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 theinterpretations 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 bookis 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 assistreaders to find their way in the labyrinth of the literature about Beethoven.

One of the century's leading musicologists, Carl Dahlhaus was the editor of reference books in the field of music history and a prolific author, primarily in the fields of musical aesthetics and theory from the middle ages to Schoenberg, and the history of music in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has been described as "the most widely read (in both senses) and frequently cited musical scholar of recent times" and until his death in 1989 was Professor of the History of Music at the Technische Universitat.