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Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 420
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http://www.beethovenshair.ca/flash.html i watched this docu-drama recently - among other things, he would have been in agonising pain with gallstones but took no morphine for the sake of his music and how he dealt with deafness. fascinating! can anyone recomend a beethoven biography?
"musical training is a more potent instrument than any other because rhythym and harmony find their way into the inner places of the soul" -Plato
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Joined: Jan 2004
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I've only read portions of it, but Thayer's Beethoven is pretty good and quite comprehensive.
What you are is an accident of birth. What I am, I am through my own efforts. There have been a thousand princes and there will be a thousand more. There is one Beethoven.
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Joined: Sep 2006
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I read the book, "Beethoven's Hair" by Russel Martin. It was really good. (Sounds like the docu-drama was based on it.)
I like the biography by Maynard Solomon, although it is very long.
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Joined: Feb 2006
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"musical training is a more potent instrument than any other because rhythym and harmony find their way into the inner places of the soul" -Plato
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Joined: Feb 2006
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I watched a documentary DVD about Beethoven, a guy took a small glass box and said that was Beethoven's hair, his father got from his doctor who cut the hair when Beethoven died, some scientists tested the hair (DNA), and finally says it's true.
In my this life, I will enjoy playing the piano
In my next life, I will become a pianist
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Joined: Jan 2007
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I would recommend the Solomon book too. I don't know what laney means by saying it is "very long", though - the original version of the book is around 400 pages and the revised version 500 pages. If anything, on the short side for a full-scale biography!
There's also the New Grove biography by Joseph Kerman. I would read in conjunction with that the volume by H.C Robbins Landon which collects letters to and from Beethoven along with diary entries and other material by people who knew him. And follow that with the excellent book by William Kindermann which discusses Beethoven's music in the context of his life and time.
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A nice one....by "Emil Ludwig" nice one, but too short =(
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Originally posted by Sonata:
I watched a documentary DVD about Beethoven, a guy took a small glass box and said that was Beethoven's hair, his father got from his doctor who cut the hair when Beethoven died, some scientists tested the hair (DNA), and finally says it's true. yes, it's how it got there that's interesting - under the noses of the Nazi's,and the pain he endured - if he had taken morphine we probably would have those great late sonatas.
"musical training is a more potent instrument than any other because rhythym and harmony find their way into the inner places of the soul" -Plato
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