Beethoven and the Creative Process

Contents

• Approaching Beethoven's creative process. Part 1 Factors affecting Beethoven's creative process: Beethoven's artistic aims
• professional pressures
• extramusical factors
• recurring ideas. Part 2 Beethoven's compositional methods: the sketchbooks and their use
• the visual appearance of the sketches
• types and relationships of sketches
• the sketching of form and key
• the sketching of melody
• the vertical dimension and finishing touches. Part 3 Stages in the creative process: first conceptions - piano concerto in D minor, Op 31 No 2
• planning the later movements - string quartet in B flat, Op 130
• musical structure and vivid pictorialism - "Meeresstille", Op 112
• the problem of the joins - "Egmont" overture
• a creation in three phases - the late bagatelles
• a long-running revision - second piano concerto.