Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Tables
- Musical Examples
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 ‘A Fruitful Age of Arrangements’
- 2 Arrangers and Authority
- 3 Selling Arrangements, Constructing the Canon
- 4 Beethoven and Steiner’s Plan
- 5 Musical Arrangements and Musical Works
- 6 ‘Completely Absorbed by the Piano’
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - ‘Completely Absorbed by the Piano’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Tables
- Musical Examples
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 ‘A Fruitful Age of Arrangements’
- 2 Arrangers and Authority
- 3 Selling Arrangements, Constructing the Canon
- 4 Beethoven and Steiner’s Plan
- 5 Musical Arrangements and Musical Works
- 6 ‘Completely Absorbed by the Piano’
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Arrangements for string instruments were highly popular in the first part of the nineteenth century, but they had served a purpose and market different to that for the piano transcriptions that now took centre stage. The former were played by men, the latter by women; the focus during string quartet parties was on developing the performer, the latter on displaying the performer to best advantage. Piano performances, whether solo or in ensemble combinations, tended to be demonstrations to the audience of feeling, taste, and a moderate level of technical accomplishment—suitable attributes for a woman. Public performance and publication now took over the main role in canon formation, while chamber music’s meaning and function was redefined and split off from the dazzling Salonmusik and the still performance-based but decorous Hausmusik. The public quartet concerts of the 1820s and ’30s (especially those of Schuppanzigh’s quartet), along with reviewers’ endorsements of silent listening, and Beethoven’s increasingly difficult conceptions, changed the status of that genre.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Beethoven's Symphonies Arranged for the ChamberSociability, Reception, and Canon Formation, pp. 193 - 234Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021