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Taking Beethoven Further

 
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Playing Beethoven

Take it even further...

Go deeper with our books, courses and weblinks on Mark's subjects:
Beethoven
Chaplin
Chaucer
Cromwell
DaVinci
Descartes
Einstein
Guevara
Paine
Pankhurst
Shelley
Tubman

Composing himself

Fittingly for a man whose Ode To Joy came to be the anthem of the European Union, his life and influence spanned the continent. Meet Beethoven.

Behind the beat

Relying on Ceefax page 888 and as much Captain Sensible as Jimi Hendrix, Mark travels to Vienna to get beyond the busts and discover the real Beethoven.
Explore Beethoven a little further with our suggestions of books, weblinks and courses.

Books
The Letters of Beethoven
Edited and translated by Emily Anderson,
3 volumes (London, 1961, rpt. 1985)

The Beethoven Compendium
Edited by Barry Cooper
(London, 1991)

The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven
Edited by Glenn Stanley
(Cambridge, 2000)

Beethoven
Maynard Solomon
(New York, 1977; 2nd edition, 1998)

Beethoven Hero
Scott Burnham
(Princeton, 1995)

The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking
Alessandra Comini
(New York, 1987)

Beethoven in German Politics, 1870–1989
David Dennis
(New Haven, 1996)

Weblinks
Beethoven Profile on bbc.co.uk/music

Beethoven Resources

The BBC and the Open University are not responsible for the content of external websites

Courses
The following Open University courses include some consideration of Beethoven:

A103 - An Introduction to the Humanities - Block 5 of this Arts course includes a week studying music. One of the works discussed is Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

A214 - Understanding Music: Elements, Techniques and Styles - This is a course that teaches you about the way in which music is put together. There are a number of short extracts by Beethoven along the way, but the main focus is a set work, Beethoven’s famous Fifth Symphony. If you take this course you buy and study the score, receive a recording and spend some time on Beethoven’s music at a Summer School held in July and August at Durham University.

AA314 - Studies in Music 1750–2000: Interpretation and Analysis - Block 2 of this course focuses on a single substantial work, Beethoven’s Symphony No.8, written in 1812. Four units are devoted to this work, which forms the basis for an exploration of the symphony as a genre. There are different approaches to the analysis of musical form and the block concludes with a unit on critical reactions to this symphony, looking at a spread of writings from the early 19th century to the late 20th century.

AA302 - From Composition to Performance: Musicians at Work - Two important works from 1824 appear in this course. The Missa Solemnis is examined as an example of Beethoven’s working methods, with passages of his handwriting included. And different responses to the Ninth Symphony are examined in Block 5, ‘Reception’.

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