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Summary
Summary
"All men become brothers . . .
Be embraced, ye millions!"
The Ninth Symphony, a symbol of freedom and joy, was Beethoven's mightiest attempt to help humanity find its way from darkness to light, from chaos to peace. Yet the work was born in a repressive era, with terrified Bourbons, Hapsburgs, and Romanovs using every means at their disposal to squelch populist rumblings in the wake of the French Revolution and Napoleon's wars. Ironically, the premiere of this hymn to universal brotherhood took place in Vienna, the capital of a nation that Metternich was turning into the first modern police state.
The Ninth's unveiling, on May 7, 1824, was the most significant artistic event of the year, and the work remains one of the most precedent-shattering and influential compositions in the history of music--a reference point and inspiration that resonates even today. But in The Ninth, eminent music historian Harvey Sachs demonstrates that Beethoven was not alone in his discontent with the state of the world. Lord Byron died in 1824 during an attempt to free Greece from the domination of the Ottoman empire; Delacroix painted a masterpiece in support of that same cause; Pushkin, suffering at the hands of an autocratic czar, began to draft his anti-authoritarian play Boris Godunov; and Stendhal and Heine wrote works that mocked conventional ways of thinking.
The Ninth Symphony was so unorthodox that it amazed and confused listeners at its premiere--described by Sachs in vibrant detail--yet it became a standard for subsequent generations of creative artists, and its composer came to embody the Romantic cult of genius. In this unconventional, provocative new book, Beethoven's masterwork becomes a prism through which we may view the politics, aesthetics, and overall climate of the era.
Part biography, part history, part memoir, The Ninth brilliantly explores the intricacies of Beethoven's last symphony--how it brought forth the power of the individual while celebrating the collective spirit of humanity.
Author Notes
Harvey Sachs is a writer and music historian and the author or co-author of eight previous books, of which there have been more than fifty editions in fifteen languages. He has written for The New Yorker and many other publications, has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and is currently on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He lives in New York City.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Beethoven wasn't always a cultural icon. At least one critic attending the 1824 premiere of his Symphony No. 9 in D Minor likened what he heard to a "hideously writhing wounded dragon." Just why the composer and his works endure is the question behind this absorbing book by music historian Sachs (Toscanini). Through detailed musical analysis and condensed readings of cultural politics and 19th-century history, Sachs ponders "what role so-called high culture played, plays, and ought to play in civilization." Using the year 1824 and the premiere of the Ninth as ground zero, Sachs reviews the literary, artistic, and social movements of the time, noting how Beethoven's innovative symphony (the first with a vocal score) and its themes of equality and redemption no doubt challenged the resurgent conservatism among Europe's monarchies. Sachs places Beethoven alongside Pushkin, Byron, and other prominent romantics, whose talents he finds linked to a common quest for freedoms-political, artistic, and "above all of the mind and spirit." After first presenting the Ninth as a Viennese social event and then as emblematic of Beethoven's artistic process, Sachs shines with a close reading of the Ninth's musical score, interpreting its techniques and emotive narrative. Readers will want a recording nearby. In the book's last chapter, Sachs deals with the impact and legacy of Beethoven's masterwork and explains what makes his music universal. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
On May 7, 1824, the premier of Beethoven's ninth and last symphony pushed symphonic music into Romanticism. Napoleon had been overthrown. Byron, Pushkin, and Stendhal had advanced poetry and prose fiction; Delacroix, painting. Maturing as such political and artistic ferment mounted, Beethoven had discovered the Ode to Joy of Romantic literary forefather Friedrich Schiller 30 years earlier and employed it to sum up his art. Sachs discusses each movement of the Ninth in detail, from the terror and despair of the first to the anger and acceptance in the second to the peace of the third. The fourth begins with quotations from the its predecessors. Then, the bass vocal soloist interrupts to launch the movement into joy and hope. The Ninth influenced all subsequent nineteenth-century composers, who from Berlioz to Meyerbeer to Wagner built upon the foundations laid by Beethoven. This discussion of the cornerstone of Romantic music, whose influence extended deep into the twentieth century, is concise, thorough, and written from the heart of a great biographer, musicologist, and lover of fine music.--Hirsch, Alan Copyright 2010 Booklist
Choice Review
