Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph

by Jan Swafford

Jan Swafford’s biographies of Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathing human being who composed some of the world’s most iconic music. Swafford mines sources never before used in English-language biographies to reanimate the revolutionary ferment of Enlightenment-era Bonn, where Beethoven grew up and imbibed the ideas that would shape all of his future work. Swafford then tracks his subject to Vienna, capital of European music, where Beethoven built his career in the face of critical incomprehension, crippling ill health, romantic rejection, and “fate’s hammer,” his ever-encroaching deafness. Throughout, Swafford offers insightful readings of Beethoven’s key works. More than a decade in the making, this will be the standard Beethoven biography for years to come. 

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, Classical Music, Art

1077 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Jan Swafford is a composer and writer. His musical works range from orchestral and chamber to film and theater music, including four pieces for orchestra, Midsummer Variations for piano quintet, They That Mourn for piano trio, They Who Hunger for piano quartet, From the Shadow of the Mountain for string orchestra and the theatrical work, Iphigenia, for choir, instruments and a narrator.

Swafford's music has been played around the country and abroad by ensembles including the symphonies of Indianapolis, St. Louis, Harrisburg, Springfield, Jacksonville, Chattanooga and the Dutch Radio. Among his honors are a National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Composers Grant and two Massachusetts Artists Council Fellowships. His work appears on CRI recordings and is published by Peer Southern. From 1999-2002, he was Composer-in-Residence of Market Square Concerts in Harrisburg.

Swafford holds degrees in music from Harvard and Yale. His teachers have included Jacob Druckman, Earl Kim and, at Tanglewood, Betsy Jolas. From 1988-1989 he was a Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard. Swafford currently teaches music history, theory and composition at The Boston Conservatory.

As a musical journalist and scholar, Swafford has appeared in Slate, Guardian International, Gramophone, Symphony and 19th-Century Music. He has written program notes for the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), the Chicago and San Francisco Symphonies, Chamber Music at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall programs and Naxos and Sony Classical Recordings. Since 1998, he has participated in musical features on Nation Public Radio (NPR's) Performance Today and Morning Edition, and he is a regular preconcert lecturer for the BSO. His books include The Vintage Guide to Classical Music and the biographies, Charles Ives: A Life with Music from Norton (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award, winner of the PEN/Winship prize) and Johannes Brahms: A Biography from Knopf. Currently, Swafford is writing a biography of Beethoven for Houghton Mifflin.

Reviews

[Dmitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember a joke from years ago: "Handel, he was the best the English could do." The irony is Handel was German and never second rate. They may been comparing him to Bach, a contemporary born in the same year. At any rate both were musicians of great stature and influence, rivaling only each other. As did many keyboard students of the time, Beethoven memorized Bach’s ‘Well-Tempered Clavier” compositions in all 24 keys from from an early age.

Jan Swafford, an American composer, has enjoyed a career as a musical biographer of Ives, Brahms and this 2014 book on Ludwig van Beethoven. It is a straight forward account of LvB's life and times with sections on his compositions. There are not many German source materials noted and most of the references are from English language secondary works. This does not seem to be a problem. The literature on LvB is vast and the book aims for a wide angle view rather than a focus on newly found details. In this it has prevailed and was hailed as a recent standard bearer. Swafford is a polymath in European 18th and 19th century history and culture. The landscape of the Rhineland, Vienna and the Holy Roman Empire unfold with startling clarity.

LvB was born in 1770 to a musical family. His grandfather Ludwig was a notable maestro at the court of Bonn on the river Rhine. He drilled his son Johann to follow in his footsteps, but Johann only attained modest success in music. His grandson LvB was a different matter. Johann pushed LvB from age four to become a prodigy like Mozart, fourteen years his senior. LvB surpassed his father's tutelage at ten and was groomed by a series of teachers and patrons including the local ruler of Bonn, a brother of the Holy Roman emperor Joseph II. Playing organ in the church and keyboard at the court he was famous in the region. At sixteen he was sent to study in Vienna where he met Mozart, but returned abruptly due to his mother's death.

Swafford gives a good account of Europe's context at the time. LvB was born during the Enlightenment and died after the Industrial Revolution began. Marie Antoinette, daughter of the Holy Roman emperor in Vienna, married the future king of France in 1770. Her brother Joseph II became emperor in 1780 and fostered liberal policies before French heads began to roll. The philosopher Kant published his treatise in 1781 declaring freedom from clerical dogma. The poet Schiller wrote 'Ode To Joy' in 1785, a paean to the pursuit of human happiness. LvB incorporated it into his 9th symphony of 1824. Freemason and Illuminati societies had sprung up in central Europe. The 1793 French Reign of Terror ended this period of benevolent despotism.

LvB had met Mozart's mentor Joseph Haydn who was on his way to London in 1790. Returning in 1792, after Mozart's death at age 35, Haydn agreed to teach LvB in Vienna. As LvB left Bonn France declared war on Austria. Plans to return were delayed and not resumed. The student gained fame but never felt at home in the capital nor gave credit to any one teacher. Although a rough mannered provincial he was soon accepted in the salons of the wealthy and nobles on the strength of his piano playing. In 1795 he made his Vienna public concert debut. He began to publish compositions starting with solo and group chamber music and progressing to concertos and a 1st symphony in 1800. His early works held only hints of what was to come.

LvB studied the works of Bach, Handel and Mozart, founded on contrapuntal theory, but his talent was improvisation. Turn of the century Vienna was teeming with musicians. Amateurs were everywhere and the virtuosi numbered thousands within a 200,000 person city. LvB was considered one of the best. He is now thought of as the bridge between classical and romantic music. His 32 piano sonatas are seen as a musical new testament to the old testament of the "Well Tempered Clavier" by Bach. LvB dedicated his heroic 3rd symphony to Napoleon in 1803, who he saw as leader of a liberating force. He retracted this in protest of Bonaparte's crowning as emperor in 1804, or perhaps more cynically for reasons of retaining royalist patronage.

Napoleon crushed the Austrian and Russian coalition at Austerlitz in 1805 and the Grande Armee marched towards Vienna. LvB premiered his only opera Fidelio but revised it until 1814, inscribing it "Finished, with God's help! O Man, help thyself." The Holy Roman Empire collapsed in 1806 after 1000 years. In 1808 LvB conducted his 5th and 6th symphonies, the former in an earlier martial vein and the latter celebrating nature. The bombardment and occupation of Vienna slowed his output in 1809. In 1812 Napoleon's retreat from Russia coincided with more illnesses and family disputes. His last years saw the Hammerklavier sonata of 1818, the Solemnis Mass and Diabelli Variations of 1823, and the 9th symphony in 1824. He died in 1827.

Quick to anger and apologize, LvB showed scant appreciation for followers. Paranoid and competitive he feared that peers would steal his work and untiringly held grudges. Short, pockmarked, and unkempt he was considered unattractive. Unrequited in love, he failed to marry or have children. Deafness assailed him from 1798 on, and yet his vision wouldn’t allow him to quit. His later achievements earned him acclaim as the greatest European composer of the period. He is celebrated for the revolutionary spirit of his music but also for his humanity and aspirations. This did not happen only through genius but by a single minded pursuit of his art. His legacy grew until he became an icon. The man behind the myth wouldn't be forgotten.

This book is long but well written and moves along quickly. It is a year by year account that amasses to over 900 pages. Since the events of his time are relatively recent and he was famous during his life an amazing amount of detail can be discovered. It helped that he saved each scrap of paper he ever held. Part of the text is given to analysis of individual musical works. If uninterested one can skim these sections or follow with recordings, however they are not overly technical. The book may be more suitable for admirers of Beethoven or music aficianados but it does contain a wealth of cultural and social history. At times it is more exciting to see history from a particular angle rather than an arid recital of political and military developments.

[Jonathan O'Neill · Rating 5 out of 5]

∞⭐️

"We stand weeping over the riven strings of the harp that is hushed." - Franz Grillparzer

[Nooilforpacifists · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by a trombone player (and clearly a piano player) and a music professor. Pitched at an audience that is familiar, or willing to become familiar, with music theory concepts, and either sight reads music, or is willing to ignore the (fairly rare) page of a few bars of theme, or two pages from the conductor's score of a symphony. I took music theory lessons as a kid, kept it up in college (including some conducting), and am an avid listener and concert-goer. I own recordings of the majority of the works discussed here (and a score of the Ninth).

Why am I writing all this?--not to brag, but to warn there were places in the book that were over my head. And, one reason this book is a long read is that it's best to listen to at least the major piano sonatas, string quartets, masses and symphonies while reading the descriptions (and/or reading score selections). But, as Swafford proves Beethoven believed, "What is difficult is good."

This is not the first Beethoven biography I've read. But it is the first to communicate how out of place he was. Not because he was the Romantic hero often celebrated today, but because he was an unlucky and unloved man, who (luckily for us) could communicate best only through music composition. The history did not make the man: this man made history.


