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Beethoven's Ninth Symphony Reflects Evolving German Nationalism, William K. Savage Jr.

Senior Theses

This work relates the evolution of Beethoven’s music to the historical evolution of a unique Germanic culture; it is a vignette of the melding of art and politics in the building of a nation. The music of Beethoven began under the thumb of an entrepreneurial father and his own admiration of the music of Mozart; Beethoven through his lifetime pushed the threshold of the classical form to its outer limits reaching the pinnacle in his Ninth Symphony.

The 19^th century German culture can be traced to the Hohenzollern Dynasty which was granted a crown in 1701, and went into …