I enjoyed the emphasis on psychology adopted by Maynard Solomon. As JDubba indicates, this eventually leads the story into the Immortal Beloved affair and Solomon's argument as to the identity of Beethoven's soulmate. I found the musical analysis a bit on the light side, but Solomon certainly gives the reader plenty of options in the bibliography as to where to find a more in-depth analysis. My enjoyment of the music of Beethoven as well as that of his predecessors and successors has been greatly enhanced by reading this book. ( )

It took me some time to adapt to the author’s style of writing for this work. My initial feelings were lukewarm at best, however by the end of my journey with this book I found myself surprisingly impressed at the depth of scholarship included in such a compressed volume. Not only is the book well written for a general biography, it doubles as an invaluable reference work for Beethoven scholarship.

Solomon has structured the book into chronological sections of Beethoven’s life and development as a composer. Each chronological era is further subdivided into a series of expositional chapters describing Beethoven’s personal life during the period, followed by a chapter dedicated to his musical compositions of that period.

In general the writing tends to vacillate back and forth between very distinct blocks of text that include fact and figure citation, to distinct blocks of text expounding the author’s interpretation of those facts. I believe it was the fact and figure sections of the work that took time to adjust to stylistically. Before seeing the pattern of how the author was weaving back and forth between fact and interpretation, the dry nature of the factual rendition sections made reading pace difficult to sustain. My only other minor complaint was that at times, the interpretation tended to delve too far into clinical psychological analysis for my taste, but this is a minimal portion of the authorship and instances are never mere opinion, but substantiated by appropriately included references.

To end with more positive remarks, which this book deserves, I found the section of the book where Solomon makes his case for the identity of “The Immortal Beloved” quite entertaining. While there may never be an answer to this question regarding the one reciprocating love in Beethoven’s life, Solomon has done the research and makes a very strong argument for his candidate. If you are interested in this historical mystery, this section of the book alone makes it a worthwhile read. ( )