Ron Alexander Memorial Lectures in Musicology – Birgit Lodes, University of Vienna

Title: "An die ferne Geliebte" between Death and Resurrection: Beethoven, Lobkowitz, and mourning in Vienna around 1800

Abstract: The scholarly and popular reception of Beethoven’s song cycle An die ferne Geliebte op. 98 seems inescapably intertwined with the composer’s love for his so-called “Unsterbliche Geliebte” (Immortal Beloved). Typically, the songs are interpreted autobiographically as expressing Beethoven's personal feelings towards his "distant beloved". I suggest a rather different context for the composition: that Beethoven and the poet Alois Jeitteles conceived the cycle as a gift for Prince Franz Maximilian Lobkowitz, whose wife had died unexpectedly in January 1816.

This paper pursues the implications of this alternative contextualization, shedding new light on both the poetic and musical dimensions of An die ferne Geliebte. It highlights the cycle’s textual affinities with contemporary poetry on death and mourning, and examines how Beethoven crafted specific musical devices to convey consolation and transcendence, resulting in a work that resonates deeply with other contemporary artifacts of cultural memory.

Birgit Lodes studied in Munich, at UCLA, and at Harvard University. Since 2004, she has been Professor of Historical Musicology at the University of Vienna and currently serves as Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair at Stanford University. She is a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and editor-in-chief of the series Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich. Her research focuses on musical life in Central Europe around 1500 (https://musical-life.net/en), as well as on Beethoven, Schubert, and their circles.

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