Ludwig van Beethoven

Dances for Piano

The Menuett, the Deutscher Tanz, the Kontretanz and the Ecossaise were extraordinarily popular social dances during Beethoven's lifetime. Thus along with sonatas and variations Beethoven on numerous occasions composed easy-to-play dances and dance collections for solo piano, which are brought together in their entirety for the first time in our volume. Beethoven did not give these occasional pieces an opus number, so today they are numbered only as WoO (Werke ohne Opus, or works without opus). A few dances are piano arrangements of orchestral dances, since piano reductions for home music-making were indispensable at that time. As is to be expected from a substantial Urtext edition, the preface and Critical Notes for this important collection deal with the complex source situation of the individual pieces, along with the question of the authenticity of these piano arrangements.