Beethoven anguish and triumph a biography

Why do we need a new biography of Beethoven, the facts of whose life are already well-known and whose works are among the most familiar in the entire repertoire?  Jan Swafford, composer, scholar, and distinguished biographer of Brahms and Charles Ives, answers that question handsomely in his new Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2014).  While the book offers no new revelations, in nearly 1,000 pages Swafford offers pleasure to the general reader and insight for musicians.  It is gracefully written and free of the jargon that bogs down so many scholarly works on music.

It is an odd work in one sense.  We get a straightforward account of the composer’s life, a general summary of Beethoven’s times, and an analysis of some of the works.  But the components of the whole sometimes are not as well integrated as one might like.  Beethoven was born in 1770 in the provincial Rhenish town of Bonn (most recently former capital of the Federal Republic of Germany), for which Beethoven was nostalgic late in his life.  But as a result of spending his entire career in Vienna, he became thoroughly Viennese.  Looming over both the life of Beethoven and of the politics and military affairs of Imperial Austria was Napoleon, the original dedicatee of the Symphony No. 3 “Eroica.”

Beethoven chafed under the heavy-handed rule of the Hapsburg dynasty that ruled Austria, and he longed for the liberty that he believed Napoleon represented.  When it became obvious that Napoleon lusted only for absolute power and military glory, with no intention of conferring freedom on the subjects of his empire, Beethoven angrily revoked the dedication.  Alas for Beethoven and his fellow Viennese, the Hapsburg regime became even more repressive after it was restored upon Napoleon’s final defeat.  Still, in his music Beethoven became a symbol for liberty to all future generations.

Beethoven, like other artists of his day, was dependent on aristocratic patronage, which he both crav

About the Book

Jan Swafford’s biographies of Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathing human being who composed some of the world’s most iconic music. Swafford mines sources never before used in English-language biographies to reanimate the revolutionary ferment of Enlightenment-era Bonn, where Beethoven grew up and imbibed the ideas that would shape all of his future work. Swafford then tracks his subject to Vienna, capital of European music, where Beethoven built his career in the face of critical incomprehension, crippling ill health, romantic rejection, and “fate’s hammer,” his ever-encroaching deafness. Throughout, Swafford offers insightful readings of Beethoven’s key works. More than a decade in the making, this will be the standard Beethoven biography for years to come. 

992 pages (kindle)
Published on August 5, 2014
Buy the book

I’ve never read a biography of Beethoven before. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested, it was more that there were just so many other things to read, so I kept forgetting. The thing is, Beethoven is the ultimate tragic story. He had a pretty horrid life, and his experiences hugely informed the music he wrote. I think my favorite biography in the history of biographies is one I recently-ish reviewed on Van Gogh, who likewise lived a pretty tragic life which hugely informed his art. Reading that biography got me thinking about Beethoven, so I looked up a book and let it rip. 

Now, Jan Swafford writes biographies of musicians (I have another one, set to drop in December, on Mozart and it is amazing). The books, however, are huge. I mean, HUGE. He writes 1000 page explorations of the lives of such individuals as Brahms and Beethoven, Mozart (coming soon) and the like. Swafford is a composer and writer, and I believe

From the Inside Flap

The essential book on the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven, written by an esteemed composer and historian

Ludwig van Beethoven confronted professional and personal obstacles almost unmatched by any other artist. And yet, by the time of his death in 1827, this brilliant man had defied crippling ill health, his listeners’ incomprehension, romantic rejection, and “fate’s hammer,” his encroaching deafness, to become the most famous composer of his time, creator of some of the most iconic music ever written. He was lionized by princes, misunderstood by critics, and celebrated so widely that more than ten thousand people attended his funeral. By that point Beethoven’s works had been embraced as the anthems of the Romantic era, and the man had become a myth.

Peeling away layers of legend that have built up around Beethoven’s life, Jan Swafford’s magnificent new biography shows how a child prodigy from an obscure corner of what is now Germany came to write music that defines the modern age. Swafford mines sources never before used in English-language biographies to reanimate the revolutionary ferment of Bonn, the city where Beethoven grew up and imbibed the Enlightenment ideals that would shape all his future work.
In his early twenties, Beethoven left for Vienna, capital of European music, a city whose madness for art and gossip papered over the rigors of a repressive police state. There, Beethoven studied with the great Franz Joseph Haydn, a father figure whose shadow, like Mozart’s, would loom large in the young composer’s tormented psyche. Beethoven went on to write towering symphonies, intricate, mysterious string quartets, and piano sonatas and concertos that would push the boundaries of this new instrument. He drove his career to ever-greater heights, all while staving off financial ruin, overcoming the pains of unrequited love,