Standard and Idol, Controversies and Ideologies. Beethoven – an Early 20th-Century Romanticized Portrait as Reflected in Vincent d’Indy’s Writings
Standard and Idol, Controversies and Ideologies. Beethoven – an Early 20th-Century Romanticized Portrait as Reflected in Vincent d’Indy’s Writings

Summary/Abstract: Vincent d’Indy’s nationalist convictions were somewhat nuanced. On the one hand, he conducted all-French concerts abroad, and from 1871 he relentlessly helped to found and achieve the objectives of the Société Nationale de Musique Française. On the other hand, the masters after whom the musician modelled his entire pedagogical and compositional creed were not French. He was part of the so-called “bande à Franck”, the group of disciples gathered around César Franck after he took over the organ course at the Paris Conservatory. Franck was born in Liège, German on his mother’s side, and the predominant influences in his compositional style (which his students dutifully adopted) were the music of two of the most prominent representatives of the Austro-German musical landscape: Richard Wagner and Ludwig van Beethoven. In the present study I aim to highlight how Beethoven’s biography has been reinvented in d’Indy’s writings; a symbolic link is created across time, uniting all his musical idols in a great tradition of Catholic faith.

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