For scholars of reception, developments over the last two decades in source identification, organization, accessibility, and dissemination have been godsends. Whereas researchers in the twentieth century (and before) had to travel to access sources or settle for microfiche, microfilm, or other less-than-ideal reproductions of the original materials – with all options usually costing considerable time and money – today an enormous amount of material is available with the click of a mouse. Consider the results of inputting ‘Mozart’ into the search bar of ANNO, the digital collection of the Austrian National Library. Over 290,000 results appear, each available to the user as a high-resolution, free-to-download document whose text can be efficiently searched and copied thanks to advanced OCR technology. And ANNO’s collection of books, daily newspapers, specialized journals, concert programmes, and other memorabilia in dozens of languages, culled from the holdings of one of Europe’s most comprehensive libraries, is available for free, anywhere in the world. With the addition of digital repositories like the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s Gallica and the Bavarian State Library’s Munich DigitiZation Center, the whole of modern European history is open for review.

Given his decades-long résumé featuring work on W.A. Mozart and other figures active in the second half of the long eighteenth century, Simon P. Keefe may be one of a handful of authors to write a longitudinal history without the support of these digital tools. Indeed, his Haydn and Mozart in the Long Nineteenth Century: Parallel and Intersecting Patterns of Reception draws on a dizzying array of sources to determine

The general thrust of Haydn and Mozart in the long nineteenth century will be familiar to most scholars of the period, but the details might not. In particular, Keefe complements the typical ‘serious’ sources about these two men with ‘popularly oriented materials and imaginative fiction’ (p. 11). The presence of these sources speaks to the even wider impact of Haydn and Mozart on the nineteenth century than previously known, while validating such materials appropriate for scholarly inquiry invites new methodological and interpretive practices.

Keefe emphasizes that Haydn and Mozart never needed a revival; rather, their individual and overlapping stories underwent constant renewal.Footnote ¹ This process is already evident in the period 1792–1810, explored in Chapter 1, through all of which Mozart was dead, and for most of which Haydn was alive. While the ‘greatness’ of each was ‘complementary’ and ‘intertwined’ throughout those two decades, Keefe first shows how interest in Mozart’s music took off in the 1790s before focusing on 1798–1800, a pivotal three years that saw the first issue of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, the first hearing of The Creation and the first substantial (and frequently cribbed) biography and anecdotes about Mozart (p. 17). The serendipitous alignment of an engaging life, a major musical event and an ambitious and critical establishment ‘suited to nascent romantic sensibilities’ meant that Haydn and Mozart were front and centre in the European musical imagination in equal measure well into the early nineteenth century (p. 36). But by the time of Haydn’s death in 1809, Mozart had clearly pulled ahead in what had been a constantly changing lead for the title of ‘best’ composer, despite the enormous reach of Haydn’s reputation and the impact of The Creation. Keefe ascribes Mozart’s ascendancy not to anything that he did (or did not do), but rather to the ‘powerful factual and fictional cocktail of life, work, and death characterizing Mozart’s end’ (p. 42).

Beethoven’s appearance severely disrupted this binary, with most critics subordinating Haydn and Mozart to him. Nevertheless, the 1810s and 1820s (the focus of Chapter 2) remained ‘a period of considerable (and previously unrecognized) biographical growth for them’ (p. 49). To be sure, the Hegelian approach to history taken by critics like E.T.A. Hoffmann, Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Amadeus Wendt and A.B. Marx meant that Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven had to be fitted into a hierarchy, but Keefe identifies several contemporary sources linking ‘musical outputs and achievements usually without recourse to qualitative distinctions’ (p. 54). Wilhelm von Humboldt, Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, August Kanne, an unnamed author of a substantial review in the Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review from 1826, François-Joseph Fétis and Castil-Blaze all asserted complementary, rather than hierarchical, relationships among the triumvirate. Just as critical to these organizational vacillations, which often hinged on assessments of a selected slice of each composer’s musical output, were the biographies, anecdotes and consciously fictional accounts that explored the lives, loves and losses of Haydn and Mozart. Keefe makes a valiant effort to keep Haydn in the spotlight for this part of the chapter, but it is clear that the older composer lost major ground to Mozart, especially once Georg Nikolaus von Nissen’s biography appeared in 1828 (pp. 66–83). Drawing on an unparalleled cache of letters, Nissen’s work, flawed though it was, allowed Mozart to speak ‘for himself with a profundity, insight, and level of detail well beyond anything previously encountered’, and in a far more personal way than Haydn or Beethoven could achieve at the time (p. 83).