"When the bass soloist speaks the first words in the finale, an invitation to sing for joy, Beethoven's words are addressed to everybody, to history. There's something singularly moving about that moment when this man--deaf and sick and misanthropic and self-torturing, at the same time one of the most extraordinarily and boundlessly generous men our species has produced--greets us person to person, with glass raised, and hails us as friends."


I knew that the arc of Beethoven symphonies began with the heroic, then -- as the spirit of the age changed when Napoleon took the crown of Emperor -- Beethoven scratched-out the planned dedication of his Third "Eroica" Symphony. The zeitgeist changed so quickly that the Fifth Symphony clearly was about fate--death knocks on your door.

Yet the book describes how the arc resumes--by the Ninth, the first movement (for the first time) creates an anti-hero out of nothingness, and the famous choral last movement explains that without heroism, "Freude" (Joy) is a matter of self help:


"In the first movement of that [9th] symphony, for the last time, he buried the hero and heroic ideal once exalted in the Eroica. Now through Schiller he replaced that idea with a new one: the perfected society that begins in the freedom, happiness and moral enlightens of each person, growing from inside outward to brothers and friends and lovers, from there in a mounting chorus outward to universal brotherhood, in the world Schiller named for the Classical paradise: Elysium. … Conquering heroes and benevolent despots cannot do it that for us. We have to find Elysium for ourselves."


We cannot depend on a hero to save us. Rather, "millions" of "brothers" will have to find their own inner paradise.



As for the quartets, how had I never before known the gorgeous Third Movement of Op. 132 (late period) was Beethoven's own Hymn of Thanksgiving from a medical recovery: "Holy song of thanks to God form a convalescent, in Lydian mode." Listening with the author's prompts was like hearing what I thought a familiar work, again for the first time. It also was a pleasure (and re-affirmation) to learn that my favorite Quartet, Op. 130, was Beethoven's as well.


Shortly after Beethoven's death, the music critic Johann Friedrich Rochlitz wrote the composer "wanted to appear as a new man in each work, even at the risk of making an occasional blunder, or sometimes being scarcely understood by even a few people." Beethoven was oft-misunderstood in his time. He made some blunders, most notably in orchestration after his deafness. But, fortunately, Swafford's biography is an excellent pointer to understanding the greatness of the new man that virtually defined the word the author is careful to avoid: genius.

But a man: "So much of what we know about Beethoven we best forget when we come to his art. The limits and the pettiness of humanity held up against the illusion of the limitless in art were never more pointed as with him. He understood people little and liked them less, yet he lived and worked and exhausted himself to exalt humanity." And that contradiction is the greatest pleasure Swafford's biography manages to explain.

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Wise And Moving Biography Of Beethoven

I became an admirer of Jan Swafford through reading his biographies of Johannes Brahms and Charles Ives. My admiration has increased with this wise and moving new biography, "Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph" (2014). Swafford offers much to think about in understanding Beethoven. For example, he discusses Beethoven's composition of the Ninth Symphony and of how the work spanned the composer's life from youth to age. Swafford writes:

"The threads in Beethoven's life gathered. Twenty years before, he anguished in his Heiligenstadt Testament, `Oh Providence - grant me at last but one day of pure joy - it is so long since real joy echoed in my heart ` .... In age we often return to the ideas and inspirations of our youth. In the Ninth Beethoven returned to Schiller's poem that had been a motif of his life since his teens, to the Enlightenment ideal of `life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' Rising from liberty, happiness transforms our lives and in turn transforms society."

This short passage captures much about Beethoven's life and work. It touches the composer's anguish when he found he was becoming deaf and isolated and alone. Swafford captures the strong influence of the Enlightenment (the German Aufklarung)and on Freemasonry on Beethoven's music from the days of his youth with its emphasis on reason and on the power of art and science to transform life. Swafford shows how Beethoven became fascinated with Schiller in his youth and lived with the poet's work until writing the finale of his Ninth Symphony. In talking about how individuals often "return to the ideas and inspirations" of youth, Swafford reminded me of my own fascination with Beethoven since childhood and of how I continue to return to him over the years - most recently by reading Swafford's book.

Swafford observes that even during his lifetime, Beethoven was becoming a mythological, romanticized figure rather than a living human being. His stated aim is to present the facts of Beethoven's life without the myth. Accordingly, the book describes a Beethoven who was a great artist but who did not know how to live in the many aspects of life outside of music. His Beethoven is solipsistic, angry, self-pitying, and petty. He is frequently taken as mad. He falls in love with unattainable women and, to his sorrow, is never able to form a lasting relationship. He quarrels bitterly with most of his patrons and friends. He spends much of his late years in a custody battle over his nephew, Karl, which nearly ruins the boy. Much of this story will be familiar to those who have read about Beethoven. Swafford may exaggerate the extent to which Beethoven has been put on a pedestal in an anti-heroic, skeptical modern age. Swafford's biography includes a great deal of focus on Beethoven's early years in Bonn. In particular, he emphasizes Beethoven's early exposure to the German Aufklarung from his teacher Neefe and from the Freemasonry movement and its offshoots. Swafford shows how this influence stayed with Beethoven.

For the most part, Swafford portrays Beethoven as a conservative composer who deepened and expanded musical trends implicit in the works of Haydn and Mozart among others rather than as a revolutionary who overthrew the past. This characterization will surprise some readers. As the book proceeds, Swafford emphasizes the romantic character of Beethoven's music in the latter works. He offers fresh insights into the familiar three-period division of Beethoven's music - the first in which Beethoven was seeking his own path, the second or "new path" dominated by "heroic" music and the search for triumph over adversity in a political or individual way, and the third "poetic" path which became introspective, wandering, and spiritual.

Swafford combines his treatment of Beethoven's life with insightful detailed treatments of many of his major works. His discussions include some technical musical analysis but readers without a musical background will still be able to learn a great deal from them. He devotes a lengthy chapter in the middle of the book to an analysis of the "Eroica" Symphony. He offers a lengthy analysis late in the book of the "Missa Solemnis", a difficult work which Swafford finds is a summit of Beethoven's art. Swafford thinks highly of the "Pastoral" Symphony, a work which lovers of Beethoven sometimes downplay. He sees the 32 piano sonatas and 16 string quartets as works written throughout Beethoven's life, each with its own individual character. Swafford also discusses many works of Beethoven that deserve to be better known as well as some of his potboilers such as "Wellington's Victory".

Swafford summarizes his view of Beethoven in the discussion of the Ninth Symphony which has been discussed above and in his discussion of the late quartet in C -sharp minor, another summit of Beethoven's achievement. In his earlier heroic period, Swafford writes, Beethoven moved from anguish at the beginning to triumph at the end. In his later works, Beethoven came to realize that anguish and triumph were interrelated throughout life rather than a linear progression with a hero at the end. Swafford writes:

"As Beethoven's increasingly hard-won labors transcended the anguish of his life, the triumph of the C-sharp Minor Quartet, its answer to suffering, is the supreme poise and integration of the whole work."

This is a long book and many passages invite thinking about and lingering over. As I read, I wanted to pause and rehear music of Beethoven that I have not heard for some time, including the quartets, the Missa Soleminis and its predecessor C major mass, the violin sonatas, cello sonatas, and the string quintet, op. 29. The book also made me want to return to the piano to struggle again with learning some of the piano sonatas. Just as Beethoven's music has an immediacy while looking towards both the past and the future, Swafford's book helped me understand Beethoven as a person to be loved in youth, to be understood better as an adult, and to be inspired by in old age.

Robin Friedman

[Gary Inbinder · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Who can ever do anything after Beethoven?”
Franz Schubert

I picked up this biography after reading Swafford’s outstanding work on Brahms. I have read many fine biographies, and in my opinion, Swafford is among the best of biographers. He has all the necessary skills to make his subjects come alive; he’s an accomplished writer, musician and historian. The biographies are thoroughly researched and well-sourced, and his understanding of Beethoven and Brahms as individuals, the times in which they lived, the thoughts and feelings integrated into their works, is impressive.

While it isn’t absolutely necessary to have a basic knowledge of musical theory and the repertoire to enjoy this book, it’s certainly helpful. Swafford provides a little “refresher course” in an appendix, covering “sonata form, sonata-rondo form, concerto-sonata form, theme and variations, ABA form, minuet-scherzo form, fugue and its derivations, canon, and so on.” In the introduction, he recommends the general reader go to the appendix first, and I agree this is a good idea.

The Schubert quote is apposite; all the great Western composers of the 19th and early 20th centuries lived and worked in the Titan’s shadow. Beethoven was perhaps the most transformative of composers, in the sense that he took the forms referenced in the appendix, mastered them, and stretched them to their limits to express in sound all that was in his head and heart. Moreover, it’s important to remember that for much of his adult life he could not hear the amazing sounds he was creating. He challenged the technical capabilities of performers, both instrumentalists and singers, and the instrument makers and pedagogues as well. In that regard, it’s been recognized that Western music history can be divided into two eras: Before Beethoven and After Beethoven.

