IN

AM

ER

IC

ABeethoven

BR

OY

LE

S

Bloomington & Indianapolisiupress.indiana.edu1-800-842-6796

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. Broyles examines Beethoven’s appearance in a variety of contexts: American commercialism, the Afrocentrist and Black Power movements, and the modernist critique of Romanticism. He considers portrayals of Beethoven in American film and theater and the uses of his music in film scores, as well as references to Beethoven and his music in disco, country, rock, and rap. In the end, he shows that to examine Beethoven on American soil is to examine America itself.

$29.95

M I C H A E L B ROYL E SINDIANA

Jacket illustration: Ross McBride, Beethoven digital clock. Photo Credit: E&Y Company, LTD, Tokyo, Japan.

MICHAEL BROYLES is Professor of Music at The Florida State University and was previously Distinguished Professor of Music and Professor of American History at The Pennsylvania State University. He has published one previous book on Beethoven, and his most recent book, Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices (IUP 2007), written with Denise Von Glahn, won the Irving Lowens Prize from the Society for American Music as the best book on American music in 2007.

The author with Ludwig, taken at the American Beethoven Center.

“. . . a fantastic book that will immediately occupy a central place—and fill a lacuna—in the history of Beethoven studies.”

—William Meredith, Director of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, San José State University

“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

MUSIC . POPULAR CULTURE

I N A M E R I C ABeethoven

Copyri

ghted

Mate

rial

Indian

a Univ

ersity

Pres

s

con ten ts

· Acknowledgments ix

· Introduction 1

Pa r t 1 Ar r i va l a nd Sa c r a l i z a t io n

1 Arrival in America 13

2 Defining Bee tho ven 41

3 Deification and Spiritualization 68

Pa r t 2 Sc ie nc e , Sc h o l a r s , a nd Cr i t ic s

4 Bee tho ven, Modernism, and Science 97

5 “The Warm Tropical Summer of Sketch Research”: Bee tho ven and the Cold War 117

6 Reactions to Modernism: Musical Meaning and the Classical Canon 139

Pa r t 3 Be e t h o v e n a nd t h e Dr a ma t ic Ar t s

7 Bee tho ven on the Silver Screen 167

8 Bee tho ven’s Music in Film 210

9 Bee tho ven in the Theater 240

Copyri

ghted

Mate

rial

Indian

a Univ

ersity

Pres

s

c o nt e nt sv i i i

Pa r t 4 Be yo nd Cl a ssic is m: Be e t h o v e n i n Ame r i c a n So c ie t y a nd Cu l t u r e

10 “Bee tho ven Was Black”: Why Does It Matter? 267

11 Bee tho ven in Popular Music 292

12 Bee tho ven Everywhere 323

· Notes 355

· Bibliography 383

· Index 399Copyri

ghted

Mate

rial

Indian

a Univ

ersity

Pres

s

1Arrival in America

T h e st o r y o f Be e t h o v e n i n Ame r ic a begins in Charles ton, South Carolina, in 1805. It was a fitting location, for until the local economy

was decimated in the War of 1812, Charles ton had a greater concentration of wealth than any other city in the country. At the time of the Ameri can Revolu-tion, Charles ton was the fourth- largest city in North America, and although it was only one- third the size of Philadelphia, its per capita wealth, measured by estates, was six to eight times that of Philadelphia, New York, or Boston. Nine of the ten wealthiest men in North America lived in Charles ton or its imme-diate surroundings.1

Charles ton is situated in a protected harbor where the Ashley and Cooper rivers meet and flow into the Atlantic Ocean. In the lowlands surrounding Charles ton, rice farming flourished, planters prospered, and the rivers made for easy transport to the port. Charles ton had one other advantage for trans-atlantic trade. Its location, at that spot where the Gulf Stream suddenly veers outward into the Atlantic heading toward Europe, was a boon for sailing ships. Charles ton prospered for reasons other than the rice trade, however. Since its founding it had had close ties with the West Indies and thus became the center of the slave trade in the colonies. Before the importation of slaves was abolished in 1807, hundreds of thousands of slaves, as many as forty percent