In this subjective, descriptive, semi-fictional work, Sachs presents the cultural context of the Ninth Symphony's creation and looks at its impact through the years. Beginning in 1824, when the symphony premiered, the author provides biographical sketches and evaluations of works by selected contemporaneous writers and artists, including Byron, Stendhal, Pushkin, Heine, and Delacroix. He finds, in Beethoven and all of these individuals, a shared spirit of Romantic rebellion and urge for freedom. Interspersed into the book's nonlinear, digressive historical parts are references to Beethoven's biography, a quick history of European art music, and a fictional monologue by the composer. In analyzing the Ninth, Sachs provides a blow-by-blow account of musical events in nontechnical terms, but makes no attempt to convey the symphony's forms or styles. The lack of bibliography and numbered footnotes makes the book untenable as a scholarly resource. Academic readers should turn instead to Beethoven and His World, ed. by Scott Burnham and Michael Steinberg (2000); Stephen Rumph's Beethoven after Napoleon (CH, Dec'04, 42-2130); or Lewis Lockwood's biography Beethoven: The Music and the Life (CH, May'03, 40-5129)--or, for analysis of the Ninth, to Nicolas Cook's Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (1993) or David Levy's Beethoven: The Ninth Symphony (CH, Oct'95, 33-0838). Summing Up: Optional. General readers only. A. M. Hanson St. Olaf College
Guardian Review
Norman Lebrecht has been tweeting the virtues of his book on Mahler so vigorously in the past month that I was unusually keen to trash it. I also had something of a personal score to settle. In 2002 we were both in Vienna to hear millionaire Mahler fanatic Gilbert Kaplan record the Second Symphony - Kaplan is obsessed by this work - with the Vienna Philharmonic. Lebrecht gave me a lift in his taxi back to the airport after the recording session, and even paid the fare. What he didn't tell me, this immensely civilised but sharp-elbowed music journalist, was that he'd already filed his article, beating me hollow. For all that, I find I can't do it. This is a most peculiar enterprise which mixes biography, travelogue, CD guide and rather too much autobiography (I came to dread the words "the situation is personally familiar"), yet the sheer exuberance of the writing makes you forgive the lack of organisation and the decision to write the book in the present tense, which Lebrecht justifies on the grounds that Mahler is "a man of my own time". He has been labouring over this extended love letter for four decades, becoming close friends with the composer's daughter Anna, treating the great man as his artistic talisman, in awe of Mahler's determination to expose life in all its rawness in his music. At times Lebrecht's adoration becomes ludicrous. "To know Mahler is, ultimately, to know ourselves," he writes in his overwrought introduction. "Mahler's resilience is a source of courage in my times of adversity and hope in my depressions," he says in his equally overheated conclusion. But, in between, the narrative hums along, breathless, information-packed, aspiring perhaps to the pulse of music rather than the plod of prose. Lebrecht offers excellent broadbrush readings of the 10 symphonies, gives a full (at times too full) account of Mahler's career as a conductor - if he had never composed a note, his place in musical history would have been secure for this alone - and explores his unsettled private life as the child of a loveless marriage whose own young wife Alma then cuckolded him. Lebrecht also shows how Mahler's Jewishness contributed both to his driven personality and to his perception of himself as an outsider. Whereas all the other giants of Austro-German music are buried in Vienna's central cemetery, Mahler's grave is on the outskirts at Grinzing, chosen because it was close to the house where he had wooed Alma, was near the open country he adored and lay outside Vienna, which Lebrecht labels a "nostalgia factory". Mahler's importance is that he straddles two musical worlds: he was born, in 1860, in the age of high romanticism but was at his most productive in the first decade of the 20th century at a time of artistic revolution; he expanded both the scale and range of the symphony. "The symphony is like the world, it must encompass everything," he told Sibelius, a formalist who didn't buy his argument at all. On the whole, I would side with the Finn, preferring Sibelian structure to Mahlerian messiness, but it is testimony to the energetic advocacy of this collection that it makes me urgently want to give Mahler another go. Harvey Sachs's book about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is also something of a hybrid, again with rather too much about the author's personal musical odyssey, and without the stylistic sparkiness that encourages the reader to forgive such digressions. Faber have given it a duller cover and smaller type than Lebrecht, and after the leaden opening chapter covering Beethoven's life - the traditional image of deaf, cantankerous, money-obsessed genius who in his final decade ushers in a brave new soundworld emerges - I was all for tossing it out of the nearest window. But happily things improve once Sachs's purpose becomes clear: this is not primarily a book about Beethoven's Choral Symphony, but about 1824, the year it was premiered, and the point at which artists began to stand up to - or at least issue pointed commentaries on - Europe's repressive governments. Sachs provides mini-biogs of Byron (who died fighting to liberate Greece in 