Beethoven

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful brief introduction to a great composer
Review: Amateurs tread upon the musicologist's turf always at their peril - a tendency doubled in the case of one amateur reviewing another. J.W.N. Sullivan was one of the most gifted popularizers of science (i.e., THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE) between the world wars, conveying in clear, polished prose the main lines of scientific development tailing Einstein's once-in-a-lifetime comet. When he turned his hand to music, as in this short appraisal of the inner development of Beethoven as it found expression in his work, he brought to the task his customary literary gifts, and the result is a joy to read. Sullivan spends a fair amount of throat-clearing time early in his book in discussing the capacity of music to convey deep, extralinguistic truth (a topic ground to dust by every would-be philosopher since at least as far back as the pre-Socratics). The remainder of the book highlights the unending round of struggles - physical, material, emotional - faced by the composer, and the ways in which he strove to express and overcome them in his music. Especially from the vantage of today, with the wealth of fine scholarship at their disposal, Beethoven specialists may quarrel throughout with Sullivan's pet notions. But general readers, who have claims of their own, will be hard put to find a more moving or better-written short attempt at conveying what stirs us still in the life and work of a composer who, to paraphrase the great musicologist Sir Donald Tovey, will always occupy a central place in a sound musical mind.

Rating:
Summary: insightful and informative
Review: I recommend the book not only for its intertwined information about the composer's life and works, but for its demonstration of Beethoven's inward evolution. My one criticism is that the author tends to see in some of Beethoven's clearly neurotic behavior (e.g., his obsession with his nephew; his incredible personal messiness; his narcissistic rages at certain colleagues) an overabundance of some sort of energy--which may indeed be the case at a very deep level, but hey, misbehavior is misbehavior. Nevertheless, an excellent Beethoven resource.

Rating:
Summary: insightful and informative
Review: I recommend the book not only for its intertwined information about the composer's life and works, but for its demonstration of Beethoven's inward evolution. My one criticism is that the author tends to see in some of Beethoven's clearly neurotic behavior (e.g., his obsession with his nephew; his incredible personal messiness; his narcissistic rages at certain colleagues) an overabundance of some sort of energy--which may indeed be the case at a very deep level, but hey, misbehavior is misbehavior. Nevertheless, an excellent Beethoven resource.

Rating:
Summary: A Book I Have Read Several Times
Review: Sullivan examines Beethoven's spiritual development and how that development was reflected in the composer's music. After reading this book, I will listen to Beethoven's music with new insight. I found Sullivan's book to be an enjoyable read. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A Book I Have Read Several Times
Review: Sullivan was a mathematician, scientist and philosopher, but music had a high priority in his life. And Beethoven was at the top of his list of greats. He says: "Perhaps even Shakespeare never reached that final stage of illumination that is expressed in some of Beethoven's late music."

As the title says, this is not a biography so much as a description of Beethoven's "spiritual development. If you love Beethoven. You must read this book.

And you might ask yourself the question: Why has this book remained in print for 73 years?

Rating:
Summary: The willl against the fate : far beyond the graves !
Review: Why has Beethoven reached this special place in the music world?
First at all his music is fundamentally human . The organic feature of his works shows the timeless conflict between the will and the fate ; the horizontality of the destiny and the verticality of the irrevocable and untamed human character .
Ernest Newman has said : " The peculiarity of Beethoven imagination is that it raises over and over to heights since we can do a new appraisement , not only of all the music but the life , the emotions and the ideas".
Think in the Final of the last variation of his Third Symphony and will understand the message ; you have to fight always without expecting anything in change ; because the hero attitude is to make not to think . And you know this wisdom statement of Goethe: "We are what we do".
This book is admirably compelling and reveals unknown facets , interesting letters and even I do not agree with the value of the last stage of his life in which the transfiguration and the evasion would seem derivate making a simple analysis of the endings of his last three Piano Sonatas , the text is a must for any reader really interested in the life and work of this icon beacon of the mankind : Ludwig van Beethoven.