Copyri

ghted

Mate

rial

Indian

a Univ

ersity

Pres

s

14 Ar r i val an d Sa c r al i z a t io n

of those brought to America, passed through the Charles ton slave market. Rice farming especially created a heavy demand for slaves, for the work was hard and the conditions onerous. The heat and humidity, combined with the marshy fields that rice needed, not only created possibly the worst working environment that any slaves encountered, but were also ideally suited to the breeding of malaria. The death toll among rice field workers ensured a con-tinuous demand for the arriving ships. Conditions at the rice plantations also meant that any plantation owner who could afford to live elsewhere did so. Running the plantation was en-trusted to overseers. The economic success of the rice trade thus allowed the rise of a class relatively close to the British aristocracy, a landed gentry who lived off the proceeds of the estate but who managed it from a distance. Freed from the grim reality of the plantation and its cost in human suffering, the gentlemen of Charles ton and its environs emulated the British upper class in many ways; as Lord Adam Gordon observed when visiting in 1765, they stood apart from the inhabitants of other colonies in the degree to which they still considered England their true home. Almost all wealthy Charles tonians had visited England, and most sent their children there to be educated. Alexander Hewitt, visiting from England, commented on the social refinement of Charles-tonians and of the “assemblies, balls, concerts and plays, which were attended by companies almost equally brilliant as those of any town in Europe of the same size.”2 In one sense, then, Bee tho ven arrived in America on the backs of African slaves. To further their interest in music, the gentlemen of Charles ton founded the St. Cecilia Society in 1766. Modeled directly on similar organizations in Eu-rope, its function was to provide regular concerts for its members. Member-ship was carefully restricted to the male gentry, women being allowed to attend only as a guest of a member. Concerts were potpourris, featuring ensembles, soloists, and vocalists. At first many of the members participated in the con-certs as amateurs, particularly in the orchestra, but as a critical mass of profes-sional musicians arrived in Charles ton, a greater differentiation between per-former and audience ensued. By 1805 the performers were professionals. Until 1820 they offered fortnightly concerts followed by a ball during the social sea-son, roughly November to May, although there were several years of interrup-tions during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Restricted as it was for most of its existence, the St. Cecilia Society was the most important mu-sical organization in Charles ton and arguably in the United States during the early Federal era. It was an appropriate debut for Bee tho ven. To celebrate Passion Week in Charles ton in 1805, the German- born con-ductor Jacob Eckhard arranged a s pecial oratorio concert on April 10 for

Copyri

ghted

Mate

rial

Indian

a Univ

ersity

Pres

s

15Ar r iv a l in Amer ic a

the St. Cecilia Society. Eckhard opened the event with a “grand overture” by Ludwig van Bee tho ven. One year later, Eckhard programmed a similar concert for the same pre- Easter celebration, this time not only opening the program with an overture by Bee tho ven but closing it with a “finale” by the composer. The content of the program needs translation, as words were used differ-ently then. The term oratorio does not necessarily mean that an oratorio was performed. This was a generic word that referred to any concert of mostly sa-cred or mixed sacred and secular music. If the opening piece on a concert was orchestral, it was usually called an overture, whether it was or not. Bee tho-ven had written only one overture by this time, to the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, and it was not well known. The 1805 overture was probably the first movement of a s ymphony. It is even more likely that the overture and finale by Bee tho ven in 1806 referred to one of his symphonies, as a concert would often begin with the opening movement of a symphony and close with the last, in effect creating for the entire program a large symphonic sandwich. Nothing is known about which Bee tho ven symphony it was, although we can guess that it was the First. Only the first three had been composed by 1806, and it is unlikely to have been the Third, the Eroica. The outer movements were too big and too difficult for an oratorio program, and it is hard to imagine that it would have already been known in Charles ton at this time. It had received only a private performance in Vienna before 1805 and was not published until 1806. The Second Symphony is also an unlikely candidate, as the long slow in-troduction to the first movement would hardly be appropriate for the purpose of opening a varied program. A more puzzling question is how Bee tho ven managed to get to the shores of America in 1805. Specifically, where did Eckhard obtain the score of a Bee-tho ven symphony? Clearly he did not bring it with him. Eckhard emigrated to America in 1776, when Bee tho ven was five years old. In 1786 Eckhard was of-fered a position as organist at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Charles ton, a post he held until 1809, when he moved to St. Michael’s Episcopal Church because it had a much larger and better organ. He remained in Charles ton until his death in 1833, and there is no record of him traveling to Europe before 1806. In the pre- steam years of sailing ships, a European journey was not a light under-taking. Someone else must have imported the piece and brought it to Eck-hard’s attention, but who we do not know. Nevertheless, Eckhard almost certainly did perform at least part of a Bee-tho ven symphony, and we may pinpoint Bee tho ven’s official debut in America as having been in Charles ton on April 10, 1805. For a few years afterward the Bee tho ven trail becomes cold. For reasons that are not clear, the St. Cecilia Society attempted no more Bee tho ven sym-

