The present publication was designed to accompany an exhibition mounted by the Paul Sacher Foundation at the invitation of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn. As the Foundation's research archive centers on music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and as its holdings largely comprise collections and posthumous estates from composers (plus a few performer collections), it was logical to focus on the reception of Beethoven among composers of the last one-hundred-twenty years. The book thus deals with the manner in which artists have engaged creatively with Beethoven – with his music, his ideas, and everything his name has stood and continues to stand for. In contrast, the other two principal modes of musical reception – analysis and performance – are touched on only peripherally, the first in the form of a few verbal documents from composers, the latter in the form of sources for a Beethoven adaptation by Cathy Berberian. Although both these areas are represented in the Foundation's holdings by quite interesting manuscripts and recordings, they do scant justice to the wide-ranging spectrum of recent Beethoven interpretations and performance traditions. Another reason for limiting ourselves to the reception of Beethoven by composers was that the spatial restrictions at the Beethoven-Haus made it clear from the outset that ours would be a smallscale showcase exhibition.

Even within these limitations, however, the subject still remains vast. Although Beethoven's impact was most immediate in the nineteenth century, countless composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have grappled with him in a great many ways. It is all the more striking, then, that the subject is not nearly as well-researched as one might expect. True, much has been written about the verbal and imaginative ties to Beethoven, our changing image of Beethoven, and the various ways in which he has been politically and ideologically co-opted. We need only mention three earlier “classics”: Arno Schmitz's monograph on the Romantic image of Beethoven, Leo Schrade's study of Beethoven in France, and Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht's exhaustive investigation of writings on Beethoven. But to the present day, only halting attempts have been made to produce a broad-based study of Beethoven's reception among twentieth- and twenty-first-century composers that goes beyond isolated figures or pieces.

Nor does our book, being limited to the archival holdings of the Paul Sacher Foundation, seek to create such a larger picture.