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Beethoven: The Universal Composer (Eminent Lives) | 
 enlarge | Author: Edmund Morris
Publisher: Harper Collins
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
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Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 214445
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.3 x 1
ISBN: 0060759747
Dewey Decimal Number: 780.92
EAN: 9780060759742
ASIN: 0060759747
Publication Date: October 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was a genius so universal that his popularity, extraordinary even during his lifetime, has never ceased to grow. It now encircles the globe: Beethoven's most famous works are as beloved in Beijing as they are in Boston. Edmund Morris, the author of three bestselling presidential biographies and a lifelong devotee of Beethoven, brings the great composer to life as a man of astonishing complexity and overpowering intelligence. A gigantic, compulsively creative personality unable to tolerate constraints, he was not so much a social rebel as an astute manipulator of the most powerful and privileged aristocrats in Germany and Austria, at a time when their world was threatened by the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. But Beethoven's achievement rests in his immortal music. Struggling against progressive, incurable deafness (which he desperately tried to keep secret), he nonetheless produced towering masterpieces, such as his iconic Fifth and Ninth symphonies. With sensitivity and insight, Edmund Morris illuminates Beethoven's life, including his interactions with the women he privately lusted for but held at bay, and his work, whose grandeur and beauty were conceived "on the other side of silence."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 One of the best short biographies November 23, 2005
David E. Levine (Peekskill , NY USA)
56 out of 59 found this review helpful
There are a number of different series of short biographies that are curretly being published. For example, there is a series of short presidential biographies published by Times Books. Penguin has issued a number of short biographies and now, Harper Collins has joined in with the Eminent Lives series. Edmund Morris's contribution, "Beethoven: The Universal Composer" is one of the best of the many short biographies I have ever read. The author, famous for longer biographies of both Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan (the Reagan biography "Dutch" was very controversial) has shown that he is an expert in music and is extraordinarily knowledgable about his subject.
I bought this book at an author's signing at a bookstore. Mr. Morris stated that he was approached by the editors of this series to write a biography of a subject of his choosing. Morris proposed Beethoven. The editors were skeptical, thinking there might not be a wide audience for that subject. Mr. Morris, howver, prevailed and I'm glad he did as this is superb contribution to the series. At the booksigning, Mr. Morris spoke and he provided extraordinary insights. It is well known that Beethoven became hard of hearing and, ultimately, stone deaf. Although it is not stated in the book, in speaking, Mr. Morris demonstrated that there are certain instances in Beethoven's music in which he is reproducing the odd sounds he was hearing in his head due to his deafness. For example, the opening strains of the 9th Symphony, according to an expert Morris spoke to, sounds like the "sounds" caused by a certain type of deafness.
Beethoven was raised by a father who was somewhat abusive. His father forced him to practice his music and physically chastised the young child when he did not perform properly. Beethoven became something of a prodigy, not like Mozart as a composer (althopugh he certaily was a very fine one) but more as a performer. He became famous early on and he was certainly the preeminent composer of his day. He became the great composer he was despite numerous demons. Remarkably, he composed much of his greatest work while stone deaf. He suffered from ill health and Mr, Morris speculates that he may have had a case of typhus which led to his loss of hearing, or, perhaps he suffered from lupus.
Beethoven had other demons. At times he was almost psychotic. He was paranoid. He was a tragic failure in his love life and his "immortal beloved" letters are heart rending. He never had children and after his brother Caspar died, by way of protracted litigation, he got custody of his nephew Karl. Beethoven consiodered Karl his son, not his nephew, perhaps to the point of being delusional. He did everything he could to prevent Karl from seeing and communicating with his mother. Certainly, taking a child away from his mother is hardly meritorious conduct. Quite frankly, Beethoven was not someone who we would consider to be a "nice guy." Nonetheless, despite all that he went through, mentally, emotionally and physically,he produced extrordinary music. How can someone who lived such a miserable life have produced music of such unabond joy such as the 9th Symphony?
Morris is very knowledgable about music and, indeed he is an accomplished pianist. In fact, during the book signing I attended, he sat down at the piano to demonstrate sounds that Beethoven produced which were influenced by the sounds he "heard" in his deafness. Therefore, Morris is able to explain technical aspects of Beethoven's compositions. He does so in a manner which does not make it overly obtuse to the reader who is not expert in music theory (that would encompass most of us). This short biography (a little less than 250 pages) is packed with insights into the remarkable Beethoven. I highly recommend this book to those who love Beethoven's music and to those who, perhaps would like to become afficionados.
Succinct and complete November 15, 2005
Craig (Ohio)
32 out of 33 found this review helpful
Trimmming away all the conjecture and speculation that is found in too many biographies, Morris has written a wonderfully straightforward and lucid biography of one of music's most important figures.
Given the relatively short length for a biography (barely 250 pages), I was concerned that completeness might be lacking. However, Morris manages to cover all the major points - Beethoven's problems with alcohol, his deafness, the methods behind his genius, his problems with women - without giving the impression that he's rushing us through the book.
