Online open-access Beethoven bibliography
Co-director, The Beethoven Gateway (initially: The Beethoven Bibliography Project), 1990-2016
This database is a comprehensive computer-based bibliography of Beethoven materials that also includes scans of rare materials including manuscripts, first and early editions, and art. The project has received funding from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the California Library Association, San José State University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Beethoven Society. The database is accessible through the Internet. I conceived the database and began working on establishing it in the fall of 1985 when I began as director of the Beethoven Center. In 1986 Patricia Stroh was hired as the first curator of the Center and became project co-director. After extended discussions over hardware, software, procedures, and funding, the project was begun in 1990 with a grant from the California State Library. The database contains over 25,000 bibliographic entries (articles, books, review, etc.). The database has recently been dramatically enhanced with the addition of high-resolution scans of some of the Center’s first edition scores and artworks (particularly engravings of Vienna and Bonn from Beethoven’s lifetime).
Free access to the Gateway is found at: https://www.sjsu.edu/beethoven/resources/beethoven-gateway.php
Beethoven Center’s collection development (1985-2016)
As the founding director of the Beethoven Center, it was my responsibility to build the collection from Ira Brilliant’s initial gift of 75 first editions in 1985 to become one of the major and largest Beethoven research collections in the world. As of August 2016 when I retired, the Center owned over 30,000 items, including:
- 367 first editions
- 3,350 early 19th-century rare editions
- over two dozen original Beethoven manuscripts
- 5,200 books
- more than 1,000 original engravings and illustrations from Beethoven’s lifetime
- collection of Beethoven busts
- three locks of Beethoven’s hair (two of which were used for DNA research)
- collection of thousands of scholarly articles and other ephemera (movie posters, popular culture items, etc.)
The vast majority of these acquisitions were selected from antiquarian dealers around the world and acquired with funding that had to be raised through the American Beethoven Society.
For the opening of the Center in 1985, Ira and Irma Brilliant commissioned a reproduction of a Jean-Louis Dulcken fortepiano of ca. 1795 made by Janine Johnson and Paul Poletti in memory of their daughter Maxine. While serving as director, we added—thanks to the work of American Beethoven Society donors—an original 1823 Broadwood fortepiano (ABS funding raised by Mona Onstead), an 1825 original Mathias Jakesch (funding from ABS board members James Green and Ira Brilliant), and reproductions of a clavichord (Kurt Sperrhake, Pasau, Germany, ca.1953, gift of Gene Wagner from the collection of his sister Edyth Wagner) and a harpsichord (Eric Herz, Boston, 1977, formerly in the possession of Dr. Thomas Wendel).
Musicological annotator (German translation project) and editor
With Wayne Senner, emeritus, Arizona State University (general editor and translator of vol. 1) and Robin Wallace, Baylor University (translator of vol. 2 and musicological annotator): The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Music by His German Contemporaries. University of Nebraska Press (v. 1-2). Volume 1: Spring 2000. Volume 2: Fall 2001.
Editor (periodical literature)
The Beethoven Journal (initially The Beethoven Newsletter). San José: San José State University and the American Beethoven Society, 1986-Summer 2016 (current issue, Volume 31, no. 1 [Summer 2016])
Since its founding as The Beethoven Newsletter in 1986, the journal is the only regularly appearing periodical on Beethoven. I founded the journal in the spring of 1986 to advance communication about Beethoven scholarship, news, and events around the world. Because of its unique role in publishing original scholarship, reporting on Beethoven conferences and events worldwide, and providing bibliographic information on new publications, the newsletter was renamed The Beethoven Journal beginning with volume 10 (1995). It has won silver, bronze, and gold awards in the competition sponsored by the Council for the Support and Advancement of Education (CASE). Each volume contains two issues; the journal is indexed in Music Index, RILM, and other bibliographic sources.
The Beethoven Journal was separated into The Beethoven Newsletter (as a printed journal) and The Beethoven Journal (as an online open access collection of scholarly articles) by Dr. Erica Buurman when she took over as the second director of the Beethoven Center in 2019.
Series editor (monograph series: North American Beethoven Studies)
No. 6 (2014): Paul Ellison. The Key to Beethoven: Connecting Tonality and Meaning in His Music. Pendragon Press.
No. 5 (2009): Owen Jander. Beethoven’s “Orpheus” Concerto: The Fourth Piano Concerto in Its Cultural Context. Pendragon Press.
No. 4 (2008): Bathia Churgin. Transcendent Mastery: Studies in the Music of Beethoven. Pendragon Press.
No. 3 (2001, 2000): Vols. 1 and 2 of The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Music by His German Contemporaries. University of Nebraska Press (v. 1-2). Vol. 3-4 in progress.
No. 2 (1996): Theodore Albrecht, editor and translator. Letters to Beethoven & Other Correspondence. 3 vols. University of Nebraska Press.
No. 1 (1991): William Kinderman, editor. Beethoven’s Compositional Process (essays by Richard Kramer, Lewis Lockwood, William Drabkin, William Kinderman, William Caplin, Geoffrey Block, William Meredith, and Barry Cooper). University of Nebraska Press.