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![Beethoven: The Music and the Life](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.9.4)
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Overview
An authoritative work offering a fresh look at Beethoven’s life, career, and milieu. “Magisterial” —New York Review of Books.
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. "Lewis Lockwood has written a biography of Beethoven in which the hours that Beethoven spent writing music—that is, his methods of working, his interest in contemporary and past composers, the development of his musical intentions and ideals, his inner musical life, in short—have been properly integrated with the external events of his career. The book is invaluable." —Charles Rosen "Lockwood writes with poetry and clarity—a rare combination. I especially enjoyed the connection that he makes between the works of Beethoven and the social and political context of their creation—we feel closer to Beethoven the man without losing our wonder at his genius." —Emanuel Ax "The magnum opus of an illustrious Beethoven scholar. From now on, we will all turn to Lockwood's Beethoven: The Music and the Life for insight and instruction." —Maynard Solomon "This is truly the Beethoven biography for the intelligent reader. Lewis Lockwood speaks in his preface of writing on Beethoven's works at 'a highly accessible descriptive level.' But he goes beyond that. His discussion of the music, based on a deep knowledge of its context and the composition processes behind it, explains, elucidates, and is not afraid to evaluate; while the biographical chapters, clearly and unfussily written, and taking full account of the newest thinking on Beethoven, align closely with the musical discussion. The result is a deeply perceptive book that comes as close as can be to presenting the man and the music as a unity."—Stanley Sadie, editor, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians "Impressive for both its scholarship and its fresh insights, this landmark work—fully accessible to the interested amateur—immediately takes its place among the essential references on this composer and his music."—Bob Goldfarb, KUSC-FM 91.5 "Lockwood writes like an angel: lucid, enthusiastic, stirring and enlightening. Beethoven has found his ablest interpreter."—Jonathan Keates, The Spectator "There is no better survey of Beethoven's compositions for a wide audience."—Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times Book ReviewProduct Details
ISBN-13: | 9780393347555 |
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Publisher: | Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. |
Publication date: | 05/06/2013 |
Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 624 |
Sales rank: | 555,235 |
File size: | 20 MB |
Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Lewis Lockwood taught at Princeton and Harvard universities, where he is Fanny Peabody Professor of Music Emeritus. His Beethoven: The Music and the Life was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He resides in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Table of Contents
Illustrations | xiii | |
Preface | xv | |
Prologue. Youth, Maturity, Old Age: Three Letters | 3 | |
1787: The Death of Beethoven's Mother | 3 | |
1812: Letter to a Child | 8 | |
1826: The Old Child | 12 | |
Life and Works | 15 | |
Part 1 | The Early Years 1770-1792 | |
1. | Beginnings | 25 |
Bonn as a Musical Center | 25 | |
Bach from the Hands of Neefe | 31 | |
Kant, Schiller, and the Enlightenment | 35 | |
Max Franz and the Mozart Legacy | 38 | |
Family, Friends, and Patrons | 42 | |
To Vienna in Search of Mozart | 46 | |
The Last Years in Bonn | 47 | |
Waldstein's Prophecy | 50 | |
2. | Music of the Bonn Years | 53 |
Early Keyboard Music | 53 | |
"This passage has been stolen from Mozart" | 55 | |
