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.
Download [EPUB]: http://goo.gl/tTo2qN
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