Two Beethoven Sketchbooks

A comprehensive description of Beethoven's sketchbooks--bound books of music paper in which Beethoven made sketches for his compositions from about 1798--has been long felt by Beethoven scholars. Although almost all the sketchbooks have survived in one form or another, it became clear in the 1960s that they were in a state of disarray. A reconstruction of their original condition was essential to the proper study of their musical contents.

The essays in this volume grew out of an international Beethoven conference held in honor of Lewis Lockwood at Harvard University in 1996. Michelle Fillion?s opening essay explores the Mass in C and its turn away from the ?heroic? style of the ?middle-period? works. In ?Beethoven and the Aesthetic State,? Karol Berger reflects on the manner in which the composer?s music often shifts back and forth between a ?real? and an ?imagined? world. William Drabkin examines the role of the cello part in Beethoven's late quartets, particularly in regard to the elusive parameter of texture. Richard Kramer?s reading of the song Resignation (1818) opens new perspectives on the idea of a ?late? style in the composer?s output. ø In ?Beethoven's ?Expressive? Markings,? Leo Treitler demonstrates how seemingly straightforward directions to performers about tempo, mood, or dynamics raise fundamental questions about the relationship between music and language. Michael C. Tusa reviews more than a century of attempts to relate form and content in the last movement of the Ninth Symphony and offers a new interpretation on the idea of the choral finale as a kind of four-movement symphony in its own right. Maynard Solomon?s essay on the ?Diabelli? variations argues that the theme itself, although simple, is by no means trivial and indeed is ?perfectly suited to unpacking issues of firstness and lastness and their interchangeability.? William Drabkin concludes the volume with a review essay on Beethoven: Interpretationen seiner Werke, edited by Albrecht Riethm_ller, Carl Dahlhaus, and Alexander Ringer.

Fresh perspectives on the symphonies and piano concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven are offered in the inaugural volume of North American Beethoven Studies. To be published under the joint auspices of the University of Nebraska Press and the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, the volumes in the new series will focus on the life and work, milieu and influence of the great composer. The first volume, edited by the noted music scholar and pianist William Kinderman, brings together recent studies by leading scholars on Beethoven?s major orchestral, including the first two piano concertos, the Egmont overture, the Missa Solemnis, and several of the symphonies, especially the Third, Fifth, and Ninth. They devote special attention to Beethoven?s creative process by analyzing, in some instances closely for the first time, his numerous surviving musical sketchbooks and loose sketch-leaves. The issues dealt with include Beethoven?s reinterpretation of the composition models of Haydn and Mozart, his working methods in composition, the structural expansion of his symphonic forms, the design of variation movements in his symphonies, and Beethoven?s musical symbolism. Four introductory essays probe the relation between Beethoven?s sketches and the analysis of his finished works; it is a fascinating and controversial undertaking. The first volume of North American Beethoven Studies illuminates critical issues and challenges traditional interpretations of some of Beethoven?s most celebrated works while avoiding the narrow specialization of some recent scholarship. Future volumes will focus on performance practices, composition, and recording history.

Provides a detailed overview of the life of Ludwig van Beethoven, from Enlightenment-era Bonn to the musical capital of Vienna, describing the composer's career, ill health, and romantic rejections.

The aim of this series is to present scholarly work on Beethoven, broad in range as well as meticulous in method.