More about Beethoven in Steiner's Shop: Publishers’ Corrections to the First Edition of the Quartet in F Minor, op. 95. A tribute to Alan Tyson

Abstract

Alan Tyson (1926–2000) was one of the most remarkable, influential and prolific Beethoven scholars of his generation. Yet his achievements ran wider than Beethoven, and even wider than music: he studied psychoanalysis, practised as a psychiatrist, and learnt German specifically in order to translate many of the writings of Siegmund Freud. Even before the claims of his musicological researches finally won over his medical career, he was the first to demonstrate the importance, and indeed authenticity, of many English editions of Beethoven. He published a huge amount of bibliographical material on Beethoven, both articles and books, particularly (in collaboration with Douglas Johnson and Robert Winter) a complete catalogue of Beethoven's sketchbooks. Not content with that, however, he turned his attention to Mozart, becoming the prime authority on the paper types and watermarks of Mozart's autograph manuscripts. Shortly before his death a Festschrift was dedicated to him, in which the complete bibliography of his publications occupies nine full pages.