Beethoven The Man Revealed

Ludwig van Beethoven remains one of the world’s best loved and most influential composers, the creator of such magisterial works as the ‘Eroica,’ the famous Fifth Symphony, and the ‘Emperor’ Piano Concerto, yet also smaller, more intimate pieces like the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, and ‘Für Elise.’ But few know much of Beethoven’s tumultuous personal life, beyond the fact that he is the composer who became deaf.

Beethoven scholar John Suchet has had a lifelong passion for the man and his music. In this book, he illuminates Beethoven’s difficult childhood, his struggle to find a wife, his ungovernable temper, his emotional volatility, his tendency to push away those trying to help him, and in middle age his obsessive compulsion to control his nephew’s life. In this detailed and absorbing biography, Suchet argues that it is perhaps more true of Beethoven than of any other composer, that if you know what was going on in his life, you listen to his music through different ears.

Beethoven is a full and comprehensive account of a momentous life that takes the reader on an extraordinary journey, from the composer’s birth in Bonn to his death in Vienna. Beethoven scholarship is constantly evolving, and Suchet draws on the latest research, as well as using source material (some of which has never before been published in English), to paint the fullest picture yet created of the greatest composer who ever lived.