The definitive book on the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven, written by the acclaimed biographer of Brahms and Ives.

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote numerous piano pieces to teach to his pupils. Still, today, his works are an integral part of piano lessons. My first Beethoven is perfect for pianists of every age to become acquainted with these works. This volume contains Beethoven's most popular and easiest piano pieces – from the frequently played Sonatinas in G and F major to Für Eliseand the famous Moonlight Sonata. Ideal for music lessons and music-making at home! Great works for little masters!

Shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize Based on the German composer's own correspondence, this inventive, counterfactual work of historical fiction imagines Beethoven traveling to America to write an oratorio based on the Book of Job. It is a matter of historical record that in 1823 the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston (active to this day) sought to commission Beethoven to write an oratorio. The premise of Paul Griffiths’s ingenious novel is that Beethoven accepted the commission and traveled to the United States to oversee its first performance. Griffiths grants the composer a few extra years of life and, starting with his voyage across the Atlantic and entry into Boston Harbor, chronicles his adventures and misadventures in a new world in which, great man though he is, he finds himself a new man. Relying entirely on historically attested possibilities to develop the plot, Griffiths shows Beethoven learning a form of sign language, struggling to rein in the uncertain inspiration of Reverend Ballou (his designated librettist), and finding a kindred spirit in the widowed Mrs. Hill, all the while keeping his hosts guessing as to whether he will come through with his promised composition. (And just what, the reader also wonders, will this new piece by Beethoven turn out to be?) The book that emerges is an improvisation, as virtuosic as it is delicate, on a historical theme.

A fascinating and in-depth exploration of how the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and Napoleon shaped Beethoven’s political ideals and inspired his groundbreaking compositions. Beethoven imbibed Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas in his hometown of Bonn, where they were fervently discussed in cafés and at the university. Moving to Vienna at the age of twenty-one to study with Haydn, he gained renown as a brilliant pianist and innovative composer. In that conservative city, capital of the Hapsburg empire, authorities were ever watchful to curtail and punish overt displays of radical political views. Nevertheless, Beethoven avidly followed the meteoric rise of Napoleon. As Napoleon had made strides to liberate Europe from aristocratic oppression, so Beethoven desired to liberate humankind through music. He went beyond the musical forms of Haydn and Mozart, notably in the Eroica Symphony and his opera Fidelio, both inspired by the French Revolution and Napoleon. John Clubbe illuminates Beethoven as a lifelong revolutionary through his compositions, portraits, and writings, and by setting him alongside major cultural figures of the time—among them Schiller, Goethe, Byron, Chateaubriand, and Goya.

This 1990 book is a survey of the critical reaction to Beethoven's music as it appeared in the major musical journals, French as well as German, of his day, and represents the first published history of Beethoven reception. The author discusses the philosophical and analytical implications of these reviews and reassesses what has come to be the accepted view of a nineteenth-century musical aesthetics rooted in Romantic Idealism. Wallace sees Beethoven's critics as in fact providing a link between two apparently antithetical approaches to music: the eighteenth-century emphasis on expression and extra-musical interpretation and the nineteenth-century emphasis on 'absolute' music and formal analysis. This book thus provides, in addition to a carefully documented study of Beethoven's critical reception, a re-evaluation of his oeuvre and its significance in music history. An index of all reviews cited is provided, and a further appendix contains the quoted material in its original language.

How hard is it to move 5 legless pianos 39 times? Beethoven owned five legless pianos and composed great works on the floor. His first apartment was in the center of Vienna's theater district... but he forgot to pay rent, so he had to move. (And it's very hard to move a piano. Even harder to move five). Beethoven's next apartment was in a dangerous part of town... so he moved, and the pianos followed on a series of pulleys. Then came an apartment with a view of the Danube (but he made too much noise and the neighbors complained), followed by an attic apartment (where he made even MORE of a rukus), and so Beethoven moved again and again. Each time, pianos were bought, left behind, transported on pulleys, slides, and by movers, all so that gifted Beethoven could compose great works of music for the world.

Written for the general reader, this book reveals how Beethoven's works reflect both his artistic individuality and the deepest philosophical and political currents of his age.