Introduction
Thayer’s Life of Beethoven (hereafter Thayer-Forbes), rev. and ed. Elliot Forbes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 1050–51.
Chapter 1
Anonymous, “Nachrichten: Wien,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 18 (1816): 121.
Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811–1814), in his Werke: Hamburger Ausgabe, 14 vols., ed. Erich Trunz et al. (Munich: Beck, 1981), 9:283.
Chrétien Urhan, “Feuilleton, Revue musicale. Musique. Premier concert du Conservatoire.—Symphonie avec choeur de Beethoven,” Le Temps, January 25, 1838, as quoted in David B. Levy, “Early Performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: A Study of Five Cities” (PhD diss., University of Rochester, Eastman School of Music, 1980), 323; Alexandre Oulibicheff, Beethoven: Ses critiques et ses glossateurs (Paris: Jules Gavelot, 1857), 262.
Julian Schmidt, Geschichte der deutschen Nationalliteratur im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Herbig, 1853), 2:410. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own.
Anonymous, “Recension: Musée musical des Clavicinistes,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung mit besonderer Rücksicht auf den österreichischen Kaiserstaat 1 (1817): 66.
Friedrich Schlegel, “Lyceums-Fragment 55” (1797), in Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, ed. Ernst Behler et al. (Munich: F. Schöningh, 1958–), 2:154.
E. T. A. Hoffmann, “Recension: Sinfonie…par Louis van Beethoven…Oeuvre 67,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 12 (1810): 633–34.
Letter of ca. 1798, Briefwechsel: Gesamtausgabe (hereafter BGA), ed. Sieghard Brandenburg, 7 vols. (Munich: G. Henle, 1996–1998), no. 35 (1:43); Beethoven, The Letters of Beethoven (hereafter Anderson), ed. Emily Anderson, 3 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1961), no. 30 (1:32).
Carl Czerny, “Further Recollections of Beethoven,” Cock’s Musical Miscellany 1, no. 6 (August 2, 1852): 65–66, quoted in Beethoven aus der Sicht seiner Zeitgenossen (hereafter Kopitz-Cadenbach), ed. Klaus Martin Kopitz and Rainer Cadenbach, 2 vols. (Munich: G. Henle, 2009), 1:215.
A. G., “Conservatoire Impérial de Musique, Ier. et IIme. exercices des élèves,” Les Tablettes de Polymnie 2 (March 20, 1811): 310–11.
Jeremy Denk, “Congratulate Yourself, Beethoven,” http://jeremydenk.net/blog/2011/07/10/congratulate-yourself-beethoven-3/.
Gustav Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana (Leipzig: C. F. Peters, 1887), 182n.
Letter to Breuning of early November 1804, BGA no. 197 (1:227); Anderson no. 98 (1:118–19).
Letter to Wegeler, June 29, 1801, BGA no. 65 (1:81); Anderson no. 51 (1:62); Karl Bursy, quoted in Kopitz-Cadenbach, 1:173.
Letter to Breitkopf & Härtel, February 28, 1812, BGA no. 555 (2:245–46); Anderson no. 351 (1:359).
Chapter 2
Barry Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 5, 1.
Maynard Solomon, “Beethoven’s Birth Year,” in his Beethoven Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 35–42.
Christian Gottlob Neefe, “Nachricht von der churfürstlich-cöllnischen Hofcapelle zu Bonn und andern Tonkünstlern daselbst,” Magazin der Musik 1 (1783): 395.
Letter to Breitkopf & Härtel, November 22, 1809, BGA no. 408 (2:88); Anderson no. 228 (1:246).
Julia Ronge, “Beethoven liest musiktheoretische Fachliteratur,” in Beethoven liest, ed. Bernhard R. Appel and Julia Ronge (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2016), 27.
Letter of January 23, 1782, to Leopold Mozart, in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen: Gesamtausgabe, expanded ed., 8 vols., ed. Wilhelm A. Bauer, Otto Erich Deutsch, and Ulrich Konrad (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2005), 3:193.
Anton Schindler, Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Münster: Aschendorff, 1860), 1:18.
