Music and Monumentality

Abstract

A few weeks after the reunification of Germany, Leonard Bernstein raised his baton above the ruins of the Berlin Wall and conducted a special arrangement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The central statement of the work, that “all men will be brothers,” captured the sentiment of those who saw a brighter future for the newly reunited nation. This now-iconic performance is a palpable example of “musical monumentality” — a significant concept which underlies our cultural and ideological understanding of Western art music since the nineteenth-century. Although the concept was first raised in the earliest years of musicological study in the 1930s, a satisfying exploration of the “monumental” in music has not yet been made. The author sets his focus on the main players of the period within the Austro-German repertoire as he unpacks a two-fold definition of “musical monumentality.” The author generally attempts to examine how German music emerges as a unified cultural and musical brand.

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