Journal Article

Genius, Instrumental Music, and “Great Mistakes”: Amadeus Wendt and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

Waltz, Sarah Clemmens

2024

Overview

Forin order to develop the wonderful power and effect of instruments ever more, it was necessary to make use of them in the most multifarious combinations and exchanges, which could only be sufficiently motivated by a romantic and fanciful play of ideas. The attribution can be well established on circumstantial grounds, i.e., by tracing references in the critic's other reviews and solidifying Wendt's activity with the journal. [...]the language and views that the correspondent employs are fully consistent with Wendt's. Most knowledge of Wendt derives from the aforementioned Fidelio review of 1815.12 Though this review is a complex piece of aesthetic writing, spread across six issues and taking up roughly fifty columns, it was summarily dismissed in MacArdle's Beethoven Abstracts as \"a not particularly enthusiastic analysis of Beethoven's style. Because so little about Wendt is known or available, some basic knowledge about Wendt's career and movements is given here in order to demonstrate that he was in a position to write the infamous 1826 Leipzig review. Often spoken of in the same breath as Hoffmann, nineteenth-century biographical sources chronicled Wendt at a length comparable to that given Friedrich Rochlitz (editor of the AmZ), Adolf Bernhard Marx (Beethoven supporter and editor of the BamZ), and Ludwig Rellstab (reputedly responsible for the \"Moonlight\" title of the Op. 27, no. 2 sonata).14 Wendt's importance to aesthetics is shown in his correspondence with leading German thinkers.15 Hegel, who clearly influenced Wendt, referred to him as a friend.16 Among composers, Carl Maria von Weber befriended Wendt in Dresden-the critic had wintered there in his years as a private tutor.17 Robert Schumann names Wendt among the Davidsbiindler and had his work reviewed in the NZ/M, a project which Wendt supported and to which he certainly would have contributed had he not died soon after its inception.18 Born Johann Gottlieb Wendt on 29 September 1783, he possibly adopted the Latinate Amadeus in emulation of his favorite composer, Mozart-as had E. T. A. Hoffmann (born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm).

• Publisher: San Jose State University & The Trustees of the California State University
• Subject: Aesthetics / Criticism / Hoffmann, E T A (Ernst Theodor Amadeus) (1776-1822) / Instrumental music / Opera / Philosophy / Symphonies (Musical compositions)