Ludwig van Beethoven, by Alessandro Zignani
A severe, frustrated, even alcoholic father and an absent and gloomy mother were the main cause of a narcissism so strong as to make Ludwig van Beethoven a borderline personality, constantly looking for that parental affection that he didn’t have as a child, but with instinct and “intolerance for every bond transcended into everyday familiarity”.
The relationship he had with his deafness was also controversial: as an adult he was terrified of appearing in public because he was ashamed of it, but later he sublimated it “in the metaphysical timelessness of his last works”.
This is how the rich woman is presented to us biography “Ludwig van Beethoven”, da Alexander Zagnaniwriter, musicologist and Germanist, published by Zecchini Editore: “Like all narcissists, Ludwig made his own psychic violence a physiological tribute to his genius”.
His brother Carl and his son Karl also played a fundamental role in the formation of his unique character. The famous composer had stormy relationships with both, but he was reconciled with the first when he fell ill; he took care of it and when he died he then became the son’s legal guardian.
Ludwig also had serious problems with school: “he abandoned regular studies so early, that to perform a multiplication he proceeded to a long series of sums. Not even divisions, he knew how to do ”. However, he almost memorized many Greek, Latin and German authors and philosophers: “Geniuses are not cultured, they are curious. They look everywhere for inner visions that trigger the creative process in them”.
Investigating every well-known anecdote and often passing from private life to the most salient facts of the time and vice versa, the author traces an in-depth psychological, moral and historical picture of Beethoven, also analyzing the environments and contexts in which he grew up and lived: fully immersed in of his time, the composer, a pupil of Haydn and Salieri, had close contacts with some famous artists of the time such as Goethe and two famous theater authors, Heinrich Collin and Franz Grillparzer.
He was also active in politics by openly supporting the French Revolution; subsequently he became a friend of the Archduke Rudolf of Habsburg, entering under his protective wings and dedicating the trio for strings and piano to him.
Later, however, he also had intense relations with Napoleon, only to later become, “with suspicious zeal”, composer of the regime at the Congress of Vienna. In this regard, the beautiful and very evocative scenario of the Austrian capital described by Zignani is also worth mentioning.
After extensively illustrating and analyzing his life, the author dedicates the second half of the book to the interpretation of music.
The volume is, therefore, divided into two parts: the first, more fluent and descriptive, is the real biography divided into four historical periods: childhood, stay in Vienna before 1815, the Vienna of the Congress and finally the Vienna after the Congress.
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