‘Why beethoven’ review: Can a genius survive?

I haven’t read the reviewed book. However, it seems close enough to on topic to recommend Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford, which is one of the best biographies I have ever read. Beethoven’s story is hardly believable - from his early exposure to the Bavarian Illuminati, through his years of piano showdowns, through his triumphant 9th symphony when he was nearly deaf. If you are looking for book to dig into, I strongly recommend it.

I’ve been studying 7th symphony 2nd movement as a beginner and it’s incredible to me. It’s so simple. Dull, almost, when you’re reading the notes. And yet those notes in just the right way evoke such incredible emotions.

The book under review consists of a collection of remarks about individual works by Beethoven. For each individual work, the author lists some historical anecdotes and follows it up with a list of notable recordings. Of course, the recording review is quite helpful, and it's often helpful to hear someone else's thoughts even on recordings that you know very well. However, it is frustrating that the author says so little about the music itself, and I feel that many people, like me, do not feel the anecdotes of a work's creation and reception improve our enjoyment of the music. I'm afraid the book doesn't quite live up to the title in that way.

There is also the issue of the inaccuracies underlying some of the author's statements which can lead to a misleading picture of the composer. The reviewer has rightly picked up the different social aspect of music in the 18th and 19th centuries that undermines the simple comparison between the reception history of Beethoven and Bach done by the author, but there is more in the same (concluding) chapter. The author states that "[Beethoven] is practically unquotable, yielding few spinoffs." and after listing a few minor borrowings concludes "But that’s about it...". He has omitted to mention Schumann's C major fantasy, which surely is one of the most astonishing and effective works that is explicitly based on a direct quotation of Beethoven. Shortly after the author states "He is empirically inimitable. Nobody has emulated the ninth symphony, the Hammerklavier, the Archduke trio or the late quartets.", this is simply not true. Brahms made a point of specifically emulating Beethoven's 9th symphony in his first symphony, and when people pointed out the similarity, Brahms reportly said "Any ass can see that!". Brahms' 1st piano sonata is also so closely based on the Hammerklavier such that the resemblance is unmistakable. The fact that Brahms burned several sonatas before he published the "first" one shows how carefully he treated Beethoven's legacy. Mendelssohn also wrote a much less effective piano sonata based on the Hammerklavier, but he had the sense of never publishing it. In his youth he was much more successful, Mendelssohn's Op 13 string quartet is also explicitly modelled on the late Beethoven quartet in the same key, mirroring Beethoven's successful emulation of Mozart's K 464 quartet in his own first quartet collection. It's one thing to gush over Beethoven's reputation concerning the impossibility in following in his footsteps (and it is true that when 19th century composers tried to emulate Beethoven the result was often disastrous, the examples I've given are the exceptions which prove the rule), it doesn't give us any understanding as to why this is the case if one make vague blanket statements.

Although I can understand the purpose of the author, part of me thinks Beethoven's music is on such a higher plane than current politics. Or maybe that WAS his message....

When people talk about "desert island" picks, I prefer to modernize it to what one would choose to take with them on a long space flight, or (if we use deep sleep) to a new space colony. I don't know how many bytes of storage I'd be allotted, but I have a feeling Beethoven's late string quartets would be included. And Steely Dan....