Lives of Beethoven No Other

¶ … Lives of Beethoven

No other name resonates through the canon of Western music like that of Ludwig van Beethoven. While the exact date of his birth has been contested over time - a confusion that Beethoven undoubtedly contributed to, as we will explore below - it is genuinely believed that he was born in the latter half of 1770. By the time of his death in 1827 at the age of fifty-six, Beethoven was already recognized as one of the greatest musical talents of his era.

In his Life of Beethoven, David Wyn Jones attempts to dispel the myth of Beethoven as an isolated musical genius who was somehow detached from the society he lived in. The problem with figures such as Beethoven, Jones argues in his preface, is that they tend to be deified. Beethoven, as is commonly known, was deified in his own lifetime - a process that has undoubtedly continued since his death. Rather than portraying him as a "single-minded artist" who ate, drank, slept, and lived through music, Jones attempts to locate the human qualities of Beethoven, while remaining cognizant of those qualities that made him unique from other men.

This outlook surfaces in the methodology Jones employs in writing his biography. As he states at the outset,

Accordingly this account places less reliance on the rich anecdotal heritage associated with the composer in favour of primary and contemporary documentation. With this emphasis on the context in which the composer lived and worked it is hoped that Beethoven emerges as a more varied musical personality than posterity has often allowed him to be and with his individuality enhanced rather than circumscribed (Jones xi-xii).

This focus on the context in which he lived and the utilization of primary sources thus promises a more objective portrayal of the social circumstances that Beethoven existed among. Inherent to this approach is the idea that creative genius cannot be considered apart from the social nexus it was inevitably linked to.

Martin Geck also acknowledges the problems of writing about a figure so revered and deified as Beethoven. In the words of Peter Sheppard Skaerved, who penned the introduction to Geck's biography:

No composer has been so deeply identified with music in its noblest form. Reading a biography of Beethoven both assists and hinders this identification. It depends on the reader's as much as the writer's point-of-view whether he or she is seeking a picture of a day-to-day Beethoven or a representation of superhuman greatness. It is difficult for anybody to write, think, or even play Beethoven. His music is part of all of us. To achieve an objective view of him would require us to step outside the collective sense of self that he helped to form. He has moulded our languages of expression, speech, taste, ethics, politics, love, and our every musical breath. In no composer before or since has the intimate grandeur of humanity found a greater unity (Geck xiii-xiv).

Skaerved's introduction may in many ways be interpreted as an apology for Geck's method. While Geck certainly strives to maintain the objectivity that Jones's study is based on (i.e. The utilization of primary sources and an evaluation of the social context that gave rise to Beethoven's genius), Geck also has difficulty resisting slipping in the sort of gossipy anecdotes that, while interesting, certainly do not go very far in dispelling the myth of Beethoven as a sort of untouchable god. At the same time, Geck shows the ways in which Beethoven fostered many of the myths surrounding his genius during his own lifetime. Geck admits early on that there continues to be some confusion regarding Beethoven's exact birth date, for example. Much of this confusion arises from the fact that Beethoven was not the first-born son of his parents - but he was the first-born son to survive. Two years prior to Beethoven's birth, they had had another son who was also named Ludwig, but who died in infancy. For this reason, Beethoven believed that he had been born in 1772, rather than 1770, as has commonly been believed.

If there is a problem with Geck's biography, it is a structural one. While Geck devotes an equal length of pages to both the context of Beethoven's life (i.e. Bonn and Vienna in the late 18th and early 19th centuries) and to Beethoven's personal life, the book is structured in clusters devoted to each of these segments (i.e. "The Public Beethoven" and "The Private Beethoven.") Rather than integrating both facets of Beethoven the person and Beethoven the artist, as Jones does in his biography, Geck wishes to show us the two different sides of Beethoven through a sort of dichotomous split. The result makes for a rather dense, at times tedious read. Jones's skillful integration of the two facets of Beethoven's life seems to flow on a much more natural narrative level.

One of the characteristics that distinguish each of the biographies is their brevity. Unlike more definitive biographical studies, which tend to number into the late hundreds or even thousands in page count, both Jones and Geck manage to condense Beethoven's life to less than two hundred pages. This brevity has both its benefits and its limitations. On the one hand, the general reader, who perhaps has an appreciation of Beethoven's music that has spurred their interest in exploring the man behind the sounds, will appreciate a general introduction to that man's life and times. But for those specialists who have devoted months or even years to studying Beethoven's music and life, such short biographies may seem rather trite, under researched, or even vague.

Still, one of the benefits of short, condensed works of biography such as these is the fact that they provide us with a general overview of the composer, without boring us with too much detail on any one particular facet of the composer's life. They provide a clear structure that highlights the most important events in the composer's life, such as the dates of composition and the first performance of the most important works. In the event that we are unsatisfied and need to know more information about a particular event, then at least we have been provided with a context through which we may track down other studies.

For this reason, it is important to note that, while both authors provide bibliographical details for further reading, Geck's bibliography is by far more complete than that of Jones. What is more, Geck's bibliography is actually annotated and consists almost completely of other biographies. By reading Geck's annotations, we can discover which biographies are best in terms of content, but also which ones may focus on particular details of Beethoven's life and work that we may want to pursue in our individual research.

I think that both of these studies of Beethoven are commendable as biographies. However, if I had to recommend just one to my classmates, I would have to recommend the Jones biography. It provides a more objective account of Beethoven's life, including plenty of primary sources, as well as musical examples scattered throughout the text to give those with some knowledge of music a better idea of Beethoven's vast achievements.