Book Description

This account of Beethoven reveals the life and times of a creative musician in Bonn and Vienna in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While paying due regard to the image of Beethoven as one of the most single-minded composers in the history of music, this biography places his work in the context of the musical life of the period. Through an understanding of the changing nature of musical patronage, the private and public concert, the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on culture and society--in addition to the effects of Beethoven's increasing deafness and his difficult relationships with both patrons and the musical institutions of the day--a varied and dynamic picture of the life and career of the musical genius emerges. ... Read more

Book Description

The life story of Ludwig van Beethoven, profusely illustrated.Everyone who loves music will want to peruse this delight at least thrice!Even young children will whistle the ninth symphony after coloring this. ... Read more

Book Description

This volume offers fourteen various and original piano solos by the Classic Period master, along with a biography. Included are Dances, Bagatelles, a waltz, the famous Minuet in G, and two Sonatinas, offering the student a good overview and introduction to this composer at the intermediate level. Ornaments are written out in footnotes to assist the student in proper performance of the music of this period. ... Read more

Book Description

These are the personal memories of an elderly man who, as a child was closely acquainted with Beethoven. Gerhard von Breuning, the son of one of Beethoven's oldest friends, was favorite of the ageing composer, who delighted in the boy's frequent visits. This first-hand account provides us with telling details about Beethoven's daily life, his personality, and his relationships with family and friends. It is as a clear-eyed witness of Beethoven's final illness that Breuning is particularly compelling, providing graphic reports on the atmostphere of the sick-room, the course of the medical treatment and Beethoven's death throes after he despaired both of his doctor and of his life and, muttering 'Oh, that ass!', turned his face to the wall. This is the first ever English translation of a fascinating document. The Beethoven scholar, Maynard Solomon, has provided many explanatory notes as well as a full and informative introduction. A permanent contribution to the Beethoven literature, this book provides a sensitive and unique insight into the life of the composer during his later years. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

REMEMBERING BEETHOVEN.
By its nature, what's most obvious can easily escape our attention, so it may be worth noting that Beethoven's era is beyond the recall of any living person. Theoretically, there might now be some living centenarian whose grandfather could have known him, or at least been in his presence and spoken with him - but this is conceptual, and though conjecture is fruitless it's still fascinating. We can't talk with Beethoven or his intimates, none of whom lived into the 20th century - but here one of them operatively speaks to us, if not literally then surely effectively.

Edited by Maynard Solomon and translated for the first time from the original German by him and Henry Mins, the book FROM THE HOUSE OF THE BLACK SPANIARD - REMEMBRANCES OF BEETHOVEN FROM MY YOUTH was authored by Dr. Gerhard von Breuning and first published in Vienna in 1874.

The title is fitting. As a 12-year-old, the author (whose father was a close friend of the composer) was privy to Beethoven's inner circle and played a small but important role in the composer's daily existence during the last year and a half of his life. He helped him in various ways by assisting with his correspondence, running special errands, helping him keep order in his dwelling, and doing what he could during Beethoven's last illness. The boy eventually developed for the composer a feeling approaching worship. Beethoven reciprocated this devotion by guiding some of the boy's musical education. When the young Gerhard eventually asked the older man's permission to address him with the familiar Du (rather than the formal Sie), the boy was overjoyed when Beethoven consented.

Dr. Solomon says in the book's introduction, "Like many children, Gerhard was a keen observer of small details..." This boy, who became a respected Viennese physician, evidently was the early 19th-century counterpart of today's "kid who doesn't miss a thing" (even pinpointing in his book such details as the exact location and number of windows of Beethoven's street-facing top floor apartment). His precision was fortunate and significant for posterity: it extended even to the minutest specifics about Beethoven's dwelling, personality and character, mood swings, daily conversations about his circumstances, personal preferences and other matters now irretrievably beyond our reach and forever lost. Often even the smallest details, about any subject, can be keys to opening large doors behind which are answers to some important questions. Beethoven's life was dramatic enough without the need for embellishment a-la-Hollywood, and von Breuning illuminates his subject from the real-world viewpoint.

His book takes its name from the building, the Schwarzspanierhaus (House of the Black Spaniard) - Beethoven's last residence, and where he died on Monday, March 26, 1827. In Vienna today, the site of the house (demolished ca.1904) is Schwarzspanierstrasse 15, marked with a memorial plaque and the characteristic red and white Austrian banner. In his day the address was 200 Alsergrund am Glacis. Because of its Beethoven connection the street was later renamed Schwarzspanierstrasse: the composer's swarthy complexion in his youth prompted some to call him The Black Spaniard - which in turn might have been what induced a few revisionist claims in our day that the composer was negro.

