Publisher's Synopsis
In this volume, an author combines interpretations of individual works which go into issues of composition and musical history, instead of merely duplicating in words what can already be read in the scores, 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 book is the reconstruction of Beethoven's "musical thinking" from the evidence in the works themselves and their context in the history of ideas.
