The chapter examines Beethoven’s encounter with the Catholic Enlightenment in the lands of the Bohemian crown, where his music had been widely known as early as the 1790s. Since the eighteenth century, linguistic issues, as championed by Bohemia’s Catholic Enlightenment, were key to addressing local questions of nationality and societal progress. Central to these debates were the teachings of Bernhard Bolzano. A priest, philosopher and theologian, but also a respected mathematician and astronomer, Bolzano wanted Catholicism to be compatible with the demands of reason. Although his radical thought was dismissed by the government, his ideas remained a source of inspiration for societal reforms when Beethoven’s famous pupil and patron archduke Rudolph became prince-bishop of Olomouc/Olmütz. For Beethoven, Rudolph’s new role was an important point of connection to the Catholic Enlightenment in the region. Among the many works Beethoven dedicated to the archduke was the Missa solemnis, op. 123, where he presented the world with a musical response to philosophical questions that had occupied him for decades and that also were at the core of the Catholic Enlightenment in Bohemia.

Ideas usually associated with the Enlightenment – such as freedom, equality, and individualism – have featured prominently in commentary on Beethoven’s life and music, and have especially influenced accounts of the composer’s political and religious outlook. This chapter demonstrates that, at least in terms of published biographies of the composer, the main elements of this “enlightened” image of Beethoven first appear explicitly in the work of Anton Schindler and are largely absent from earlier writings. It is likely that Schindler’s portrayal of Beethoven’s worldview was influenced by his own political commitments, which were shaped by the particular context of the Vormärz era and the failure of the 1848 liberal revolutions. Schindler’s perspective was then taken up by later writers, especially Alexander Wheelock Thayer, thus solidifying their impact on Beethoven reception. Recent Beethoven scholarship has become more attentive to doubts as to the reliability of Schindler’s biography, though commentators are often inconsistent is their use of Schindler’s claims, dismissing some of them while still at least tacitly accepting others. That Schindler’s account was affected by his personal biases during a period of political turmoil in the German lands should encourage greater caution in accepting traditional assumptions about Beethoven’s “enlightened” outlook.

Following the death of Emperor Joseph II and election of Emperor Leopold II in 1790, the nineteen-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven was invited by Bonn’s Lesegesellschaft (founded in 1787 by some former Illuminati) to compose two cantatas responding to each of these momentous events: Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II (WoO87) and Cantata on the Accession (Elevation) of Emperor Leopold II (WoO88). The first of these odes (and probably the second one) was by a local poet/cleric Severin Anton Averdonk (1768–1817), whose language shows him to be clearly sympathetic to Enlightenment and some Jacobin ideals.

This chapter reconstructs how Bonn remembered the emperor at the time of his death and various ways in which that perspective influenced the poem and music of Beethoven’s first cantata, the seven-movement Funeral Cantata. Through a close study of professor/cleric Eulogius Schneider’s memorial address in March 1790 to the Lesegesellschaft, a contemporary’s perspective on the “enlightened” aspects of Joseph’s rule is surveyed. Averdonk’s and Beethoven’s approaches to the text and music are summarized.

The cantata’s striking elements of drama and surprise and prodigious use of musico-rhetorical topics reflect Beethoven’s fervent commitment to the philosophical currents of the time, some of which were likely stimulated by his contact with Professor Schneider at Bonn’s Universität as well as through his multifarious, deep, autodidactic reading of poetry and classics. Although the work was never performed or published during Beethoven’s lifetime, it remains uncanny how many of its aspects “haunted” much of his later music.

Beethoven’s time at the Bonn Electoral Court was marked by a vibrant concert and operatic life, along with liturgical occasions with prestigious musical performances. Maximilian Franz of Habsburg-Lothringen, Elector of Cologne (1784–1794), skillfully navigated his dual role as elector and archbishop during a period of intense Enlightenment debate. While earlier historiography often contrasts Enlightenment rationality with Baroque opulence, recent research reveals a more nuanced perspective on the sacred music of the period.

The recently rediscovered Sacred Music Collection of the Bonn Electoral Court indicates a sophisticated integration of sacred music into both religious and political spheres, and demonstrates that these practices were central to courtly representation and cultural life. It also reveals Andrea Luchesi’s activity and central role in the production of sacred music to hitherto unknown depths. This leads to a reassessment of his role as composer and kapellmeister (1774–94).

This essay focuses on Luchesi’s contributions and uses case studies to show how a distinct tradition during Christmastide influenced musical practice and compositional adaptations. Luchesi’s hymn settings, adapted for specific feast days and Marian devotions, reflect a pragmatic approach to liturgical use. They illustrate the interplay between musical and cultural dynamics, and highlight a trend towards vocal music and criticism of Italian styles, influenced by financial constraints and practical considerations, including the downsizing of the court organ.

Building on this exploration, my historiographical approach re-examines enduring narratives about Luchesi and Neefe. Not only in light of their role in court music, but also in relation to Beethoven’s formative years.

In an attempt to demonstrate the scale, scope and orientation of Viennese commemorations of its musicians, this chapter examines funerals and graves, anniversary festivities and physical monuments, demonstrating how the city positions itself at the front and centre of commemorative activities. It focuses on Viennese fascination with death, the funerals and reburials of Beethoven, Strauss Sr, Strauss Jr and Schubert, anniversary celebrations for Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and statues erected of the city’s great musicians, often in controversial circumstances.

This chapter evaluates the subject of ethnographic material in Viennese music, recognizing that those who defined the Viennese perspective, composing and performing music in Vienna, were very often men from elsewhere, attracted by the opportunities of the imperial capital. It examines Ottoman operatic subjects and Turkish Janissary style, Viennese ethnography (including as integrated into classical style), folk songs, Hungarian-Roma influences and style, musical nationalism and ethnographic repertory at the Vienna Opera.

