‘No one could enter more fully into the spirit of all those marvelous musical poems, nor better grasp the whole and the parts, nor follow with greater energy the eagle's impetuous flight and discern more clearly when he rises or when he sinks, nor say it with more frankness.’ Thus wrote Berlioz of Wilhelm von Lenz in a review not untinged with irony (one more of those links between Berlioz and the elucidatory tradition already discussed in the introduction to Part I, above). This comment reminds us that, in addition to articulating Fétis's tripartite stylistic classification of Beethoven (see vol. I, Analysis 16b), von Lenz made a contribution to Beethoven studies in the form of sustained analyses of the thirty-two piano sonatas, taken as exemplifying all stages of Beethoven's development. He subjected them in turn to an analytical treatment which is both enthusiastic and penetrating. We should not be deflected by the flowery verbiage. Beneath it lies a keen ear and sharp judgment. Von Lenz delivers adverse criticism when he feels it right (as here with the first and third movements); he also admits his inability to follow occasionally Beethoven's line of thought.

The middle section (167 pages) of von Lenz's tripartite book is entitled ‘Analyses of the Piano Sonatas’ and is itself divided into six sections or chapters, of which the present analysis falls into the first, ‘Beethoven's First Manner: Sonatas 1–11’.