I’ll close with an analogy to physics. Studying, understanding, and appreciating Mozart is like studying, understanding, and appreciating Newton; studying, understanding, and appreciating Beethoven is like studying, understanding, and appreciating Einstein.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love an extensive biography, so despite my limited knowledge of classical music, this book has been on my list since 2014. While most of Swafford’s technical descriptions were lost on me, the descriptions of Beethoven’s life and Europe of this time more than compensated.

This book has been well reviewed by professional music critics and citizen reviewers here on GR, so there is little to add by way of review; instead I will give some takeaways and highlights, and through them you can see how this book can appeal to even those without the musical background.

Takeaways:
• how hard Beethoven had to work to scratch out a precarious living. I think of today’s artists who complain about producing 2 albums a year.
• the status of the self-made man at this time/place and how this diminished Beethoven’s marriage prospects, was pivotal in his attempts to adopt his nephew, and made him beholden to shallow aristocrats.

A few of many parts with excellent prose or interesting content:

• Beethoven’s hearing loss: his realization, possible causes and attempts at solutions/cures pp. 223-226

• The process of writing “Eroica”: begun as“Bonaparte” a tribute to Napoleon whom Beethoven saw as transforming the aristocratic hold on Europe. As he was concluding the work Napoleon declared himself emperor and shattered Beethoven’s idealism. Chapters 17 & 18.

• Original letters: throughout the book: with the background of his health, loneliness and creative drives you see his powerful emotions as he faces rejection (and perceived rejection) by women, publishers and potential benefactors.

• Bettina Brentano: I’d like to know more about this friend and perhaps romantic partner. Could she have been his "immortal beloved"?

• How big events show impact in everyday life: For instance “… international postage was disrupted by the Napoleonic Wars, the song had to be mailed back and forth in multiple copies sent by multiple routes. One package Beethoven posted in Malta took two years to arrive in Scotland”. p. 569.

• The genesis and development of “Wellington’s Victory”: Swafford demonstrates how this shows: “Beethoven the consummate professional; he knew how to produce twaddle on demand” p. 616.

• Congress of Vienna: the artists entertained the aristocrats as Europe was divvied up following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Swafford describes how the spy system started and the and shrinking liberties that resulted. Chapter 26.

• How Beethoven could be so fully involved in his music from his music from the state of his apartment, his personal hygiene, his phasing out in conversation and (pp. 790-793) a description of how he shadow conducted his 9th Symphony.

If you are a Beethoven fan, you might have already read this and if you haven't you will get a lot more out of it than those not steeped in his musical canon. If you are not a fan and you are disposed to big thick biographies, this is highly recommended.

[Karen·]

In looking back through the course of Beethoven's life as a man, what may be most astonishing about him is that he survived the burden of being Beethoven.

And looking back through the course of this magisterial work, what may be most astonishing about it is that Jan Swafford makes his subject almost likeable. He may have been able to make friends, but he was certainly not affable or easy to get on with. A psychologist could have a field day on his habit of only ever falling in love with the unavailable, the already engaged or married, rather than the less showy sister who hung on his every word. And when you see how he treated his servants - noting that Nanni is slightly more tractable since he threw half a dozen books at her head - it's tempting to feel relief for womankind that none had to put up with his mercurial moods, paranoia and peevishness.

This biography is a magnificent synthesis: Swafford deftly places Beethoven in the political landscape of the time, anchors him securely in the era of the Enlightenment, gives him his due position in the history of music and ideas, strips away a lot of the myth making (that Schindler!), describes the reactions to the man through letters, diary entries reports of those who met him, and, not least, provides analysis of the work. This last was a stretch for me, someone who, when they hear the words tonic scale is more likely to start thinking about the relative merits of Fever Tree and Thomas Henry than anything to do with triads or chords. But I valiantly took up the challenge, frequently failing miserably and sometimes (ahem) skipping over pages. Other times, though, taking great delight in original and insightful descriptions that truly convey moods and textures.

Of greatest interest to me was how Beethoven managed financially, as he was born into that awkward time when the old system of aristocratic patronage was giving way to a more commercial nexus, but without the structures that allow an artist to make money: at a time when such concepts as copyright or royalties for performance were non-existent. For him it meant paradoxically that the works which cost him the greatest time and effort, the large symphonic works, brought him the least income. Publishing houses needed to supply the demand for small chamber pieces which came from a burgeoning number of amateur and professional players looking for new pieces to play - a constant complaint from his British publisher Thomson was that the piano accompaniment to his settings of folk songs were too difficult for their young ladies. And the proofreading! A frustrating business all round.
As a freelance - for Haydn was firmly ensconced as Kapellmeister in Vienna - Beethoven had to "cobble together a living from a grab bag of sources: commissions, publishing, part-time jobs in church or court, teaching, performing, patronage from the nobility." Thus was his early deafness such a disaster, as he could no longer perform as a virtuoso pianist, losing him around a quarter of his income.
He was inventive in sourcing income: he was one of the first composers to demand, and get, a share of the ticket proceedings from a public concert, although he refused to make his music more pleasing to increase the appeal (and the takings), and he was sure that he'd been fiddled (of course). And he also enjoyed the benefits of a stipend from a kind of conglomerate of patrons, His Imperial Highness Archduke Rudolph, Prince Lobkowitz and Prince Ferdinand Kinsky. A brilliant way of hedging your bets, as quarrels or bankruptcy could always cause a source to dry up, and he could feel less like the personal servant of any particular one of these, indeed often cried off giving Archduke Rudolph lessons due to ill health. And his health was always poor, to put it mildly.

This work is itself a triumph. It succeeds in all its many-sided undertakings and leaves you utterly astounded at the singularity of Beethoven's achievement. Even when the myth-making is stripped away he still emerges as nothing less than an incomparable phenomenon, the standard setter for music to come.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

A word of caution first, a da-da-da-dum, if you will. The author is a classical music composer, as well as a teacher of music theory and composition. So, in this superb biography of Beethoven there is also much written about the music of Beethoven. You will get the ultimate joy of reading this if you can read music and talk knowledgeably about the Sonata Form. I, unfortunately, can do neither. Pictured portions of musical score were thus useless to me, as were explanations like this:

In a long-unfolding melody of various phrasing, without hurry it drifts down from B-flat to D below the staff, then over the next twelve bars slowly wends its way up to B-flat above the staff, then sinks down an octave.

Those of you who recognized the Pathétique Sonata can rightly feel smug.

I did not, and I surely skimmed a few lengthy musical dissections. But some of the descriptions of selected works were quite beautiful, even for the likes of me. Here's what we're told as the final movement of the 9th Symphony fills the air:

The fanfare breaks out again, the basses answer again. At that point Beethoven, in the context of his time, plays one of his strangest cards yet. As if in a mangling of time we hear for a few seconds the mysterious A-E tremolos that began the symphony. The basses respond to this phantom with more wordless, chromatic recitative that seems to say, No, not that. Now there is a snippet of the scherzo and then the slow movement, the scherzo rebuffed gruffly by the basses, the slow movement with wistful regret, growing to a fortissimo outburst. That in turn gives rise to another snippet: it is the first phrase of the Freude theme in the winds, marked dolce, "sweetly." Now in a clear D major the basses wordlessly but unmistakably cry, Yes! This is what we want! In short, evocations of the first three movements have appeared in the finale, the basses have turned them away, and then they embrace the Freude theme.

Music, anthropomorphized.

We are told this also of the 9th: It would be exalted by tyrannies and it would celebrate the downfall of tyrannies.

Some bullet points:

-- In school he learned to add but never to divide or multiply. To the end of his life, if he needed to multiply 62 by 50, he did it by writing 62 in a column 50 times and adding it up.

-- Beethoven thought Handel was his only superior.

-- In Bonn, Beethoven heard his name pronounced Biet-hoffen. When he moved to Vienna he was called Herr Be-toof-fen. (The author never told when Ludwig became Bay-toe-ven. And I was looking for that.)

-- His ideas about women were puritanical, but his instincts were robust.

-- Beethoven checked out a book about venereal diseases from the library.

-- The last words spoken by Beethoven are reputed to be, "Pity, pity, too late." I prefer his penultimate words, spoken in Latin: Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est. Applaud, friends, the comedy is over.

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biographer Jan Swafford aims to be fair and balanced about Beethoven but at the end of the day forgives the man with total absolution, despite those times when that smelly unkempt disease-ridden misanthrope was a total ass, dick and shithead -- which was a lot.

And, I guess, I'll let bygones be bygones, also. Otherwise why would I have attended the opera to see the staging of Beethoven's Fidelio, or heard the master pianist, Rudolf Serkin, play his mighty "Emperor" Fifth Piano Concerto, or seen Sir Charles Mackerras and the English Chamber Orchestra perform Beethoven's Fourth Symphony at the Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee in 1983 or joined the congregants -- twice, no less -- to hear his magnum opus, the sublime ode to humanity -- the Symphony No. 9 (once helmed with a hilarious conducting "technique"* by Lukas Foss, the composer-conductor pal of Leonard Bernstein and Glenn Gould)?

