BEETHOVEN ET SES TROIS STYLES; Édition Nouvelle / Avec un avant-apropos et une bibliographie des ouvrages relatifs a Beethoven / par M. D. Calvocoressi / et orné d'un portrait de Beethoven avec signature et fac-simile d'écriture
Paris: Librairie Musicale Gustave Legouix, 1909. Engravings. Edition Nouvelle [TEXT in FRENCH]. Wrappers. Small 8vo (73/8" x 4 7/8"), beige wrappers with black typography, frontispiece illustration of Beethoven in top hat (plus tissue guard) facing a facsimile of a handwritten sheet of Beethoven's music, glassine dust jacket; ix, [x: blank] + 500, [501] pages. Very Fine / Very Fine. Item #7293
Uncut and unopened. Bright, tight, clean copy: virtually As New with light uniform age-toning.
Wilhelm von Lenz (1809 in Riga - 1883 in Saint Petersburg) was a Baltic German Russian official and writer. Wilhelm von Lenz was a friend and student of many mid-century Romantic composers, including Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin and Hector Berlioz, Lenz's most important and influential work was an early biography of the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven, entitled Beethoven et ses trois styles (1855), written in response to the disparagement of Beethoven by Alexander Ulybyshev in his Nouvelle biographie de Mozart (1843).
Lenz promoted the idea (already suggested by earlier figures such as François-Joseph Fétis) that Beethoven's musical style be divided into three characteristic periods. Lenz's periodisation, with minor changes, is still widely used today by musicologists in discussing Beethoven's compositions.
Price: $70.00