Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Art of Absolute: Interpreting Beethoven

This book offers a musicological study of Wilhelm Furtwängler’s conducting style and performance legacy. It explores how his musical thought is realised in sound, arguing that his performances embody a unique synthesis of structure, expression and temporal fluidity, best understood through critical listening and aural analysis. Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Art of the Absolute: Interpreting Beethoven examines the conductor’s interpretative philosophy as a central manifestation of twentieth-century musical idealism. Through a comparative analysis of recordings and annotated scores, alongside Furtwängler’s writings, the study investigates how his performances of Beethoven embodied a metaphysical conception of music as a revelation of the Absolute. It situates Furtwängler’s aesthetic within broader intellectual traditions – Romanticism, German idealism and phenomenology – while assessing how interpretative choices reveal a dialectic between fidelity to the score and transcendence of it. Combining musicological inquiry with philosophical reflection, the book reconsiders the relationship between interpretation, expression and truth in the performance of Beethoven’s works.