William (Will) Meredith is a scholar who served as the founding director of The Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San José State University from 1985 through 2016. Currently residing in San Rafael, California, 18 miles north of San Francisco, he continues to explore Beethoven’s world, focusing on documents from the composer’s lifetime that help us understand his music and biography. Most recently, he has been part of an international team working on Beethoven’s genome for a paper that was published in March 2023, and also researching (1) Beethoven as a medical patient, (2) how his alcohol consumption in the 1820s may have contributed to his death from cirrhosis and kidney failure, and (3) his romantic passion for the gifted fortepianist Josephine Brunswick, whom Beethoven loved deeply from 1804 until at least 1808 or 1809. Dr. Meredith’s wide-ranging essay on why he believes that Bettina Brentano was most probably the famous “Immortal Beloved” of 1811-12 is listed in the Selected Essays section of this website.

As it has evolved, beethovenscholar.com has grown to contain the work of other scholars, especially that of Tristan Begg, Cambridge University, who is an expert on the composer’s medical health and the contemporaneous documents that survived to help us understand his medical history. The editor of the ongoing edition of Beethoven’s conversation books, my friend Theodore Albrecht, sent me a helpful concise summary of the composer’s normal drinking habits (see the section on liver disease). The website has also benefited from the advice of several other scholars credited here.

Dr. Meredith may be contacted through: william.meredith@sjsu.edu