Swafford's Beethoven Bio

[Oldnslow]

Just finished Jan Swafford's mammoth and wonderful biography of Beethoven. Certainly the best musical biography I have read. Next up-- -Swafford's Brahms

[Artem]

I am still reading it. Finished about half of it. I am finding it less enjoyable than his bios of Brahms and Ives though.

[Mandryka]

I haven't read it like a story book, from the start through to the end, but I have it and I use it sometimes like a reference book, with not totally satisfying results. I'll give a couple of examples, I was interested in op 106 and, if you look at Swafford's chapter about it, some of his interpretation turns on a comment that Beethoven made in a letter to his publisher that "what is difficult is good." But a friend of mine showed me the letter and it seems to me that Beethoven was probably making a joke. That's wasn't clear to me from Swafford's comments, who makes it sound like one of his rules of life.

I also looked to see what he had to say about op 110 this week -- nothing interesting there though, that I could find.