Reception
Beethoven was quite late in presenting Matthisson with a copy of his song, fearing the poet would not like it (see letter above). In fact, Matthisson appreciated the song greatly; he later wrote (in an 1825 introduction to an edition of his collected poems):
- Several composers have animated this little lyrical fantasy through music; I am firmly convinced however that none of them so threw the text into the shade with their melody as did the genius Ludwig van Beethoven in Vienna.
Of Beethoven's songs (a minor genre for this composer), "Adelaide" is one of the most popular, and it is included in most recorded anthologies.
The work was especially popular in Beethoven's day, and went through many editions. Various composers, including Sigismond Thalberg and Franz Liszt (who wrote three versions, S.466) prepared arrangements of the song for solo piano. Later in the nineteenth century, the critic Eduard Hanslick called "Adelaide" "the only song by Beethoven the loss of which would leave a gap in the emotional life of our nation." The song is less well-known today; the New Grove calls it "once-popular".
Read more about this topic: Adelaide (Beethoven)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
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“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
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