Late Beethoven
Subtitle: Music, Thought,  Imagination
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: May 14, 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 344
ISBN-13: 9780520237469
Subjects: Composers & musicians; Genres & Styles - Classical; Biography/Autobiography; Biography; Last years; Biography & Autobiography; Biography / Autobiography; Criticism and interpretation; Composers & Musicians - General; Composers; Composers & Musicians - Classical Composers; History & Criticism - General; Beethoven, Ludwig van; Music / General; Beethoven, Ludwig van,; 1770-1827; Austria
First sentence: Now may be an appropriate time to reexamine an old notion in the literature on the "Diabelli" Variations, namely that Beethoven, initially scornful of so impoverished a theme.
Description: "Maynard Soloman'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, "provides kindling for the blaze of his imagination.""--Jacket.