Shortly after Beethoven’s death no-one could foresee how much biographical material would later circulate about him. Klaus Martin Kopitz spent almost ten years collecting the numerous records by Beethoven’s contemporaries, which were partly published separately over the course of two centuries. He presents them to the reader with state-of-the-art text analysis and scholarly criticism. Some of the prominent contemporaries include Bettina v. Arnim, Muzio Clementi, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz...