La Symphonie politique: Notes sur le Beethoven de Victor Hugo

This paper attempts to show that while the young Victor Hugo proved oblivious to music in general and that of Beethoven in particular, the mature writer of William Shakespeare (1864) tried to make amends for reasons having more to do with politics than musicology. Indeed, Victor Hugo may have included Beethoven in his artistic pantheon so as to better exclude Goethe, the other "great German" whose anti-democratic and aristocratic stance clashed with Hugo's republican ideals. (MP)