Beethoven

Anguish and Triumph

Jan Swafford

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780618054749
• eBook ISBN: 9780544245587
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Biographies

This "monumental" portrait of the man, his music, and the world in which he lived is "a truly remarkable biography" ( The Christian Science Monitor).
Jan Swafford's biographies of Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven, more than a decade in the making, peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathing human being who composed some of the world's most iconic music.
Swafford mines sources never before used in English-language biographies to reanimate the revolutionary ferment of Enlightenment-era Bonn, where Beethoven grew up and imbibed the ideas that would shape all of his future work. Swafford then tracks his subject to Vienna, capital of European music, where Beethoven built his career in the face of critical incomprehension, crippling ill health, romantic rejection, and "fate's hammer," his ever-encroaching deafness. Throughout, Swafford offers insightful readings of Beethoven's key works.
"Swafford's writing on Beethoven's music is perceptive and illuminating. But just as impressive is his sympathetic portrait of Beethoven the man. [The book] does not diminish any of the composer's flaws. Instead, it suggests that these flaws were inconsequential compared with the severity of the composer's anguish and the achievement of his music." — The Washington Post
"Comprehensive, detailed, and highly readable . . . an entertaining biography that should find favor with music lovers and history buffs." — Seattle Times
"A saga of a man at odds with so many things: convention, social mores, himself, women, his family . . . one gets a better sense of how this roiling personality produced works to roil the human soul." — The Boston Globe

Notes

1. Bonn, Electorate of Cologne

1. Thayer/Forbes, 1:44–45.

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2. Ibid., 1:12.

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3. Closson, “Grandfather Beethoven,” 369.

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4. MacArdle, “Family van Beethoven,” 533.

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5. Closson, “Grandfather Beethoven,” 370; Clive, Beethoven and His World, 23.

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6. Blanning, Pursuit of Glory, 366.

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7. Pfeiff, Bonn, 25.

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8. Wetzstein/Fischer, 5n12.

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9. Pfeiff, Bonn, 32.

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10. Zehnder, Die Bühnen des Rokoko, 157.

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11. Pfeiff, Bonn, passim.

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12. Knopp, “Die Stadtgestalt Bonns,” 52–54.

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13. Thayer/Forbes, 1:16.

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14. Siebengebirge denotes “seven mountains,” but they are mostly hills and there are more than forty of them, so one finds various theories about the origin of the name.

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15. Victor Hugo, quoted in Scherman and Biancolli, 5.

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16. Knopp, “Die Stadtgestalt Bonns,” 51.

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17. Stader, “Bonn und der Rhein,” 122.

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18. Thayer/Forbes, 1:40.

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19. Madame de Staël, quoted in Knight, Beethoven, 10.

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20. Marek, Beethoven, 26.

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21. Raynor, Social History, 299. He gives 50,000 thalers as the cost of an opera production, which is about 75,000 florins. Here and throughout I will convert most sums to florins, for comparison.

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22. This bon mot may be traditional or may be Thayer’s.

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23. Pfeiff, Bonn, 43.

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24. Wetzstein/Fischer, 11nn33–34.

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25. Thayer/Forbes, 1:17.

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26. Ibid., 1:11.

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27. Valder-Knechtges, “Andrea Luchesi,” 46.

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28. Wetzstein/Fischer, 13 and n42, 151.

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29. Solomon, “Economic Circumstances,” 334.

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30. In Germany and Austria, the “first” floor of a building is the one above the ground floor. In American terms, then, the Beethovens rented the third floor of the Fischer house. Here, American floor numbers will be used.

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31. Wetzstein/Fischer, 7.

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32. Ibid., 27.

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33. Thayer/Forbes, 1:18–19.

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34. Wetzstein/Fischer, 14.

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35. Ibid., 12n35.

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36. Ibid., 12. As in much of Gottfried Fischer’s memoir, this would have been his sister Cäcilie’s recollection, because old Ludwig died before Gottfried was born.

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37. Wegeler/Ries, 14.

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38. Closson, “Grandfather Beethoven,” 372.

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39. Wetzstein/Fischer, 22.

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40. Thayer/Forbes, 1:50–51.

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41. Wetzstein/Fischer, 21–22.