Thayer-Forbes, 89.
Ignaz von Seyfried, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Studien im Generalbasse, Contrapuncte, und in der Compositions-Lehre (Vienna: Haslinger, 1832), 6–7. Translation from Thayer-Forbes, 206–7.
Alice M. Hanson, “Incomes and Outgoings in the Vienna of Beethoven and Schubert,” Music & Letters 64 (1985): 178.
Franz Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries, Biographische Notizen über Ludwig van Beethoven (Koblenz: K. Bädeker, 1838), 33.
Wegeler and Ries, Biographische Notizen, 119–20.
Letter of November 2, 1793, BGA no. 11 (1:17); Anderson no. 7 (1:11).
John Russell, A Tour in Germany, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1825), 2:273–74.
The report by Louis Baron de Trémont is quoted in Kopitz-Cadenbach, 2:1004.
Letter to B. Schott’s Söhne, September 17, 1824, BGA no. 1881 (5:368); Anderson no. 1308 (3:1141).
Chapter 3
Letter to Breitkopf & Härtel, November 22, 1809, BGA no. 408 (2:88); Anderson no. 228 (1:246).
Ludwig van Beethoven, Beethovens Tagebuch: 1812–1818, 2nd ed., ed. Maynard Solomon (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2005), 29–30, 57–64, 66, 247, 254, 258. Translation from Maynard Solomon, “Beethoven’s Tagebuch,” in his Beethoven Essays, 246.
Beethoven, Beethovens Tagebuch, 30; translations from Solomon, “Beethoven’s Tagebuch,” 247.
Letter to Hans Georg Nägeli, September 9, 1824, BGA no. 1873 (5:362); Anderson no. 1306 (3:1139).
Beethoven, Beethovens Tagebuch, 41, 45; translations from Solomon, “Beethoven’s Tagebuch,” 254, 258.
Beethoven, Beethovens Tagebuch, 72, 104; translations amended from Solomon, “Beethoven’s Tagebuch,” 274, 294.
Letter to “Emilie M. in Hamburg,” BGA no. 585 (2:274); Anderson no. 376 (1:381). On the presumed authenticity of this letter, see Lewis Lockwood, Beethoven: The Music and the Life (New York: Norton, 2005), 8–12.
Letter of September 17, 1824, to B. Schott’s Söhne, Mainz, BGA no. 1881 (5:368); Anderson no. 1308 (3:1141).
Ludwig Tieck, “Symphonien” (1799), in Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, ed. Silvio Vietta and Richard Littlejohns, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1991), 1:241. Hoffmann, “Recension: Sinfonie…par Louis van Beethoven…Oeuvre 67,” 633.
Beethoven, Beethovens Tagebuch, 66.
Beethoven, Beethovens Tagebuch, 57–64; translations from Solomon, “Beethoven’s Tagebuch,” 265–69.
Annotation to Herder’s poem “Macht des Gesanges,” transcribed in Ludwig Nohl, Beethovens Brevier (Leipzig: Ernst Julius Günther, 1870), 104.
Letter to Therese Malfatti, late May 1810, BGA no. 442 (2:122); Anderson no. 258 (1:273).
Beethoven, Beethovens Tagebuch, 48; translation from Solomon, “Beethovens Tagebuch,” 259.
BGA no. 106 (1:122); Anderson Appendix A (3:1352).
Letter to Wegeler, November 6, 1801, BGA no. 70 (1:89); Anderson no. 54 (1:68).
Chapter 4
By far the best treatment of Beethoven’s deafness is Robin Wallace, Hearing Beethoven: A Story of Musical Loss and Discovery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). My account draws heavily on Wallace’s sensitive and insightful research.
Letter to Wegeler, June 29, 1801, BGA no. 65 (1:80); Anderson no. 51 (1:60).
BGA no. 106 (1:121–25).
Wallace, Hearing Beethoven, 31, 26, 134, 139–49.
