Beethoven is a classic study of the composer's music, written by one of the most important thinkers of our time. Throughout his life, Adorno wrote extensive notes, essay fragments and aides-memoires on the subject of Beethoven's music. This book brings together all of Beethoven's music in relation to the society in which he lived.

Adorno identifies three periods in Beethoven's work, arguing that the thematic unity of the first and second periods begins to break down in the third. Adorno follows this progressive disintegration of organic unity in the classical music of Beethoven and his contemporaries, linking it with the rationality and monopolistic nature of modern society.

Beethoven will be welcomed by students and researchers in a wide range of disciplines - philosophy, sociology, music and history - and by anyone interested in the life of the composer.

"Great works of art, Adorno knew, always resist the attempt to subsume them under theoretical categories. In the case of a supreme artist like Beethoven, a lifetime of futile efforts by Adorno to complete a major philosophical study bore ironic witness to this insight. The struggle to write his impossible book left behind, however, a wealth of tantalizing fragments, which have the added value of revealing Adorno's own process of intellectual production. Masterfully reconstructed and annotated by Rolf Tiedemann, they are now available in Edmund Jephcott's elegant translation. In their very "failure" they demonstrate the abiding power of Adorno's claim that the dialectic of art and philosophy must remain unreconciled and negative." Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley

"These fragments shed valuable light not only on Adorno's thinking on Beethoven, but also equally importantly on the sources of Adorno's philosophy of music. Rolf Tiedemann's sensitive editing has produced a remarkably coherent volume out of the most disparate material, while Edmund Jephcott's translation rises magnificently to a difficult task." Max Paddison, University of Durham

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), a prominent member of the Frankfurt School, was one of the most influential thinkers of this century in the areas of social theory, philosophy and aesthetics.