Ludwig van Beethoven: Approaches to his Music

Many books have been written about Beethoven but it is rare to find one which seeks an alternative to the tendency of academia, on the one hand, to fragmentation, and of popular biographical writing, on the other, to a superficial overview. In this volume, the late Carl Dahlhaus combines the interpretations of individual works with excursions into the musical aesthetics of the period around 1800, an age which was not only a `classical' period in the history of the arts but also one in which aesthetics carved itself a place in the centre of philosophical attention. The theme of the book is the reconstruction of Beethoven's `musical thinking ' from the evidence in the works themselves and their context in the history of ideas. A table entitled `Chronicle' places the references to biographical data in their historical context. The selective bibliography includes comments to assist readers to find their way in the labyrinth of the literature about Beethoven.

CONTENIDO

-List of plates
-Chronology
1. Life and work
. The biographical method
. Inner form and external intention
. "Intitulata Bonaparte"
. The aesthetic subject and the biographical subject
2. Personal style and the individuality of single works
3. "Ingenium" and "Witz"
4. The symphonic style
. The sublime and the "Noble Ode"
. The monumental
. Temporal structures
5. Issues in sonata form
. Motivic relationships
. Models of sonata exposition
. Introduction and coda
. Form as transformation
6. Theme and character
. The dual concept of "theme" in the Eighteenth Century
. Formal and aesthetic themes
. Aesthetic logic
. Rhythm and the "metrical foot"
. "Moral characters"
7. The "underlying idea"
8. Form as idea
. "Obbligato accompaniment" and "Durchbrochene Arbeit"
. The "motives of the variation"
. A forgotten formal idea
9. The "New Path"
11. Fidelio
. Idyll and utopia
. Musical symbolism and motives of reminiscence
11. Church music and the religion of art
12. "Subthematicism"
13. Late works
. What is a late work?
. "Con alcune licenze"
. Abstraction
. "The magic of association"
. Ambiguity
. Lyricism and motivic working
-Bibliography
-Index
-Index of Beethoven's works