Der Korrespondent von und für Deutschland (Nuremberg) 9, no. 340 (1814): 1417–18, quoted in Klaus Martin Kopitz, “Beethoven und die Zarenfamilie: Bekanntes und Unbekanntes zur Akademie vom 29. November 1814 sowie zur Polonaise op. 89,” Bonner Beethoven-Studien 5 (2006): 143.
Thayer-Forbes, 810–11.
Letter to Joseph Wilhelm von Schaden, September 15, 1787, BGA no. 3 (1:5); Anderson no. 1 (1:4).
Owen Jander, “ ‘Let Your Deafness No Longer Be a Secret—Even in Art’: Self-Portraiture and the Third Movement of the C-Minor Symphony,” Beethoven Forum 8 (2000): 25–70.
Letter to Wegeler, November 6, 1801, BGA no. 70 (1:89); Anderson no. 54 (1:68).
Chapter 5
Wegeler and Ries, Biographische Notizen, 117.
Undated letter, BGA no. 582 (2:271); Anderson no. 373 (1:376).
Beethoven, Beethovens Tagebuch, 29–30; translation from Solomon, “Beethoven’s Tagebuch,” 246.
Rita Steblin, “New Evidence for Josephine as the ‘Immortal Beloved’ Involving Beethoven and England,” Musical Times 160, no. 1947 (2019): 19.
Anton Schindler, Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven (Münster: Aschendorff, 1840), 29, 34.
Letter of May 8, 1816, BGA no. 933 (3:257); Anderson no. 632 (2:577).
Birgit Lodes, “Zur musikalischen Passgenauigkeit von Beethovens Kompositionen mit Widmungen an Adelige: An die ferne Geliebte op. 98 in neuer Deutung,” in Widmungen bei Haydn und Beethoven: Personen, Strategien, Praktiken, ed. Bernhard R. Appel and Armin Raab (Bonn: Verlag Beethoven-Haus, 2015), 171–202.
Chapter 6
Georg August Griesinger, Biographische Notizen über Joseph Haydn (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1810), 24.
Letter to Hoffmeister & Kühnel, ca. September 20, 1803, BGA no. 157 (1:183); Anderson no. 82 (1:97–98).
Letter to Franz Anton Hoffmeister, January 15, 1801, BGA no. 54 (1:64); Anderson no. 44 (1:48).
Beethoven, Beethovens Tagebuch, 45; translation amended from Solomon, “Beethoven’s Tagebuch,” 258.
Letter of April 5, 1809, BGA no. 375 (2:58); Anderson no. 209 (1:224–25).
Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Vertraute Briefe, geschrieben auf einer Reise nach Wien und den österreichischen Staaten zu Ende des Jahres 1808 und zu Anfang 1809 (Amsterdam: Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir, 1810), 2 vols., 1:254–55.
Letter of sometime after May 19, 1818, BGA no. 1259 (4:190–91); Anderson no. 903 (2:766–67).
Letter to C. F. Peters, February 20, 1823, BGA no. 1575 (5:52); Anderson no. 1158 (3:1020).
Letter to Andreas Streicher, July–September 1796, BGA no. 22 (1:32); Anderson no. 18 (1:25).
Albert Christoph Dies, Biographische Nachrichten von Joseph Haydn (Vienna: Camesina, 1810), 75.
Letter of December 28, 1782, to his father, in Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, 3:245.
Anonymous, “X Variationen pour le clavecin…par L. van Beethoven,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 1 (1799): 607.
Anonymous, “Tre sonate…dal S. Luigi van Beethoven. Op. 12,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 1 (1799): 571.
Letter to Breitkopf & Härtel, April 22, 1801, BGA 59 (1:69); Anderson no. 48 (1:53).
Anonymous, “Wien: Musikalisches Tagebuch vom Monat März,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 28 (1826): 310–11.
Chapter 7
The comment (“Östreich löhne Napoleon”) appears at the beginning of the second movement. See Ludwig van Beethoven, Werke, III:3, Klavierkonzerte II, ed. Hans-Werner Küthen (Munich: G. Henle, 1996), xiii.
Kopitz, “Beethoven und die Zarenfamilie”: 146.
