The definitive biography of Beethoven, “already a classic of its kind” (The New York Times), setting the world standard in composer biographies
Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven has long been firmly established among music lovers and scholars alike as the standard modern biography of Beethoven. Now it is thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded by the author to incorporate new materials and the findings of later research to further illuminate the human dimension that underlies a series of creative events unique in the history of civilization.
In Beethoven, Solomon movingly traces the slow process by which the renowned composer reconstructed his life and ultimately arrived at a new mode of self-understanding, offering probing analyses of the composer’s deafness, romantic longings, and political outlook, and of his reshaping of the classical tradition. Solomon divides the life and works of the composer into four periods: Beethoven’s early years fraught with family troubles, and his emergence as an exemplary young court musician and virtuoso; his move to Vienna in late 1792 and subsequent conflicts with teachers and patrons and struggles for independence and recognition; the psychological, stylistic, and ideological crises that accompanied the formation of Beethoven’s “heroic” style; and the collapse of Beethoven’s marriage plans, the dissolution of his “heroic” style, and his turbulent attempt to seize the guardianship of his nephew, Karl.
Hailed as a masterpiece for its original interpretations of Beethoven’s life and music, this edition of the classic biography includes a thirty-page bibliographical essay and numerous illustrations, providing a robust pictorial biography of the composer. 32 b&amp;w images

Beethoven

Biographies & Memoirs

SOLOMON, MAYNARD

Arts & Literature

Schirmer Books

Maynard Solomon's Beethoven, first published in 1977, was instantly hailed as a major reinterpretation of the life, personality, and works of the enigmatic genius. Now, a generation later, the book has been thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded by the author to incorporate new materials and the findings of later research.

Humor & Entertainment

Macmillan

Hailed as a masterpiece for its original interpretations of Beethoven's life and music, this edition takes into account the latest information and literature. Includes a 30-page bibliographical essay, numerous illustrations, and a full-color pictorial biography of the composer.

Exploding the myth of Mozart as the "eternal child" and revealing unknown aspects of his family relationships, a definitive biography utilizes bold interpretations and insights, as well as modern analysis to examine Mozart's personality in a new light.

Mozart: A Life

Harpercollins

On the occasion of Mozart's two hundred and fiftieth birthday, read Maynard Solomon's Mozart: A Life, universally hailed as the Mozart biography of our time.

Harper-perennial

In this first full-scale biography since the 1950s, esteemed biographer Maynard Solomon draws on a half-century of new information to provide an in-depth account of Mozart's family life, his passions, and his personality.

The apparently effortless delight of Mozart's music seems so godlike in its inspiration that critics often give way to awe. The result is that Mozart studies are either highly technical exercises in musicology, or gushing tributes which explain little. In this biography, Maynard Solomon tackles the most intriguing and important issue of all, the roots of Mozart's creativity, and finds them in previously misunderstood details of his life. At its heart, for all his boundless energy and genius, lies rejection by his family, his patrons and his city.

Mozart

RH Canada UK Dist

Marxism and Art is a book of basic readings in Marxist criticism and aesthetics. Maynard Solomon, through his selections and critical introductions, shows connections between the arts and society, between imagination nd history, and between art and revolution. He selects from thirty-six authors to reveal the range of opinion from dogma to heresy, beginning with excerpts from the works of Marx and Engels that are pertinent to an understanding of Marxist philosophy.The book traverses a wide range of subjects from the origins of art to the nature of creativity, the aesthetic experience, the dialectics of consciousness, the psychology of art, and the evolution of art forms. The sources of art in ritual, in the labor process, in the play drive, and in social conflict are explored.

Marxism and Art: Essays Classic and Contemporary

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

KNOPF

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.

Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination

University of California Press

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Books by SOLOMON, MAYNARD

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SOLOMON, MAYNARD. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Beethoven

Beethoven

Beethoven

Mozart: A Life

Mozart: A Life

Mozart: A Life

Mozart

Marxism and Art: Essays Classic and Contemporary

Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination

Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination