Beethoven Gateway

About the Beethoven Gateway Project

The Beethoven Gateway is a system of online databases developed by the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies to assist with discovery of resources on the composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Designed for any level of scholarly research, the Gateway is available online at no charge. The Beethoven Gateway originated in 1990 as the Beethoven Bibliography Database (BBD), an annotated index of literature on Beethoven, and its accompanying Beethoven Thesaurus. It later expanded to include the Beethoven Center’s online catalog and Digital Collection.

The Beethoven Gateway currently includes five components. See below for more details about each component:

• Digital Collections
  • Visit the King Library's Digital Collections web page for a database of digitized materials from the Beethoven Center, including manuscripts, rare scores (first and early editions), portraits, engravings, maps, and ephemera. Users of this database can browse or search for images, resize them for closer viewing, download, and print images, free of charge. 
• Library Catalog

  • Beginning in July 2017, the entire online catalog of materials at the Beethoven Center was integrated into the OneSearch Catalog from San Jose State University Library. This catalog is part of the Unified Library Management System (ULMS), a project mandated for all California State University libraries by the Chancellor’s Office that links all CSU libraries. 

    Although the separate database devoted to the Beethoven Center’s collection is no longer available, search results in the OneSearch catalog can be limited to the Beethoven Center’s holdings, or accessed through a direct link. All of the indexing terms created for the Beethoven catalog are still retrievable using keyword searches. See our guide for searching for Beethoven materials in the online catalog [OneSearch Guide] [pdf]

• Beethoven Thesaurus

  • The Beethoven Thesaurus is a list of approximately 9,000 subject and category (formerly known as genre) terms used for searching in the Center’s library catalog, the Beethoven Bibliography Database, and to some extent the digital collections and catalog as well.

    The online thesaurus provides an alphabetical list that can be browsed or searched by keywords. Terms are organized in hierarchies that can also lead researchers to related terms. Each listing might also include information on how indexers applied the term to a particular subject area.

    For deep searching of the Center’s catalog and the Beethoven Bibliography Database, we recommend using the Thesaurus for locating the most appropriate search terms for your research.

    In addition to serving as a tool for searching the Beethoven Gateway resources, the Beethoven Thesaurus is a helpful reference tool for identifying Beethoven’s works and the documents associated with his life and music. For example, a search on “Fifth Symphony” direct you to the correct work number (Opus 67), and a search on “Corrected copies” will provide a list of all known manuscript sources under that category.

• Beethoven Bibliography Database

  • The Beethoven Bibliography is now separated from the Beethoven Center’s library catalog and functions as a deeply-indexed bibliography of literature on Beethoven (books and articles), as well as writings that are not specifically about Beethoven but have discussions of the composer that the indexers determined were significant. 

    One of the issues with the old Beethoven Gateway, which combined the Center’s catalog with the bibliography, was that by necessity it included non-Beethoven research or practical materials (e.g. general histories and language dictionaries). By separating our bibliography of articles and books on Beethoven from the general catalog, we can continue to direct Beethoven researchers to the most relevant secondary literature on the composer. The Beethoven Center is committed to maintaining a separate database that functions as an in-depth index of literature on Beethoven.

    At the outset, the aims of the BBD were to be comprehensive in scope and contain descriptions and indexing of books and articles on Beethoven. Through detailed descriptions and in-depth indexing, the BBD helps researchers study a remarkably broad range of subject areas, including topics in the history of medicine, psychology, politics, and religion as well as music history and theory.

    Researchers can find writings on the causes of Beethoven’s deafness, the performance history of the “Ode to Joy,” the enduring mystery of the Immortal Beloved, Beethoven’s complexrelationships with Napoleon and Goethe, the current locations of the widely scattered manuscripts and first editions of his string quartets, and thousands of other topics. A complete list of possible search terms is available in the online Beethoven Thesaurus.

    An ongoing project, the database is continually enhanced and updated with new publications as
    they appear.

    BBD User Guide [pdf]

• Beethoven Auction Index

  • Beethoven manuscripts, first editions, and other rare and unique items associated with Beethoven frequently appear for sale at auction. The Beethoven Auction Index database tracked offerings from major auction houses, and sales of important Beethoven materials offered in smaller auctions.

    Compiled by the Beethoven Center’s Curator, Patricia Stroh, the database includes the indexes of Beethoven manuscripts, first and early editions, and other materials sold at auction from 1985 to 2016. This database is no longer updated. Compiled by the Beethoven Center’s Curator, Patricia Stroh, the database includes the indexes of Beethoven manuscripts, first and early editions, and other materials sold at auction from 1985 to 2016. As of 2017, this database is no longer updated.

The Beethoven Gateway project is sponsored in part by grants from the Farrington Historical Foundation, the American Beethoven Society, and through the digital sponsorship program.

Visit the Support page to learn more about our digital sponsorship programs and other ways you can support the Beethoven Center. 

More Beethoven Gateway Resources

• Call for Volunteers [pdf]
• BBD Indexing Manual [pdf]
• Indexing Short Form [docx]
• Workform Data Entry Model [pdf]