Beethoven, the loner – that is the historiographical image that has long dominated biographies and research on Beethoven. But while this image resonates with the enduring impression of the artistic genius, its credibility founders when one examines more closely his life and environment during his first decades in Vienna. Here, as a pianist and composer, as a teacher and witty conversationalist, Beethoven belonged to an expansive and close-knit tapestry of social, artistic, professional, family and friend-based relationships. And it is the social circles Beethoven encountered as he settled in the cultural and political metropolis, as well as how he negotiated his way through and communicated musically within them, that are newly put up for discussion in this edited volume. The political turbulence of the early 19th century saw the aristocracy’s authority increasingly displaced, transforming the social and cultural conditions in countless ways and newly determining who should be remembered and how. This meant that a composer like Beethoven – aided by his self-mythologization as an anti-feudal, bourgeois artist and eccentric genius – could easily be incorporated into the heroic historical narrative that characterized the contemporary political tide. The occasion celebrated in the present volume – the Beethoven anniversary year of 2020 – therefore also offers the opportunity to trace and rethink the after-effects of this culture of remembrance, including how Beethoven’s image continued to evolve throughout the 20th century.

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