Beethoven (Life and Times Series)

Book Description
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is one of the legendary figures of world culture. But who is the man behind the legend? Martin Geck offers a vivid portrait of a difficult but fascinating man with a tangled and still controversial love life. This is an expert introduction to a self-styled cultural hero, presented warts, genius, and all.


From the Publisher
The Life & Times series tells the stories of those who have shaped our present and our past, from Beethoven to Curie, Dietrich to Wilde. Offering expert, eminently readable texts by distinguished authors, these handsomely designed books feature chronologies, full indices, and striking color photos and illustrations. Together, they form a superb modern library of biography.


About the Author
Martin Geck is the founding editor of the collected works of Richard Wagner and has written several books on the great composers, including the critically acclaimed Bach: Life and Work. Peter Sheppard Skaerved, leader of the Kreutzer Quartet and Research Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music, specializes in the study of Beethoven. He has recorded the complete Beethoven repertoire for piano and violin (Metier Sound & Vision).


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First published in German in the 1990s, these well-researched pocket biographies, part of the publisher's "Life & Times" series, discuss their subjects in terms of their influence on history as well as how they were influenced by others. Geck (Bach: Life and Work) traces Beethoven's rise to fame during his lifetime, his influence on composers who came after him (e.g., Wagner), and his continuing prominence through the 20th century. In the Prokofiev study, Schipperges (musicology, Univ. of Heidelberg, Germany) centers on his subject's struggle with the Communist government of Russia. Since both men were composers, much of the discussion involves their compositions, but the music itself is not discussed outside of its historical context. The discography in both books is rather meager, as is the bibliography in the Beethoven book. (There is evidence that a bibliography had been planned for the Prokofiev study, but none is included.) Both books are well written and reliable and will thus serve anyone needing biographical/historical studies, but it is difficult to imagine who would want to know about these composers and not want to know more about their music. Maynard Solomon's Beethoven, Lewis Lockwood's Beethoven, Daniel Jaffe's Sergey Prokofiev, and Neil Mintum's The Music of Sergei Prokofiev integrate detailed studies of their compositions with similar quantities of historical breadth. Recommended with hesitation.-Timothy J. McGee, Hastings, Ont. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.


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