BECOMING BEETHOVEN Re-Enacting Aesthetic Ideas and Mindsets From an Early Romantic Discourse of Musical Performance

Abstract

This book explores French and German early Romantic music aesthetics from the perspective of the performer, including ways to re-enact ideas and mindsets from these aesthetics. It shows how musical performances were attributed with the potential to create an experience of synthesis between the real and the ideal, the material and the spiritual, as well as a unification or sympathy between the performers, listeners, composers, the sounding music and musical instruments. The book includes two video recordings of re-enactments of chamber music by Schubert and Beethoven in which the listeners’ real-time thoughts and feelings are visualized.