1824), Pushkin, Stendhal, Heine and others from an artistic generation which was, in his words, learning to "internalise revolution". None of the analysis is especially profound and the writing is at best workmanlike, but the point is well made: as diplomats developed their deadening "Concert of Europe", artists were striving for a different conception of the future, embodied above all in Beethoven's hymn to universal brotherhood. As he warms to his theme of art's war with stupidity and self-interest, Sachs indulges in some Lebrechtian ecstasy. "Until our sorry species bombs or gluts itself into oblivion," he writes, "the skirmishing will continue, and what Beethoven and company keep telling us, from the ever-receding yet ever-present past, is that the struggle must continue." I'm not sure this is hugely helpful in understanding Beethoven's music, but one must admit it is a rather inspiring sentiment. To order Why Mahler? for pounds 13.99 or The Ninth for pounds 9.99, both with free UK p&p, call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846. - Stephen Moss [Harvey Sachs] provides mini-biogs of Byron (who died fighting to liberate Greece in 1824), Pushkin, Stendhal, Heine and others from an artistic generation which was, in his words, learning to "internalise revolution". None of the analysis is especially profound and the writing is at best workmanlike, but the point is well made: as diplomats developed their deadening "Concert of Europe", artists were striving for a different conception of the future, embodied above all in Beethoven's hymn to universal brotherhood. As he warms to his theme of art's war with stupidity and self-interest, Sachs indulges in some Lebrechtian ecstasy. "Until our sorry species bombs or gluts itself into oblivion," he writes, "the skirmishing will continue, and what [Beethoven] and company keep telling us, from the ever-receding yet ever-present past, is that the struggle must continue." I'm not sure this is hugely helpful in understanding Beethoven's music, but one must admit it is a rather inspiring sentiment. - Stephen Moss.
Kirkus Review
The year 1824, viewed through the lens of Beethoven's final symphonya mix of cultural history, memoir and musicology. Former conductor Sachs (Music History/Curtis Institute of Music; The Letters of Arturo Toscanini, 2002, etc.) leaves no doubt of his intentions, declaring immediately that the Ninth is "one of the most precedent-shattering and influential compositions in the history of music." Following a brief laudatory prelude, the author describes a recent visit to the building where Beethoven was living when the piece premiered in Vienna on May 7, 1824, and then reconstructs that pivotal evening, writing with informed confidence about the vast demands of the piece on musicians and noting sadly that the theater no longer stands. In a bold, perhaps foolhardy, move, the author ventures briefly into Beethoven's mind, imagining his thoughtse.g, "Even if my green frock coat were covered in shit it would be to good for the sniveling Viennese." Fortunately, Sachs quickly abandons this device, sticking thereafter to what he knows and feels, which is more than sufficient. He sketches Beethoven's family history, summarizes the complexities of post-Napoleonic Europe (taking a shot at historian Eric Hobsbawm) and glances at the lives and achievements of contemporaries, including Byron, Pushkin, Delacroix, Stendahl and Heine. Sachs then provides a long, personal response to each of the symphony's four movements, sections that engage not for their practical valuewe learn few specificsbut for the passion and affection that inform every phrase. The author ends with a discussion about how Beethoven influenced some noted contemporariesfrom Schubert to Rossiniand with deeply personal comments about how Beethoven has affected his own life since boyhood. A fan's noteseloquent, erudite, passionate and musical. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
The Ninth Symphony is not just one of greatest musical masterpieces of all time-it was also Beethoven's evocation of the prerevolutionary climate of 1824, a time of unrest and yearning for personal freedom. With that seminal hymn, he brilliantly captured that tension while also celebrating humanity's collective spirit. Here, Sachs (Curtis Inst. of Music, Philadelphia) puts the composition into historical context, packing his writing with down-to-earth humor and including candid reactions of other artists to Beethoven's work and influence. The numerous European accents actor Patrick Egan employs (e.g., Lord Byron) are appropriately grand and glorious and enhance the overall listening experience. For anyone liking biographies and for all students and enthusiasts of music and history. ["A thought-provoking, broadly based, well-informed discussion that should appeal to well-educated general readers as well as music specialists," read the review of the Random hc, LJ 1/10.-Ed.]-Susan G. Baird, formerly with Oak Lawn P.L., IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Prelude | p. 3 |
| Part 1 A Grand Symphony with Many Voices | p. 7 |
| Part 2 1824, or How Artists Internalize Revolution | p. 59 |
| Part 3 Imagining the Ninth | p. 113 |
| Part 4 To Begin Anew | p. 163 |
| Postlude | p. 195 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 201 |
| Notes | p. 203 |
| Illustration Credits | p. 213 |
| Index | p. 215 |