And why would I own four-dozen recordings of the third symphony, the "Eroica," the dividing line between all that was and all that would be in music? Or possess three-dozen recordings of the Violin Concerto, a piece that I listen to with fair regularity (this morning it was Zino Francescatti from 1961 and right now it's Hilary Hahn, live, from 2017)?

Because, whatever else Beethoven was -- and he himself admitted freely that he was a complete incompetent at everything but composition -- he created a body of work that never gets old, never gets boring, never sounds the same in any two performances, and never fails to inspire all musicians to the heights of personal excellence -- that turns the greatest ideas and ideals and poetry into a sound so incomparable that one can do nothing but stop and listen and ponder and feel better about this flawed world. And when it's done especially well, cry at how amazing it is.

As I was listening this week to Trevor Pinnock's crystalline interpretation/recording of Handel's Messiah, I could still hear the plaintive sonorities of Medieval troubadour songs in it. Haydn and Mozart started the process of shedding this ancient sound from music, but it was Beethoven who threw off the stench of the Middle Ages entirely. Are any of these assertions musicologically or historically sound? No, they're my opinions based on my semi-experienced ears. Late in the book, though -- after I'd written the above -- Swafford literally writes of how Beethoven -- in his complex "Hammerklavier" piano sonata -- "obliterated the old dichotomy between melody and harmony." But, I'm saying nothing new, and maybe neither is Swafford. Beethoven, the musical revolutionary, is a cliche, but Swafford understands that the idea of revolution -- certainly the Enlightenment Era's understanding of it -- is central to understanding Beethoven, his music, and the complex and contradictory approach to life that those notions animated.

Indeed, my favorite part of this book is the opening pages in which Swafford lays out clearly the philosophical precepts of the Enlightenment, or Aufklärung, which informed Beethoven's artistic and life outlooks. Coming from a musician and musical biographer, it's an explanation of such clarity that most college philosophy professors who do far worse at it should retire to the locker room in hangdog shame.

Interestingly, it's this marble-pure belief in high ideals that also made Beethoven an insufferable prude, so that even as a wildly popular young performing pianist and innovative composer -- a rock star: long-haired, fiercely independent and untameable -- he never could get on board with the sex and drugs part of the rock star life -- unless applying a horseradish home remedy to one's failing ears qualifies as indulgence in illicit substances. His misanthropy and poor social skills didn't help him parlay his rock-star status into free love opportunities. And despite his mastery and staunch aesthetic principles, he did compromise, sometimes -- as when he wrote the hilariously schlocky Wellington's Victory. But at the end of the day, he resisted publishers who wanted him to technically "tone down" his pieces a bit so that the young ladies who bought piano sheet music could play without looking too embarrassed about it.

Beethoven perhaps wanted too much, and was right, in the end, to throw himself thoroughly into his art when the chick thing wasn't working. He had done everything you shouldn't do with women -- excessive flattery, for one -- and thus never came close to marriage or union with a perfect idealized love partner. His misery translates into our rewards; and the poignancy of the music is the pain of his heart. As Jan Swafford notes in this bio, Beethoven from his earliest youth was poorly raised and socialized and never truly understood how to mix and mingle effectively with other humans, especially women. When the pressure got too great, he visited brothels, but he also felt dirty and guilty about it afterward. His "immortal beloved" -- his romantic ideal expressed in a famous letter -- was a woman whose identity has never been satisfactorily pinned down by scholars. Swafford lays out all the possibilities about who this woman might have been, without committing to a preference. And, perhaps, that's how it should be. This warped socialization led to one of the great tragedies of Beethoven's life, (apart from the obvious one of deafness) -- his controlling, smothering treatment of his nephew, Karl; the composer's apparent response to his own lack of an heir. A sad story for all involved.

The point of me reading this was to find a good recent "starter" biography of Beethoven -- without going back to the ancient one by Thayer -- that made me understand the arc of his life, times, and personality, and on this score Swafford delivers. Beethoven ceased to be a remote figure and emerged as a breathing, flawed, poignant and frustrating character. The writing is good overall, though not always as elegant as one would like, but Swafford is never less than thoughtful and there's a real musicological authority all the way. Even when he discusses deeply technical matters I felt myself absorbing something of use despite my limited understanding of terminology and notation.

I find it funny that Beethoven --a genius who nonetheless never learned multiplication, so that he literally wrote the same number in a column dozens of times to painstakingly add them up -- could juggle the complexities of "quintuple dealing," as Swafford puts it, underhandedly trying to sell his Missa Solemnis to four different wannabe publishers at once. A feat, I suppose, only possible by someone with an understanding of the intricacies of counterpoint and complex musical structure.

I've read the pros and cons about this book, including a somewhat unfair review in the Wall Street Journal by the late biographer Edmund Morris, who himself was not above criticism for fabrication. There's nothing fabricated in Swafford's tome, but there are individual quirks and educated speculations. Since I understand where these occur based on context, I find nothing wrong with them. There are many gaps in the story of Beethoven and Swafford does the best he can with them. Swafford examines the myths of the romantic, heroic Beethoven and tracks down and names sources of those legends, examining their validity while still maintaining his own awe for the man.

The question is: Is this the place to start with Beethoven? Yes. But maybe after you've dedicated years to listening to his music, as I have.

Quite an achievement, and very close to five stars. Let's call it four and a half.

eg/kr '20

*Foss by the end, during the "Ode to Joy" simply balled up his fists and pumped them up and down at his sides as if lifting and lowering an invisible wheelbarrow, smiling and bopping up and down on his feet in a stationary dance. He just let the players go and was enjoying himself. RIP maestro.

[Stian · Rating 4 out of 5]

During the last few months, I have, with something that must be called close to an obsession, listened to classical music. In the past, I have resolutely tried to wade my way into the vast ocean of classical music, getting, at most, my ankles wet. The idea then was that if I just forced myself to listen to it a lot, it would click and I would “get it.” Alas, at every instance, I eventually waded back out of the ocean, and then only sat at the shore gleaming at the beautiful and “safe” surface. That is to say, I was back where I started: being able to recognise the decidedly most famous pieces by ear, but only rarely being able to name even the composer of the piece. Humorously, I find in my last.fm that I attempted a few listens of Eroica a few years ago; I do not recall that at all. That was that – I must not have gotten it.

These last few months, however, it finally clicked, and it was not forced at all. Classical is pretty much all I’ve listened to during these months. I have, to complete the slightly silly metaphor above, finally delved into the ocean of it and stayed there. The one composer that I have explored the most by far, who has been the cause of my obsession really, is the man this mammoth biography is about – really he needs no introduction: Beethoven.

The book is huge – 1077 pages, with some 100 of them being notes, and a 10-page appendix which is helpful as it explains Beethoven’s musical forms, introducing some essential concepts for the reader if he or she is unfamiliar with sonata form; what a fugue is; what is meant by theme and variations, and so on. The biography is also written by a man who is himself a composer. This fact is both a strength and a weakness for the book, because this is as much a biography about Beethoven the human being as it is about Beethoven’s art.

For me, that is great. We get to see how Beethoven was reared from the start by his alcoholic father to become a great musician, like his namesake and grandfather before him, who died when young Ludwig was 3. He was bred to outdo Haydn and Mozart. We see how his father did this partly because he himself was a mediocre musician who failed to achieve the things he aspired to; we see Beethoven’s affection for his mother, his only “real” friend in life, he would later write. We see his growth as a person (or really, in many ways, lack of growth) and his slow ascent to becoming the revolutionary composer he eventually became. We get Beethoven placed in a historical context throughout the book – done in an exemplary way as the author never meanders or forgets who the focal point of the book is. Rather, we get historical events explained and examined briefly, and we see how this affected (or in some cases might have) affected the composer in his music, and why we can say that Beethoven was a romantic composer (and in what ways he was so much more).

In the end we get painted a brutally honest picture of Beethoven, as a man who was remarkably temperamental to the point of it being destructive to just about everything he touched in his life (except perhaps his music), a man who was incredibly moody, oftentimes childish in his anger and temperament, and even quite vindictive; a man who drove his own nephew to attempt suicide while in his custody. But even so, as Swafford notes, Beethoven rarely intended harm. He just never really grew to understand other human beings. And of course, the devastating deafness that hit him at a young age (he was only 28 when he began complaining about this) and the myriad of other physical illnesses that pestered him throughout his life meant it could not always have been pleasant being Beethoven.