Composing and Sketching | 62 | |
Cantatas for Two Emperors | 64 | |
Part 2 | The First Maturity 1792-1802 | |
3. | The First Years in Vienna | 69 |
The Political Atmosphere | 69 | |
Vienna as a Musical Center | 73 | |
Confronting the Viennese Aristocracy | 74 | |
Haydn | 80 | |
Playing for an Elector and a King | 86 | |
Entering the Publishing World | 88 | |
4. | Music of the First Vienna Years | 93 |
Revising Earlier Works | 93 | |
Chamber Music and Piano Sonatas | 96 | |
5. | Years of Crisis | 111 |
Deafness | 111 | |
The Heiligenstadt Testament | 115 | |
6. | Music for and with Piano | 124 |
The "New Way" and the Early Sketchbooks | 124 | |
A Laboratory of Invention: More Piano Sonatas | 130 | |
From Convention to Originality: Piano Variations | 140 | |
New Violin Sonatas | 142 | |
The Earlier Piano Concertos | 144 | |
7. | Music for Orchestra and the First Quartets | 147 |
The First Symphony and the Prometheus Ballet | 147 | |
The French Dimension and Military Music | 151 | |
The Second Symphony | 156 | |
Opus 18: "I have now learned how to write string quartets" | 159 | |
8. | The First Maturity: An Overview | 169 |
Part 3 | The Second Maturity 1802-1812 | |
9. | Beethoven in the New Age | 181 |
Napoleon and Self-Made Greatness | 181 | |
Beethoven and His Milieu | 187 | |
Relations with Women | 196 | |
10. | New Symphonic Ideals | 202 |
The Heroic and the Beautiful | 202 | |
The Third Symphony (Eroica) | 204 | |
The Fourth Symphony | 214 | |
The Fifth and Sixth ("Pastoral") Symphonies | 217 | |
The Seventh and Eighth Symphonies | 230 | |
11. | The Mature Concertos | 238 |
The New Symphonie concertante: The Triple Concerto | 238 | |
The Fourth Piano Concerto | 241 | |
The Violin Concerto | 245 | |
The "Emperor" Concerto | 248 | |
12. | Music for the Stage | 252 |
The Opera Leonore and Its Overtures | 255 | |
The Coriolanus Overture | 262 | |
Incidental Music for Goethe's Egmont | 266 | |
13. | Vocal Music | 269 |
Oratorio and Mass | 269 | |
The Songs | 274 | |
14. | Beethoven at the Keyboard | 280 |
Improvising and Composing at the Piano | 280 | |
Pianos | 288 | |
The "Waldstein" and "Appassionata" Sonatas | 292 | |
Piano Sonatas Opp. 79-81a | 299 | |
Lyrical and Monumental Chamber Music | 303 | |
15. | String Quartets | 312 |
The "Razumovsky" Quartets | 312 | |
The "Harp" Quartet and the "Quartetto Serioso" | 325 | |
Part 4 | The Final Maturity 1813-1827 | |
16. | The "Fallow" Years | 333 |
The Congress of Vienna | 334 | |
Lighter Works | 336 | |
Celebrating Wellington's Victory | 337 | |
Fidelio | 341 | |
New Sonatas | 342 | |
An die ferne Geliebte | 344 | |
Emergence of the Late Style | 346 | |
17. | Beethoven's Inner and Outer Worlds | 349 |
Isolation and Deafness | 349 | |
The Guardianship Struggle | 355 | |
"The human brain ... is not a salable commodity" | 358 | |
The Final Projects | 363 | |
18. | Bringing the Past into the Present | 366 |
The Third Maturity | 366 | |
Beethoven's Knowledge of Bach and Handel | 370 | |
19. | Late Piano Music | 377 |
The Hammerklavier Sonata, Opus 106 | 377 | |
Piano Sonatas Opp. 109-111 | 384 | |
The "Diabelli" Variations | 391 | |
The Late Bagatelles | 395 | |
20. | The Celestial and the Human | 400 |
The Missa solemnis | 400 | |
The Ninth Symphony | 411 | |
The Political Background of the Ninth | 413 | |
Changing Views of the Ninth | 417 | |
Composing the Ninth | 424 | |
The Character of the Ninth | 427 | |
21. | Timeless Music: The Last Quartets | 441 |
Introduction | 441 | |
Opus 127 | 446 | |
Opus 132 | 452 | |
Opus 130 and the Grand Fugue | 458 | |
Opus 131 | 468 | |
Opus 135 | 479 | |
Final Thoughts | 488 | |
Notes | 491 | |
Chronology | 551 | |
Bibliography | 559 | |
Classified Index of Beethoven's Works | 579 | |
Index of Beethoven's Works by Opus Number | 585 | |
General Index | 591 |
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