The Beethoven Violin Sonatas

Beethoven's ten violin sonatas have long been cornerstones of the chamber music repertoire. The ''Spring'' and ''Kreutzer'' sonatas are the best known of these works, which stand at the pinnacle of music for violin and piano. Lewis Lockwood and Mark Kroll's volume The Beethoven Violin Sonatas is the first scholarly book in English devoted exclusively to the Beethoven sonatas, and deals with them in unprecedented depth. It presents seven critical and historical essays by some of the most important American and European Beethoven specialists of our time. The authors examine the sonatas within the history of the genre, the social and cultural context in which they were written, their significance within Beethoven's life and works, and the issues they raise regarding performance practices of the period.''The Beethoven Violin Sonatas offers new perspectives, at once scholarly and broadly appealing, for anyone from amateur musicians and concertgoers to students and scholars. The selections are by turn original, lucid, elegant, and wise.''--Elaine Sisman, Anne Parsons Bender Professor of Music, Columbia University ''This volume makes a wonderful contribution to the literature on a genre that was crucial for Beethoven's compositional development during a period which yielded several unquestionable masterpieces. The violin sonatas have been relatively neglected in Beethoven scholarship, and this book takes a large step forward in correcting this oversight and will surely stimulate further research into this rich field.''--Glenn Stanley, professor of music history, University of Connecticut at Storrs