Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780593317723)

"Padel's imagery and imagination took me deeper into Beethoven than many biographies I've read." --Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times

A fascinating poetic journey into the mind and heart of a musical genius, from the author of the celebrated Darwin: A Life in Poems

Ruth Padel's new sequence of poems, in four movements, is a personal voyage through the life and legend of one of the world's greatest composers. She uncovers the man behind the music, charting his private thoughts and feelings through letters, diaries, sketchbooks, and the conversation books he used as his hearing declined. She gives us Beethoven as a battered four-year-old, weeping at the clavier; the young virtuoso pianist agonized by his encroaching deafness; the passionate, heartbroken lover; the clumsy eccentric making coffee with exactly sixty beans. Padel's quest takes her into the heart of Europe and back to her own musical childhood: Her great-grandfather, who studied in Leipzig with a pupil of Beethoven's, became a concert pianist before migrating to Britain; her parents met making music; and Padel grew up playing the viola, Beethoven's instrument as a child. Her book is a poet and string player's intimate connection across the centuries with an artist who, though increasingly isolated, ended even his most harrowing works on a note of hope.

Author: Ruth Padel
ISBN-10: 0593317726
ISBN-13: 9780593317723
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Language: English
Published: 02/02/2021
Pages: 144
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.40w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 09/01/2020 pg. 71
Publishers Weekly 03/22/2021