When Gerhard von Breuning died in 1892 he was the last survivor of those who had personally known Beethoven. Though his accounts were written late in life, he was there to witness the events of the composer's last years. This gives us not only a more immediate picture, but perhaps more importantly, bottom-line details which shed a bright light on what transpired more than a century and a half ago. This proximity gives special value to accounts like these.

Among the book's photographs are Beethoven's desk, the entrance hall and main door to the very apartment he occupied in the Schwarzspanierhaus, the building's exterior, an intriguiging floor plan of the actual dwelling, and Gerhard von Breuning himself in old age.

Perhaps the most compelling illustration is a superb photograph of Beethoven's life-mask, made by Franz Klein in 1812. It's compelling because it offers a literal glimpse into the past: Beethoven lived before the advent of photography, but this life mask represents him effectively as he looked at 42 and gives us the most accurate rendering we have of his physical features. Artists might disagree - but this illustration, by its very immediacy, seems to enlarge and strengthen the links in the chain that binds us to our own musical history.

Von Breuning's reports range from the humorous and fascinating - about Beethoven's fondness for puns and sarcasm - to the exasperating and even heartbreaking: Gerhard was devastated when as a young adult the numerous handwritten notes he had received from Beethoven were inadvertently discarded by a servant who thought they were trash.

This book is for those who want to know about Beethoven from someone who truly knew him. Historians compile and present an amalgam of data; author von Breuning via editor Solomon takes us into a courtroom and displays primary evidence unsullied by the traditional legendary gloss, the ghosts of myth, and the passage of more than 17 decades. Though no-one's memory is infallible, he still places before us, devoid of cosmetic veneer, the raw material from which we can experience our own reactions, form our own opinions, and draw our own conclusions.

The editor of this work has prepared a book that can be read and enjoyed by both reader and scholar. It's content is authentic, not synthetic - a treasury of material taken from a primary source: someone who literally knew Beethoven and who reports from this distinctive perspective. There are few if any substitutes for accounts like these, and a more superlative book of this type would be hard to imagine.

There's no other book quite like it so its singularity makes it quite special. About Beethoven there are countless tomes, perhaps more than about any other composer, but this book provides something rather unique, which adds to its value: a compendium of fascinating details that would be difficult, if not altogether impossible, to find in any other single volume. The book is, in a word, superb and for both the reader and researcher can be enjoyable, even fascinating and, perhaps more importantly, enlightening reading.

JEFFREY DANE ... Read more

Book Description

Peter Clive examines Beethoven's relations with the multitude of persons who formed his circle: relatives, friends, librettists, poets, publishers, artists, patrons, and musicians. With over 450 entries, this volume is the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the subject currently available in any language. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

More about the live and times of Beethoven than the music
This is a very pretty looking book that introduces young readers to the world of Ludwig Van Beethoven. The idea of this series is to look at the influences and historical events that shaped the lives of great composers. Roland Vernon describes how Beethoven was born into a changing world of revolutions that transformed America and France, and shows how Beethoven's music mirrored those turbulent times. But Vernon also explores how Beethoven's music reflected a deeply personal exploration of human nature and emphasizes how the composer profoundly changed every form of music in which he work. The book has sidebars devoted to Beethoven's musical contemporaries like Mozart, revolutionary thinkers like Thomas Paine, instruments like the harpsichord, and events like the fall of Napoleon. As I said above, the book is illustrated quite impressively, with historic paintings and artifacts. Vernon focuses most on the details of Beethoven's life and the history of the time, somewhat at the expense of his music, which matters here because the thesis is that Beethoven is a musical revolutionary. That is difficult to do in a book, granted, but if that is the contract with the reader then it needs to be followed up on more explicitly. Other titles in the series introduce young readers to Bach, Chopin, Gershwin, Mozart, Starvinsky, Verdi, and Vivaldi. ... Read more

Book Description

Available for the first time in English, this biography, published in Prague only a few months after the composer's death, provides a contemporary view of the man and musician. Eminent Beethoven scholar Barry Cooper puts this curious work into perspective, clarifying inaccuracies in the original 19th-century text. ... Read more