Beethoven and His World.(Review)

Beethoven and His World. Edited by Scott Burnham and Michael P. Steinberg. (Bard Music Festival Series.) Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. [x, 383 p. ISBN 0-691-07072-5 (cloth); 0-691-07073-3 (pbk.). $55 (cloth); $19.95 (pbk.).]

In recent decades, musicological journals have not been able to cope with the increasing volume of scholarship from all research specialties, few as rich as Beethoven studies. In response, many worthy essays have been published in collections whose contents are sometimes difficult to ascertain using conventional research tools. Among the best of these are The Creative World of Beethoven, edited by Paul H. Lang (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971); Beethoven Studies, edited by Alan Tyson (3 vols. [imprint varies, 1973-]); and more recently, Beethoven Forum, edited by Christopher Reynolds (7 vols. to date [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992-]).

The present compilation follows this tradition and is the result of the cooperative efforts of the annual Bard Music Festival in New York and the music department of Princeton University. Its research reflects numerous individual projects and conferences, including a conference on Beethoven's late period held in honor of Lewis Lockwood at Harvard University in 1995. The eleven essays here were written by at least three generations of academic specialists in the history of music, art, and culture, and they represent the current views of mostly North American, English, and German scholarship.

The book is divided into four large topics. Part 1, "Heroic Beethoven," comprises essays by Reinhold Brinkmann and Lewis Lockwood that explore the context and manifestations of the "heroic" in Beethoven's life and works. Part 2, "Late Beethoven," presents new analyses of An die ferne Geliebte, Cello Sonata op. 102, no. 1, and Piano Sonata op. 109 by Elaine Sisman, ...