Beethoven "in drei Charakterbildern": Three Beethoven Images from the Interwar Hungary

Bozó, Péter (2020) Beethoven "in drei Charakterbildern": Three Beethoven Images from the Interwar Hungary. STUDIA MUSICOLOGICA: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGY OF THE HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, 61 (1-2). pp. 99-112. ISSN 1788-6244 (print); 1789-2422 (online)

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Abstract

In my study, I show how three different figures of the interwar Hungary saw Beethoven. The first of them, Dénes Bartha (1908–1993), was a musicologist and became an international specialist of Viennese Classicism. In the context of contemporary Hungarian literature, his first Beethoven monograph (1939) represents an emphatically anti-Romantic attitude. In the second part, I examine the popular image of the composer, on the basis of the planned operetta Beethoven (1929–1931) by Zsolt Harsányi, an author of popular biographical novels, and Mihály Nádor (1882–1944), a successful operetta composer. This piece follows the example of Das Dreimäderlhaus, and its music was compiled from Beethoven’s melodies by Nádor. In the third part I examine an essay about Beethoven by an important musician of the period, Ernst von Dohnányi (1877–1960), who was, according to Bartók, a leading Beethoven performer of his age. Although the text of his “Romanticism in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas” was written during his émigré years (draft: 1948, revision: 1955), it summarizes well what the leading figure of the interwar Budapest musical life might have thought about Beethoven’s music.

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