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THE HEART OF BEETHOVEN by Selden Rodman

THE HEART OF BEETHOVEN

By

Pub Date: May 8th, 1962
Publisher: Shorewood (384 E. 45th St. NYC 17)

Using the researches of the most conservative musicologists as his jumping-off point, Rodman has penetrated the massive foliage of Beethoven ""material"" to take an intent, somewhat unusual look at the question of the relationship of the artist's character to his art. Since agreement is probably universal that Beethoven expressed ""the whole range of human emotions"", his other biographers have made much of the conflicts between his sufferings, psychogenic instability, and eccentric deportment on the one hand, and his well-ordered, monumentally beautiful music on the other. Apart from inclusion of Franz Liszt's account of meeting Beethoven in 1823, Rodman offers little new material (an improbable feat, what with all that's been written), yet there is a certain rewarding sense of clarification to be gotten from following Rodman's reasoning that although trivialities may have dominated Beethoven's life, it was only essentials that structured his music. For serious students only.