Letter to Beethoven from the City Magistrate of Vienna, November 16, 1815, BGA no. 853 (3:179).
Letter of Autumn 1814, BGA no. 747 (3:64); Anderson no. 502 (1:474).
Letter written soon after June 25, 1823, BGA no. 1680 (5:157); Anderson no. 1194 (3:1049).
Letter of August 2, 1794, BGA no. 17 (1:26); Anderson no. 12 (1:18).
Letter to Johann Baptist Bach, October 27, 1819, BGA no. 1348 (4:331); Anderson no. 979 (2:852).
Ludwig Tieck, quoted in Kopitz-Cadenbach, 2:986.
Letter to Breitkopf & Härtel, July 26, 1809, BGA no. 392 (2:71); Anderson no. 220 (1:233–34).
As transcribed by Julia Ronge, “Beethoven liest musiktheoretische Fachliteratur,” 28.
Letter of March 5, 1818, BGA no. 1247 (4:178); Anderson no. 895 (2:760).
Joseph Sonnleithner to Philipp von Stahl, October 3, 1805, BGA no. 238 (1:267–68).
Beethoven, Konversationshefte, ed. Karl-Heinz Köhler and Dagmar Beck, 11 vols. (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1972–2001), 9:168, 2:279, 3:288.
Chapter 8
Douglas Johnson, “Beethoven Scholars and Beethoven’s Sketches,” 19th-Century Music 2 (1978): 6.
Anonymous, “Nachrichten,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 7 (1805): 321.
Chapter 9
The summary here follows the chronology and motivations proposed by Maynard Solomon, “The Creative Periods of Beethoven,” in Beethoven Essays, 116–25.
Karl-Heinz Köhler, “The Conversation Books: Aspects of a New Picture of Beethoven,” in Beethoven, Performers, and Critics, 154.
Wiener Journal für Theater, Musik und Mode 1 (1806), quoted in Ludwig van Beethoven: Die Werke im Spiegel seiner Zeit, ed. Stefan Kunze (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1987), 13. Anonymous, “Tre sonate . . . dal S. Luigi van Beethoven. Op. 12,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 1 (1799): 571.
Holz’s recollections as reported by Wilhelm von Lenz, Beethoven: Eine Kunststudie, 5 vols. (Kassel: Ernst Balde; Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1855–1860), 5:217.
Chapter 10
Letter to Breitkopf & Härtel, ca. December 18, 1802, BGA no. 123 (1:145); Anderson no. 67 (1:84).
Anonymous, “Soll man bey der Instrumentalmusik Etwas denken,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 29 (1827): 529–38, 546–54.
Owen Jander, Beethoven’s “Orpheus” Concerto: The Fourth Piano Concerto in Its Cultural Context (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2009).
Richard Wagner, Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (Leipzig: Otto Wigand, 1850), 90.
Anonymous, “Sechs Gesänge mit Begleit. des Pianoforte…von L. van Beethoven…Oeuvr. 75,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 13 (1811): 593.
George Thomson to Beethoven, August 5, 1812, BGA no. 590 (2:281); translations from Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence, ed. and trans. Theodore Albrecht, 3 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), no. 163 (1:256).
Letter to Johann Andreas Streicher, September 16, 1824, BGA no. 1875 (5:364); Anderson no. 1307 (3:1140).
Chapter 11
Joseph Fröhlich, “Recensionen: Sinfonie, mit Schlusschor…” Cäcilia 8 (1828): 236.
A. B. Marx, “Beurtheilungen: Quatuor pour 2 Violons, Alto, et Violoncelle par L. v. Beethoven. Oeuvr. 135…” Berliner Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 6 (1829): 169.
Ludwig Speidel, Fremden-Blatt, January 25, 1893, 7–8, as quoted in Elizabeth Way Sullivan, “Conversing in Public: Chamber Music in Vienna, 1890–1910” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2001), 129.