Copyri

ghted

Mate

rial

Indian

a Univ

ersity

Pres

s

16 Ar r i val an d Sa c r al i z a t io n

phonies prior to 1820. Nicholas Butler, in his study of musical patronage in Charles ton, speculates that they may have been too heavy for the lighter, more hedonistic tastes of the Charles ton aristocracy, or there may not have been the orchestral forces to perform them. The latter problem, however, did not deter musicians in other cities. Possibly Bee tho ven was too revolutionary, too close to emerging Romanticism, to sit well with the conservative Charles ton elite. Members of the St. Cecilia Society were more aligned with an eighteenth- century gentry approach to music rather than Bee tho ven’s more intense emo-tionalism. There is one record of a “Fantasie with variations” by Bee tho ven, a solo keyboard work, being performed on March 16, 1813. Otherwise, Charles-ton would have nothing to do with him.3

If there are any concert programs with Bee tho ven’s name on them any-where between 1805 and 1813, I have not been able to find them. Yet scraps of evidence, a hint of activity, and a casual comment suggest that he was not en-tirely ignored. A series of Amateur Subscription Concerts was given in Phila-delphia from 1809 to 1812, although neither programs nor advertisements that list pieces exist, so the programming remains a mystery. Louis C. Madiera, however, reported that in the years prior to 1820, a group of amateurs, con-sisting of some of the best musicians in the city, along with invited guests met regularly to perform, among other works, the quartets of Bee tho ven. They also attempted to put together an orchestral ensemble, but as far as we know nothing came of that. Madiera’s description fits almost perfectly the Ama-teur Subscription concerts, though the musicians may not have all been ama-teurs. This does not mean that even in Philadelphia in 1810 there were ring-ers among the performers as much as that the distinction between amateur and professional at the time was not always a hard- and- fast one.4 After 1812, either Madiera’s group continued to meet and play for themselves, without the formality of the Amateur Subscription concerts, or since the concerts had been only for members and invited guests, not for the public, the concerts could have occurred outside the historical glare of public documentation. It is not hard to deduce, however, which Bee tho ven quartets were played. The six quartets of op. 18, published in 1800, were by far the most accessible, both technically and musically. The other quartets of the 1800 decade, the three Razu movsky Quartets, op. 59, and the two single ones, op. 74 and op. 95, are possible, but even in Bee tho ven’s time these lay outside Viennese audi-ences’ understanding. Except possibly for op. 74, performance of these pieces by amateurs with little introduction to Bee tho ven would have been a daunt-ing experience. The late quartets, the ultimate challenge for any string quartet throughout the nineteenth century, can of course be discounted: they would not be composed for another ten years.

Copyri

ghted

Mate

rial

Indian

a Univ

ersity

Pres

s

17Ar r iv a l in Amer ic a

Also lying outside the public record is activity in the home. It is impossible to gauge in how many homes Bee tho ven’s music was a regular visitor, for un-less something tragic or scandalous occurs, a young lady practicing a Bee tho-ven piano sonata in the parlor is not the stuff of news. The growing interest in having a piano in the home, however, grew markedly in this period. In 1791 there were only twenty- seven pianos in Boston.5 By 1810, according to Loesser, almost every house between the Delaware and the Schuylkill, the area around Philadelphia, had a piano or harpsichord.6 This is not a geographical distinc-tion. A few years later, in Boston, Lowell Mason observed that “among the wealthy every parlor must have a piano.”7 This imperative was soon to spread to the middle class, as piano manufacturing began in earnest in the United States around 1800 and pianos thus became more affordable. Prior to 1800 al-most all pianos had to be imported from Europe. Between 1813 and 1820, Bee tho ven’s name begins to appear on public pro-grams, with even a few symphonic performances. After the Charles ton be-ginning, the next known Bee tho ven symphony performance occurred in the Moravian community in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. The Moravians, also known as the Unitas Fratrum, Unity of Brethren, were a P rotestant denomination that first emerged in the fifteenth century in Moravia, today part of the Czech Republic. They were followers of Jan Hus, a t heologian who was burned at the stake in 1415 for his heretical views. After considerable growth and even more persecution, in clud ing near annihilation in the Thirty Years War, they reemerged in Saxony under the patronage of Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zin-zendorf, who encouraged them to expand geographically. They settled in Beth-lehem and Nazareth, Pennsylvania, in 1741. With a central European background, the Moravians brought with them a highly developed instrumental music culture. A small farming community attempting to tame a w ilderness had little place for professional musicians, but many of the settlers were proficient on musical instruments, and the ac-tive musical life they had in Saxony continued. There was an orchestra, many chamber groups, and concerts. They brought a rich collection of scores from Europe, in clud ing many works of Haydn, Mozart, and other classical com-posers. Bee tho ven’s First Symphony, perhaps in a chamber version, was per-formed by the Collegium Musicum of Nazareth on July 13, 1813. The Moravians had a full orchestra, but the only score of the symphony in their still- extant library is a nonet version published in Europe in 1808. Otto Albrecht, who ex-amined the Moravian records, is reasonably certain that all four movements of the piece were performed.8

