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An overhyped book without new insights, exclusively based on English texts An overhyped book I'm afraid. Imagine a book about Elgar or Ives, nearly completely based on books and articles in German. Swafford writes that he wants describe Beethoven living, composing, talking. Though in the bibliography the Conversation booklets (Konversationshefte) are mentioned, not one foot note refers to them. Though Swafford is a musician (more than a biographer - his own words), of the nearly 20 odd sketch books which have been published, only a handful are mentioned, and even less used. His elaboration of sketches is merely based on the Nottebohm publications - dating from the 1870s. Of all the pubications of the Beethoven Haus in Bonn -for far the best part in German- not one has been consulted. His approach of the enigma of the Eternal Beloved is equally weird: he did not use Goldschmidt's important publications at all (they are in German), but from the most important of these, the state of the art of the research around the Unsterbliche Geliebte, there exists a brilliant English translation. In stead he uses a publication which -even in his own words- contains some inconsistencies. But part of Swafford's story around this unknown lady are nevertheless built around this publication! The musical analyses are nice, but they would be much more impressive if Swafford would have taken the trouble to look at the sketches (other than the 19th Century Nottebohm ones). Then for instance he could have made some remarks regarding the finale of the 2nd symphony - a sudden change of mind well documented in the changes Beethoven made in the continuity draft of that movement: A link to the Heiligenstadt testament as well as to the exspansiveness of the Eroica. This is just one of the missed chances where Swafford could have made his biography stand out in the mass of Beethoven-biographies. The book is very readible, and the illustrations -though without any unknown or even lesser known picture- well chosen. But effectively ignoring sources in German, which apart from the Konversationshefte also include the newly published and really complete Beethoven Letters (the Brandenburg edited 8 volumes - Swafford sticks to the now dated Anderson version in 3 volumes), means he ignores a lot of primary sources for his book (not to mention the important secondary ones). This book is a kind of rewriting the standard biography of Thayer/Forbes, without adding any new stuff which has come to light since that biography was [re]published in 1967 (with many reprints in either one or 2 volumes, and on eBay even new cheaper than Swafford). I found the new biography disappointing. Contrary to the blurp: Swafford does not add new insights to what we can read in Thayer/Forbes's or Solomon's biographies. It looks like he is unable to read the original german sources, as I cannot think of any other explanation. Thus he is unable to integrate recent and important developments in research and assessment of Beethoven's life and music in the material he actually used (and that is less than he lists in the bibliography - just check the foot notes) short: a well readable biography, but a completely superfluous publication if you are already introduced in Beethoven life and works.Read full review
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