Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination

By Maynard Solomon

Book Overview

In a series of powerful strokes, the music of Beethoven's last years redefined his legacy and enlarged the realm of experience accessible to the creative imagination. Maynard Solomon's Late Beethoven investigates the phenomenon of the final phase, focusing especially on the striking metamorphosis in Beethoven's system of beliefs that began early in his fifth decade and eventually amounted to a sweeping realignment of his views of nature, antiquity, divinity, and human purpose.

Using the composer's letters, diaries, and conversation books, Solomon traces Beethoven's attraction to a constellation of heterogeneous ideas, drawn from Romanticism, Freemasonry, comparative religion, Eastern initiatory ritual, Mediterranean mythology, aesthetics, and classical and contemporary thought. Through these often arcane sources, Beethoven gained access to a vast reservoir of imagery and ideas with the potential to expand music's expressive and communicative reach. This "multitude of productive images," writes Solomon, "provided kindling for the blaze of his imagination."

Late Beethoven is a rich tapestry of original perspectives on Beethoven's music. Solomon sees the Seventh Symphony as a deployment of the rhythms of antiquity in an effort to revalidate the premises of the Classical world; the Ninth as an essay on the prospects and limits of affirmative, monumental endings; and the "Diabelli" Variations as a doorway to the universe of metaphoric significances that attach to beginnings. In the Violin Sonata in G, op. 96, Solomon finds a restoration of the full range of pastoral experience that the ancient poets had known. In the Grosse Fuge he locates issues of fragmentation and reassembly, and he suggests that pivotal passages of the last sonatas evoke sacred states of being.

These stimulating perspectives illuminate the inner world within which Beethoven dwelled during his last fifteen years and the ways in which his thought and music may be interrelated. Written in accessible and eloquent prose, and with numerous music examples, Late Beethoven is a serious contribution to understanding this miraculous quantum leap in Beethoven's creative evolution.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520243390
• ISBN13: 9780520243392
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 327 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A Good Read...

Sounds banal but this is really a good read on late Beethoven. Soloman's done his homework and he writes a nice, clear, subtly postmodern criticism. Especially fine is his discussion of Romanticism.

good book in general

I got this book and read through some chapters, and thought that the book gives some good or objective views on late Beethoven. But for some reason, I don't quite agree with some parts of book when author quoted references and associated Beethoven with some sort of religion or political believes. Although I do know there're some transcendental spirits, sublimity and profundity in Beethoven's late music, in his sonatas, string quartets, Diabelli variation among others, he is not religious even till the end but perhaps the greatest music genius and artist. Author also explored Romanism in late Beethoven, which I took less pleasure in reading. I found it less interesting with some of his writing style, when he quoted poems or others words and let reader go with him on some sort of purposeless or boring ride. But overall it is good book on late Beethoven, especially the chapter on Diabelli variations.

An essential book for the serious musician

Maynard Solomon is probably the most important Beethoven biographer of modern times. His book is essential research for serious musicians and composers who wish to gain insight into late Beethoven. Solomon's writing is dense; every word and paragraph count. Many, many musical examples, so the ability to read music (and knowledge of music theory) is a must. This is not a casual book, but if you are up for it, it is among the most rewarding Beethoven studies around. Richard Russell [...]