There are more comprehensive bios of Beethoven out there, but this is a great starting point, and a terrific addition to the study of an important figure.
 Pompous nonsense March 5, 2006
CPP (California)
18 out of 28 found this review helpful
Beethoven is, of course, an amazing person about whom excellent books have been written. But the book by Edmund Morris is not one of them. I'm sure Mr. Morris thinks he writes beautifully, but I find it often pompous and extremely inelegant. Some examples:
"The paradox of Beethoven's "bigness" is that it is not always measurable in time or decibels."
Clumsy!
"So a brilliant green butterfly metamorphosed from the shabby cocoon of Ludwig's schooldays."
Awful!
"His preferred data bank was to remain the twelve tones of the scale--so much closer, in their logical order, to the ten digits of mathematics than to the twenty-six mutable ciphers of the alphabet."
Haha, what a nonsense! Apparently, the author has no clue about mathematics. Another ridiculous comparison:
"The fugue that ends the Hammerklavier sonata takes.....sometimes all three processes going at once: the musical equivalent of trigonometry."
and another one:
"If he had to choose between the charm of a seductive tune and a figuration built out of integral coefficients, mathematical beauty won out every time."
If you think this is all beautiful prose, go ahead and read the book, you'll enjoy it.
 Beethoven Over All February 26, 2007
D. A Wend (Buffalo Grove, IL USA)
18 out of 21 found this review helpful
I read Thayer's Life of Beethoven many years ago and I wanted to revisit the life of Beethoven. My interest was for something dealing closely with Beethoven's personality and this short book by Edmund Morris seemed ideal. There is a lot of information that makes this short study interesting but I ultimately did not find this book very satisfying. A danger in writing a biography is that the author can fall under the spell of his subject and cease to be objective. I found this to be the case with Mr. Morris especially in his first chapter where he addresses his subject as "Ludwig" and seems eager to explain his life rather than objectively relate events.
Mr. Morris' lack of objectivity was also made clear in the opening Prologue where he denigrates other composers; he points out that "Brahms has never gone down well in France" and that "Sibelius, who once seemed sure of a seat on Parnassus, has been replaced by the masturbatory Mahler." At one time, radio audiences in America voted Sibelius as the most popular composer, even over Beethoven, and it should also be noted that Beethoven's symphonies were not played in France until after his death where in some circles they, indeed, did not go down well either. And as for Mahler, I found such comments by Mr. Morris' to be extremely uncharitable and a turn off.
There were other comments that I found irksome and a few doubtful. An example: "It is hard to think of any contemporary classical-music radio station or website that does not attempt to beat to death, on a daily basis, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the "Emperor" Concerto, the Coriolan and Leonore I Overtures and the Choral Fantasy - while fortunately neglecting such other masterpieces as the Cello Sonata, Op. 69, the "Ghost" and E-flat major Trios, Op. 70, and the little known, tranquilly lovely Mass in C major." This seems quite an exaggeration, and my advice for Mr. Morris is to listen to WFMT, but not on December 16.
I found myself skimming the book particularly from Mr. Morris' pedantic style of writing. His overuse of foreign words was a bit much and while in some cases the use of foreign phrases is interesting and even a necessity there were many times in this book when they were unnecessary. An example, "Max Franz was receptive to the Count [Ferdinand Waldstein] - who quickly became a court favorite - but showed no interest in favoring Ludwig over any of the other musici." Can't we simply refer to them as musicians?
Beethoven's music is covered, for the most part, succinctly by Mr. Morris, as I would have expected in a book of this length and events in the composer's life are well-presented - particularly Beethoven's relationship with this nephew Karl. Regrettably, Mr. Morris says nothing of Beethoven's interest in Schubert's music that happened during his final illness. Schubert was among his visitors and the dying Beethoven asked to see him before other friends who were present. As it is, Mr. Morris relates that Schubert was a torchbearer during Beethoven's funeral and notes that Schubert was buried near Beethoven and continued to be dominated by him.
Unfortunately, I cannot say that Mr. Morris provided the well-rounded portrait of Beethoven that I was seeking, and I plan to turn to a longer biography of the composer. I came away from reading this book that I needed another point of view concerning Beethoven.
An unfortunate book on Beethoven January 8, 2006
W. R. Shindle (Westminster, MD)
13 out of 18 found this review helpful
I was received this book as a present, shortly after reviewing the more objective biography of Beethoven by Barry Cooper, part of the Masters Musicians series publihed by Oxford University Press, a second time. It did not take me long before before I realized that Morris relied too much on the writings of the Sterbas, and accepted without questioning some of the more contraversial aspects in the writings of Maynard Solomon. Many of these aspects were adressed in the Barry Cooper's biography, in which he has investigated and put into proper perspective. I became more and irritated as I read through Morris's book. It is a shame that this book is written with the idea of for introducing Beethoven to the general public. For a more acurate biography of Beethoven incorporating his life and works, one without the other is meaningless, I would suggest the Biography by Barry Cooper.
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