1.1 Reading: Notes from the Instructor
Welcome to the class!
I'm very happy to see the course reopened, in its new format. The class is meant for people of all levels of experience with Beethoven's music (including no experience at all!). On this platform, you can watch the lectures as many times as you like, at whatever pace is comfortable for you. The first lecture offers some background in musical history, harmony and structure; you may find it helpful to refer to it occasionally as you work your way through the subsequent lectures.
A new series of lectures has been added! Over the next few months, I will also be meeting with students—online and in person, in various cities. All of this news, in addition to dates of concert performances featuring Beethoven's music, will be posted in the Announcements and Events section, so watch that space! Online Forums
You can join the Curtis Online Forum, where I've posted some questions as starting points to the discussion. In addition, you can ask a question or interact with other learners in the Discussion area while viewing a video lecture (found directly under the video). I will be wading in to the conversation from time to time, usually to answer direct questions.
Suggested Readings
You may want to explore the subject from a different perspective; there are several terrific studies of Beethoven:
[Alexander] Thayer's Life of Beethoven, in two extensive volumes, still, after well over a century, sets the standard for all Beethoven biographies. It is thorough and sober-minded without being dry. It is not the work of a musician, but as a look at the man's life, it is unmatched. Edited by Elliot Forbes, it is available from the Princeton University Press.
Lewis Lockwood's Beethoven: The Music and the Life, published in 2005 by Norton, is very different and no less valuable. Far less exhaustive on Beethoven's biography than Thayer, Lockwood focuses on Beethoven's musical development, of which he gives a beautiful account—scholarly, but definitely readable by a non-musician. Since the course first ran, there is yet one more biography of Beethoven, and I am happy to report that it is extremely fine: Jan Swafford's Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph. Written from the point of view of a composer, it is highly sensitive, meticulously researched, and very ambitious without overreaching. Highly recommended.
Beethoven's own letters are extremely revealing, and often very touching. Beethoven's mix of pride, stubbornness, and generosity is constantly on display, just as it is in the music. Dover has a collection of 457 of the letters, which touch on matters both mundane (fees for compositions; details of publications) and excruciating (his deafness; his tragic relationship with his nephew).
On a more musicological level, I cannot recommend Charles Rosen's works highly enough. Those without any musical background will probably find them very thorny. But for anyone who has studied music, both The Classical Style and Sonata Forms (Norton, again) are works of art. The former has a chapter devoted to Beethoven, but really, every word of both books manages to explain how the music of the period works—not merely in an academic manner, but in a way that comes as close to explaining the psychological power of this music as one can in words. Again, not essential as background for the course, but enthusiastically recommended for anyone who wants to go deeper into these pieces.
Of course, the best way to explore Beethoven's piano sonatas is to listen to them. There are countless great recordings of these works; the complete cycles that I grew up with are those of Artur Schnabel (EMI) and Richard Goode (Nonesuch). They are products of two very different eras, and therefore they collectively form a document of the relationship great musicians have had with Beethoven over the past 100 years.
In addition to the suggested recordings, others are available for free online. IMSLP provides both recordings and scores. Please heed the copyright restrictions as they apply to your location—some scores are noted as not public domain in the EU, for example.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have written about Beethoven previously, on my website and as a Kindle Single. These writings are not specifically connected to the content of the course; they are more about my own personal relationship with Beethoven and his psychological effect on me, as a performer.
I am also in the midst of recording the sonatas; the first four volumes already released are available from Onyx Classics, and are available at DFTBA, Amazon, and iTunes.
So, happy exploring! I hope that you find this music as fascinating and inspiring as do I, and look forward to sharing it with you.
-Jonathan Biss
