"Tell the French that there is still one man in Austria who is not subject to them, and that he does not bear any title!" 1806. The great Napoleonic conquests are underway and Austria is now occupied by French troops. One fateful night, while preparing to host a group of the occupying officers, von Lichnowsky requests-and then demands-Beethoven play for his guests to show "what remains of a prince of Austria." But Beethoven is insubordinate, not only towards the victors-these "servants of tyranny"-but towards his own protector who attempts to exploit him. By refusing to play, Ludwig van Beethoven declares himself a free man and would remain such for the rest of his life.

Through an important episode in the life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Régis Penet paints the portrait of a humanist genius who refused to submit to the powerful.

Over the last two centuries, Beethoven's music has been synonymous with the idea of freedom, in particular a freedom embodied in the heroic figure of Prometheus. This image arises from a relatively small circle of heroic works from the composer's middle period, most notably the Eroica Symphony. However, the freedom associated with the Promethean hero has also come under considerably critique by philosophers, theologians and political theorists; its promise of autonomy easily inverts into various forms of authoritarianism, and the sovereign will it champions is not merely a liberating force but a discriminatory one. Beethoven's freedom, then, appears to be increasingly problematic; yet his music is still employed today to mark political events from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the attacks of 9/11. Even more problematic, perhaps, is the fact that this freedom has shaped the reception of Beethoven music to such an extent that we forget that there is another kind of music in his oeuvre that is not heroic, a music that opens the possibility of a freedom yet to be articulated or defined. By exploring the musical philosophy of Theodor W. Adorno through a wide range of the composer's music, Beethoven and Freedom arrives at a markedly different vision of freedom. Author Daniel KL Chua suggests that a more human and fragile concept of freedom can be found in the music that has less to do with the autonomy of the will and its stoical corollary than with questions of human relation, donation, and a yielding to radical alterity. Chua's work makes a major and controversial statement by challenging the current image of Beethoven, and by suggesting an alterior freedom that can speak ethically to the twenty-first century.

Our image of Beethoven has been transformed by the research generated by a succession of scholars and theorists who blazed new trails from the 1960s onwards. This collection of articles written by leading Beethoven scholars brings together strands of this mainly Anglo-American research over the last fifty years and addresses a range of key issues. The volume places Beethoven scholarship within a historical and contemporary context and considers the future of Beethoven studies.

Few composers even begin to approach Beethoven's pervasive presence in modern Western culture, from the concert hall to the comic strip. Edited by a cultural historian and a music theorist, Beethoven and His World gathers eminent scholars from several disciplines who collectively speak to the range of Beethoven's importance and of our perennial fascination with him. The contributors address Beethoven's musical works and their cultural contexts. Reinhold Brinkmann explores the post-revolutionary context of Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony, while Lewis Lockwood establishes a typology of heroism in works like Fidelio. Elaine Sisman, Nicholas Marston, and Glenn Stanley discuss issues of temporality, memory, and voice in works at the threshold of Beethoven's late style, such as An die Ferne Geliebte, the Cello Sonata op. 102, no. 1, and the somewhat later Piano Sonata op. 109. Peering behind the scenes into Beethoven's workshop, Tilman Skowroneck explains how the young Beethoven chose his pianos, and William Kinderman shows Beethoven in the process of sketching and revising his compositions. The volume concludes with four essays engaging the broader question of reception of Beethoven's impact on his world and ours. Christopher Gibbs' study of Beethoven's funeral and its aftermath features documentary material appearing in English for the first time; art historian Alessandra Comini offers an illustrated discussion of Beethoven's ubiquitous and iconic frown; Sanna Pederson takes up the theme of masculinity in critical representations of Beethoven; and Leon Botstein examines the aesthetics and politics of hearing extramusical narratives and plots in Beethoven's music. Bringing together varied and fresh approaches to the West's most celebrated composer, this collection of essays provides music lovers with an enriched understanding of Beethoven--as man, musician, and phenomenon.

Over the last two hundred years, Beethoven's music has been synonymous with modernity's 'absolute' value-freedom. Author Daniel KL Chua explores how Beethoven's music engages with freedom's aspirations and dilemmas, challenging the current image of Beethoven, and suggesting an alterior freedom that can speak ethically to the twenty-first century.

The "Coletânea Internacional Ludwig van Beethoven - Sonata Poética da Liberdade" (Ludwig van Beethoven International Collection - Poetic Sonata of Freedom) is a Tribute to Beethoven in the celebrations of the 250th jubilee of his birth. The work was conceived, produced and organized by the Brazilian journalist and writer Élle Marques, who brought 90 guest authors together. It is a poetic composition that harmonizes around the Conductor's legacy. The authors reinterpret feelings such as "eternal love" and the value of creatures and nature. It is the first international collective poetic work in the world dedicated to the memory of the great German composer. The Poetic Sonata of Freedom was originally produced in Portuguese. English version: Hudson Ribeiro. Mundo Cultural World publishing house, 2021. Contributors: Aldir Carvalho Filho, Silvio Fergon, Amauri Queiroz, Gui Kallifer, Khathleen Evelyn Müller, Ana Paula Cunha, Eduardo Souza, Fábio Roberto

A fascinating and in-depth exploration of how the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and Napoleon shaped Beethoven’s political ideals and inspired his groundbreaking compositions. Beethoven imbibed Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas in his hometown of Bonn, where they were fervently discussed in cafés and at the university. Moving to Vienna at the age of twenty-one to study with Haydn, he gained renown as a brilliant pianist and innovative composer. In that conservative city, capital of the Hapsburg empire, authorities were ever watchful to curtail and punish overt displays of radical political views. Nevertheless, Beethoven avidly followed the meteoric rise of Napoleon. As Napoleon had made strides to liberate Europe from aristocratic oppression, so Beethoven desired to liberate humankind through music. He went beyond the musical forms of Haydn and Mozart, notably in the Eroica Symphony and his opera Fidelio, both inspired by the French Revolution and Napoleon. John Clubbe illuminates Beethoven as a lifelong revolutionary through his compositions, portraits, and writings, and by setting him alongside major cultural figures of the time—among them Schiller, Goethe, Byron, Chateaubriand, and Goya.

Is there a moment in history when a work receives its ideal interpretation? Or is negotiation always required to preserve the past and accommodate the present? The freedom of interpretation, Charles Rosen suggests in these sparkling explorations of music and literature, exists in a delicate balance with fidelity to the identity of the original work. Rosen cautions us to avoid doctrinaire extremes when approaching art of the past. To understand Shakespeare only as an Elizabethan or Jacobean theatergoer would understand him, or to modernize his plays with no sense of what they bring from his age, deforms the work, making it less ambiguous and inherently less interesting. For a work to remain alive, it must change character over time while preserving a valid witness to its earliest state. When twentieth-century scholars transformed Mozart's bland, idealized nineteenth-century image into that of a modern revolutionary expressionist, they paradoxically restored the reputation he had among his eighteenth-century contemporaries. Mozart became once again a complex innovator, challenging to perform and to understand. Drawing on a variety of critical methods, Rosen maintains that listening or reading with intensity-for pleasure-is the one activity indispensable for full appreciation. It allows us to experience multiple possibilities in literature and music, and to avoid recognizing only the revolutionary elements of artistic production. By reviving the sense that works of art have intrinsic merits that bring pleasure, we justify their continuing existence.