Due to the author’s unsurpassed research and comprehension, we stand in the presence of a genius and see all his flawed...
A thorough, affectionate and unblinking account of the life of the great composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).
Swafford (Music History, Theory and Composition, Boston Conservatory; Johannes Brahms: A Biography, 1997, etc.) brings a lifetime of study and passion to this remarkable work. Rich in biographical detail, the volume contains revealing excerpts from many of Beethoven’s letters and from the written observations of his visitors and family; it also contains detailed analyses of many of his most notable works, analyses that will no doubt puzzle readers unversed in music theory and/or unable to read music (Swafford includes numerous examples from the composer’s scores). Although the music remains prominent here, Beethoven’s life and personality are also downstage. We learn about his contentious relationships with his family—especially with his nephew Karl, whom Beethoven took into his home when the composer’s brother Carl died. Rigorous and unyielding, Beethoven had a difficult time with the young man, who eventually learned to play his uncle artfully. We also see Beethoven’s enormous talent at the piano, an instrument on which he could endlessly improvise—and an instrument he had to gradually surrender as his hearing worsened. We see the composer, too, as a homely man (his face scarred), often slovenly in his appearance and personal habits, an extremely proud man who considered himself the equal of all, a man who had a horrible time managing money and who never did find a woman who would accept him. (He invariably chose far younger women or women above his social standing.) Swafford highlights Beethoven’s ferocious work ethic and his emergence from the substantial shadows of Haydn and Bach (he failed to acknowledge the influence of the former until Haydn’s death).
Due to the author’s unsurpassed research and comprehension, we stand in the presence of a genius and see all his flawed magic.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-618-05474-9
Page Count: 1088
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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