Willi Stoph, address to the Konstituierende Sitzung des Komitees für die Beethoven-Ehrung der DDR, Neues Deutschland, March 28, 1970, quoted in Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, Zur Geschichte der Beethoven-Rezeption, 2nd ed. (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1994), 84; idem, “Festansprache…auf dem Festakt zur Beethoven-Ehrung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik am 16. Dezember 1970,” in Bericht über den Internationalen Beethoven-Kongress 10.–12. Dezember 1970 in Berlin, ed. Heinz Alfred Brockhaus and Konrad Niemann (Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik, 1971), 2–3.
Steven Mufson, “Women’s Forum Opens in China amid Disputes,” Washington Post, August 31, 1995. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/08/31/womens-forum-opens-in-china-amid-disputes/41143272-3405-4806-9099-9254afc002cf/?utm:term=.7461f6371038; idem, “Women’s Conference Opens with Fanfare,” Washington Post, September 5, 1995. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/09/05/womens-conference-opens-with-fanfare/870797c2-d77b-4405-961f-482bad594b9c/?utm:term=.963f39d8a014. My thanks to Michael Morse for pointing out this latter performance to me.
Steven R. Weisman, “Japan Sings Along with Beethoven,” New York Times, December 29, 1990. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/29/arts/japan-sings-along-with-beethoven.html.
Maynard Solomon, Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 225.
Hermann Abert, “Beethoven zum 26. März 1927,” Die Musik 19 (1927): 386.
Mauricio Kagel, Preface to Ludwig van: Hommage von Beethoven (London: Universal Edition, 1970), ix. http://www.bibliotecabeethoveniana.it/.
Bernstein on Beethoven: A Celebration in Vienna (1970), directed by Humphrey Burton.
Further reading
Scores
The standard modern edition of the music is the Werke, ed. Joseph Schmidt-Görg et al. (Munich: Henle, 1961–). This set of carefully edited scores is still in progress and not likely to be finished for several decades yet. In the meantime, the older Werke, 37 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1862–1865, 1888), remains serviceable if far from ideal; it is accessible online through the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) at www.imslp.org. Many selections from this older edition have also been reprinted in reasonably priced editions.
Thematic catalogue
The authoritative catalogue of the music is Ludwig van Beethoven: Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, ed. Kurt Dorfmüller, Norbert Gertsch, and Julia Ronge, 2 vols. (Munich: G. Henle, 2014). The entry for each work provides detailed information on its origins, surviving sketches, first performance, and first and early editions, along with a brief musical notation of the opening of each work and its various movements, if any.
Letters and documents
The meticulously annotated Briefwechsel: Gesamtausgabe, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg, 7 vols. (Munich: G. Henle, 1996–1998), includes letters both to and from the composer in their original languages. Emily Anderson’s English translation, The Letters of Beethoven, 3 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1961), is supplemented by Theodore Albrecht’s Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence, 3 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996). Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988) includes a translation of the complete diary. Beethoven: A Documentary Study, ed. H. C. Robbins Landon (New York: Macmillan, 1970), offers a good selection of key sources.
Biographies
Excellent accounts include Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven, 2nd ed. (New York: Schirmer Books, 1998); Lewis Lockwood’s Beethoven: The Music and the Life (New York: Norton, 2005); William Kinderman’s Beethoven, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); and Jan Swafford’s Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014). Solomon’s focus is on Beethoven the individual, with emphasis on the composer’s psychological makeup. Lockwood, Kinderman, and Swafford integrate accounts of the music and the life. Alexander Wheelock Thayer’s Beethoven (1866–1879), revised by Elliot Forbes as Thayer’s Life of Beethoven (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), documents the composer’s life year-by-year in detail and remains indispensable though in need of updating.
Iconography
Alessandra Comini, The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking, 2nd ed. (Santa Fe, NM: Sunstone Press, 2008), traces images of the composer from his lifetime into the early twentieth century. H. C. Robbins Landon’s Beethoven: A Documentary Study (New York: Macmillan, 1970) provides a rich selection of texts as well as images.