Despite the allure of such a dynamic personality on the Romantic generation, Haydn also had his moments. Chapter 3, which covers 1831–1860, brings an exploration of how ‘[r]eputational markers’ like birth and death anchored the earliest anniversaries and commemorations (p. 91). The fiftieth anniversary of Mozart’s death saw multi-day events in Vienna and Salzburg, but also Budapest and Prague. Keefe cites the elaborate festivities in Salzburg as jumpstarting ‘a veritable industry of Mozart admiration, contemplation, performance and scholarship’ that surely influenced similar commemorations of other musical figures (p. 97). And while the festivities connected to Haydn anniversaries were more muted, Keefe provides plenty of evidence to show that Haydn’s presence was widespread, even if arguably more in the critical imagination than on the conductor’s podium or chamber musician’s stand. That imagination was put to good use by writers like Heribert Rau, whose cultural-historical novel Mozart: Ein Künstlerleben (1858) eclipsed in popularity the more scholarly efforts of Alexandre Oulibicheff and Otto Jahn; and with Haydn a pivotal figure in the work, Rau also advanced tropes of Haydn’s societal perseverance, commitment to his art, and lasting achievement (p. 120). Keefe shows how other quasi-biographical and even purely fictional publications emphasized similar ‘virtues and values’ (p. 122) to which a contemporary reader might readily aspire (p. 122).

As chronological distance grew, however, these attitudes changed. Of the two, Haydn’s ‘relevance to contemporary and non-musical life’ was increasingly challenged between 1861–1890, the subject of Chapter 4 (p. 134). But at the same time, scholarship on Haydn settled on firmer ground, first with Constant von Wurzbach in 1861 and especially Carl Ferdinand Pohl’s two-volume biography of 1875 and 1882. The surge in Haydn scholarship reopened the generation-old debate of whether Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven should be remembered complementarily or hierarchically in terms of achievement and impact. Meanwhile, Köchel’s groundbreaking catalogue of Mozart’s compositions (1862), the second edition of Jahn’s biography (1867) and the Complete Works Edition (1876–1883) of over 13,000 pages inundated the public, further reinforcing the popular image of Mozart as a man who lived (and died) only for music. Not surprisingly, ‘a golden period for Haydn and Mozart fiction’ ensued, although each piece that Keefe explores seems to have exaggerated and extended earlier characterizations further and further – almost as if the maximalization of compositional techniques and processes found in the music of Mahler and Scriabin had infiltrated the biographical enterprise (p. 163).

Yet the anniversaries flanking the fin de siècle demonstrate that ‘the respective positions of Haydn and Mozart in the musical world were more similar than at any stage since the 1790s’ (p. 223). Chapter 5, which addresses these commemorations, thus comes full circle. The reputations of two composers were helped by a flurry of scholarship. Haydn finally ‘caught up’ to Mozart, thanks to the appearance in 1898 of a translation of Haydn’s notebooks from his first London visit, the initiation of a Complete Works Edition in 1907, and a reassessment of Haydn’s time at Eszterhazá as ‘servitude transformed into a beneficial early twentieth-century (imagined) opportunity’ – all of which helped to pave the way for the introduction of several previously unknown works into the public eye (p. 189). Likewise, Mozart celebrations reiterated his contemporary relevance, with Keefe arguing for the 1906 anniversary as an audacious, experimental enterprise that offset the rather ho-hum events connected to the centennial of the composer’s death. Indeed, performances of Mozart’s works in the first years of the twentieth century reflected a collective ‘urge to refine, contextualize, and deepen understandings of his stylistic and historical position, implicitly encouraging listeners to contemplate Mozart’s achievements at least partially through comparison with other music [e.g., Beethoven, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák]’ (p. 210).

