It would be impossible to exaggerate the significance and influence of Beethoven in the history of music over the past two hundred years. His music and personality have captured and commanded the imagination of successive generations of composers, performers, and listeners to an extent unmatched by any other composer. In the nineteenth century, Beethoven became synonymous with the ideal of artistic originality and the image of the rebellious revolutionary genius. In the twentieth century, Beethoven's shadow loomed impressively over the evolution of modernism. At the same time, selections from his most recognized music became clichés as they were appropriated by a startlingly contradictory range of personal and political ideologies.

Not only has Beethoven's music remained at the very center of the concert and recorded repertoire, but every composer since Schubert has felt compelled to confront his legacy. Beethoven's influence has been uniquely international. His first important biographer, Alexander Wheelock Thayer, was an American. A magnificent popular novel based on his life, Jean-Christophe (1904­12), was written by a Frenchman, Romain Rolland. The most lionized conductor of modern times, an Italian, Arturo Toscanini, is best remembered for his interpretations of the nine symphonies. One of the most influential early Beethoven scholars was a Russian, Alexander Ulibicheff. And the English have been consistently among Beethoven's most fervent admirers.

The Bard Festival has chosen to inaugurate its second decade (and, by coincidence, the twenty-first century) with a systematic reconsideration of the most famous of all composers. This year's festival is organized chronologically. Throughout the course of two weekends at Bard and the weekend at Lincoln Center, the festival will survey the range of Beethoven's musical output, from his Bonn years to the late quartets and the Missa Solemnis, by utilizing the opportunities unique to the festival. Within the chronological framework, genres will be mixed. Well-

known works will be placed side by side with the less familiar in each concert. Surprisingly enough, much of Beethoven's music is not well known, and many of the works most popular in his lifetime have fallen out of the repertory.

The many and often contradictory sides of Beethoven's music, ideas, and personality will be presented to the audience in an effort to highlight old and new controversies. The festival will explore Beethoven's compositional practices and intentions, the nature of his personality, his life in Bonn and Vienna, and the form and character of his music. There has been an extraordinary amount of recent scholarship and commentary about Beethoven. The many myths and realities surrounding Beethoven's life and achievement will be confronted by scholars and performers with radically divergent points of view. Through a reappraisal of Beethoven in his historical context, the Bard Music Festival seeks to help illuminate the ways in which Beethoven and his music may continue to influence music and culture in the twenty-first century.