Ignition: Beethoven Format: Paperback

This book accompanies the Paul Sacher Foundation's exhibition at the Bonn Beethovenhaus. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, composers have referred to Beethoven in their music. The volume explores this subject and illustrates it with documents from the Foundation's archives in Basel.

Although the notion of a musical "mainstream" with Beethoven as its fons et origo barely holds today, countless composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have referred to Beethoven in their music or creatively sought to distance themselves from him. This volume illustrates his ongoing relevance using documents from the collections of the Paul Sacher Foundation. Designed to accompany the eponymous exhibition in the Bonn Beethovenhaus, itadopts the four thematic areas of that exhibition: "Learning and Teaching with Beethoven," "Idealizations," "Strategies of Reference," and "Distortion - Dismantlement." It explores the contexts, techniques, and ideological thrustsof Beethoven references in musicians of very wide-ranging backgrounds, from Anton Webern, Béla Bartók, and Richard Strauss to Mauricio Kagel, Cathy Berberian, and Kaija Saariaho. The selected documents are captured in photographic reproduction and accompanied by detailed commentary. Each section is preceded by an introductory essay discussing general aspects of recent Beethoven reception.

A publication of the Paul Sacher Foundation

FELIX MEYER has been the director of the Paul Sacher Foundation since 1999. He has edited several books, most recently a facsimile of Béla Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (2018). For The Boydell Press he edited Crosscurrents: American and European Music in Interaction 1900-2000 (with Carol J. Oja, Wolfgang Rathert, and Anne C. Shreffler, 2014) and Elliott Carter: A Centennial Portrait in Letters and Documents (with Anne C. Shreffler, 2008).

SIMON OBERT is a scholarly staff member and curator at the Paul Sacher Foundation. Most recently he edited the volume Re-Set: Rückgriffe und Fortschreibungen in der Musik seit 1900 (with Heidy Zimmermann, 2018). He is also a member of the directory of the Anton Webern Complete Edition.