But, as said, Beethoven’s music is just as big a part of the book. Swafford spends a great many pages explaining what Beethoven did musically that makes him so great, so revolutionary (though Swafford is careful to say evolutionary). A typical passage goes something like this (prefaced by a picture of some sheet music):

Finally, to make the opening theme he adds the note G to the scaffolding of the basso and inverts the direction of the two B-flats. To that he appends the three-note chromatic slide, this time going not up but down: E-flat-D-C-sharp. The first three notes of the resulting Thema, a major third up and back down, E-flat-G-E-flat, are the same as the first three notes of the englische tune. The new theme and the englische share a trochaic rhythm, long-short, long-short, and a wavelike shape:

[some sheet music]

In other words, the new opening starts by outlining an E-flat-major chord, a triad, filling in the outline of the bass theme and forming the familiar figure of a horn call. A triadic horn call, then, is the essence of das Thema. Taking the most common chord in music as the leading motif is an utterly Beethovenian way to proceed. Surely from Haydn he had learned that he could start with something nearly meaningless and fill it with meaning through the course of a work (pp. 338-339).

This is from the chapter on Eroica, and is quite typical for how Swafford talks about many of Beethoven’s most famous works. There is a lot of this type of stuff in the book: if you are looking for a book merely describing Beethoven’s life and his character, then this book is probably not for you – at least you have to do a lot of skimming and/or skipping.

The book is generally good and well-written, though you should expect to read a few things over again, as sometimes the author introduces people or events twice or sometimes thrice, often just quoting himself from the first time. Basically: he repeats himself a few times, but not so often that it becomes jarring, but you do end up thinking perhaps the book needed a bit of editing in places. It’s just that you notice it. Frankly, this was okay with me, as my memory is less-than-stellar anyway.

Recommended for people who love Beethoven’s music, want to understand his music better both by contextualising it and by having it explaining by a capable person, and also for people who simply are interested in LvB’s person, though you may need to skip a lot of the musical analysis.

P.S.

I feel I should append the review with this video on the unparalleled and remarkable genius of Beethoven. How could he write all this great music being deaf - and eventually completely deaf? What did music sound like to him? As Rick usually says, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bA2V...

Oh, and happy 250th, Ludwig van. Thanks for it all.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first biography I read about a classical composer and it was an excellent choice. Jan Swafford is a great biographer that really but flesh on the bones of this eccentric genius. His life is absolutely fascinating and this book does not lose itself (as many other biographies about classical composers) in endless musical scores (incomprehensible to non-musicians like me). Rather, it concentrates on Beethoven the man and his productive and somewhat revolutionary life. You will come away with a whole new appreciation for his life and his work - I had to go back and listen to everything and found so many treasures that they are impossible to count. I guess put another way, before this book, the only pieces I could unhesitatingly identify as being from Beethoven were the 5th and the 9th symphonies and I was really only aware of his as a symphonic writer. I learned thanks to Swafford about his incredible 32 sonatas, his gorgeous and incredibly challenging 16 string quartets, his opera Fidelio...it was like opening the closet door to the Narnia of classical music. I find Beethoven to uncompromising to his audience - he demands us to listen carefully and critically and this can be quite tiring - perhaps why the most known works tend to be the simple ones like Für Elise and the 5th Symphony.
In any case, this is the best biography I read about Beethoven and one of the best I found about any composer. I have not yet read Swafford's Brahms biography but it is on my list!

[Steven Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a rich and nuanced biography of Ludwig van Beethoven--warts and all. The book does not romanticize him; it does not take a critical orientation. It is an evenhanded consideration of a complex, extraordinarily talented, difficult person. And it highlights his musical output--making the book very compelling.

This is, on the one hand, a cradle to grave biography, beginning with his family's background and his early life (I had always thought it settled that his birth was on December 16, 1770--but not so certain according to the author). The book explores his childhood as a prodigy, pushed by his father to generate income. His father championed him as a new Mozart (indeed, the young Beethoven met Mozart once, to no great advantage).

The book also traces his musical output, from childhood efforts to his mature works--the final string quartets, Symphony # 9, Missa Solemnis, and the like. One of the stronger features of the book is the author's detailed discussion of selected works, in terms of their "musicality." Jan Swafford, the author, teaches music history, theory, and composition--so that he has the requisite background for making sense of Beethoven's music. I cannot read music, so that his inclusion of the music itself is beyond me--but his description of the music informs well enough.

The book also considers the arc of Beethoven's life--his battles with others, his friends, his volatile temperament, his relationship as guardian of his nephew, his (ill-fated) loves, his challenging economic situation over time, his scheming to enhance his income (sometimes offering several publishing companies the same piece of music!), his progressive deafness (a tragedy for a composer and a pianist) and so on.

All in all, an important work if one wishes to understand better Beethoven's life and art.

But the value of this book is (a) a deeper understanding of Beethoven the person and (b) his music and how it came about.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know what would make this audiobook awesome? If it played his songs in the background so I knew what the hell it was talking about

[Sher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe this book will be enjoyed by anyone interested in the arts and culture of this time period late 18th- 19th C even if you don't think yourself a Beethoven fan, because it's a cultural biography of a great artist yes, and a book that thoroughly investigates the time period and the forces at work. Very interesting storyline about patrons and how court musicians worked, and also I got much insight into Mozart and Hayden's musical influence upon the day. Being a fan of Goethe-- I enjoyed his coverage in the book and his muses and also his uneven relationship Beethoven. Beethoven's music is discussed technically, but not overly so. So, I was able to follow the gist of Swafford's musical analysis. This book helped me to appreciate Beethoven's music more than I ever have-- I really thought of Beethoven and the strong 5th Symphony which has not been a favorite. I coupled this book with The Great Courses --Beethoven Symphonies and Beethoven Piano Sonatas by Robert Greenberg. Together - its been a tremendously immersive and interesting Beethoven experience. The title of Swafford's book is apt and poignantly so. One of my best reads of 2020 I'm sure.

[Andrew Marr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ludwig von Beethoven is one of those larger-than-life cultural figures who towers over Western Civilization like a Colossus. Is the man worthy of this mythological status? As a human being, far from it; as a composer of music, very much so. In Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, Jan Swafford has written a biography and musical survey of Beethoven that is worthy of the subject and surely sets the standards (very high) for any future works on Beethoven. The book is nearly a thousand pages long but I was so absorbed in the narratives that I didn’t mind the length at all.

Swafford places Beethoven firmly in his cultural and historical contexts. His discussion of the Enlightenment as developed in Bonn is particularly interesting as its formative influence on Beethoven was deep. Schiller’s famous Ode to Joy was published during Beethoven’s youth and it haunted the composer throughout his life, giving him a lifelong intention to set it to music which he finally did in the ninth symphony. Then there is Napoleon, another towering figure of the Age who inspired humanistic idealism in Beethoven as well as many others, only to end in disillusionment when he crowned himself emperor of France. Beethoven’s richest period of frenetic composing coincided with the Napoleonic wars and the disruptions they caused, not least in Vienna. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Austria sank into a police state where instrumental music was about the only area with some freedom. Although Beethoven was too grounded in the classical tradition to be a Romantic figure, he roughly pushed enough envelopes to be possibly the most inspiring figure of the Romantic Movement wit E.T.A. Hoffman the first to build the Romantic mythology around Beethoven.

The sad narrative of Beethoven’s life is told with novelistic detail and immediacy. Not only Beethoven’s famously cantankerous personality but those of dozens of other important figures in the composer’s life come alive in the telling. The idealism Beethoven believed in and embodied in the nobility of his greatest works did not translate into Beethoven’s daily life. Time after time, the reader winces at Beethoven’s inability to understand any individual person besides himself. His problem isn’t so much a willful egoism so much as a constitutional problem with him, exacerbated by his deafness. I wonder if it might also show the weakness of Enlightenment idealism which stirred love for humanity in general but not for humans in particular. That surely catches Beethoven’s personality in a nutshell. Beethoven could be a devoted and intense friend but he quarreled with nearly all of his friends throughout his life. His problematic relationship with his nephew Karl is particularly painful. When Beethoven’s brother died, Ludwig devoted himself to an ugly custody battle with Karl’s mother. To be blunt and short: Beethoven was not cut out to be a good father figure for an orphaned child. Beethoven’s dealings with music publishers were shabbier than their dealings with him. (If royalties had been invented back then, Beethoven would have been less desperate about money.) The sad saga of Beethoven’s hopes for a companion is marriage is pitiful, though understandable, from the point of view of any woman who ever lived.

The book’s greatest strength, for me anyway, is the discussion of Beethoven’s music. Some rudimentary knowledge of music theory or better would be helpful for any reader, but Swafford’s ability to make Beethoven’s musical works sound like awesome adventure stories might carry along some readers who lack such knowledge. Every work of Beethoven’s of any consequence (and there are many) is discussed with at least a page’s worth of pinpointed criticism, and the most complex works, such as the Eroica and ninth symphonies, are given the epic treatment they deserve. Swafford’s probing analyses reminded me of the frisson of my own first encounters with these great works as a child and adolescent: the amazing start of the Eroica and the numinous opening of the ninth, to name a couple. Swafford also demonstrates how profound Beethoven could be in simplicity as he was in the Pastoral Symphony and the Mass in C Major, a work underrated then as much as it is now. Much attention is given to Mozart’s drawing upon and reacting to his immediate predecessors Mozart and Haydn. Haydn was as much a rival as a mentor to Beethoven. Poor Papa Haydn was traumatized by Beethoven’s early C Minor piano trio and the Eroica shattered his life musical world. As a youth, Beethoven was lucky enough to be introduced to JS Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier which loomed as a great formative influence throughout his life. Many writers have written fine things about the transcendent late works such as the final piano sonatas & the last string quartets, but Swafford outdoes all of them in leading the reader to the heights of these incredible works.

