<i>Haydn and Mozart in the Long Nineteenth Century: Parallel and Intersecting Patterns of Reception</i>. By Simon P Keefe

Reception studies often contend with a major challenge: until recently, very few people had the means to preserve their ideas in writing.Focusing only on erudite and scholarly texts might therefore give an incomplete picture of how a figure or work was understood by broader swaths of society.Simon Keefe seeks to address this challenge in Haydn and Mozart in the Long Nineteenth Century: Parallel and Intersecting Patterns of Reception, a tour de force of primary-source research that, as the title straightforwardly indicates, explores the afterlives of Haydn and Mozart in the long nineteenth century.He makes his central claim by way of his methodology: a 'catholic' approach to reception study, which bypasses regional and linguistic boundaries (considering English-, French-, and German-language sources) and treats accessible, popular genres like fiction and pithy biographies on a par with scholarly and 'critical' writing.This, Keefe argues, yields more accurate narratives of reception history.This stands in marked contrast to other notable contributions in this arena, such as Bryan Proksch's Reviving Haydn (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2015), which illuminates Haydn's reception in a series of case studies.Keefe's exhaustive approach refines prevailing narratives, deepening our understanding of how Haydn and Mozart were understood separately and in tandem.He particularly challenges the story of Haydn's notorious 'demise', asserting the consistent presence of a 'powerful and persuasive voice' (p.10) that balanced the scales.He similarly calls into question aspects of Mozart's reception, such as a diminished interest in his music or his arc from 'romantic to classic figure ' (p.11) over the course of the century.Keefe proceeds chronologically from 1792 to 1914, covering about 20-30 years in each chapter.After an introduction that considers the methodological shortcomings of several other reception studies on each of the two composers, in chapter 1 he explores the period roughly between