Beethoven in America

Author: Michael Broyles

A pop-cultural tour of Beethoven's America

Seeks to understand the composer as he exists in the American imagination and explores how Beethoven became a cultural icon

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Summary

A pop-cultural tour of Beethoven's America

Seeks to understand the composer as he exists in the American imagination and explores how Beethoven became a cultural icon

Description

Beethoven permeates American culture. His image appears on countless busts and coffee mugs; his music is heard in movie scores, TV soundtracks, commercials, and pop songs; he is Schroeder's god in Peanuts and Chuck Berry's freaked-out parent in "Roll over Beethoven." In this book, Michael Broyles seeks to understand the composer as he exists in the American imagination and explores how Beethoven became a cultural icon.

Awards

Winner of 2012 AAUP Public and Secondary School Library Selection.

Critic Reviews

“"[T]his book is as much cultural history as musicology, and this makes it useful across disciplines. Like Beethoven's person and music, it is varied and interesting and suggests many possibilities for future research." --Music Reference Services Quarterly”

"This book fills a great gap in our understanding both of Beethoven and of American culture. The panorama of this narrative encompasses antebellum rice plantations in South Carolina and the film studios of Hollywood, music critic John Dwight and rock star Chuck Berry, Theosophy and Black Power, Beethoven's sketches, and YouTube videos." Christopher Reynolds, University of California, Davis "The racial politics of Beethoven boils down to those who believd he really was black, and writers, like Amiri Baraka, who were playing a more symbolic game - to claim Beethoven was to claim that everything white Europeans say about tradition, from Bach to Schoenberg, was a calculated, self-serving lie. With the alleged death of ideology in the new millennium, Broyles concludes that the sting has largely gone out of racial and feminist perspective. Beethoven is many things: a cartoon dog, or the obvious figure for sound artist Leif Inge to work on, stretching his Ninth Symphony electronically over 24 hours as 9 Beet Stretch, because his familiarity means our culture now needs reminders of his materiality. The question, circa 2012, is how to protect Beethoven from himself." - Philip Clark, The Wire, September 2012 "The value of this thought-provoking book lies not in insightful interpretations into Beethoven and his music but in its look at US cultural history through the wide Beethovenian lens. ... Recommended." Choice, October 2012

About the Author

Michael Broyles is Professor of Music at Florida State University and former Distinguished Professor of Music and Professor of American History at Pennsylvania State University. His most recent book, Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices (IUP, 2007), written with Denise Von Glahn, won the Irving Lowens Prize in 2007.