Bill Pirkle wrote:

>...  But I am not sure that they used the meta-composition approach you
>speak of.  While a writer may start with the overall plot and characters
>and fill in the dialog - though some don't - I am not conviced by my study
>of Beethoven that he had such a thing in mind.  The probable problem for
>both Mozart and Beethoven was what to use of the several things that came
>immeiately to mind from from the last thing.  There was the struggle,
>resolved by asking, which of these is the most compatible with the
>composition so far.  Maybe if you could define what you mean by
>"meta-composition" we could discuss this more.  It sound ike an
>interesting idea.

Allow me disagree.  My study of Beethoven showed that it's not unlikely
that he had such a thing in mind.  See, for instance, the testimony of
Bettina Brentano, whom he met in spring 1810.  He seemed to have fallen in
love immediately and according to Bettina, who wrote such to Goethe, they
were together for about 5/6 weeks.  Then she left, returned to Frankfurt,
where she lived, and got engaged to Achim von Arnim, whom she married in
early 1811.  Now Bettina is by no means the world's most reliable witness,
so we should be on our guard when judging her words.  On the other hand
we have Beethoven's letter to her, written in February 1811, in which he
sends her his congratulations for her marriage and even kisses her on the
forehead, though "mit Schmerzen." That's obvious, isn't it? The letter fits
very well to Bettina's story that they had become very close in spring 1810
and that they had talked a lot about life and arts in general and music in
particular.  Bettina surely was a very intelligent and highly sensitive
girl.  Now what did she write to Goethe? That Beethoven had told her that
he "carried his ideas" with him for a long period before starting to
compose.  And this testimony is not the only one.  By 1808/9, for instance,
he obviously decided to write three more symphonies, for on sketches of
other compositions he wrote down the structure (tempi of the movements) and
the key of the symphonies of which he had not yet composed a single note.
IMHO, this all does look like having "meta-compositions" in mind.

Greetings,
Joyce Maier
www.ademu.com/Beethoven