Rating: 
Summary: Solomon's is not completely acceptable
Review: I have reviewed this book in the past under an anonymous name. However, I feel that I should reiterate that this should not be considered a definitive biography. Thayer still provides the best information in a very fair format. Solomon is too concerned with analysis, which should be left out of a biography covering such a large subject. It would have been better if he saved the analysis for essays and papers, and focused more on updating the facts and questions left by Thayer's biography. While Thayer is quite comprehensive (and three or four times the size of Solomon's), the book has not been updated in several decades. Solomon could have done a great service by combining his exhaustive research with that of Thayer. However, Solomon preferred to take the psychological route instead of a factual route. I conclude with my original review: I have spent over half of my life researching the life of Beethoven. Like many people, I was excited to learn of the new edition. However, I found it as disappointing as the original. If you are SERIOUS about Beethoven research, stick with Thayer. Unlike Solomon's biography, Thayer's reads as if it were a diary. Solomon provides too much analysis, which should be left to some of the fine articles and papers he has written in the past. This book would serve well as a supplement instead of a cornerstone. Thayer provides facts, and very little opinions. It is important to remember that Solomon is not the first person to do extensive Beethoven research. Many other authors and researchers have come before him with richer results. Take his finding as that of only one of a hundred authors on Beethoven. Check his facts with others and decide for yourself. If you are just interested in reading one or two books on Beethoven, please select another biography. Solomon's is not completely acceptable.
Rating: 
Summary: Not really a biography
Review: I have spent over half of my life researching the life of Beethoven. Like many people, I was excited to learn of the new edition. However, I found it as disappointing as the original. If you are SERIOUS about Beethoven research, stick with Thayer. Unlike Solomon's biography, Thayer's reads as if it were a diary. Solomon provides too much analysis, which should be left to some of the fine articles and papers he has written in the past. This book would serve well as a supplement instead of a cornerstone. Thayer provides facts, and very little opinions. It is important to remember that Solomon is not the first person to do extensive Beethoven research. Many other authors and researchers have come before him with richer results. Take his finding as that of only one of a hundred authors on Beethoven. Check his facts with others and decide for yourself. If you are just interested in reading one or two books on Beethoven, please select another biography. Solomon's is not completely acceptable.
Rating: 
Summary: so, you say you have issues with your father...
Review: I like the psychoanalytic approach even if it is an anachronism here. Nice to know those of us who had issues with our fathers are in good company. Read The Mozart Myths by Stafford for a discussion of how an 18th century biography can be tainted by 19th century ideas of genius. After reading this, I watched the movie Immortal Beloved and was surprized how close the movie was to this book, although the book wasn't mentioned in the credits. Of course, the movie made up the bit about the IB being B's sister-in-law but Solomon suggested the love/hate relationship between the two so I wouldn't be surprized if even that idea came from a reading of this book. Solomon discussion of the music was a bit dry, which was the books biggest drawback.
Rating:
Summary: so, you say you have issues with your father...
Review: I like the psychoanalytic approach even if it is an anachronism here. Nice to know those of us who had issues with our fathers are in good company. Read The Mozart Myths by Stafford for a discussion of how an 18th century biography can be tainted by 19th century ideas of genius. After reading this, I watched the movie Immortal Beloved and was surprized how close the movie was to this book, although the book wasn't mentioned in the credits. Of course, the movie made up the bit about the IB being B's sister-in-law but Solomon suggested the love/hate relationship between the two so I wouldn't be surprized if even that idea came from a reading of this book. Solomon discussion of the music was a bit dry, which was the books biggest drawback.
Rating:
Summary: An ode to genius
Review: Maynard Solomon's 1977 biography "Beethoven" is divided into four main sections, "movements" so to speak, and every section is filled with themes and variations. Each section ends with an essay titled simply "The Music", in which is described the works Beethoven composed during the period under discussion. The interpretations are acute but easily understood by the non-musician. In fact, it could be that Solomon's book is the most reader-friendly of Beethoven biographies. (There are dozens.) Some of Solomon's revelations are surprising. For instance, the average reader does not think of Beethoven as a composer for voice, outside of "Fidelio" and the Ode to Joy, but Solomon states that "half of his 600 works are vocal". (Among other things, Solomon's description of "Fidelio"'s plot is fascinating.) Solomon also discusses how Beethoven's later works threatened to become travesties of his Herioc Style. In fact, "Wellington's Victory" was considered by professionals "a stupendous musical joke". Beethoven's difficult nature is legend, and Solomon deals with it frankly. Some of his irascibility was undoubtedly due to his deafness, which exacerbated after 1812. What caused the deafness is a little mysterious. The composer himself, in a rather weird anecdote, attributed it to an "excitement of rage", but the cause may have been more medically sound. Beethoven never married, and his "open" sex life consisted of flirtations with married women. (In fact, the 30-page account of the Immortal Beloved theorizes that she was a pretty Viennese matron whose affair with Beethoven eventually became an "exalted friendship".) His "secret" sex life, however, was his employment of prostitutes; and in his youth he was treated for syphilis. Did the contraction cause the deafness? Solomon doesn't go there, but he does indicate that Beethoven's morose treatment of other people was aggravated by the deafness. His brothers, for instance: the omission of Nikolaus Johann in the Heiligenstadt Testament and the shabby treatment of Kaspar Carl's widow and her son. Beethoven's gall could be incredible. Although he enjoyed "Il Barbiere di Siviglia", he warned Rossini not to attempt serious opera because it "ill suited the Italians. You do not possess sufficient musical knowledge to deal with real drama". Well, so much for Verdi (who was a child at the time). Of course, now, nearly 180 years after Beethoven's death, it's the music that matters. Even so, such a productive life can be appreciated on a literary level, and it's that experience that Maynard Solomon provides in this superlative biography.
