Haydn and Mozart in the Long Nineteenth Century
Parallel and Intersecting Patterns of Reception

Traces the evolving musical reputations of Haydn and Mozart, evaluating a wide range of scholarship, biography, criticism and fiction.

Simon P. Keefe (Author)

9781009254373, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 March 2023

268 pages
25 x 17.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.66 kg

'Everyone interested in Mozart and Haydn and their passage across time - to say nothing of those interested in the prehistory of the types of critical discourses still in play in the first quarter of the twenty-first century - will be grateful to Simon Keefe for this penetrating and timely piece of work. It makes everyone realize just how great is the distance between our views of Mozart and Haydn and those of the nineteenth century, and how the latter condition the former. Haydn and Mozart in the Long Nineteenth Century is a major addition to scholarship on the two composers but also to that of the long nineteenth century in general.' Newsletter of the Mozart Society of America

The first extended study of the combined reception of Haydn and Mozart in the long nineteenth century, this book generates new, holistic understandings of their musical, cultural and historical significance in the Germanic, French and Anglophone worlds. It places a wide range of written sources under the microscope, including serious and popular biographies, scholarship, musical and non-musical criticism, and a diverse body of fiction, and evaluates the impact of anniversary commemorations. Haydn and Mozart in the Long Nineteenth Century determines how reputations, images and narratives for the two composers converge, diverge, develop at different speeds, and influence one another. Countering received wisdom about Haydn's reputational decline and reassessing Mozart reception through consideration of a broad spectrum of publications, we hear Haydn and Mozart speaking to the long nineteenth century in more nuanced, powerful, and persuasive voices than previously recognized.

1. Papa and the Matador, Alive and Dead: Haydn and Mozart, 1792–1810
2. Biographical and Critical Narratives and Perspectives, 1811–1830
3. Anniversaries, Commemorations, Writings: The Developing Reputations of Haydn and Mozart, 1831–1860
4. Scholarship and Fiction in the Late Nineteenth Century, 1861–1890
5. Anniversaries in Context, 1891–1914
Epilogue: Continuity and Change.

Subject Areas: Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups [AVH], Music reviews & criticism [AVC], Music [AV]