Musicologists and hardcore Beethoven mavens will be impressed at Haley’s meticulousness, but casual readers may get lost in...
A musicological study that delves deeply into one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s most famous symphonies.
At its 1805 premiere, Beethoven’s Third Symphony, Eroica, blew up Vienna’s music scene with its epic length, thunderous dissonances, and unhinged emotional drama. The anti-monarchical Beethoven originally dedicated it to the French general Napoleon Bonaparte, who was busy conquering Europe in the name of democracy. But when Napoleon crowned himself emperor, the composer denounced him as a tyrant and scratched out the dedication; he finally retitled it “heroic Symphony / composed to celebrate the memory of a great Man.” However, debut author Haley expands on his undergraduate thesis to argue that Napoleon actually played a minor role in Beethoven’s imagining of the Eroica. His argument focuses on the disputed provenance of the central melody of the symphony’s fourth movement. Mainstream Beethoven scholars hold that he originally wrote it for a suite of ballroom dances, reused it in the ballet Creatures of Prometheus, and eventually plugged it into the Third Symphony. Haley reverses steps one and two, contending that the melody was written originally for Prometheus—and thus carries heavier ideological weight. Proceeding from a study by Soviet musicologist Nathan Fishman, the author pores over Beethoven’s notebook sketches for the symphony, links the four pieces’ compositional histories together, and makes close comparative readings of their scores. Haley discerns an important point while nailing down the Eroica melody’s origin. He points out that the tune is a cheerful, lilting thing, but one that meant more in its original Prometheus setting. The ballet is about the creation of the first man and woman by Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from Olympus to give to humans, whom Zeus sentenced to be eternally gnawed by a vulture. Prometheus’ creatures, born clumsy, gain skill until a climactic dance—to the future Eroica theme—proves them to be as graceful as gods. The music thus celebrates a hero who helps humans ascend to divine transfiguration. In Haley’s probing telling, Beethoven saw himself as such a hero, gnawed by the unjust punishment of his encroaching deafness yet determined to elevate mankind with sublime music. The symphony’s theme of conflicted heroism, the author argues, was thus inspired by themes in Prometheus and Beethoven’s romantic self-conception; Napoleon was an afterthought. But despite its demotion of the emperor of the French, Haley’s treatise won’t do much to revise popular perceptions of the Eroica. Although the prose is reasonably lucid, its scholarly denseness will make it a bit of a slog for all except its target readership of academic musicologists; more than half of the volume consists of appendices, including endnotes, reviews, commentary on Prometheus and the Eroica in multiple languages, and haphazard biographical snippets of various figures. That said, it will deepen readers’ understanding of Beethoven’s personality and motivations—and his (perhaps justified) egotism in seeing himself to be the real hero of his age.
Musicologists and hardcore Beethoven mavens will be impressed at Haley’s meticulousness, but casual readers may get lost in the scholarly thickets.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73270-110-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Eroica Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.
The renowned writer offers advice on information-gathering and nonfiction composition.
The book consists of eight instructive and charming essays about creating narratives, all of them originally composed for the New Yorker, where McPhee (Silk Parachute, 2010, etc.) has been a contributor since the mid-1960s. Reading them consecutively in one volume constitutes a master class in writing, as the author clearly demonstrates why he has taught so successfully part-time for decades at Princeton University. In one of the essays, McPhee focuses on the personalities and skills of editors and publishers for whom he has worked, and his descriptions of those men and women are insightful and delightful. The main personality throughout the collection, though, is McPhee himself. He is frequently self-deprecating, occasionally openly proud of his accomplishments, and never boring. In his magazine articles and the books resulting from them, McPhee rarely injects himself except superficially. Within these essays, he offers a departure by revealing quite a bit about his journalism, his teaching life, and daughters, two of whom write professionally. Throughout the collection, there emerge passages of sly, subtle humor, a quality often absent in McPhee’s lengthy magazine pieces. Since some subjects are so weighty—especially those dealing with geology—the writing can seem dry. There is no dry prose here, however. Almost every sentence sparkles, with wordplay evident throughout. Another bonus is the detailed explanation of how McPhee decided to tackle certain topics and then how he chose to structure the resulting pieces. Readers already familiar with the author’s masterpieces—e.g., Levels of the Game, Encounters with the Archdruid, Looking for a Ship, Uncommon Carriers, Oranges, and Coming into the Country—will feel especially fulfilled by McPhee’s discussions of the specifics from his many books.
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-14274-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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