Pulitzer-prize winning biographer Edmund Morris interweaves the personal history of the world's most famous composer with an insightful exploration of the way Beethoven's life was reflected and embodied in his genius and his music. Eminent Lives is an exciting and groundbreaking series that pairs great biographers, historians and novelists with iconic subjects, building on a biographical tradition that can be traced back to Aubrey's 'Brief Lives', Dr Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets' and Lytton Strachey's 'Eminent ...
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Pulitzer-prize winning biographer Edmund Morris interweaves the personal history of the world's most famous composer with an insightful exploration of the way Beethoven's life was reflected and embodied in his genius and his music. Eminent Lives is an exciting and groundbreaking series that pairs great biographers, historians and novelists with iconic subjects, building on a biographical tradition that can be traced back to Aubrey's 'Brief Lives', Dr Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets' and Lytton Strachey's 'Eminent Victorians'. 'To preserve a becoming brevity which excludes everything that is redundant and nothing that is significant,' wrote Strachey. 'That, surely, is the first duty of the biographer.' Edmund Morris, the author of three bestselling presidential biographies and a lifelong devotee of Beethoven, brings the great composer to life as a man of astonishing complexity and overpowering intelligence. A gigantic, compulsively creative personality unable to tolerate constraints, he was not so much a social rebel as an astute manipulator of the most powerful and privileged aristocrats in Germany and Austria, at a time when their world was threatened by the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. But Beethoven's achievement rests in his immortal music. Struggling against progressive, incurable deafness (which he desperately tried to keep secret), he nonetheless produced towering masterpieces, such as his iconic Fifth and Ninth symphonies. With sensitivity and insight, Edmund Morris illuminates Beethoven's life, including his interactions with the women he privately lusted for but held at bay, and his work, whose grandeur and beauty were conceived 'on the other side of silence.'
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Add this copy of Beethoven: the Universal Composer to cart. $9.22, very good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 2010 by Harper Perennial.
Add this copy of Beethoven: the Universal Composer to cart. $9.22, very good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2010 by Harper Perennial.
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Add this copy of Beethoven: the Universal Composer (Eminent Lives) to cart. $9.48, fair condition, Sold by Goodwill of the Olympics rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from TACOMA, WA, UNITED STATES, published 2010 by Harper Perennial.
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Fair. An acceptable and readable copy. All pages are intact, and the spine and cover are also intact. This item may have light highlighting, writing or underlining through out the book, curled corners, missing dust jacket and or stickers.
Add this copy of Beethoven: the Universal Composer (Eminent Lives) to cart. $9.92, fair condition, Sold by Once Upon A Time Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Tontitown, AR, UNITED STATES, published 2010 by Harper Perennial.
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Fair. This is a used book. It may contain highlighting/underlining and/or the book may show heavier signs of wear. It may also be ex-library or without dustjacket. This is a used book. It may contain highlighting/underlining and/or the book may show heavier signs of wear. It may also be ex-library or without dustjacket.
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Fine. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 256 p. Eminent Lives. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
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Very Good. Brilliant....This book is a perfect marriage or should one say, duet of subject and author, every word as masterly as the notes of the artist it illuminates. Christopher Buckley, ForbesThis is not just criticism but poetry in itself, with the additional and inestimable merit of being true. Washington Post Book World Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund Morris (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, Dutch) is one of America s most distinguished biographers, known for his rich, compulsively readable prose style. His biography of Beethoven, one of the most admired composers in the history of music, is above all a study of genius in action, of one of the few giants of Western culture. Beethoven is another engaging entry in the HarperCollins Eminent Lives series of biographies by distinguished authors on canonical figures. '
I loved Morris's biography of President Reagan ("Dutch") almost as much as his first volume on Theodore Roosevelt, so I thought he mainly did politicians. I was pleasantly surprised. For its length and scope, this is an excellent biography, especially for non-musicians. (Professional musicians of course already have a vast library of Beethoven studies and would not be interested in this.) The writing is crisp, the necessary historical context is interesting in its own right.
Sunlily
Apr 20, 2007
this book is very short, about 200 pages, and it is pocket size. you do get enough info. about Beethoven, but this book is not for general readers. I love classic music, I listen to it all the time, but I have no basic training. this book spent a third going into details about the music Beethoven wrote, using a lot of music language which i find very boring. if you know music theory you may not find so. i really liked 'Dutch', also written by Edmund Morris. that was the reason i chose this book when i decided to read about Beethoven. i have watched movies 'Immortal love' and 'copying Beethoven' recently. after reading this book, i guess these movies dramatized and stretched truth a bit. overall it is a nice break from huge books like 'Dutch'.
