Polemica allevi beethoven biography

Following Jan Swafford through the thousand-plus pages of his new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven is hardly as exhilarating as listening to the music of the peerless composer.

But the stately rhythm, carefully etched detailing and oceanic sweep of this ambitious book mirror the complexity and richness of Beethoven's revolutionary Romanticism.

It may be hard to grasp, but surrender to it and it's easy to be swept away.

That's because Swafford comes marvelously equipped to take on the enormousness of Beethoven's life and work – his heights of inspiration, depths of suffering, the roots and range of his masterworks.

The author of acclaimed biographies of Johannes Brahms and Charles Ives, Swafford is also a celebrated composer, musical scholar and teacher whose empathic vision of Beethoven extends far beyond the typical biographer's focus on the facts of a life.

Since those facts were well-mined by Alexander Wheelock Thayer's massiv