Its full title means Ludwig van Beethoven's Works: complete, critical, thoroughly revised, authorized edition).
Musicologist Friedrich Spiro delivered a paper to the Fourth Congress of the International Music Society in 1911 that advocated a revision of the Gesamtausgabe.
Spiro pointed out both numerous inaccuracies in its musical text and various authentic works of Beethoven that were never included (such as Op.
In 1957 Willy Hess published a catalogue of authentic works of Beethoven not included in the Gesamtausgabe.
(A similar phenomenon is observable when one compares the piano concertos of Mozart as originally written by the composer and the versions of the Alte Mozart-Ausgabe published in the 1870s; the latter have numerous changes, particularly in matters of phrasing.)