Good Beethoven Biography?

[chris111]

Hello,

I recently purchase a serious of collected fragments written by Theodor Adorno on Beethoven. It's a good book - trouble is, I can't understand half of it, and it's not what I was looking for anyway.
Having returned the book, I back on the trail for a good biography covering Beethovens life and as much as possible analysing his works.
I'm a secondary school student studying GCSE Music in the UK and want some background reading material to compliment this and my love for Beethoven's music. I don't want a music textbook or dictionary of music though.

Has anyone got any good suggestions for biographies on this influential genius?

[Tegan]

You might want to try Beethoven: The Music and the Life, by Lewis Lockwood. It is a biography, but at the end of each section, Lockwood talks about individual compositions from different periods in Beethoven's life. I liked it.

[Peter]

A book that deals specifically with the works is the Beethoven companion edited by Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune (Faber).

Or perhaps,

Beethoven: His Life, Work and World, H.C. Robbins Landon, Thames & Hudson. 1993. ISBN 0500015406 (hardcover)

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'Man know thyself'

[urtextmeister]

I recently was given this exact Adorno book as a gift. I have just started it, but I plan to read it this summer. It is a philsophical book. One of those books that make you feel stupid until you realize that nobody else can understand it either. Here is an example:

"Beethoven may represent an attempt to circumvent the ban on images. His music is not an image of anything, and yet is an image of the whole: an imageless image."

He took the words right out of my mouth.

[chris111]

Heh, I read that part of the book! I like the quote, but as a biography it wasnt what I was looking for.

Thanks for the suggestions - I had my eye on 'The Beethoven Compendium: A Guide to Beethoven's Life and Music'. It's a decision between that one and 'Beethoven: The Music and The Life' by Lockwood. Anyone got more opinions on either of the two?

[Gurn Blanston]

Chris,
The Beethoven Compendium is a trove of useful information. In my opinion, it is more valuable as a reference book than as a ... "reading book", if you take my meaning. Peter mentioned above "Beethoven: His Life, Work and World" H.C. Robbins Landon. I have this book too, and it has a lot of the most interesting little tidbits of information in it. As a drawback, it is fair to say that it does not have any narrative thread holding it together. If you are already very knowledgeable about Beethoven, then this is a fun book because it has like the original full text out of which you may have read a sentence before, so that is cool, but it jumps around in time a lot which can confuse you. Save it for later. I think Tegan's recommendation of Lockwood's book is probably your best choice. It leans kind of hard on the music, but down the road you will find that none of the other books you can get place very much emphasis on the music, so this will be valuable! Once you get into reading Beethoven books, you will find that there is no one book that really will satisfy your curiousity, so it will be several down the road, but this one to start.


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Regards,
Gurn
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That's my opinion, I may be wrong.
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[This message has been edited by Gurn Blanston (edited 06-02-2004).]