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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.
- Sales Rank: #2033673 in Books
- Published on: 2003-05-14
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.11" h x 6.30" w x 9.38" l, 1.37 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 344 pages
Review
"Solomon's prose is challenging, but as the book progresses, his language eases into fluency . . . Essential." -- M. N.-H. Cheng, Choice: Current Reviews For Academic Libraries
"The wide-ranging and wildly varied essays here show in the first place how fluid any notion of late (or middle, or early) Beethoven must be. Still more broadly, Mr. Solomon, with immense erudition, sows how imprecise and elusive the most pertinent historical concepts of Classicism and Romanticism are."--James R. Oestreich, New York Times -- Review
"[Solomon is] an approachable and frequently illuminating writer." -- BBC Music Magazine
From the Inside Flap
"Maynard Solomon writes with an unrivaled control of a vast cultural and intellectual sweep that reaches beyond Ancient Greece, and with a graceful precision that disguises the rich complexity of his ideas. Distilling from the late works their sources in both the overarching themes of mankind and the troubled psyche of the composer, he has forever altered a familiar landscape."—Richard Kramer, Distinguished Professor, Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and author of Distant Cycles: Schubert and the Conceiving of Song
"With a bow to the immortal study by J.W.N. Sullivan, Late Beethoven could have also been called "Beethoven: His Spiritual Development." Solomon weaves amazingly diverse threads, chapter by chapter, into the fabric of Beethoven's belief system, his take on nature, divinity, human purpose, morality, and the mission of music. This is a book of surprises by an author whose combination of breadth of thought, imaginativeness, aesthetic sensitivity, and learning is really wonderful.—Joseph Kerman, author, with Alan Tyson, of The New Grove Beethoven
From the Back Cover
"Maynard Solomon writes with an unrivaled control of a vast cultural and intellectual sweep that reaches beyond Ancient Greece, and with a graceful precision that disguises the rich complexity of his ideas. Distilling from the late works their sources in both the overarching themes of mankind and the troubled psyche of the composer, he has forever altered a familiar landscape."-Richard Kramer, Distinguished Professor, Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and author of Distant Cycles: Schubert and the Conceiving of Song "With a bow to the immortal study by J.W.N. Sullivan, Late Beethoven could have also been called "Beethoven: His Spiritual Development." Solomon weaves amazingly diverse threads, chapter by chapter, into the fabric of Beethoven's belief system, his take on nature, divinity, human purpose, morality, and the mission of music. This is a book of surprises by an author whose combination of breadth of thought, imaginativeness, aesthetic sensitivity, and learning is really wonderful.-Joseph Kerman, author, with Alan Tyson, of The New Grove Beethoven
Most helpful customer reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Some good portions but a disappointing book overall - patchy is the word
By jt52
After reading Maynard Solomon's very interesting and illuminating biography of Beethoven, I decided to pick up the more recent "Late Beethoven", which is really a collection of re-worked essays around a central theme. Let me begin by highlighting some strong points, where Solomon has carefully researched key issues and generated interesting points:
1) Solomon takes on the topic of whether Beethoven is fundamentally a "classical" or a "romantic" composer, a debate which has existed since the 1820s. Of course, the answer is that he lies between those two poles, so the question is really a matter of emphasis - which side matters more to Beethoven's art? Solomon goes back to contemporary reactions to Beethoven's music and forcefully underlines how his contemporaries viewed him as a wild innovator and explorer of new terrain. This casts doubt on the position that Beethoven is a follower of the classical tradition. The riposte is sure to follow from the musicological community, but this is a solid, thought-provoking piece of research.
2) Solomon has also engaged in solid source research on Beethoven's relationship to Freemasonry, taking the position that Beethoven was sympathetic and influenced by the movement without being an actual lodge member. Numerous texts are analyzed for their Masonic content, most interestingly Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy," of course used in the finale of the 9th symphony. This research has limited application to musical analysis (I find it doubtful that the opening of the Missa solemnis, with its three chords, refers to the Masonic lodge knock rather than the Trinity), but it's a new light on Beethoven's intellectual history.
3)Most interestingly, Solomon's interprets the fact that Beethoven was willing to dismember three of his major late works - the Op. 106 Hammerklavier sonata, the Missa Solemnis and the 9th symphony (Beethoven apparently strongly considered disposing of the choral finale entirely!) - as evidence that the supposed organic, fully-worked-out features of the forms of these pieces does not reflect the composer's opinion. He argues instead that Beethoven was constantly revising the forms of his works and believed they could be completed in many ways. Just a great argument and one that could re-shape the critical view of Beethoven. (Assuming a critical view will still exist given the meltdown of classical music in the present day.)
That said, here are some flaws:
1)I found the book overwritten - too many references, too many lists, filled with academic jargon. Bad writing often dilutes Solomon's meaning and makes the book sometimes just tedious to read.