Handbooks and essay collections
The Beethoven Compendium, ed. Barry Cooper (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), and The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven, ed. Glenn Stanley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) provide excellent overviews of both the life and works. Beethoven and His World, ed. Scott Burnham and Michael P. Steinberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), offers more-specialized but important essays. Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988) and Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) supplement his biography of the composer with essays that go into greater detail on specific aspects of the composer’s life.
Genre surveys
Lewis Lockwood surveys the symphonies in Beethoven’s Symphonies: An Artistic Vision (New York: Norton, 2015), as does Martin Geck in Beethoven’s Symphonies: Nine Approaches to Art and Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). Leon Plantinga provides a comparable overview in his Beethoven’s Concertos: History, Style, Performance (New York: Norton, 1995). Charles Rosen introduces the piano sonatas in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), while Donald Francis Tovey’s A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, first published in 1931 and now available in a revised edition by Barry Cooper, remains a classic (London: Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, 1998).
Joseph Kerman’s The Beethoven String Quartets (New York: Norton, 1966), still the standard survey of the genre, is supplemented by a number of more recent publications, including The Beethoven Quartet Companion, ed. Robert Winter and Robert Martin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); The String Quartets of Beethoven, ed. William Kinderman (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006); and Lewis Lockwood and the Juilliard String Quartet, Inside Beethoven’s Quartets: History, Interpretation, Performance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).
Other genre surveys include The Beethoven Violin Sonatas: History, Criticism, Performance, ed. Lewis Lockwood and Mark Kroll (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004); Marc D. Moscovitz and R. Larry Todd, Beethoven’s Cello: Five Revolutionary Sonatas and Their World (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017); and Paul Reid, The Beethoven Song Companion (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).
Specialized studies
Robin Wallace examines the composer’s deafness in Hearing Beethoven: A Story of Musical Loss and Discovery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). Scott Burnham explores the musical basis for the perception of Beethoven’s music as “heroic” in his Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
The composer’s political views have been the focus of several recent studies, including Stephen Rumph’s Beethoven after Napoleon: Political Romanticism in the Late Works (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Nicholas Mathew’s Political Beethoven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and John Clubbe’s Beethoven: The Relentless Revolutionary (New York: Norton, 2019).
The compositional process has long fascinated scholars, in part because the material is so rich: Beethoven himself preserved an enormous quantity of his sketches. Important studies include Barry Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Beethoven’s Compositional Process, ed. William Kinderman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991); and Lewis Lockwood, Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). Douglas Johnson, Alan Tyson, and Robert Winter provide a detailed reconstruction and inventory of the sources in The Beethoven Sketchbooks (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). For a recent survey of the field, see Lewis Lockwood, “Beethoven’s Sketches: The State of Our Knowledge.” http://www.bu.edu/beethovencenter/beethovens-sketches-the-state-of-our-knowledge/.
Performance issues are the focus of William S. Newman’s Beethoven on Beethoven: Playing His Piano Music His Way (New York: Norton, 1988); Performing Beethoven, ed. Robin Stowell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); and Stewart Gordon’s Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas: A Handbook for Performers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
On the critical reception of the music, see Robin Wallace, Beethoven’s Critics: Aesthetic Dilemmas and Resolutions during the Composer’s Lifetime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); David B. Dennis, Beethoven in German Politics, 1870–1989 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Esteban Buch, Beethoven’s Ninth: A Political History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Mark Evan Bonds, Music as Thought: Listening to the Symphony in the Age of Beethoven (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); and Michael Broyles, Beethoven in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011). On the growing perception of music as an essentially autobiographical art, see Mark Evan Bonds, The Beethoven Syndrome: Hearing Music as Autobiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).
Online resources
The Beethoven-Haus in Bonn maintains a museum housed in the composer’s birth-house as well as an extensive archive of manuscript and printed sources, portions of which are available online: www.beethoven.de/en. The Ira F. Brilliant Beethoven Center at San Jose State University also houses a museum and archive as well as an excellent website with extensive bibliographies of both general and specialized topics related to the composer: www.sjsu.edu/beethoven/. Boston University’s Center for Beethoven Research hosts regular conferences and concerts and maintains a valuable website of particular interest to scholars: www.bu.edu/beethovencenter/.