --- Beethoven, L. van --- Beethoven, Louis van, --- Beethoven, Ludvig van, --- Bethovenas, L., --- Betkhoven, Li︠u︡dvig van, --- Beṭhoṿn, Ludṿig ṿan, --- Beethoven, Ludwik van, --- Betkhoven, L. van --- Bētōven, Rūtovihhi van, --- בטהובן --- בעטהאָוון, לודוויג וואן --- ベートベン, ルートビッヒ, --- 贝多芬, --- Criticism and interpretation. --- Europe --- History --- academic. --- beethoven. --- biographical. --- classical music. --- composer. --- conservative. --- economics. --- famous composer. --- freedom. --- french revolution. --- german composer. --- german ideology. --- german music. --- german musician. --- humanism. --- interdisciplinary. --- liberal. --- music history. --- musical composer. --- musical composition. --- napoleon. --- napoleonic. --- native german. --- native people. --- political commentary. --- political. --- politics. --- progress. --- religious studies. --- revolution. --- revolutionary. --- romantic. --- scholarly.

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Gabriel Fauré’s mélodies offer an inexhaustible variety of style and expression that have made them the foundation of the French art song repertoire. During the second half of his long career, Fauré composed all but a handful of his songs within six carefully integrated cycles. Fauré moved systematically through his poetic contemporaries, exhausting Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal before immersing himself in the Parnassian poets. He would set nine poems by Armand Silvestre in swift succession (1878-84), seventeen by Paul Verlaine (1887-94), and eighteen by Charles Van Lerberghe (1906-14). As an artist deeply engaged with some of the most important cultural issues of the period, Fauré reimagined his musical idiom with each new poet and school, and his song cycles show the same sensitivity to the poetic material. Far more than Debussy, Ravel, or Poulenc, he crafted his song cycles as integrated works, reordering poems freely and using narratives, key schemes, and even leitmotifs to unify the individual songs. The Fauré Song Cycles explores the peculiar vision behind each synthesis of music and verse, revealing the astonishing imagination and insight of Fauré’s musical readings. This book offers not only close readings of Fauré’s musical works but an interdisciplinary study of how he responded to the changing schools and aesthetic currents of French poetry.

Song cycles --- Music and literature --- Songs --- History and criticism. --- History --- Analysis, appreciation. --- Fauré, Gabriel,