Beethoven and the Cretive Process

Approaching Beethoven´s creative process. Part 1 Factors affecting Beethoven´s creative process: Beethoven´s artistic aims; professional pressures; extramusical factors; recurring ideas. Part 2 Beethoven´s compositional methods: the sketchbooks and their use; the visual appearance of the sketches; types and relationships of sketches; the sketching of form and key; the sketching of melody; the vertical dimension and finishing touches. Part 3 Stages in the creative process: first conceptions - piano concerto in D minor, Op 31 No 2; planning the later movements - string quartet in B flat, Op 130; musical structure and vivid pictorialism - "Meeresstille", Op 112; the problem of the joins - "Egmont" overture; a creation in three phases - the late bagatelles; a long-running revision - second piano concerto.