BEETHOVEN

There are charming illustrations of the Rhineland, a pleasing format and quite simple reading to differentiate this biography of Beethoven from others. For the musical child the story will be of interest. The literary style is somewhat stilted, characterization seems two dimensional and though the associations which influenced him, the ambitions of a drunken father to push the prodigy, his fortunate relationships with Mozart and the Breuning family and Haydn, his admiration of and later disillusionment in Napoleon are interpreted well, there is neither lilt nor power to the telling. A competent rather than distinguished biography.