edited by Miguel Ángel Marín and Teresa Cascudo García-Villaraco, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024, (Speculum Musicae, 54), pp. x+356, ISBN: 978-2-503-61557-8.
This publication is the first to explore the collective reception of works by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven in Spain. It addresses two main questions that shed light on the roles these composers played in a southern European context, viewed from Europe’s periphery.
Firstly, the study examines how different contexts and performance practices influenced the presentation of these composers’ music. It delves into the transmission of musical texts and their adaptation to various demands through arrangements and transcriptions. Secondly, it explores how the physical and symbolic nature of performance spaces shaped listening habits.
In nineteenth-century Spain, the salon, the church, and the concert hall were the primary venues for this music, similar to the rest of the Western world. However, some works ventured beyond these traditional spaces, finding new homes and creating fresh cultural meanings.
These shifts not only altered the functions of the music but also transformed musical sociability, as detailed in the book.
By examining the remapping of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven’s music to a southern European context, this book provides novel insights into the significant roles these composers played in Western culture.
Miguel Ángel Marín (PhD University of London) is Full Professor of Music at the University of La Rioja, Spain. His main research interests focus on music in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Spain, Joseph Haydn and concert studies. He is author of Joseph Haydn y el cuarteto de cuerda (2009) and El “Réquiem” de Mozart. Una historia cultural (2024), as well as co-editor of Instrumental music in Eighteenth-century Spain (2014), among a dozen of books.
Teresa Cascudo García-Villaraco (PhD Universidade Nova de Lisboa) is a Full Professor of Music at the Universidad de La Rioja, Spain. Her research has extensively focused on the relationship between music and nationalism, as well as on musical criticism. She was the editor of the collective volume Un Beethoven Ibérico: dos siglos de transferencia cultural(2021). She is currently the principal investigator of one of the LexiMus subprojects, dedicated to the study of music terminology in Spanish.
