Product Description

A "magisterial" (New York Review of Books) work offering a fresh look at Beethoven's life, career, and milieu.

This brilliant portrayal weaves Beethoven's musical and biographical stories into their historical and artistic contexts. Lewis Lockwood sketches the turbulent personal, historical, political, and cultural frameworks in which Beethoven worked and examines their effects on his music. "The result is that rarest of achievements, a profoundly humane work of scholarship that will—or at least should—appeal to specialists and generalists in equal measure" (Terry Teachout, Commentary). Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. 50 illustrations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #89693 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 604 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Although he breaks no new ground, Lockwood (a Harvard professor emeritus in music and a leading Beethoven scholar) does offer an extremely cogent account of the works as they relate to the well-known three phases of Beethoven's remarkable creative life. It's appropriate that the title places the music first, because it is Lockwood's highly observant account of the composer's musical development that will strike readers most forcibly. There is nothing much new to say about the life, and here Lockwood only goes through the motions, pausing only to observe that despite all the speculation, it is doubtful that Beethoven ever enjoyed the physical love of a woman, notwithstanding his many infatuations and sometimes passionate letters. On the music, however, he has many fine insights, particularly into Beethoven's very conscious and determined development of his skills, and his often-neglected splendor as a melodist. A regular Beethoven listener could do worse than use Lockwood's accounts of the works, particularly the middle and late ones-he's inclined to give scant shrift to anything before the Opus 18 quartets-as concert or record notes, written at exactly the right pitch for knowledgeable music lovers who don't have a score in front of them. Lockwood is also thorough regarding the impact of such previous masters as Handel, Bach, Mozart and Haydn on Beethoven's art. Many illustrations not seen by PW; in an unusual extra, about 100 musical examples linked to the book are available on a dedicated Web site.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A recognized authority on Beethoven, Lockwood (music, emeritus, Harvard) concentrates primarily on his subject's music and development as a composer before dedicating separate chapters to biography and the historical, political, and cultural milieus. This particularly refreshing approach, modeled on Abraham Pasis's "Subtle Is the Lord": The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein and Nicholas Boyle's Goethe: The Poet and the Age, differs from other recent studies that focused more on Beethoven's life (e.g., Barry Cooper's Beethoven and Maynard Solomon's Beethoven). All of Lockwood's narrative, including the discussion of specific compositions, will be accessible to serious music lovers with only a modest technical background. This results partly from an interesting innovation, especially pleasing to specialists-100 additional musical examples are available on a companion web site (www.wwnorton.com/ trade/lockwood), allowing the author to be far less technical in his discussion. Lockwood's study offers a new and authoritative interpretation of a prodigiously gifted and complex man and artist who saw himself as Mozart's heir. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.
Timothy J. McGee, Univ. of Toronto
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Beethoven linked the Classical and Romantic periods in music. His early compositions reflected Mozart's influence and the example of the mature Haydn's work. Creativity, imagination, an acute mind, and a musical ear led Beethoven to explore new formal and harmonic structures, and his middle period includes most of his string quartets, piano sonatas, and symphonies--vehicles of his exploration. In his last period he produced his most romantic and grandest pieces. Lockwood relies upon Beethoven's sketchbooks, diaries, conversation books (used when he was very deaf), and letters to show how Beethoven developed his music. He provides background on historical and political events, including the French Revolution and rise of Napoleon, that influenced Beethoven. Along with some 50 music examples that are available on a Web site, Lockwood analyzes Beethoven's major compositions and shows how his musical thought grew. Coherent and eminently readable, this is a book that will complete anyone's understanding of one of the most innovative composers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who remains influential and popular today. Alan Hirsch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Not an adequate biography, nor an adequate critique
As a college undergrad I took a music course taught by Lockwood many years ago. He was good as a teacher, and I knew he was a LvB scholar, so I always hoped to see a book about LvB's music. After I left college he published not one but at least two such books.

This one was written for the general audience, someone who wants to learn about LvB's life as well as his music. Unfortunately, the interweaving leaves the book in the awkward position of fulfilling neither purpose. As a biography it's too brief, and if you were looking for in-depth analysis of LvB's great music you'd be disappointed like myself. I guess one purpose it can serve is as a casual introduction to the background of LvB as a person and as a musician, against the cultural-political backdrop of his times. However, I myself find the coverage too shallow, way too shallow.

A Musically Conceived Biography
Lockwood's Beethoven:...is not only one of the best organized (as in excellently researched and uniquely ordered),but is also smartly presented from a sensitive muscial point of view. This point would seem to be obvious in biographies of composers, but is not always the case. From the standpoint
of a present day composer, this is fine new portal into the mind and music
of this giant of giants.

UNQUESTIONABLY, ONE OF THE FINEST RECENT BOOKS ON THE MASTER...
Can't go wrong with this finely researched and well written tome on the Master.