From the Ruins of Enlightenment : Beethoven and Schubert in Their Solitude

**Richard Kramer follows the work of Beethoven and Schubert from 1815 through to the final months of their lives, when each were increasingly absorbed in iconic projects that would soon enough inspire notions of “late style.”** Here is Vienna, hosting a congress in 1815 that would redraw national boundaries and reconfigure the European community for a full century. A snapshot captures two of its citizens, each seemingly oblivious to this momentous political environment: Franz Schubert, not yet twenty years old and in the midst of his most prolific year—some 140 songs, four operas, and much else; and Ludwig van Beethoven, struggling through a midlife crisis that would yield the song cycle __An die ferne Geliebte__, two strikingly original cello sonatas, and the two formidable sonatas for the “Hammerklavier,” opp. 101 and 106. In Richard Kramer’s compelling reading, each seemed to be composing “against”—Beethoven, against the Enlightenment; Schubert, against the looming presence of the older composer even as his own musical imagination took full flight. __From the Ruins of Enlightenment__ begins in 1815, with the discovery of two unique projects: Schubert’s settings of the poems of Ludwig Hölty in a fragmentary cycle and Beethoven’s engagement with a half dozen poems by Johann Gottfried Herder. From there, Kramer unearths previously undetected resonances and associations, illuminating the two composers in their “lonely and singular journeys” through the “rich solitude of their music.” "This is a book about Vienna in 1815, at the close of the Napoleonic era and the Napoleonic wars, and on the verge of the Congress of Vienna, which would redraw national boundaries and reconfigure the European community for a full century. Beethoven and Schubert were both citizens of Vienna at this time, Beethoven half-way through his composing career and socially withdrawn because of his almost total deafness; Schubert not yet twenty years-old and in the middle of one of his most prolific periods, with 140 songs and a symphony composed over the course of 1815 alone. Seemingly oblivious to the momentous events and deeply immersed in their own world, they each seemed to be composing "against" something, in Richard Kramer's compelling reading: "against the Enlightenment" in Beethoven's case, for whom only a sense of stripped-down nostalgia remained of the optimistic spirit of the 1790s; "against Beethoven" in Schubert's case, who felt the looming presence of the older composer even as his own musical imagination bloomed. In taking his readers through a carefully chosen selection of works dating from 1815-songs, string quartets, piano sonatas, and more-Kramer insightfully unearths previously undetected resonances and associations and illuminates the two composers' "lonely and singular journeys" through the "rich solitude of their music.""-- Provided by publisher Contents Preamble: 1815 and Beyond In the Silence of the Poem Chapter 1. Hölty’s Nightingales, and Schubert’s Chapter 2. Herder’s Hexameters, and Beethoven’s Chapter 3. Whose Meeres Stille? Toward a Poetics of Fugue Chapter 4. Gradus ad Parnassum: Beethoven, Schubert, and the Romance of Counterpoint Chapter 5. Con alcune licenze: On the Largo before the Fugue in Op. 106 Sonata and the Claims of Narrative Beethoven Chapter 6. On a Challenging Moment in the Sonata for Pianoforte and Violoncello, Op. 102, No. 2 Schubert Chapter 7. Against the Grain: The Sonata in G (D 894) and a Hermeneutics of Late Style Last Things, New Horizons Chapter 8. Final Beethoven Chapter 9. Posthumous Schubert Postscript: ...and Beyond Acknowledgments List of Tables, Examples, and Figures Works Cited Index