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Launched in 1995, Bach Perspectives has become the premier English-language serial book series dedicated to cutting-edge Bach scholarship. The University of Illinois Press now offers the first four volumes in open access editions available for free to all interested readers.

The third volume of the acclaimed series features a roster of scholars analyzing the crucial influence of J. S. Bach’s music upon compositions by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Hindemith, and others. Throughout, the contributors highlight Bach’s subtle presence in the history of composition and illuminate the intertwined works of Bach and his successors.

Contributors: Thomas Christensen, Ludwig Finscher, Walter Frisch, Stephen Hinton, William Kinderman, and Robert L. Marshall

We have long regarded Beethoven as a great composer, but we rarely appreciate that he was also an eminently political artist. This book unveils the role of politics in his oeuvre, elucidating how the inherently political nature of Beethoven’s music explains its power and endurance.

William Kinderman presents Beethoven as a civically engaged thinker faced with severe challenges. The composer lived through many tumultuous events—the French Revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Congress of Vienna among them. Previous studies of Beethoven have emphasized the importance of his personal suffering and inner struggles; Kinderman instead establishes that musical tensions in works such as the Eroica, the Appassionata, and his final piano sonata in C minor reflect Beethoven’s attitudes toward the political turbulence of the era. Written for the 250th anniversary of his birth, Beethoven takes stock of the composer’s legacy, showing how his idealism and zeal for resistance have ensured that masterpieces such as the Ninth Symphony continue to inspire activists around the globe. Kinderman considers how the Fifth Symphony helped galvanize resistance to fascism, how the Sixth has energized the environmental movement, and how Beethoven’s civic engagement continues to inspire in politically perilous times. Uncertain times call for ardent responses, and, as Kinderman convincingly affirms, Beethoven’s music is more relevant today than ever before.

"Cutting across traditional subject boundaries in music and cultural studies, this admirably comprehensive work adopts a welcome interdisciplinary ideal and makes a truly significant contribution to our knowledge of musical improvisation."--Robert Witmer, professor emeritus of music, York University

Contributors are Stephen Blum, Patricia Shehan Campbell, Sabine M. Feisst, Lawrence Gushee, Robert S. Hatten, William Kinderman, Natalie Kononenko, Robert Levin, Charlotte Mattax Moersch, Ingrid Monson, John P. Murphy, Bruno Nettl, A. Jihad Racy, Anne K. Rasmussen, Stephen Slawek, Gabriel Solis, Nicholas Temperley, John Toenjes, and Thomas Turino.

Great music arouses wonder: how did the composer create such an original work of art? What was the artist's inspiration, and how did that idea become a reality? Cultural products inevitably arise from a context, a submerged landscape that is often not easily accessible. To bring such things to light, studies of the creative process find their cutting edge by probing beyond the surface, opening new perspectives on the apparently familiar.

"We do not understand music--it understands us." This aphorism by Theodor W. Adorno expresses the quandary and the fascination many listeners have felt in approaching Beethoven's late quartets. No group of compositions occupies a more central position in chamber music, yet the meaning of these works continues to stimulate debate. William Kinderman's The String Quartets of Beethoven stands as the most detailed and comprehensive exploration of the subject. It collects new work by leading international scholars who draw on a variety of historical sources and analytical approaches to offer fresh insights into the aesthetics of the quartets, probing expressive and structural features that have hitherto received little attention. This volume also includes an appendix with updated information on the chronology and sources of the quartets and a detailed bibliography.