The Moravian performance, however, created no surge of interest or ripple effect for Bee tho ven in Federal America. It was held for a relatively isolated

Copyri

ghted

Mate

rial

Indian

a Univ

ersity

Pres

s

18 Ar r i val an d Sa c r al i z a t io n

German community lying in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains, and it is doubtful if anyone outside the Brethren heard the symphony. Some four years later, Bee tho ven’s First Symphony received another performance in Lexing-ton, Kentucky. Since Philadelphia, New York, and Boston had not yet touched a Bee tho ven symphony, how did one show up in Lexington? By 1817 Lexing-ton was no longer on the western frontier, but was still relatively removed from the world along the eastern seaboard. For many years the principal barrier to westward expansion had been the Allegheny Mountains, and while Daniel Boone and others had forged the Cumberland Trail in 1775, travel to the west was still a challenge. In that context, one Anthony Heinrich arrived in Lexing-ton in 1817. How Heinrich, a former wealthy Austrian merchant, ended up in Lexington, and how he came to direct a Bee tho ven symphony there is one of the strangest tales in the Ameri can Bee tho ven saga. Oscar Sonneck, one of the pioneer historians of Ameri can music, called Heinrich “the oddest figure in Ameri can musical history.”9 Heinrich was born in Schönbüchel in northern Bohemia in 1781, and in 1800 he inherited an es-tate and a large international import and manufacturing business. This made him one of the wealthiest merchants in central Europe. Seeking to expand his business he came to America in 1805, and sometime between then and 1810 he married a young woman from Boston, whose name is unknown. By 1810 he was in Philadelphia directing the orchestra at the Southwark Theatre as an amateur. He had studied violin as a youth, and during his travels in Europe he obtained a valuable Cremona violin, maker unknown. Since Cremona was the home of the Amati, Guarneri, and Stradivari family, one can only guess.10

In 1811 disaster struck. Because of the Napoleonic wars, the financial mar-kets in Austria and hence much of eastern Europe collapsed. Heinrich, along with the Austrian government, went bankrupt. Possibly to recoup what he could, Heinrich and his pregnant wife left for Europe in 1813, and after giv-ing birth to a daughter at Heinrich’s ancestral home, his wife, suffering ter-rible homesickness, became so ill that Heinrich decided they must return to America. Because of her own illness their daughter, Antonia, was left behind with relatives. Almost immediately upon their return to Boston his wife died. Heinrich found himself in America broke and widowed and with his only child a continent away. He returned to Philadelphia to play in the theater or-chestra again, but this time to earn a l iving. Soon he was invited to direct the music for the one theater in Pittsburgh, and Heinrich began the three- hundred- mile journey on foot. At this time it was a journey into the wilder-ness, over and through the Allegheny Mountains to a town of seven thousand. The theater itself, in the words of the actor Noah Ludlow, was “the poorest

