This book examines once passionate cultural concerns that shaped music of Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann, and works of their contemporaries in drama or poetry. Music, especially music with text, was a powerful force in lively ongoing conversations about the nature of liberty, which included such topics as the role of consent in marriage, same-sex relationships and society, and freedom of the press. Among the most common vehicles for stimulating debate about pressing social concerns were the genres of historical drama, and legend or myth, whose stories became inflected in fascinating ways during ... More

This book examines once passionate cultural concerns that shaped music of Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann, and works of their contemporaries in drama or poetry. Music, especially music with text, was a powerful force in lively ongoing conversations about the nature of liberty, which included such topics as the role of consent in marriage, same-sex relationships and society, and freedom of the press. Among the most common vehicles for stimulating debate about pressing social concerns were the genres of historical drama, and legend or myth, whose stories became inflected in fascinating ways during the Age of Metternich. Interior and imagined worlds, memories and fantasies, also were evoked in purely instrumental music, and music was widely celebrated in private for its ability to circumvent the restrictions that were choking the verbal arts. The book invites us to listen in on these cultural conversations dating from a time when the climate of censorship made the tone of what was said every bit as important as its content. At this critical moment in European history such things as gesture, spontaneous improvisation, or music’s demeanor could release forbidden meanings and fly under the censor’s radar with messages of hope and resistance to political oppression. The book concerns herself rather with mechanisms of communication than with trying to decode or fix meanings, and she probes distortions that can form over time when we lose sight of the pressures that shaped expression in another age. Enlivening the narrative are generous music examples, reproductions of artwork, and plates of autograph material.