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42. Ibid., 29 and n113.

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43. Ibid., 33.

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44. Schiedermair, 97.

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45. Wetzstein/Fischer, 28.

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46. Thayer/Forbes, 1:23. In January 1773, a singer applying to fill Ludwig’s place in the court choir describes him as “incapacitated.” Wetzstein/Fischer, 7n18, says that Amelius is the painter’s correct first name, not Thayer/Forbes’s Johann.

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47. The description of this painting is based on Owen Jander’s article, “Let Your Deafness,” 54–60. The detail concerning where Ludwig’s finger points is mine. It seems significant that Ludwig points not toward the musical score but rather to his hand turning the page, which suggests that it was not only music itself that saved him but also his engagement with it.

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48. Closson, “Grandfather Beethoven,” 371.

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49. Thayer/Forbes, 1:55.

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50. Solomon, “Economic Circumstances,” 337–38.

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51. Davies, Character of a Genius, 4.

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52. Solomon, “Economic Circumstances,” 336n22.

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53. Wetzstein/Fischer, 32n129.

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54. Ibid., 27n107.

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55. Zehnder, Die Bühnen des Rokoko, 153.

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2. Father, Mother, Son

1. My sense of a prodigy’s upbringing and the risks and problems it entails comes from a variety of sources about rearing children in exacting disciplines such as music and athletics, but mainly from an interview of ca. 1984 with the celebrated violin teacher Dorothy DeLay about musical prodigies she had known and taught at Juilliard.

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2. Wetzstein/Fischer, 45–46. Again, memories of Ludwig van Beethoven’s first thirteen or so years that appear in Gottfried Fischer’s memoir would have largely come from his sister Cäcilie, because Gottfried was born ten years after Ludwig, and Cäcilie eight years before.

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3. To a degree, this is speculation about Johann’s goals for his son, based on old Ludwig’s training of Johann, which would have been his model—but with the added element that Ludwig the younger was far more talented than his father and was trained as a keyboard soloist rather than as a singer.

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4. Wetzstein/Fischer, 46–47.

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5. Skowroneck, “Keyboard Instruments,” 154–57. He points out that Johann sometimes forced Ludwig to play in the middle of the night. This implies he was playing the quiet clavichord so as not to disturb the Fischer family one floor below.

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6. Wetzstein/Fischer, 22.

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7. Ibid., 57–58. This story also shows that Johann, like his son, honored old Ludwig’s memory.

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8. Ibid., 65–66.

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9. Solomon, “Economic Circumstances,” 11.

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10. Wetzstein/Fischer, 36n140; Thayer/Forbes, 1:17. Belderbusch did not yet have the title Graf, or Count.

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11. Ohm, “Zur Sozialpolitik,” 193.

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12. Quoted in Solomon, Beethoven, 47–48.

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13. Im Hof, Enlightenment, 27.

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14. Quoted in Marek, Beethoven, 145.

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15. Blanning, Pursuit of Glory, 518.

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16. Quoted in Brandt, “Banditry Unleash’d,” 20.

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17. Gutzmer, Chronik der Stadt Bonn, 76.

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18. Pfeiff, Bonn, 47. Wetzstein/Fischer, 48, includes a contemporary print of the fire showing the injured and dead lying in the courty...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Introduction
• Bonn, Electorate of Cologne
• Father, Mother, Son
• Reason and Revolution
• Loved in Turn
• Golden Age
• A Journey and a Death
• Bildung
• Stem and Book
• Unreal City
• Chains of Craftsmanship
• Generalissimo
• Virtuoso
• Fate’s Hammer
• The Good, the Beautiful, and the Melancholy
• The New Path
• Oh, Fellow Men
• Heaven and Earth Will Tremble
• Geschrieben auf Bonaparte
• Our Hearts Were Stirred
• That Haughty Beauty
• Schemes
• Darkness to Light
• Thus Be Enabled to Create
• Myths and Men
• My Angel, My Self
• We Finite Beings
• The Queen of the Night
• What Is Difficult
• The Sky Above, the Law Within
• Qui Venit in Nomine Domini
• You Millions
• Ars Longa, Vita Brevis
• Plaudite, Amici
• Appendix
• Works Cited
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author
• Connect with HMH