Copyri

ghted

Mate

rial

Indian

a Univ

ersity

Pres

s

19Ar r iv a l in Amer ic a

apology for one I had then ever seen.”11 Not surprisingly, almost as soon as Heinrich arrived the theater went bankrupt. Heinrich now made a crucial decision. He was alone, isolated even from the East Coast, with no means of support, and still grieving over the loss of his wife and his inability to see his daughter. Rather than return east he de-cided to continue west, destination Lexington. He had been captivated by the vastness and splendor of nature that he had seen on his way to Pittsburgh, and he may have wanted to lose himself in the wilderness, but he also made a shrewd choice. Lexington was the largest city west of the Alleghenies, a cul-tural center, and home to the theatrical empire of Samuel Drake. By 1817 Drake had established regular performances in Lexington, Louisville, Frankfort, and Cincinnati. Spinoffs from his company went as far as Nashville and Fayette-ville, Arkansas. Since Heinrich had experience in theater orchestras, it offered intriguing prospects, and there would not be the level of competition he would find in the large East Coast cities. Besides, he was already halfway there. Heinrich’s stay in Lexington turned out to be different from what even he thought. Soon he received an invitation to live on the estate of Judge John Spiegel, where he was a guest for two years. He spent the spring and summer of 1818 in a log cabin on the estate and began to compose. He had no training in composition, but by 1820 he had finished his Opus 1, a potpourri of piano, violin, and vocal pieces, which he called The Dawning of Music in Kentucky. An original, eccentric, dense, and complex collection of music, it created a stir in Boston, where it was published. John Rowe Parker, editor of the music magazine The Euterpeiad, immediately pronounced Heinrich the “Bee tho ven of America,” and Heinrich for the rest of his life exploited the moniker “the Log Cabin Composer.” When he first arrived in Lexington, Heinrich quickly demonstrated his worth as a theater musician. An “Amateur” writing to the Kentucky Reporter “notices with pleasure, that the music at the theatre has been greatly improved by the acquisition to the band of one of the first Violin performers in America. On Monday evening last, we heard with exquisite delight the finest Solo ever performed on that instrument in our Orchestra.” Heinrich is not named but the amateur observes that this soloist is a stranger newly arrived in Lexing-ton, that he wants to remain there, and that he plans to give a concert in the next week.12

Exactly one week after the amateur’s communication, Heinrich did pre-cisely that. Like many musicians at the time who wished to announce their presence, he gave a benefit concert.13 He had quickly ingratiated himself to the musicians in town, for the concert was lengthy and, according to the program,

Copyri

ghted

Mate

rial

Indian

a Univ

ersity

Pres

s

Figure 1.1

Cover of “The Log House,” by Anthony Heinrich. Heinrich is pictured composing the piece.

Copyri

ghted

Mate

rial

Indian

a Univ

ersity

Pres

s

21Ar r iv a l in Amer ic a

included a “Full Band.” The word “band” at the time meant any instrumental ensemble from two or three players to what we would today call a symphony orchestra. A f ull band in this context could have any number of meanings. Even though Lexington at the time was a small town of 5,000 inhabitants, 1,500 of whom were slaves, Drake’s theatrical activities meant the presence of musicians: every theater had to have an orchestra, and theaters were the only regular source of employment for most instrumental musicians in Fed-eral America. The first piece on the program was called a “Sinfonia con Minuetto,” by Bee tho ven, which was almost certainly the First Symphony. The printed pro-gram does not answer two questions, however: What exactly was played, and who played it? Did it include all four movements? A more intriguing but equally unanswerable question regards the instrumentation. How much adap-tion needed to be done? Was there really a full complement of woodwinds, in-clud ing oboes and bassoons? Could this have been the European nonet version used by the Moravians in 1813? Even if he had a full band, it might have been easier to spread the nine parts over whatever orchestral members there were rather than reduce the full score. Finally, where did the score come from? Did Hein rich bring it with him, or did someone already have it in Lexington? It is more likely that Heinrich had obtained it in Philadelphia, although had it al-ready been in Lexington, Heinrich’s may not have been its first performance. The presence of this program tantalizes more than satisfies, giving intriguing bits of evidence that naturally leads to more questions than can be answered. Whatever remains in the shadows of the past, however, this much seems clear: Hein rich directed a performance of at least part of a Bee tho ven symphony in Lexington, Kentucky, on November 12, 1817. By 1820, Bee tho ven’s music had begun to seep into Ameri can musical cul-ture, here and there a single piece finding its way onto a program. Most of what we have seen was instrumental music, the genres that Bee tho ven is known for today: the symphonies, the sonatas, the string quartets. In Federal America, however, Bee tho ven’s reputation rested more than any other on one other com-position, his oratorio Christ am Ölberg (Christ on the Mount of Olives), which was also known as The Mount of Olives. The English, troubled by having Jesus appear on stage in what they considered an operatic setting, modified the li-bretto, and eventually a new version appeared titled Engedi, or David in the Wilderness. Because of the close cultural ties between England and America that remained long after the Revolution, this title is also found in the United States, although somewhat later than 1820.

Copyri

ghted

Mate

rial

Indian

a Univ

ersity

Pres

s