Introduction

In the reception of Haydn and Mozart, public and critical responses coincided significantly, even when their final evaluations differed; with the music of Beethoven the rôle of criticism was not to reflect (or deflect) public opinion but to inform and educate it. The Gazette's Beethoven criticism took a wide variety of forms, including descriptive analysis, literary portrayals and Romantic accounts of Pauline conversions to his music. Diverse as these approaches were, they shared a wish to mould public appreciation in favour of some of the most difficult music it had yet known. In comparison with Gluck, Mozart or Haydn, the number of articles on Beethoven which are independent of a performance is considerably larger, particularly if one includes Berlioz's Conservatoire reviews of 1838, which contained scant information about each programme, presenting instead an analytical survey of all nine symphonies. The Gazette offered its readers an extended justification of Beethoven from different perspectives, each providing a different way into the music. Its attitude was apparent from the outset; the composer's Romantic image as explored in Janin's ‘Le Dîner de Beethoven’ (GM 1/1–2: 5–12 Jan. 1834) was continued throughout its first decade. Such Romantic effusions may explain why, despite being welcomed as a member of the editorial staff in 1836, Fétis père contributed little of substance on Beethoven in the journal's entire lifetime. His views, as revealed in his own Revue musicale, were both too ambivalent and too professorial for Schlesinger.