Beethoven FROM THE PUBLISHER
The connections between a great artist's life and work are subtle, complex, and often highly revealing. In the case of Beethoven, however, the standard approach has been to treat his life and his art separately. Now, Barry Cooper's new volume incorporates the latest international research on many aspects of the composer's life and work and presents these in a truly integrated narrative.
Cooper employs a strictly chronological approach that enables each work to be seen against the musical and biographical background from which it emerged. The result is a much closer confluence of life and work than is usually achieved, for two reasons. First, composition was Beethoven's central preoccupation for most of his life: "I live entirely in my music," he once wrote. Second, recent study of his many musical sketches has enabled a much clearer picture of his everyday compositional activity than was previously possible, leading to rich new insights into the interaction between his life and music. This volume concentrates on Beethoven's artistic achievements both by examining the origins of his works and by expert commentary on some of their most striking and original features. It also reexamines virtually all the evidence—from fictitious anecdotes right down to the translations of individual German words—to avoid recycling old errors. And it offers numerous new details derived from sketch studies and a new edition of Beethoven's correspondence.
Offering a wealth of fresh conclusions and intertwining life and work in illuminating ways, Beethoven will establish itself as the reference on one of the world's greatest composers.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Over the past 30 years, much scholarly research has been conducted on Beethoven's correspondence and his music sketchbooks. Cooper (music, Univ. of Manchester, UK; Beethoven and the Creative Process) unites these two sources as a way of refining scholars' understanding of the man, his works, and his creative processes. He is admittedly quite cautious in his treatment of some of the well-known stories and "facts" based on questionable and unreliable sources. No startling new revelations are to be found here, but Cooper does present a new focus for serious students. As a picture of Beethoven and his creative genius, this work does not, however, replace Maynard Solomon's more insightful and adventurous Beethoven (LJ 8/00). Recommended for public and academic libraries.--Timothy J. McGee, Univ. of Toronto Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
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