Books
The Beethoven Syndrome – Hearing Music as Autobiography
Mark Evan Bonds Oxford University Press
The chief thesis of this book is that around 1830, shortly after Beethoven’s death, the predominant way of listening to music changed. Previously it had been heard objectively, as agreeable, energetic sounds; now it began to be heard as personal expression (largely thanks to Beethoven’s music), as melodious and more or less structured tonal autobiography. Or as Mark Evan Bonds puts it, ‘the framework of rhetoric★★★
