Beethoven Essays

Significant new insights into Beethoven’s life and style are offered in this volume in honor of Elliot Forbes, whose revision of Thayer’s Life of Beethoven is the standard modern edition of that classic. Essays by James Webster, Martin Staehelin, Alan Tyson, Maynard Solomon, and Michael Ochs look carefully at aspects of Beethoven’s career and also deal with Thayer and his work as biographer. Studies of individual works include Edward T. Cone’s completion of an unfinished cadenza for the First Piano Concerto and Geoffrey Block’s look at sources for the Second Piano Concerto. Sieghard Brandenburg provides an essay on the scherzo of the Fifth Symphony based on an exhaustive scrutiny of its sources. Christopher Reynolds writes on the Violin Sonata Op. 30, no. 1. J. Merrill Knapp contributes an article on the Mass in C major, Op. 86, and Robert Winter discusses the origins of the Missa solemnis, Op. 123.