Michael Spitzer is Professor of Music and Head of the School of Music at the University of Liverpool, UK

• Contents: Introduction. Part I History and Historiography: The biographical method, Carl Dahlhaus; Beethoven’s hero, Scott Burnham; ‘Late’, last, and least: on being Beethoven’s Quartet in F Major, Op. 135, K.M. Knittel; Beethoven before 1800: the Mozart legacy, Lewis Lockwood; Beethoven and the London pianoforte school, Alexander L. Ringer; New roads to old ideas in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Warren Kirkendale. Part II Documents and Sketches: Beethoven’s birth year, Maynard Solomon; Das ‘Heiligenstädter Testament’ im Licht der Freimaurerei. Beethovens ‘letzter Wille’ als ein Beweis für seine Zugehörigkeit zur Logenbruderschaft?, Hans-Werner Küthen; New light on Beethoven’s letter to an unknown woman, Maynard Solomon; Conversations with Beethoven, Alan Tyson; Beethoven’s understanding of ‘sonata form’: the evidence of the sketchbooks, William Drabkin; Beethoven's Sixth Symphony: sketches for the first movement, Philip Gossett; Plans for the structure of the String Quartet in C Sharp Minor Op. 131, Robert Winter. Part III Analysis: Tovey’s Beethoven, Joseph Kerman; A case study for interpretation: the Third Movement of Op. 106 (Hammerklavier), Robert S. Hatten; Form as the process of becoming: the Beethoven-Hegelian tradition and the ‘Tempest’ Sonata, Janet Schmalfeldt; The significance of recapitulation in Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ Sonata, Michael Spitzer; Beethoven’s experiments in composition: the late bagatelles, Edward T. Cone. Part IV Aesthetics and Hermeneutics: Adorno’s diagnosis of Beethoven’s late style: early symptom of a fatal condition, Rose Rosengard Subotnik; Beethoven and romantic irony, Rey M. Longyear; Beethoven’s ‘Orpheus in Hades’: the andante con moto of the Fourth Piano Concerto, Owen Jander; Beethoven and masculinity, Sanna Pederson; Resisting the Ninth, Richard Taruskin; Beethoven’s myth sympathy: Hollywood’s re-construction, Holly Rogers. Name index.