Beethoven's Acoustics

by John Spitzer

Stefan Weinzierl. Beethovens Konzerträume: Raumakustik und symphonische Aufführungspraxis an der Schwelle zum modernen Konzertwesen. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Erwin Bochinsky, 2002. 267pp.

T he picture on page 214, adapted from Stefan Weinzierl's outstanding new book on Beethoven's concert halls, is worth at least a thousand words. Weinzierl's graph shows how loud various concert halls sound compared to the size of the halls. The round dots to the upper left of the graph are the halls in Vienna for which Beethoven composed his orchestral works and in which these works were performed during his lifetime. The diamonds and triangles to the bottom right are some typical nineteenth- and twentieth-century halls in which Beethoven's orchestral music is often performed today.