The definitive biography of Beethoven, “already a classic of its kind” (The New York Times), setting the world standard in composer biographies
Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven has long been firmly established among music lovers and scholars alike as the standard modern biography of Beethoven. Now it is thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded by the author to incorporate new materials and the findings of later research to further illuminate the human dimension that underlies a series of creative events unique in the history of civilization.
In Beethoven, Solomon movingly traces the slow process by which the renowned composer reconstructed his life and ultimately arrived at a new mode of self-understanding, offering probing analyses of the composer’s deafness, romantic longings, and political outlook, and of his reshaping of the classical tradition. Solomon divides the life and works of the composer into four periods: Beethoven’s early years fraught with family troubles, and his emergence as an exemplary young court musician and virtuoso; his move to Vienna in late 1792 and subsequent conflicts with teachers and patrons and struggles for independence and recognition; the psychological, stylistic, and ideological crises that accompanied the formation of Beethoven’s “heroic” style; and the collapse of Beethoven’s marriage plans, the dissolution of his “heroic” style, and his turbulent attempt to seize the guardianship of his nephew, Karl.
Hailed as a masterpiece for its original interpretations of Beethoven’s life and music, this edition of the classic biography includes a thirty-page bibliographical essay and numerous illustrations, providing a robust pictorial biography of the composer.
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Maynard Solomon is that rarest of writers on classical music: a well-trained expert who is also gutsy and humane, and who knows about life. He had the courage to write in recent years about Franz Schubert's homosexuality, which, judging by the size of the polemic that ensued, some academics were still not ready to hear about. But for many readers, Solomon's masterpiece is still his 1977 biography of Beethoven, offered here in a revised second edition that is a must-read for anyone interested in classical music, let alone "The Big Deaf One," as Jean Cocteau referred to the composer. Artfully blending history, psychology, sociology, and musicology in just the right measures, Solomon has taken the opportunity in his revision to focus more on certain themes, like Beethoven and Freemasonry; to discount evidence now seen as suspect, including the forgeries of the composer's friend Schindler; and to present new finds such as recently discovered documentary evidence. The result stands with Thayer's biography and Tovey's analyses as the classics on Beethoven, along with other fascinating books like the Cambridge Music Handbook on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. A triumph--bravo, Professor Solomon! --Benjamin Ivry
