Esteban Buch is director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author of Histoire d'un secret: A propos de la Suite lyrique d'Alban Berg, Richard Miller has translated more than seventy books and articles from the French, including Roland Barthes's The Pleasure of the Text and Brassai's The Secret of the Thirties.
In this translation of his La Neuvieme de Beethoven: Une histoire politique (1999), Buch (director of studies, Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris) presents a study of music as a political vehicle, using as his centerpiece the last movement of Beethoven's most popular symphony. Based on a poem by Friedrich Schiller, Ode to Joy, Buch shows, became identified with the universal brotherhood of man as well as a symbol of Western Europe almost immediately after its first performance in 1823. Beginning in the 1730s with the first political anthems, the book covers England's "Rule Britannia" and "God Save the King" and moves on to "La Marseillaise" later in the century. Also included are a number of other songs that became identified with a particular nation or geographical entity, ending with the adoption in 1972 by the Council of Europe of Beethoven's Ode to Joy as the European anthem. In a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion, Buch looks at the music and the texts of dozens of anthems, relates them to the Beethoven/Schiller work, and discusses them in terms of world politics, philosophy, and psychology. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-Timothy J. McGee, Hastings, Ont. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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