Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2025 AMS-SMT Joint Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
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Structure and Effect in Beethoven Location: Great Lakes C Session Chair: Stephen Husarik, University of Arkansas - Fort Smith Discussant: Sanna Pederson, University of Oklahoma | |
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"An die ferne Geliebte" between Death and Resurrection: Beethoven, Lobkowitz, and mourning in Vienna around 1800 Stanford University, University of Vienna The scholarly and popular reception of Beethoven’s song cycle An die ferne Geliebte op. 98 seems inescapably intertwined with the composer’s love for his so-called “Unsterbliche Geliebte” (Immortal Beloved). Typically, the songs are interpreted autobiographically as expressing Beethoven's personal feelings towards his „distant beloved“. I suggest a rather different context for the composition: that Beethoven and the poet Alois Jeitteles conceived the cycle as a gift for Prince Franz Maximilian Lobkowitz, whose wife had died unexpectedly in January 1816. This paper pursues the implications of this alternative contextualization, shedding new light on both the poetic and musical dimensions of An die ferne Geliebte. I highlight the cycle’s textual parallels with contemporary poetry on death and mourning, as well as the ways in which Beethoven crafted specific musical features to convey consolation and transcendence. Two aspects of op. 98 are particularly revealing in this regard: First, the cycle’s exuberant conclusion, often perceived as paradoxical in a work suffused with longing, can be understood as a vision of reunion of husband and wife in the afterlife—a theme that resonates with Beethoven’s broader reflections on immortality. Secondly, one of the most conspicuous and famous features of the oeuvre is its construction as a series of songs without interruption which, by ending thematically where it began, forms a true “cycle,” a symbol for eternity – even further reinforced visually by an explicitly open ending (without double bar-lines) in the autograph. In so doing, Beethoven created a highly symbolic musical ouroboros, the ancient symbol of a serpent that bites its tail. This imagery was well known in learned Viennese circles of the early 19th century, not least through Antonio Canova’s famous monument to Princess Maria Christina in the Augustinerkirche—just steps away from the Palais Lobkowitz. By invoking such a potent symbol in an innovative musical form, Beethoven imbued An die ferne Geliebte with levels of meaning far deeper than its conventional reading as a mere earthly love song cycle. | |