2)Solomon's musical analysis in the older Beethoven biography was very undeveloped. He has obviously worked hard to upgrade that part of his research, but I am underwhelmed by the results. I find the reading of the Diabelli Variations as a spiritual journey an over-earnest view of a playful, undirectional work. The reading of the Op. 96 G-major violin sonata as a pastoral strikes me as unsupported, either by documentation or the musical analysis. And the application of poetic meters to the 7th symphony was stretched and unilluminating. That some of the motivic kernels of the 7th are somewhat related to poetic meters isn't surprising. Whether Beethoven related poetic meters to the composition of the 7th is unproven by either analysis or primary historical research.
So I give "Late Beethoven" three stars. Some very solid primary research is diluted by plodding writing and unconvincing musical analysis. It's not recommended for the casual reader and is written for an academic audience. Those who would benefit need to be familiar both with Beethoven and music history to enjoy the work.
72 of 74 people found the following review helpful.
Solomon on Late Beethoven
By Robin Friedman
Maynard Solomon has followed-up his distinguished biography of Beethoven (rev.ed. 1998)with an outstanding study of the music of Beethoven's third period and of the intellectual and emotional changes in Beethoven's outlook that likely contributed to Beethoven's late masterworks. These works include the Ninth Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, the Diabelli Variations, the final string quartets, including the great fugue, and the final five piano sonatas.
Solomon's biography of Beethoven was both notable and controversial for its psychoanalytical approach. I find that approach mostly lacking here. For his approach to Beethoven's inner life and development, Solomon draws extensively on Beethoven's Tagebuch, which Solomon describes as "the intimate diary [Beethoven] kept between 1812 and 1818 to which he confided his innmost feelings and desires" (p.2). Solomon finds a "sea change" (as he titles his Prologue) in Beethoven's system of belief beginning in about 1810. Following Beethoven's comparatively fallow period as a composer between 1812-1816, this change in Beethoven's beliefs bore its consequences in the works of his final maturity. In general, Solomon finds Beethoven's beliefs changed from the rational, enlightment, classical thought that characterized, for Solomon, the first and second period works, to a more romantic belief system that focused on inwardness, theology, (I found it fascinating that Beethoven showed awareness of and interest in Eastern thought in the Tagebuch), nature, and imagination. In sum, Beethoven in his final period came more under the influence of romanticism (whatever that notoriously vague term might mean) than is sometimes realized. Furthermore, with his nearly total deafness and the failure of his attempts to establish a lasting relationship with a woman, Beethoven tried mightily to devote his life to the pursuit of his art rather than to his own personal, less exalted ends.
The book consists of twelve chapters, some of which were earlier published, which Solomon has worked into a coherent whole. Of the twelve chapters, seven are examinations of the sources of Beethoven's thought and deal in broad concepts. Thus two chapters explore the relationship between concepts of classicism and romanticism -- highly slippery concepts as Solomon realizes-- and argue that Beethoven's final work and thought show an increased romantic influence -- particularly in its transcendent element. Two chapters discuss the possible influence of Freemasonry upon Beethoven while an additional chapter discusses the increased religious dimension in Beethoven's final works, including the influence of Eastern thought.
The remaining five chapters focus on individual works. The Diabelli Variations receive two detailed chapters. The first of them explores Diabelli's waltz theme and the attraction it might have had for Beethoven while the second is a detailed analysis of the pattern of each of the 33 variations, including copious musical illustrations. There is an outstanding chapter on Beethoven's opus 96 violin sonata and its source in pastorale. There is a chapter on the seventh symphony (not usually considered a late work) and on the influence it shows of Greek poetical meters, and a thorough chapter on the Ninth Symphony. This description only briefly touches the scope of the book as Solomon has provocative things to say about the last quartets, particularly on the opus 130 quartet and on the question of its two finales: the grosse fugue and the much simpler rondo which Beethoven substituted for it. And, as I mentioned, Solomon says much about the last piano sonatas, the Missa Solemnis and about the song cycle "An die Ferne Geliebte" even though these works do not have a specific chapter devoted to them.
I found it a joy to read this book. It combines a love and emotional understanding of Beethoven's music with deep erudition and a love of learning. Beethoven's music and intellectual development are well-discussed even if the reader finds himself not agreeing with all Solomon's arguments. The book is full of detailed consisderation of specific works including quotations from Beethoven's scores. It is probably a book that will be most appreciated by those who have some familiarity with Beethoven's music, particularly the works of the third period, rather than by those coming to the music for the first time.
This is a difficult, challenging, and revealing study of late Beethoven combining scholarship, philosophical thinking, and a love and understanding of Beethoven's music.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Good writing and research, especially on Freemasonry
By Amazon Customer
Good writing and research, especially re: Beethoven's possible/probable ties to Freemasonry, a secret society which was outlawed during part of his lifetime.
See all 4 customer reviews...
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