Beethoven ludwig van

151907 — Rare first edition of the first biography of Beethoven printed months after his death. Octavo original printed pictorial wrappers frontispiece portrait of Beethoven and a lithograph facsimile of a letter from Beethoven to Abbe Maximilian Stadler. The scarce first biography of Beethoven published only months after the composer's death. Though frequently maligned by later biographers Schlosser's account remained the sole separate biography of Beethoven available until 1838. While certain of Schlosser's claims have not withstood subsequent scholarly scrutiny Barry Cooper observes that the work retains interest as "a reflection of what was generally known and believed about Beethoven at the time of his death." Schlosser published this edition to raise funds for a monument to Haydn a project that ultimately never came to fruition. See Barry Cooper editor Beethoven: The First Biography Portland: Amadeus Press 1996. In very good condition early owner's signature on the front cover old bookseller's mark on the rear cover. Housed in a custom clamshell box. Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827 stands among the most consequential figures in the history of Western music a composer whose work bridged the Classical and Romantic eras and fundamentally reshaped the expressive possibilities of nearly every genre he undertook. Born in Bonn and trained in the traditions of Haydn and Mozart Beethoven settled in Vienna in 1792 where he established himself first as a virtuoso pianist and subsequently as a composer of unprecedented ambition and individuality. His nine symphonies sixteen string quartets thirty-two piano sonatas and the opera Fidelio transformed the formal and emotional scope of instrumental and vocal music alike while his late works—the Missa Solemnis the Ninth Symphony and the final quartets among them—pressed beyond the conventions of his time and anticipated the harmonic and structural innovations of the century to follow. The progressive deafness that afflicted him from his late twenties and which had rendered him almost wholly deaf by the final decade of his life lent his biography a tragic dimension that has shaped his reception ever since casting him in the popular imagination as the archetypal Romantic artist whose creative vision triumphed over personal suffering. unknown