Description

• Proposes a new way of listening to Beethoven that takes us beyond the iconic scowl and more nearly reflects the way in which the composer’s contemporaries heard his music
• Approaches Beethoven’s music as a series of variations on his life as manifested through his ideals and his attitudes toward deafness, friendship, love, religion, money, and politics
• Draws heavily on Beethoven’s writings – his letters, his diary – and lets the composer’s personality emerge through his own words

Throughout his life, Beethoven remained remarkably consistent in his most basic convictions about his art. He approached music as he approached life, weighing whatever occupied him from a variety of perspectives: a melodic idea, a musical genre, a word or phrase, a friend, a lover, a patron, money, politics, religion. His ability to unlock so many possibilities from each helps explain the emotional breadth and richness of his output as a whole, from the heaven-storming Ninth Symphony to the eccentric Eighth, and from the arcane Great Fugue to the crowd-pleasing Wellington’s Victory. Beethoven’s works are a series of variations on his life. The iconic scowl so familiar from later images of the composer is but one of many attitudes he assumed and projected through his music. Discarding tired myths about the composer, this introduction to the composer proposes a new way of listening to Beethoven by hearing his music as an expression of his entire self.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. 1. The Scowl
3. 2. The Life
4. 3. Ideals
5. 4. Deafness
6. 5. Love
7. 6. Money
8. 7. Politics
9. 8. Composing
10. 9. Early-Middle-Late
11. 10. The Music
12. 11. Beethoven
13. References
14. Further Reading
15. Index