Beethoven / Edition 2

by William Kinderman

Overview

Combining musical insight with the most recent research, William Kinderman's Beethoven is both a richly drawn portrait of the man and a guide to his music. Kinderman traces the composer's intellectual and musical development from the early works written in Bonn to the Ninth Symphony and the late quartets, looking at compositions from different and original perspectives that show Beethoven's art as a union of sensuous and rational, of expression and structure. In analyses of individual pieces, Kinderman shows that the deepening of Beethoven's musical thought was a continuous process over decades of his life.

In this new updated edition, Kinderman gives more attention to the composer's early chamber music, his songs, his opera Fidelio, and to a number of often-neglected works of the composer's later years and fascinating projects left incomplete. A revised view emerges from this of Beethoven's aesthetics and the musical meaning of his works. Rather than the conventional image of a heroic and tormented figure, Kinderman provides a more complex, more fully rounded account of the composer. Although Beethoven's deafness and his other personal crises are addressed, together with this ever-increasing commitment to his art, so too are the lighter aspects of his personality: his humor, his love of puns, his great delight in juxtaposing the exalted and the commonplace.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195328363
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/10/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	785,890
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 3.10(d)

About the Author

William Kinderman is Professor of Musicology at the University of Illinois - Champaign-Urbana. His books include Beethoven's "Diabelli" Variations (OUP, 1987), ed., Beethoven's Compositional Process (Nebraska, 1991), Beethoven (OUP and California, 1995), ed., The Second Practice of Nineteenth-Century Tonality (Nebraska, 1996), Artaria 195: Beethoven's Sketchbook for the 'Missa solemnis' and the Piano Sonata in E Major, Opus 109 (Illinois, 3 vols., 2003), ed. (with Katherine Syer), A Companion to Wagner's "Parsifal" (Camden House, 2005), ed., The String Quartets of Beethoven (Illinois, 2006), and Mozart's Piano Music (OUP, 2006). He is also an accomplished pianist whose recordings have been met with global acclaim; his double CD of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations has appeared with Arietta Records.

Table of Contents

Preface and AcknowledgmentsList of PlatesList of music Examples and FiguresOverture1. The Bonn Years2. The Path to Mastery, 1792-17983. Crises and Creativity, 1799-18024. The Heroic Style I, 1803-18065. The Heroic Style II, 1806-18096. Consolidation, 1810-18127. The Congress of Vienna Period, 1813-18158. The Hammerklavier Sonata, 1816-18189. Struggle, 1819-182210. Triumph, 1822-182411. The ‘Galitzin' Quartets, 1824-182512. The Last Phase, 1826-1827Selected BibliographyBibliography of Works CitedIndex of Beethoven's CompositionsGeneral Index

Editorial Reviews

"A most welcome addition to Beethoven literature ... combines a musician's perception of the music and an informed musicologist's command of recent Beethoven scholarship."—Alfred Brendel

"The great strength of William Kinderman's Beethoven lies in its superb analyses of many of the composer's works. Kinderman is at his best when revealing the "dramatic narrative" intrinsic to Beethoven's greatest compositions. Kinderman's analyses are original - sometimes breathtakingly so - insightful, sympathetic, and entirely convincing. It is impossible to read this book without having gained renewed appreciation of Beethoven's massive achievement ... it is impossible adequately to convey in a short review the book's powerful overall impact ... William Kinderman not only brilliantly accomplishes what he set out to do, but he has also produced a work that will be useful as a handbook or guide to Beethoven's music. Taken in its entirety, Kinderman's Beethoven will stand as a modern classic in Beethoven scholarship."—The Beethoven Journal, Fall 1995, Volume 10, Number 2

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