Towards a History of the Eccentric Artist: Beethoven’s Bad Manners and the Lure of the Anecdote

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since the late nineteenth century, Beethoven’s bad manners have been framed as a political act of resistance against the stilted affect of the nobility. Yet this posthumous view does not fully account for how Beethoven’s contemporaries understood his (mis)behaviour. This article situates reactions to Beethoven’s bad manners that originated during his lifetime, alongside anecdotes published shortly after his death, to show how the eccentric artist persona interfaced with a history of etiquette. The very act of noticing behavioural minutiae took part in a celebrity culture poised on the cusp of novelty and conformity, entertainment and moral instruction. In a period dominated by conduct books, Beethoven’s friends sought to reconcile his gaffes with sensibility and (mannered) naturalness, reframing him as an ideal bourgeois subject. The case of Beethoven not only sheds light on the formation of the eccentric artist, but on the lure of the anecdote as an imaginative form of re-enactment.