Beethoven in America
Michael Broyles
Beethoven permeates American culture. His image appears on countless busts and coffee mugs; his music is heard in movie scores, TV soundtracks, commercials, and pop songs; he is Schroeder's god in Peanuts and Chuck Berry's freaked-out parent in "Roll over Beethoven." In this book, Michael Broyles seeks to understand the composer as he exists in the American imagination and explores how Beethoven became a cultural icon. Broyles examines Beethoven's appearance in a variety of contexts: American commercialism, the Afrocentrist and black power movements, and the modernist critique of Romanticism. He considers portrayals of Beethoven in American film and theater and the uses of his music in film scores, as well as references to Beethoven and his music in disco, country, rock, and rap. In the end, he shows that to examine Beethoven on American soil is to examine America itself.
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About Michael Broyles
Reviews for Beethoven in America
Santa Fe New Mexican
[T]hanks to Broyles' book, we're a little bit closer to understanding Beethoven's lasting impression on American culture.
stereosubversion.com
Broyles pens an engaging and fascinating text, relying on copious amounts of research supplemented with myths and mysteries to rebuild and develop the image of Beethoven. . . . The language of [the] text is accessible and avoids unnecessary scholarly jargon or extensvie musicological terms.
popmatters.com
...[M]akes the case that not only was Beethoven the all-around musical stud of musical studs, he might be the greatest of all musical ingratiators, turning up in our American corner of the universe, again and again, and more than most of us realize.
Washington Post Book World
Beethoven in America remains an engaging and valuable work of cultural history. The breadth of Broyles's knowledge about Beethoven's public presence is astounding, and this is the rare academic book that has thoughtful discussions of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Adrienne Rich, Amiri Baraka, and Yngwie Malmsteen. That people from such diverse circles felt connections to Beethoven is brilliantly demonstrated, and this is ultimately a fascinating analysis of the strange career of Beethoven as a multipurpose icon.
Journal of American History
[Beethoven in America] is packed with Beethoven facts and also takes a unique approach.
CHOICE
[T]his book is as much cultural history as musicology, and this makes it useful across disciplines. Like Beethoven's person and music, it is varied and interesting and suggests many possibilities for future research.
Music Reference Services Quarterly