In order to capture Vienna’s abundant, diverse and socially engaged musical culture between c.1770 and c. 1830, this chapter first examines late eighteenth-century activities through the prism of different interlocutors and communities, including critics, writers and audiences who demonstrate particular admiration for multi-talented performer-composers; publishers, liaising with composers, who produce printed music for general circulation; and musicians who often tetchily compete with one another. It then evaluates the equally heterogeneous and colourful early nineteenth century, primarily through the lens of the Vienna correspondent to the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, also explaining how canonic statuses for Viennese composers take root.

A preoccupation with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach was one of the constants in the lives of the Mendelssohn family, especially Fanny and Felix. Bach was one of the few composers who were considered exemplary in the Mendelssohn family. The special chorale and fugue-orientated training with Zelter, their membership of the Singakademie and the cultivation of Bach among their family and friends make it clear in which traditions the siblings Fanny and Felix grew up and undertook their first musical steps and expressions. Bach’s works are always present in the musical performances of both of them. In Fanny’s ’Sunday musicales’, works by Bach were just as much a part of the repertoire as in the concerts that Felix conducted or played on the piano or organ. Their lifelong engagement with Bach’s music is reflected in the compositions of Fanny and Felix and includes details of content, form and compositional technique.

Nowadays Beethoven’s canonic status is taken for granted, but in the 1820s as the Mendelssohns were coming of age, his music was still controversial, and their advocacy of it was something that set them apart from many contemporaries. In their roles as composers, performers, and promoters of music, both Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Hensel would play a fundamental part in the evolving story of early nineteenth-century Beethoven reception. Moreover, their activities intersected with some of the other leading figures in the nineteenth-century canonisation of Beethoven in ways that shed light on the already contested legacy of their forebear. Equally, the influence of Beethoven on Hensel and Mendelssohn has often been misunderstood, commonly being viewed through later 19th-century anxieties and ideologies that remain extraneous to their world. In short, their relationship with Beethoven is crucial for understanding their own music – and historically was no less crucial for understanding Beethoven’s.

Mendelssohn worked out his publishing career strategically. His first opus numbers established his place in various genres and styles. In his maturity, regular publication of roughly one major work per year supported his reputation as a composer of serious music. Modestly scored pieces accommodated the domestic music market, as did larger works in two- or four-hand piano arrangements. Early nineteenth-century laws established copyright within countries, but no international agreements prevented pirated editions beyond borders. Negotiations with publishers therefore occupied much of Mendelssohn’s time and energy. Mendelssohn undertook two substantial editions of music by his eighteenth-century forebears, Handel’s Israel in Egypt, and Bach’s organ music. Insisting on a rigorous editorial policy, he anticipated now-standard musicological principles. Fanny Hensel began publishing late, the small number of her publications reflecting social and familial constraints. Seven opus numbers appeared during her lifetime, all within her last year and all addressing the bourgeois, domestic audience. Four posthumous works resulted from her family’s project to honour her and promulgate her music.

Dresden, the capital city of the Kingdom of Saxony since 1806, was intimately connected with Wagner’s childhood and his early professional life as Royal court Kapellmeister from 1843 to 1849. The locale is thus both a key site of early life impressions and the site of the composer’s most critical period of creative development, from the premiere of Der fliegende Holländer up to the first conceptual stages of Der Ring des Nibelungen tetralogy. The shared post of Hofkapellmeister involved continual negotiations between a musical-theatrical ancien régime and Wagner’s developing vision of a radical new aesthetic-social order manifested in his own operas, writings and utopian ideals. Wagner’s programming of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at key junctures during the later period of his Kapellmeistership and the burning of the ‘old’ (Pöppelmann) court theatre during the May 1849 insurrection are read as symbolic of a key transition in Wagner’s life and artistic career.

Wagner’s early compositional training is seldom examined, perhaps because of his unambiguous claim in 1851 to be an autodidact, taught only by ‘life, art and myself’. Yet Wagner’s work with Christian Müller and particularly with Theodor Weilig on early works and in abstract skills (notably counterpoint) reveal various dependencies. Wanger’s shifting attitude towards this period of training sits alongside his choice of more public mentors, in Beethoven and Weber, whose works he studied and arranged.

This chapter fills in the background to the composition of the string quartet in 1834. First, we look at Hensel’s early musical education, her intimate creative ties with her brother Felix Mendelssohn, their mutual use of music as a form of intimate communication, and the asymmetrical career path that resulted from her being a woman in contemporaneous society. In parallel to this sibling influence runs the Mendelssohns’ reception of late Beethoven in the 1820s, whose influence on their works of the later 1820s is clear and also has a major bearing on Hensel’s quartet. A final case study showcasing both the interaction with her brother and the music of Beethoven is provided by a brief analysis of the ‘Easter’ Sonata of 1828, which points forward to many features of the string quartet.

This chapter introduces the wide range of music bound up with the sublime in the Romantic period. This is a time often associated with the triumph of music – and especially ‘autonomous’ instrumental music – as the most sublime of the arts, and with a canon of overwhelming, ground-breaking, transgressive works by great (mostly German) composers. These associations are important, not least as a way of understanding the unease and sometimes controversy that has surrounded the musical sublime since the later twentieth century. Yet equally important to understanding the sublime in the Romantic period is to look beyond monumental instrumental compositions to see how smaller-scale genres and vocal music, alongside performers, listeners and other agents, shaped and contested the sublimity of music, sound and hearing, and left an indelible mark on the broader aesthetic category of the sublime itself.