Rating:
Summary: Beethoven: Down the Garden Path....Again
Review: One would think a revised edition would correct the errors of the past, but here is an exception. Most of the mistranslations, misinformation, and inaccuracies of the original book have been carried over into this version. Although soundly criticized by mainly European scholars, this book continues to dazzle American academicians who have never bothered to double-check the primary source material from which quotes have been taken. Truncated quotes, misquotes, and half-truths support theories which the information in original form would have easily shown as false. The psychoanalyses included are ludicrous and often based on misrepresentations of facts. A strong caveat to all readers.
Rating: 
Summary: A revised opinion¿and review
Review: Sometimes it's necessary to read a book twice to really understand it. For me, neither an academic nor a musicologist, this is the case with Maynard Solomon's "Beethoven." When I first read it two tears ago, I saw it as "the best Beethoven biography I ever read...combining excellent writing, complete objectivity, and outstanding scholarship...maybe the best Beethoven biography ever." Now that I've read it again, (after also reading additional material Beethoven's life from other sources,) my opinion has changed. This time I found his attempts to psychoanalyze Beethoven annoying, and seemingly rooted more in conjecture rather than solid facts. Even the chapter on the Immortal Beloved, which I found so impressive the first time I read the book, seems now to me based more upon a process of elimination rather than solid scholarship. Professor Solomon's prose is lively and entertaining, and his musical commentary may help non-academics and non-musicologists like myself better understand Beethoven's work. However, readers like myself, with a strong interest in Beethoven's life and music, may find other biographies (most notably Thayer's) that will better meet their needs.
Rating:
Summary: Rollover Chuck Berry
Review: This book came highly recommended which may have resulted in some preconceived ideas and expectaions. The book is divided into four main sections which each contain about five or six chapters. Mr. Solomon portrays the famous composer's life and times by allotting critical events and major influences individual chapters under one of the four main sections. Mr. Solomon often uses modern psychological theories to explain the dynamics that formed the young Beethoven's personality and then goes on to suggest how this may have influenced his later years. Each of the four major sections ends with a chapter entitled, "The Music," which discusses the music from each period in his life. Each chapter has its own story to tell, describing a particular event, or interactions with, one, or a group of individuals. The chapter entitled, "The Immortal Beloved," was my personal favorite because it encompassed the mystery and suspence that have long captivated Beethoven scholars concerning the identity of the only woman Beethoven loved and loved him in return. The chapter on the events surrounding his nephew Karl exposed the dark side of greatness. What I missed was the feeling of what it might have been like to sit in the audience on opening night for the premiers of Beethoven's Symphonies. Also I would have enjoyed more anaylsis of what made Beethoven's music so innovative. I did not like the arbitrary separation of his music from his life. Each section describes a part of Beethoven's chaotic life and the severe psychological problems he suffered. While the last chapter in each section reviewed the music for each period, it seems to separate the great creative genius from the troubled human being who composed it.
Rating: 
Summary: As much a masterpiece as Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
Review: This incredibly well-written volume provides profuse information and reads like a novel. I could not get enough of it. Those reviewers who comment that the book is a work of psychohistory make a very valid point; yet it provides a new dimension in this composer's biography and breaks a person's otherwise reliance on Thayer and Schindler. I need see only that a work is authored by Maynard Solomon and I am sure to read it - I would enjoy listening to him as a guest on Coast-to-Coast-A.M.
Rating:
Summary: As much a masterpiece as Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
Review: This incredibly well-written volume provides profuse information and reads like a novel. I could not get enough of it. Those reviewers who comment that the book is a work of psychohistory make a very valid point; yet it provides a new dimension in this composer's biography and breaks a person's otherwise reliance on Thayer and Schindler. I need see only that a work is authored by Maynard Solomon and I am sure to read it - I would enjoy listening to him as a guest on Coast-to-Coast-A.M.
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