The first extended study of the combined reception of Haydn and Mozart in the long nineteenth century, this book generates new, holistic understandings of their musical, cultural and historical significance in the Germanic, French and Anglophone worlds. It places a wide range of written sources under the microscope, including serious and popular biographies, scholarship, musical and non-musical criticism, and a diverse body of fiction, and evaluates the impact of anniversary commemorations. Haydn and Mozart in the Long Nineteenth Century determines how reputations, images and narratives for the two composers converge, diverge, develop at different speeds, and influence one another. Countering received wisdom about Haydn's reputational decline and reassessing Mozart reception through consideration of a broad spectrum of publications, we hear Haydn and Mozart speaking to the long nineteenth century in more nuanced, powerful, and persuasive voices than previously recognized.

“This enlightening volume mines an astonishing array of source materials to trace the intertwining legacies of Haydn and Mozart from the 1790s to 1914. The vast trove of information assembled here, all meticulously organized and elegantly explained, uncovers converging and diverging reception histories. Its commanding narrative provides a compelling and most welcome reinterpretation of Haydn's legacy alongside Mozart's that will surely influence generations to come.”

Caryl Clark - Professor of Music, University of Toronto

“In this important book, Simon Keefe traces a compelling joint historiography of Haydn and Mozart, with a biographer's eye for detail and a chronicler's grasp of the sweep of time. Deftly navigating a rich variety of period sources, he uses a wide-angle lens to challenge monolithic tendencies in well-known “master narratives” and reveals the long nineteenth century as a vital context for understanding Haydn and Mozart today.”

Jessica Waldoff - Professor of Music, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester

‘This book’s straightforward title previews the directness and rigour of Keefe’s writing and research. It is not only the number of primary accounts he is able to uncover; he methodically synthesizes a staggering array of sources, finding resonances among writings as diverse as a new critical edition’s reviews and whimsical anecdotes. He moreover avoids overwhelming the reader with a list-like barrage of quotations, a potential pitfall of any reception study, especially one that handles such a range of sources. Deft paraphrase and summary allow Keefe to craft narratives without being bogged down in overly difficult and impenetrable language. … Keefe’s theory of reception history-that boundaries of geography, language, and genre are much more permeable than commonly held-provides an intriguing framework for future studies. It also offers one of the most nuanced and persuasive assessments of nineteenth-century Haydn and Mozart reception to date.’

Source: Music and Letters

‘a valuable study that adds welcome nuance to the prevailing scholarly conceptions about the nineteenth-century reception of these important late eighteenth-century composers.’

Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society

‘Everyone interested in Mozart and Haydn and their passage across time - to say nothing of those interested in the prehistory of the types of critical discourses still in play in the first quarter of the twenty-first century - will be grateful to Simon Keefe for this penetrating and timely piece of work. It makes everyone realize just how great is the distance between our views of Mozart and Haydn and those of the nineteenth century, and how the latter condition the former. Haydn and Mozart in the Long Nineteenth Century is a major addition to scholarship on the two composers but also to that of the long nineteenth century in general.’

Source: Newsletter of the Mozart Society of America