Ludwig van Beethoven

Michael Hamburger

Comments by contemporaries depict the composer's music and personality and accompany selections from his letters to friends and other artists

Beethoven, Letters, Journals, and Conversations

Every time I experience his life, in any book, I’m So moved. 

Adam Scharf

Simon Elliott Stegall

What a fascinating peek into the life of classical music's greatest celebrity. Not surprisingly, much of the correspondence collected here centers around Beethoven's business, and includes letters to publishers, copiers, critics and clients. These letters are interesting in their own right, but the more fascinating ones are his contemporaries' accounts of his behavior. It is easy to see how the myth of the tortured composer deafly hammering out symphonies in a wet attic came to be.

Beethoven, Letters, Journals, and Conversations

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