Throughout the chapter, Keefe emphasizes that the focus on Haydn and Mozart in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries should be understood as an ‘intensification’ of existing practices and concerns rather than a ‘self-conscious “revival”’ (p. 186). Haydn and Mozart in the Long Nineteenth Century certainly makes a strong case for that argument, as Keefe’s tireless mining of published criticism, scholarship, and literature brings many new voices to light, with names running from the extremely well known to the completely anonymous. But how to vet those voices? For the most part, Keefe does not play favourites; his comments on his sources are generally hermeneutically anodyne. Yet the introduction of less-standard sources of reception also invites questions that Keefe, ostensibly due to the book’s rigid historical throughline, does not seek to answer. Take the issue of audience. On pages 124–125, Keefe discusses Eduard Mörike’s novella, Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag (1855), and Elizabeth Fries Ellet’s short story, ‘Mozart’s Last Visit to Doles’, published 13 years earlier. Keefe admits that Ellet’s work ‘anticipates’ Mörike’s in several respects, which raises questions of influence. But the appearance of Ellet’s story in an American women’s magazine ‘devoted to literature and the fine arts’ also raises questions concerning the circulation of stories about Mozart’s life and works in parlours and other bourgeois spaces.

Jumping from source to source so quickly (especially in the earlier chapters) can also give the reader pause. The Ellet short story, for instance, appeared in the February 1842 issue of The Ladies’ Companion with the title, ‘Original./MOZART’S LAST VISIT TO DOLES.*/a leaf from the journal of a musical student./by mrs. e. f. ellet’.Footnote ² The asterisk refers to a footnote that reads, ‘Translated from the German’. Keefe ascribes the story to Ellet, but the original publication suggests that she may have served as translator – not author – of an untraced European original.Footnote ³ (Even if this turned out to be inaccurate, the issue of transnational circulation vis-à-vis Haydn and Mozart reception is one that Keefe’s research also calls to mind.) Relatedly, additional guidance in Keefe’s footnotes could help with clarity. On page 61, Keefe justifies the argument that ‘even Italians, who rarely compared German masters, put Haydn and Mozart together at the top’ by citing a page in the short-lived Viennese Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. This citation might seem curious until one learns that the article title, which Keefe does not provide, is ‘Musikalischer Bericht aus Mailand’.Footnote ⁴ At times, Keefe’s reporting style inadvertently turns opinion or aspiration into fact. He observes, for instance, that ‘Mozart, already a German cultural phenomenon by 1811, was said to transcend poor performances through the intrinsic qualities of his music and popped up everywhere from North and South America to India’ (p. 47). Excitement of a newly discovered Mozart performance in India in the 1810s turns to disappointment, however, when the original report in the (Leipzig) Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung is consulted: ‘And that Mozart’s works will migrate to India is not to be doubted’ (‘Und dass [die Werke Mozarts] nun, von hier aus, auch nach Indien wandern werden, ist gar nicht zu bezweifeln’).Footnote ⁵

Readers will not find substantive information on the reception of Haydn’s and Mozart’s compositions in Keefe’s book. To be sure, The Creation and the Requiem factor heavily into the fashioning of their respective reputations, particularly through about 1810. Yet Keefe mentions other works in passing, such as Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor or Haydn’s quartets, whose presence in nineteenth-century concert halls and salons could further flesh out patterns of reception. At the very least, reproducing these and other mentioned items on the page – like the curious trifle, Mozart’s Celebrated Oxen Waltz, or the statues erected in Salzburg and BerlinFootnote ⁶ – could have added some welcome contrast, as Keefe’s book includes neither musical examples, images, tables, nor other types of illustrative materials.

Taken as a whole, Haydn and Mozart in the Long Nineteenth Century is an excellent survey of a transformational period of reception. Pushing back against the knee-jerk reaction that Haydn and Mozart have always been part of classical music’s discourse because of their inherent greatness, Keefe shows that their fates were intimately bound to changing notions of celebrity, new forms of criticism and life writing and aggressive processes of cultural and economic commodification. Telling this story properly requires a deft researcher not only able to turn over every (digital) document, but also willing to let in sources that usually fall outside of academic interest. In doing so, ‘we begin to experience vibrant, three-dimensional composers reinvented for a new era’ – whether ours or that of a distant past, whether Haydn and Mozart or the composers and musicians indebted to their legacy (p. 130).