Beethoven cast a looming shadow over the nineteenth century. For composers he was a model both to emulate and to overcome. "You have no idea how it feels," Brahms confided, "when one always hears such a giant marching behind one." Exploring the response of five composers - Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, and Mahler - to what each clearly saw as the challenge of Beethoven's symphonies, Evan Bonds richly enhances our understanding of the evolution of the symphony and Beethoven's legacy.

Bonds lucidly argues that the great symphonists of the nineteenth century cleared creative space for themselves by both confronting and deviating from the practices of their potentially overpowering precursor. His analysis places familiar masterpieces in a new light.