"Through the lucid presentation of many diverse sources and the close reading of several central documents, "Music as Though"t establishes the cultural force of listening to music in the age of Beethoven. The result is a compelling story with a fresh polemical spin."--Scott Burnham, Princeton University
""Music as Thought" navigates the discursive space of nineteenth-century German symphonies, and Beethoven's symphonic music especially, between the pointedly apolitical metaphysics of 'absolute music, 'and the explicit political appropriation of these works in the service of emerging German nationalism. It is hard to imagine a topic that would be more central to current musicological discourse."--Alexander Rehding, Harvard University
