In a series of powerful strokes, the music of Beethoven's last years redefined his legacy and enlarged the realm of experience accessible to the creative imagination. Maynard Solomon's "Late Beethoven" investigates the phenomenon of the final phase, focusing especially on the striking metamorphosis in Beethoven's system of beliefs that began early in his fifth decade and eventually amounted to a sweeping realignment of his views of nature, antiquity, divinity, and human purpose. Using the composer's letters, diaries, and ...
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In a series of powerful strokes, the music of Beethoven's last years redefined his legacy and enlarged the realm of experience accessible to the creative imagination. Maynard Solomon's "Late Beethoven" investigates the phenomenon of the final phase, focusing especially on the striking metamorphosis in Beethoven's system of beliefs that began early in his fifth decade and eventually amounted to a sweeping realignment of his views of nature, antiquity, divinity, and human purpose. Using the composer's letters, diaries, and conversation books, Solomon traces Beethoven's attraction to a constellation of heterogeneous ideas, drawn from Romanticism, Freemasonry, comparative religion, Eastern initiatory ritual, Mediterranean mythology, aesthetics, and classical and contemporary thought. Through these often arcane sources, Beethoven gained access to a vast reservoir of imagery and ideas with the potential to expand music's expressive and communicative reach. This 'multitude of productive images', writes Solomon, 'provided kindling for the blaze of his imagination'. "Late Beethoven" is a rich tapestry of original perspectives on Beethoven's music. Solomon sees the "Seventh Symphony" as a deployment of the rhythms of antiquity in an effort to revalidate the premises of the Classical world; the Ninth as an essay on the prospects and limits of affirmative, monumental endings; and, the 'Diabelli' Variations as a doorway to the universe of metaphoric significances that attach to beginnings. In the "Violin Sonata in G, op. 96", Solomon finds a restoration of the full range of pastoral experience that the ancient poets had known. In the "Grosse Fuge" he locates issues of fragmentation and reassembly, and he suggests that pivotal passages of the last sonatas evoke sacred states of being. These stimulating perspectives illuminate the inner world within which Beethoven dwelled during his last fifteen years and the ways in which his thought and music may be interrelated. Written in accessible and eloquent prose, and with numerous music examples, "Late Beethoven" is a serious contribution to understanding this miraculous quantum leap in Beethoven's creative evolution.
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Add this copy of Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination to cart. $4.54, very good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published 2003 by University of California Press.
Add this copy of Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination to cart. $4.54, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published 2003 by University of California Press.
Add this copy of Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination to cart. $4.54, very good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2003 by University of California Press.
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Very good in fine dust jacket. Hbk, 327pp, illustr music scores, gift inscription on front endpaper, otherwise appears unused and an excellent clean tight unmarked copy in fine, unclipped and sleeve-protected dj.
Add this copy of Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination to cart. $73.74, new condition, Sold by GridFreed rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from North Las Vegas, NV, UNITED STATES, published 2003 by University of California Press.
