Beethoven's Symphonies Arranged for the Chamber: Sociability, Reception, and Canon Formation

Nancy November

jun 2021 · Cambridge University Press

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Early nineteenth-century composers, publishers and writers evolved influential ideals of Beethoven's symphonies as untouchable masterpieces. Meanwhile, many and various arrangements of symphonies, principally for amateur performers, supported diverse and 'hands-on' cultivation of the same works. Now mostly forgotten, these arrangements served a vital function in nineteenth-century musical life, extending works' meanings and reach, especially to women in the home. This book places domestic music-making back into the history of the classical symphony. It investigates a largely untapped wealth of early nineteenth-century arrangements of symphonies by Beethoven - for piano, string quartet, mixed quintet and other ensembles. The study focuses on three key agents in the nineteenth-century culture of musical arrangement: arrangers, publishers and performers. It investigates significant functions of those musical arrangements in the era: sociability, reception and canon formation. The volume also explores how conceptions of Beethoven's symphonies, and their arrangement, changed across the era with changing conception of musical works.

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Nancy November is Associate Professor in musicology at the University of Auckland. Recent publications include Beethoven's Theatrical Quartets: Opp. 59, 74, and 95 (2013); a three-volume set of fifteen string quartets by Beethoven's contemporary Emmanuel Aloys Förster (2016); Cultivating String Quartets in Beethoven's Vienna (Boydell Press, 2017) and the Cambridge Companion to the Eroica Symphony (Cambridge, 2020). She is the recipient of a Humboldt Fellowship; and two Marsden Grants from the New Zealand Royal Society.