Beethoven cast a looming shadow over the nineteenth century. For composers he was a model both to emulate and to overcome. "You have no idea how it feels," Brahms confided, "when one always hears such a giant marching behind one." Exploring the response of five composers--Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, and Mahler--to what each clearly saw as the challenge of Beethoven's symphonies, Evan Bonds richly enhances our understanding of the evolution of the symphony and Beethoven's legacy.

Overt borrowings from Beethoven--for example, the lyrical theme in the Finale of...

The core of this book focuses on the period between 1850 and 1945. Although...

Before the nineteenth century, instrumental music was considered inferior to vocal music. Kant described wordless music as "more pleasure than culture," and Rousseau dismissed it for its inability to convey concepts. But by the early 1800s, a dramatic shift was under way. Purely instrumental music was now being hailed as a means to knowledge and embraced precisely because of its independence from the limits of language. What had once been perceived as entertainment was heard increasingly as a vehicle of thought. Listening had become a way of knowing.

Music as Thought...