Beethoven
by Edmund Morris | 
Beethoven
by Maynard Solomon | 
Language of the Spirit
by Jan Swafford | 
Shakey
by Jimmy McDonough | 
Frank
by James Kaplan | 
Ramblin' Man
by Ed Cray | 
Lowside of the Road
by Barney Hoskyns |
Mozart
by Wolfgang Hildesheimer | 
I'm Your Man
by Sylvie Simmons | 
Beethoven
by Lewis Lockwood | 
Room Full of Mirrors
by Charles R. Cross | 
Mozart
by Maynard Solomon | 
Jim Morrison
by Stephen Davis | 
Bob Dylan
by Anthony Scaduto | 
Lovesick Blues
by Paul Hemphill | 
Johannes Brahms
by Jan Swafford |
Dream Boogie
by Peter Guralnick |
The Wrecking Crew
by Kent Hartman | 
Comfortably Numb
by Mark Blake | 
The Beatles
by Bob Spitz |
Jan Swafford's biographies of Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathing human being who composed some of the world's most iconic music. Swafford mines sources never before used in English-language biographies to reanimate the revolutionary ferment of Enlightenment-era Bonn, where Beethoven grew up and imbibed the ideas that would shape all of his future work. Swafford then tracks his subject to Vienna, capital of European music, where Beethoven built his career in the face of critical incomprehension, crippling ill health, romantic rejection, and "fate's hammer," his ever-encroaching deafness. Throughout, Swafford offers insightful readings of Beethoven's key works. More than a decade in the making, this will be the standard Beethoven biography for years to come.