In Monday’s (12/19) New York Times, Allan Kozinn writes, “If we are to believe the Beethoven mythology, which is based mostly on his letters and reports from his inner circle, Beethoven had an unshakeable sense of his own importance. … Beethoven was probably much as history painted him: the deaf painter in sound, ingenious, embattled and defiant, but also a disheveled, scowling force of nature whose unpleasantness and irritability people suffered for the sake of his brilliance. … But even Beethoven probably would have been surprised at the place his name and image have found at the heart of American culture, including popular culture. … As Michael Broyles points out in his fascinating but uneven ‘Beethoven in America,’ just about everyone knows Beethoven’s name, if not necessarily his music, and for millions—particularly those with little interest in the symphonic world—he is synonymous with the classics. … Within a few decades of his death in 1827, tales of the defiant composer who plowed through a crowd of aristocrats without acknowledging them, and who supposedly shook his fist at the heavens (accompanied by a thunderclap) in his final moments, had filtered across the Atlantic. That image appealed to our ‘don’t tread on me’ sensibility, and Beethoven’s rugged, forceful music captured listeners’ imaginations.”
Posted December 19, 2011