Beethoven could be problematic not only as a person but even as a composer. For a century, he was a formidable challenge to all other composers. The final movement of his B-flat quartet, known as the Grosse Fugue is as bewildering today as Bartok’s string quartets. Not only was Beethoven a musical pioneer in his own time, he is still well ahead of us today. To tell the truth, I find the subtleties of Mozart and Schubert rich territory for my musical wanderings, but Beethoven’s storming the heavens and then gently floating up into and above them is an important part of my musical life as well.

All this is to say that I recommend Swafford’s book on Beethoven with no reservations. He leaves me hoping that Schubert is next on his list.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating. Made it a point to listen to everything (music discussed) and look up architecture and portraits. A wonderfully enriching experience. History at its best,

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been in love with Beethoven since I was just into my teens. My mother’s favourite symphony was the 8th, but we had them all on LP (the von Karajan recordings) and my friend Ruth and I would play them every weekend, one after the other in order, following along with the scores that we had between the two of us. Sometimes I would take the train into the State Library and flop down on the floor beside the Beethoven books and read everything there was on open access. I thought I knew most of what there was to know about Beethoven but I was wrong…

I did not know, for example, how strategic Beethoven was in planning his career. In the chapter entitled ‘Generalissimo’ Swafford tells us how he crafted the progress of his first opus numbers because only the pieces with opus numbers were going to be ‘serious’ ones. And he was very careful which genres he published. Mozart and Haydn were unassailable rivals that he had to manage in his early career if he were to avoid comparisons that he wasn’t ready for. Since Mozart and Haydn owned the territory with string quartets and Haydn was ‘the Father of the Symphony’ to boot, Beethoven played instead to his strengths, making the piano trio his own. This worked well for him because unlike his rivals, he had grown up with the piano:


Both his predecessors had spent much of their careers composing for harpsichord, while Beethoven was a pure pianist and piano composer. … When it came to idiomatic piano writing – exploiting the full range of touch, articulation, volume, texture and colour available to the piano as opposed to the harpsichord – one of his prime models was Muzio Clementi, who wrote one of the first substantial bodies of work for piano. At the same time, as a composer in general Clementi posed no threat to Beethoven. Clementi wrote attractively and idiomatically for the piano, Mozart and Haydn beautifully in general, but as far as Beethoven would have been concerned , the first truly significant repertoire for the piano was waiting to be written. He intended to write that repertoire. (p. 167)

Beethoven as we all know was a rather cranky fellow, and apparently even in his youth he was firmly convinced of his own genius, but – well, why not? He was a genius. It’s fascinating to read the little snippets that illustrate his contrariness, and this is a very well researched book that sustains reader interest from the get-go. So, for example, it tells us that Beethoven never really resolved the tension between the artistic debt and the veneration he owed Haydn and the jealousy he felt, so he refused to put ‘pupil of Haydn’ on the cover of his first published opus as other students routinely did with pride.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2014/11/19/be...

[John Devlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

(2.6) Swafford is authoritative, balanced, an open about the uncertainties surrounding the man. The bio charts Beethoven's childhood, his drunken abusive father, his relations with other masters like Hayden, and his increasingly problematic personality.
I just don't need the exhaustively descriptive analysis of each of Beethoven's works. I understand some may. And Swafford does a commendable job of trying to describe music with words. The number of usages of fugue, allegro, andante, poco, molto, cadenza, scherzo, arpeggio...well you get the picture.
This book could've been half its length without the explanations and musical tablature, but hey maybe that's right up someone's alley.

[Aris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ο ογκόλιθος (το βιβλίο, και ο Μπετόβεν) έλαβε επιτέλους τέλος. Τώρα δεν απομένει παρά να μαζέψω όπως όπως τις σκέψεις μου και να προσπαθήσω να τις βάλω σε μια σχετική σειρά, μπας, μπας λέω, και βγει κάποιο νόημα… αν και πολύ αμφιβάλω.
Έχουμε λοι��όν και λέμε, η βιογραφία αυτή περιέχει όλα όσα θα θέλατε να ξέρετε για τον Μπετόβεν αλλά ντρεπόσασταν να ρωτήσετε.

Θα ξεκινήσω ξεκαθαρίζοντας ότι η δομή του βιβλίου είναι γραμμική και όχι θεματική. Από εκεί και πέρα χάριν ευκολίας θα χωρίσω το βιβλίο, νοητά, σε τρία μέρη. Το πρώτο αφορά την ζωή του Μπετόβεν, ότι δηλαδή αναμένει κάποιος από μια βιογραφία, το δεύτερο αφορά το ιστορικό πλαίσιο στο οποίο έζησε και το τρίτο και φαρμακερό αφορά το έργο του.

Πιο αναλυτικά, όσον αφορά το πρώτο μέρος, περιέχει πραγματικά σχεδόν οτιδήποτε γνωρίζουμε για τον Μπετόβεν, όπου μεγάλο μέρος τους προέρχεται από την αλληλογραφία, την δική του και κοντινών του (αλλά όχι απαραίτητα) προσώπων· από μαρτυρίες τρίτων, φίλων, συνεργατών, μαθητών και πατρώνων, γράμματα τα οποία έγραψε, άλλοτε μικρότερα σε μήκος άλλοτε πάλι όχι. Επίσης άρθρα εφημερίδων και περιοδικών της εποχής όπου μας ενημερώνει για την υποδοχή των έργων του, αν και κατά πόσο αυτή τον επηρέαζε, καθώς και ότι άλλο είναι δυνατό να μας δώσει πληροφορίες για την ζωή του. Φυσικά λόγω του ότι ο Μπετόβεν ήταν πολυγραφότατος, ειδικά όταν πλέον άρχισε να χάνει τελείως την ακοή του όπου και άρχισε να χρησιμοποιεί σημειωματάρια για να επικοινωνούν ευκολότερα οι γύρω του μαζί του, τις περισσότερες φορές δεν περιλαμβάνονται ολόκληρα, όχι τα μεγαλύτερα τουλάχιστον, αλλά αποσπάσματα τους τα οποία όμως είναι αρκετά για να μας δώσουν μια ιδέα για τον άνθρωπο πίσω από το brand και τον μύθο.
Τα σχεδόν συνεχόμενα προβλήματα υγείας (δεν ήταν μόνο η σταδιακή κώφωση που τον ταλαιπωρούσε), τις ιδιότυπες σχέσεις που είχε με τις γυναίκες κυρίως, αλλά και με τους άντρες (εξαιρετικά δύσκολος άνθρωπος και ιδιόρρυθμος μέχρις τελικής πτώσεως ο άτιμος), τα αδέρφια του και από ένα σημείο και έπειτα τη νύφη του και τον ανιψιό του, όπου στο ύστερο μέρος της ζωής του και αποτέλεσαν ένα μεγάλο κεφάλαιο.
Επίσης ενδιαφέρον έχει το πως έβλεπε του συνάδελφούς του συνθέτες και ειδικότερα τους Μότσαρτ και Χάυντν κατά πρώτο λόγο και κατά δεύτερο τους Χέντελ και Μπαχ. Και οι 4 προγενέστεροι του, εκτός απ’ τον Χάυντν ο οποίος αν και άνηκε σε διαφορετικό ύφος (κλασσικός εκεί που ο Μπετόβεν για πολλούς, συμπεριλαμβανομένου και του υποφαινόμενου, θεωρείται ρομαντικός) και πολύ μεγαλύτερος σε ηλικία ήταν σύγχρονός του και για κάποιο χρονικό διάστημα και δάσκαλός του.
Μια σημείωση που θέλω να κάνω πάνω στο τμήμα της αυτής καθαυτής της βιογραφίας είναι ότι ο συγγραφέας δεν παίρνει θέση, ή τουλάχιστον προσπαθεί να μείνει όσο το δυνατόν πιο αντικειμενικός γίνεται, δεν πρόκειται για αγιογραφία αλλά για βιογραφία.

