Beethoven - (Eminent Lives) by Edmund Morris (Paperback)

About the Book

Brilliant....This book is a perfect marriage or should one say, duet of subject and author, every word as masterly as the notes of the artist it illuminates. Christopher Buckley, Forbes

This is not just criticism but poetry in itself, with the additional and inestimable merit of being true. Washington Post Book World

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund Morris (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, Dutch) is one of America s most distinguished biographers, known for his rich, compulsively readable prose style. His biography of Beethoven, one of the most admired composers in the history of music, is above all a study of genius in action, of one of the few giants of Western culture. Beethoven is another engaging entry in the HarperCollins Eminent Lives series of biographies by distinguished authors on canonical figures. "

Book Synopsis

"Brilliant....This book is a perfect marriage--or should one say, duet--of subject and author, every word as masterly as the notes of the artist it illuminates." -- Christopher Buckley, Forbes

"This is not just criticism but poetry in itself, with the additional--and inestimable--merit of being true." -- Washington Post Book World

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund Morris (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, Dutch) is one of America's most distinguished biographers, known for his rich, compulsively readable prose style. His biography of Beethoven, one of the most admired composers in the history of music, is above all a study of genius in action, of one of the few giants of Western culture. Beethoven is another engaging entry in the HarperCollins' "Eminent Lives" series of biographies by distinguished authors on canonical figures.

From the Back Cover

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was a composer of universal genius whose popularity, extraordinary even during his lifetime, has never ceased to grow and now encircles the globe. His most famous works are as beloved in Beijing as they are in Boston. A lifelong devotee, Edmund Morris, the author of three bestselling presidential biographies, brings the great composer to life as a man of astonishing complexity and overpowering intelligence--a gigantic, compulsively creative personality unable to tolerate constraints. But Beethoven's achievement rests in his immortal music, whose grandeur and beauty were conceived "on the other side of silence."

Review Quotes

"Morris knows how to set a scene, tell a story, reconstruct a world...This is not just criticism but poetry in itself, with the additional--and inestimable--merit of being true. - Washington Post Book World
"Morris clearly admires his subject not only for the work but also for his constant fight against the odds, and he has written an ideal biography for the general reader." - Publishers Weekly
"Vivid...Morris deftly sorts his way through Beethoven's biography." - New York Times Book Review
"Brilliant...Morris, biographer of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, brings to this study not only those Pulitzer Prize-winning skills and his customarily superb, elegant writing, but also his own profound knowledge as a concert-level pianist....This book is a perfect marriage--of should one say, duet--of subject and author, every word as masterly as the notest of the artist it illuminates." - Christopher Buckley, Forbes