“What Beethoven wanted from pianos, as he wanted from everything, was more: more robust build, more fullness of sound, a bigger range of volume, a wider range of notes. As soon as new notes were added ...

Music lovers who are familiar with Jan Swafford’s earlier biographies of Brahms and Charles Ives will need no further incitement to read this mammoth but compelling biography of a composer arguably ...

On Dec. 16, while the classical music world is honoring Beethoven’s 250th birthday, the international community of scholars devoted to his music will also be honoring another round-numbered occasion: ...

Following Jan Swafford through the thousand-plus pages of his new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven is hardly as exhilarating as listening to the music of the peerless composer. But the stately rhythm ...

THAYER’S LIFE OF BEETHOVEN edited by Elliot Forbes. 1 volumes, 1,136 pages. Princeton. $25. It was Richard Wagner who called Beethoven “a world walking among men.” The world was, of course, his music, ...

Ludwig van Beethoven’s career was and still is boxed into early, middle, and late periods; the last three of his violin-and-piano sonatas, taken together, fairly race through those checkpoints. The ...

No matter how many times they’ve been recorded, no matter how many times they’ve been written about, someone is always claiming there is something more to hear, something new to say about Beethoven ...

All that to say that Beethoven grew up and was shaped by the culture of the Enlightenment which was prevalent under Emperor Joseph II. Beethoven wasn’t born in Austria but he was a product of the ...