Στο δεύτερο μέρος με πολλά επιχειρήματα, ενδείξεις και αποδείξεις μας υποδεικνύει ότι ο Μπετόβεν ήταν γνήσιο τέκνο της εποχής του, ήτοι του γερμανικού διαφωτισμού (Aufklärung) ο οποίος όμως πλησίαζε στο τέλος του και αναπόφευκτα το έφτασε πριν φτάσει ο Μπετόβεν στο δικό του (ανέλαβε ο Μέττερνιχ και το κράτος καταστολής το οποίο δημιούργησε). Παρακολουθούμε λοιπόν με ποιο τρόπο οι απόψεις του και η κοσμοθεωρία του επηρεάστηκαν και διαμορφώθηκαν από την περιρρέουσα ατμόσφαιρα και τα γεγονότα της εποχής, τον ρόλο που έπαιξαν οι Καντ, Γκαίτε, αλλά και ο Ευρωπαϊκός διαφωτισμός συνολικά, η Γαλλική επανάσταση, ο Ναπολέων, και πως αυτός επηρέασε τον Μπετόβεν και το έργο του έστω κι αν δεν συναντήθηκαν ποτέ.
Δεν μπορώ και ως εκ τούτου δεν θα μπω στην διαδικασία να περιγράψω περαιτέρω ποιες είναι αυτές γιατί από παρουσίαση βιβλίου θα καταλήξει να είναι βιβλίο από μόνη της. Πάμε παρακάτω λοιπόν…

Στο τρίτο και μεγαλύτερο (συγκριτικά) μέρος του βιβλίου είναι η ανάλυση του έργου του Μπετόβεν και εδώ θα προσπαθήσω με την σειρά μου να είμαι όσο πιο αναλυτικός γίνεται. Ο συγγραφέας δεν υποθέτει ότι όσοι θα διαβάσουν το βιβλίο γνωρίζουν από μουσική, αλλά σαφέστατα αυτό θα είναι ένα μεγάλο ατού σε όποιον αποφασίσει να το κάνει. Στο τέλος του βιβλίου υπάρχουν κάποιες σελίδες αφιερωμένες όπου επεξηγεί ακριβώς σημαίνουν σονάτα, φούγκα, σονάτα-ρόντο, μινουέτο κτλ, αλλά από εκεί περά πλέον αναμένει κάποιες σχετικές γνώσεις πάνω στην τέχνη της μουσικής. Είναι θετικό επίσης για τον αναγνώστη να μπορεί, αν όχι να διαβάσει άρτια το πεντάγραμμο, τουλάχιστον να μπορεί να ξεχωρίσει τις νότες πάνω του (μιας και υπάρχουν αρκετές εικόνες με εισαγωγές, περάσματα, σημεία όπου υπάρχει λεπτομερής ανάλυση κ.ο.κ), τους χρόνους και τα κλειδιά, πράγματα που κάποιοι μπορεί να θεωρούν αυτονόητα αλλά για κάποιον χωρίς μουσικές γνώσεις δεν θα έλεγα πως είναι.
Έχοντας ξεκαθαρίσει αυτό το κομμάτι, μας παρουσιάζει τα σημαντικότερα και πιο γνωστά έργα του, αυτά τα οποία χωρίς να είναι απαραίτητα γνωστά αποτέλεσαν κομβικά σημεία στην μετέπειτα συνθετική του εξέλιξη, αναλύει προσεκτικά και στις πλείστες των περιπτώσεων βήμα βήμα την δομή τους, τυχόν καινοτομίες που υπάρχουν σ’ αυτά, πως επηρέασαν την μουσική, είτε σύγχρονη του Μπετόβεν είτε μεταγενέστερη. Στα πολύ θετικά του βιβλίου, κατ’ εμέ τουλάχιστον, και πιο συγκεκριμένα στην ανάλυση των έργων του είναι ότι, πέραν των αμιγώς τεχνικών σημείων, η γλώσσα που χρησιμοποιεί χωρίς ευτυχώς να είναι γλαφυρή είναι αν μη τι άλλο χρωματιστή, αλλά πάλι δεν νομίζω να υπάρχει και άλλος τρόπος για να περιγράψει κάποιος ένα μουσικό κομμάτι σε κάποιον τρίτο χωρίς να προσπαθήσει να δώσει έμφαση και χρώμα μουσικό. Εδώ ένα μικρό tip για τυχόν τολμηρούς, προσπαθήστε, στο μέτρο του δυνατού, να ακούτε τα κομμάτια τα οποία αναλύει παράλληλα με την ανάγνωση του βιβλίου, θα δείτε μεγάλη διαφορά και θα καταλάβετε πολύ καλύτερα για τι ακριβώς μιλάει.

Κλείνοντας, για μένα το βιβλίο αξίζει τα 5*, παρόλα αυτά λόγω ότι η εκτενέστατη ανάλυση των κομματιών με τα οποία καταπιάνεται μπορεί να κουράσει ή και ακόμα αποτρέψει πολλούς από το να το διαβάσουν μπορείτε να το δείτε και ως 4*.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Da Da Da Done!

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally finished this monumental tome! It's taken me six weeks....I usually race through a book in a couple of days. It was well worth the time. Swafford examined Beethoven's life, times, and music in great detail and really gave me a much greater understanding. Having read this, I can see why Beethoven became the Romantic age's ideal of the tortured genius. Fascinating character! Now I'm keen to work on some more of his music, and to listen to it all. I'm looking forward to Jan Swafford's next book.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://www.bookwormblues.net/2020/10/...

I’ve never read a biography of Beethoven before. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested, it was more that there were just so many other things to read, so I kept forgetting. The thing is, Beethoven is the ultimate tragic story. He had a pretty horrid life, and his experiences hugely informed the music he wrote. I think my favorite biography in the history of biographies is one I recently-ish reviewed on Van Gogh, who likewise lived a pretty tragic life which hugely informed his art. Reading that biography got me thinking about Beethoven, so I looked up a book and let it rip.

Now, Jan Swafford writes biographies of musicians (I have another one, set to drop in December, on Mozart and it is amazing). The books, however, are huge. I mean, HUGE. He writes 1000 page explorations of the lives of such individuals as Brahms and Beethoven, Mozart (coming soon) and the like. Swafford is a composer and writer, and I believe (don’t quote me on this) he has also taught music theory. The guy comes to the game with a lot in his arsenal, and it shows. Biographies can be hard, especially when the figures are infamous, because sometimes it feels as though the individual being written about somehow supersedes the author and directs the book from his/her place in history. However, Swafford retained complete control over Beethoven throughout the book, which is no small feat, considering how large the man looms in history.

At one point when she had lost a child, Beethoven invited her over, sat down at the piano, and said, “Now we will converse in music.” For more than an hour he improvised for her. “He said everything to me,” Ertmann later told Felix Mendelssohn, “and finally gave me consolation.” It must have been a heartrending scene, Beethoven making music for a bereaved woman who played and understood his work as well as anybody alive. He gave voice to her grief and offered her hope. Here was a microcosm of what all his music does: it captures life in its breadth of sorrow and joy, spoken to and for the whole of humanity. Beneath the paranoid, misanthropic, often unbearable surface, Beethoven was among the most generous of men.

I will say that a background in music is not necessary for enjoying this book, but it is helpful. I have played the piano for thirty years, and the French horn for just under that. Music put me through college via scholarships. I’ve played in more symphonies than I can possibly ever even attempt to remember. I know music, and still, some of these deep dives describing Beethoven’s various music could be, at times overwhelming. It does help to listen to the pieces as Swafford describes them, so you can kind of follow via audio what he is detailing in the books, but I anticipate that this might be the part of the book that will either make or break the reader. Now, before you freak out and say “I don’t want to read this” understand that Beethoven was as much a man as a musician, and to understand his life, you really do have to understand his music because that was how he communicated with the world. And yes, you can skim lengthy musical discussions.

An example of some of the musical lingo here:

In a long-unfolding melody of various phrasing, without hurry it drifts down from B-flat to D below the staff, then over the next twelve bars slowly wends its way up to B-flat above the staff, then sinks down an octave.

Swafford, as I’ve said, holds mastery over his subject. While everyone seems to know at least one thing about Beethoven, Swafford seems to know everything. The book is filled with details, with nuances, with all those things that makes the man feel like less a looming historical figure, and more a human who actually existed in the world. Furthermore, while I do think he lingers a bit long on some of the musical analyzation, Swafford never really gets bogged down by any one part of the story as a whole. He tells a very well-rounded story of his subject, painting him as a sort of misunderstood genius, a man who was chronically out of place, just enough of a step away from the social “norms” to make him feel utterly and completely out of sync most of the time.

Perhaps one thing I took away from the book more than almost anything else was how incredibly sad Beethoven’s childhood was. His father, determined to make the next Mozart out of his son, basically drove Beethoven to eat, drink, sleep, and dream about music, forcing him to spend hours at the piano, sometimes in the middle of the night. Punishments were brutal, involving beatings and being locked away. While he had siblings he played with, and friends of a sort, he never really learned how to be a human in the world. Everything he did was focused on music, and so he never really learned how to communicate, how to interact with others. A harsh judge of himself, he imposed that same eye to the rest of the world, often finding that the world fell short of his expectations.

Music was the one extraordinary thing in a sea of the disappointing and ordinary. Reared as he was in a relentless discipline, instinctively responsive to music as he was, the boy never truly learned to understand the world outside music. Nobody ever really demanded that of him until, disastrously, near the end of his life. Nor did he ever really understand love. He could perceive the world and other people only through the prism of his own consciousness, judging them in the unforgiving terms he judged himself.

I also didn’t know that Beethoven was really one of the very first actual piano players of the world. Up to his day, most everyone who played, played on the harpsichord, and then moved over to the piano as it became more popular. Beethoven, however, started on the piano and stayed there.

So much of the music Beethoven created was a reflection of not only his inner turmoil (I’d argue, the man was rarely, if ever, truly happy), and the political upheavals around him. Living in a time of the Enlightenment, Napoleon, and all the political and social changes that ensued, life was not short of such influences from which to base his music off of. While Swafford can go a bit deep in on the music, it was fascinating to read about a lot of these compositions and set them against the backdrop of such tumultuous times, health problems, mental health, and depression. It truly helped me understand what Beethoven was trying to say when he crafted some of his most recognizable, powerful pieces, which helps me appreciate his mastery of the musical language in a way I never truly did before reading this book.

Some of the problem with Beethoven is that he’s larger than life, nearly mythologized, and that started happening even when he was alive. Doubtless, that made the man, who had always struggled with being part of the human animal, feel that much more an outsider. I also think it’s likely why I’ve always wanted to read a biography of Beethoven, but never quite got around to it. It’s hard to take someone so large and grand, and make them both human and understood, and yet somehow Swafford managed it, showing not just the musical genius that was Ludwig van Beethoven, but also the man behind the mask, the often tortured, darkly feeling, judgmental, out of sync human who seemed to be somewhat akin to the outsider looking in. And yet, despite all of that, he still managed to retain a generosity of spirit and hope for something greater that was always hinted at in even his darkest pieces.

“There’s something singularly moving about that moment when this man—deaf and sick and misanthropic and self-torturing, at the same time one of the most extraordinary and boundlessly generous men our species has produced—greets us person to person, with glass raised, and hails us as friends.”

This is not a small book. It weighs in at slightly shy of 1000 pages. It’s a beast, but I will honestly tell you, I’d sit down to spend ten minutes reading, and before I realized what happened, half the day would be gone. This biography sucked me in. I lost so much time to it, and I didn’t regret that at all. The only other biography that has managed to captivate me so thoroughly was the one I mentioned at the start of this review, on Van Gogh.

I can truthfully say, I will never hear another Beethoven piece the same again. This is, hands down, one of the best biographies I’ve ever read.

[Micah Jakubowicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

St. Beethoven is 100% real.

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Without suffering there is no struggle, without struggle no victory, without victory no crown.’

Ludwig van Beethoven (born c16 December 1770 - 26 March 1827) was a great composer and pianist. He remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers, with his best known compositions including 9 symphonies, 5 piano concertos, 32 piano sonatas and 16 string quartets. His Ninth Symphony is my single most favourite piece of music, but it is time for me to move beyond the symphonies into his other works.
I remember learning a little about Beethoven during my compulsory music classes at high school. I remembered feeling great sympathy for him: I’d suffered periods of intermittent deafness myself as a consequence of infection, and thought how much more tragic a loss of hearing must be for someone whose life was music. But I never really took the time to learn much more about Beethoven until I fell in love with his Ninth Symphony about twenty years ago.

In this book, Jan Swafford, himself a composer and author, has tried to present the facts about Beethoven, without the romanticised myths that started growing about him while he was still alive. While Beethoven was a great artist, it seems that he had a very limited capacity for life outside music. He was idealistic and irascible, and at times quite petty. He quarrelled with his friends and benefactors, and spent many years in a bitter custody battle with his sister-in-law over his nephew Karl. He fell in love with women who were unattainable, and he never married.

‘For well and ill, what Beethoven had been in his teens had not fundamentally changed. He had never grown into social maturity. He was never able to understand anything through another person’s eyes, could see the world only though his own lense.’

For me (a non-musician) the most interesting parts of the book were those that provided biographic detail, and properly set Beethoven’s life in the history of the times (which quickly moved from the Enlightenment to revolution and war across Europe). Was Beethoven a revolutionary? Mr Swafford portrays him as a composer whose work evolved, whose work drew from earlier composers including Mozart and Hayden. Intriguing.
I felt sorry for Beethoven as he battled his progressive deafness, his ill health, his increasing paranoia. I may not understand the technical aspects of his music, but I love listening to it. Especially the Ninth Symphony.

‘The gulf between Beethoven’s music and his life, the exaltation and the darkness, only widened in his age.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this quite a bit, but most likely only because it's about Beethoven. As others have mentioned it gets repetitive and might have used a bit more judicious editing. I did learn a few new things about my favorite composer, namely that the profound brooding glare we've come to associate with Beethoven's countenance is largely due to his being uncomfortable and upset while having a life mask made, the wet plaster nearly suffocating him. Most of the busts and portraits thereafter show the same expression because it romanticizes the genius.

I also found it surprising that Swafford relates as possible truth the story of Beethoven rising up and shaking his fist at a thunderstorm seconds before passing from life. I'd always thought this tale a little too in character, surely apocryphal. But who knows?

Others have complained about the musical jargon, but as I am well familiar with the works (if not the theory so much) I had no trouble following along with the analysis sections. I can use these analyses or keep them in mind for future deep listening sessions. Still, I'd recommend this book for die-hard Beethoven fans only.

[Christy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel that I know Beethoven better as a person now. His struggle with humanity makes his championing of humanity that much more poignant. Swafford includes a nice balance of Beethoven's personal life, the culture in which he lived and analysis of his compositions. His musical analysis is both structural and philosophical. A long biography, but fantastically written.

[Kip · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent biography. I very much enjoyed the descriptions of the pieces, and found myself searching them out on youtube and purchasing some so that I could listen while I read them.

What a difficult life, and a difficult man.

[Ary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exactly two weeks before my first daughter was born, I checked off a bucket list item when I attended the SF Symphony’s recreation of Beethoven's Theater an der Wien program. The Dec 22, 1808 benefit concert debuted, among other pieces, the 5th and 6th symphonies and the Choral Fantasy, the “rough draft” of the Ode to Joy. Basking in the gloriously polished performance of orchestra and choir from our nosebleed seats, I wondered what it was like to be in the audience that heard the “da-da-da-duuuum” of fate knocking at the door for the very first time.

As the old saw goes, writing about music is like dancing about architecture, and that sums up how I felt about much of Jan Swafford’s magisterial biography of Ludwig van Beethoven. Half the book’s length consists of thoroughly detailed descriptions of LvB’s music, which are wasted on anyone without a sophisticated understanding of music theory and western classical forms. The rest is about his life and times. It’s the life and times that make it worth reading.

Pushed from childhood to be a musical prodigy, prone to fits of passionate anger as well as prodigious generosity, spurned in love because of the social strictures of his era, Beethoven's complicated humanity puts the transcendent quality of his art into even starker relief. Connecting Beethoven’s music to the social and historical context of 19th-century Vienna was the other revelatory aspect of this book.

Coming back to the Theater an der Wien concert, Swafford thoroughly details the social context of music in 19th century Vienna. Even in the undisputed musical capital of Europe, the idea of a professional orchestras didn’t really exist; concerts were performed by a mix of amateur and full-time musicians, who rehearsed for a few hours, if at all, before a performance. It wasn’t just the audience that was unprepared for the barrage of new ideas Beethoven unleashed; it was the performers, too. In an unheated concert hall in the dead of winter, playing for an audience accustomed to Haydn symphonies and Mozart operas, the orchestra struggled in fits and starts through a program of unprecedented length and complexity. Every piece on the program is now a core part of the repertory, but at the time the concert underwhelmed critically, and failed commercially.

Before I read Anguish and Triumph, I wondered what it would have been like to hear the Theater an der Wien on Dec 22 1808. Since reading it, I wonder what Beethoven would think if he heard Davies Hall on Jun 20 2015. From what I know now, I’m not sure I would trade.

[Bjørn Skjæveland · Rating 5 out of 5]

This 39 hour long audiobook took me over a month to get through, but it was totally worth it. An incredibly detailed, insightful and entertaining biography about the world's greatest composer. The author paints such a vivid and deeply human portrait of a wildly eccentric, flawed and complex genius. Funniest moments: How Beethoven was always at war with his housekeepers, and the time he forgot he owned a horse.

[Vivian Matsui · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ufa, mais de 1000 páginas... Excelente. Essa biografia engloba: os aspectos musicais, as doenças e o contexto histórico de forma muito entrosada. Eu já havia gostado bastante da outra biografia, o Lockwood, mas esta aqui foi bastante palpável, ótima para ler enquanto ouve as músicas.
Recomendo leituras complementares das cartas e dos cadernos de anotações.