Jan Swafford's biographies have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven 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 ...
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Jan Swafford's biographies have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven 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.
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I became an admirer of Jan Swafford through reading his biographies of Johannes Brahms and Charles Ives. My admiration has increased with this wise and moving new biography, "Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph" (2014). Swafford offers much to think about in understanding Beethoven. For example, he discusses Beethoven's composition of the Ninth Symphony and of how the work spanned the composer's life from youth to age. Swafford writes:
"The threads in Beethoven's life gathered. Twenty years before, he anguished in his Heiligenstadt Testament, `Oh Providence - grant me at last but one day of pure joy - it is so long since real joy echoed in my heart ` .... In age we often return to the ideas and inspirations of our youth. In the Ninth Beethoven returned to Schiller's poem that had been a motif of his life since his teens, to the Enlightenment ideal of `life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' Rising from liberty, happiness transforms our lives and in turn transforms society."
This short passage captures much about Beethoven's life and work. It touches the composer's anguish when he found he was becoming deaf and isolated and alone. Swafford captures the strong influence of the Enlightenment (the German Aufklarung)and on Freemasonry on Beethoven's music from the days of his youth with its emphasis on reason and on the power of art and science to transform life. Swafford shows how Beethoven became fascinated with Schiller in his youth and lived with the poet's work until writing the finale of his Ninth Symphony. In talking about how individuals often "return to the ideas and inspirations" of youth, Swafford reminded me of my own fascination with Beethoven since childhood and of how I continue to return to him over the years - most recently by reading Swafford's book.
Swafford observes that even during his lifetime, Beethoven was becoming a mythological, romanticized figure rather than a living human being. His stated aim is to present the facts of Beethoven's life without the myth. Accordingly, the book describes a Beethoven who was a great artist but who did not know how to live in the many aspects of life outside of music. His Beethoven is solipsistic, angry, self-pitying, and petty. He is frequently taken as mad. He falls in love with unattainable women and, to his sorrow, is never able to form a lasting relationship. He quarrels bitterly with most of his patrons and friends. He spends much of his late years in a custody battle over his nephew, Karl, which nearly ruins the boy. Much of this story will be familiar to those who have read about Beethoven. Swafford may exaggerate the extent to which Beethoven has been put on a pedestal in an anti-heroic, skeptical modern age. Swafford's biography includes a great deal of focus on Beethoven's early years in Bonn. In particular, he emphasizes Beethoven's early exposure to the German Aufklarung from his teacher Neefe and from the Freemasonry movement and its offshoots. Swafford shows how this influence stayed with Beethoven.
For the most part, Swafford portrays Beethoven as a conservative composer who deepened and expanded musical trends implicit in the works of Haydn and Mozart among others rather than as a revolutionary who overthrew the past. This characterization will surprise some readers. As the book proceeds, Swafford emphasizes the romantic character of Beethoven's music in the latter works. He offers fresh insights into the familiar three-period division of Beethoven's music - the first in which Beethoven was seeking his own path, the second or "new path" dominated by "heroic" music and the search for triumph over adversity in a political or individual way, and the third "poetic" path which became introspective, wandering, and spiritual.
Swafford combines his treatment of Beethoven's life with insightful detailed treatments of many of his major works. His discussions include some technical musical analysis but readers without a musical background will still be able to learn a great deal from them. He devotes a lengthy chapter in the middle of the book to an analysis of the "Eroica" Symphony. He offers a lengthy analysis late in the book of the "Missa Solemnis", a difficult work which Swafford finds is a summit of Beethoven's art. Swafford thinks highly of the "Pastoral" Symphony, a work which lovers of Beethoven sometimes downplay. He sees the 32 piano sonatas and 16 string quartets as works written throughout Beethoven's life, each with its own individual character. Swafford also discusses many works of Beethoven that deserve to be better known as well as some of his potboilers such as "Wellington's Victory".
Swafford summarizes his view of Beethoven in the discussion of the Ninth Symphony which has been discussed above and in his discussion of the late quartet in C -sharp minor, another summit of Beethoven's achievement. In his earlier heroic period, Swafford writes, Beethoven moved from anguish at the beginning to triumph at the end. In his later works, Beethoven came to realize that anguish and triumph were interrelated throughout life rather than a linear progression with a hero at the end. Swafford writes:
"As Beethoven's increasingly hard-won labors transcended the anguish of his life, the triumph of the C-sharp Minor Quartet, its answer to suffering, is the supreme poise and integration of the whole work."
This is a long book and many passages invite thinking about and lingering over. As I read, I wanted to pause and rehear music of Beethoven that I have not heard for some time, including the quartets, the Missa Soleminis and its predecessor C major mass, the violin sonatas, cello sonatas, and the string quintet, op. 29. The book also made me want to return to the piano to struggle again with learning some of the piano sonatas. Just as Beethoven's music has an immediacy while looking towards both the past and the future, Swafford's book helped me understand Beethoven as a person to be loved in youth, to be understood better as an adult, and to be inspired by in old age.
Robin Friedman
DLRS
Oct 3, 2014
Portrait of a genius
This is a superb biography of Ludwig van Beethoven. The one unanswered question, which has eluded everyone to date, but may yet be answered one day, is the name of the lady known as 'The Immortal Beloved', to whom Beethoven wrote passionate letters. Apart from that, this mega biography, in every sense, tells us all that is known about the life, works and philosophy of the great composer.
