No man is an island, least of all a composer like Ludwig van Beethoven. Growing up in supposedly provincial Bonn, he was subject to a wide variety of influences from his earliest days: Italian style coming north indirectly from Niccolò Jommelli's earlier tenure in Stuttgart and now directly through Kapellmeister Andrea Lucchesi (1741–1801); French style from the near West; Catholic church music from the Viennese Habsburg traditions of Bonn's rulers; and even some Protestant traces in operatic and church music. In c. 1781, Beethoven's new teacher Christian-Gottlob Neefe is thought to have introduced him to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, though he may have known portions of it earlier, and he surely became acquainted with C.P.E. Bach's True Art of Playing the Clavier. Late in 1783, Beethoven and his mother travelled down the Rhine as far as The Hague, where he concertized with Carl Stamitz, who had recently come from Mannheim. By the mid-1780s, the Bonn Court had performed Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio with the young Beethoven probably in the viola section. In the Spring of 1787, Elector Maximilian Franz (1756–1801) sent him to Vienna to study with Mozart; they met and Beethoven seemingly had an inspiring lesson or two, but was soon called back to Bonn for a last visit with his mother, who was dying of tuberculosis. Eventually, Haydn travelled through Bonn on his way to London late in 1790, and stopped there again on his return to Vienna in the summer of 1792. By this time, Mozart had died, and so the Elector sent Beethoven to study with Haydn instead. Within two years, French forces had overrun the Rhineland, and Beethoven found himself marooned in Vienna.

Beethoven fulfilled his obligations to study with Haydn, who based his instruction on Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum rather than Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Beethoven was probably a half-hearted student, and Haydn probably a half-hearted teacher, not because they were so different, but because they were so alike. Haydn had received his basic instruction as a choirboy at St. Stephan's Cathedral and had then become an autodidact (if he hadn't been one already) through most of his long and experimental career with the Esterházy family. In addition, Beethoven took some largely undocumented instruction from operetta composer Johann Schenk. When Haydn returned to London for a second visit in 1794–95, Beethoven studied with Haydn's friend (Johann) Georg Albrechtsberger and with Antonio Salieri; exercises from both of these teachers survive in various libraries. Taken together, these studies represent 167 sheets of music with 302 written pages. Julia Ronge, on the staff of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, has undertaken to assemble, edit and publish all of Beethoven's studies within Beethoven-Haus's in-progress Gesamtausgabe. The present volume represents the companion to the aforementioned edition. In its introduction, Ronge discusses Beethoven's studies and their literature in the nineteenth century, the sources, the types of manuscripts (sketches, drafts, working copies, fair copies, etc.) that Beethoven employed, and the state of research from the earliest investigations, through Nottebohm, to historical-critical research since 1900.

In the case of Beethoven's studies with Haydn (pp. 31–62), Ronge describes their pre-history, Haydn's instructional methods, the contradictions in received instruction, Haydn's instruction as viewed in the literature, Haydn's undocumented instruction and the extent to which Beethoven remained in the service of the Bonn Court.

For Beethoven's studies with Albrechtsberger (pp. 65–140), since they were not specified by the Elector's intentions, Ronge discusses the period in which the instruction took place, the motivation for it, Albrechtsberger's instructional methods and the types of counterpoint that he covered.

Similarly, with Salieri (pp. 141–70) Ronge discusses the period in which the instruction took place and the motivation for it, Salieri's methods of instruction – including the primacy of the word, textual models, learning through copying, the invention of melody and text underlay – and Beethoven's working methods and later relationship with Salieri.

As Ronge discusses in her introduction, various excerpts from these studies (including extensive ones) were already known in the mid-nineteenth century, often in corrupted versions. Gustav Nottebohm made an extensive study of them, incorporated into his Beethoveniana,Footnote ¹ but virtually nothing further was done in German until Ronge's writings here.

Meanwhile, we have been much more fortunate in the English-language literature. Alfred Mann (1917–2006) led the way, with his article ‘Beethoven's Contrapuntal Studies with Haydn’, first published in Musical Quarterly in 1970,Footnote ² then quickly reprinted in The Creative World of Beethoven.Footnote ³ In it, Mann introduces Beethoven's studies with Johann Schenk, Albrechtsberger, Haydn and Salieri. He traces the early history of the exercises, including their partial publication by Seyfried and (especially in the case of Haydn) the more organized study by Nottebohm, before subjecting the last-named to relatively detailed scrutiny.

In 1987, Mann published Theory and Practice: The Great Composers as Teachers and Students. Footnote ⁴ By far the largest section of this 167-page book is the chapter ‘Beethoven's Studies with Haydn: Counterpoint’, pp. 63–141, including annotated facsimiles of 54 pages of Beethoven's contrapuntal studies with Haydn.

Ronge is certainly aware of Mann's work; her bibliography cites no fewer than nine items from his pen, some of them in his native German. While Ronge spends only c. 31 pages on Haydn (compared to Mann's 78 pages), she complements Mann with a c. 75-page chapter on Albrechtsberger, and then adds a c. 30-page chapter on Salieri. Thus, a primarily English-language reader can use the aforementioned article and book by Mann to gain a background concerning the studies in general and with Haydn in particular, and then read Ronge's scholarly research with much greater assurance.

While Ronge's book covers its outlined topics very adequately, it does not pretend to be the last word on Beethoven's studies, or on his relationships with Haydn, Albrechtsberger or Salieri. She mines the Konversationshefte (conversation books) for references to Haydn's Creation, Seasons, or the Nelson Mass, but there is no mention of the 1796 première of the Mass in Time of War (the Paukenmesse), where Beethoven might have heard timpanist Ignaz Manker (c. 1765–1817) for the first time – the same timpanist for whom he wrote so prominently from 1803 until 1814. There is also no reference to Beethoven's possibly having seen the score to Haydn's Symphony No. 60 (Il distratto), when Haydn had it sent to Vienna in 1803. This was a work with a soft slow movement, interrupted by fanfares that subsided back into a peaceful ending – as Beethoven would later do in his Symphony No. 9 and, two generations later, Mahler in his Symphony No. 4. In the case of Albrechtsberger, there is no mention of his three supposed letters to Beethoven in 1796–97. The originals have been lost for years, but possibly some facet of Ronge's study might have shed some light on their transcriptions and questioned authenticity. In the case of Salieri, Ronge quotes the references to his dementia in Beethoven's conversation books early in 1824, but does not discuss the possible scheduling conflicts with Salieri's concerts in April 1803, or December 1808, that surely contributed to the rift between teacher and pupil. But these are details that might be more profitably included in much more extensive studies of Beethoven's relationship with each of these three mentors.

As Vol. 20 in the series Schriften zur Beethovenforschung, the volume is simply but attractively bound. The printing is often inconsistent: in the review copy, p. 56 is clear and dark, while p. 57 is considerably lighter. Similarly, in terms of printing or cutting, the text of p. 4 is three quarters of an inch higher than that of p. 5. There is an interesting appendix listing the composition students of Haydn, Albrechtsberger and Salieri, as well as an index of persons, but not an index of compositions by Beethoven or anyone else. These minor quibbles aside, Julia Ronge's study of Beethoven's studies is a most valuable contribution to the literature.