The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume I opens Alexander Wheelock Thayer’s monumental biography, long regarded as the foundation of all serious Beethoven scholarship. An American working from original documents and the testimony of those who knew the composer, Thayer set out to replace legend with verified fact.
This first volume covers Beethoven’s birth and youth in Bonn, his early musical training, and his arrival in Vienna, tracing the formation of the artist through his early career. Painstaking in its research and sober in its judgments, Thayer’s work established a standard of accuracy that later biographers have built upon. It remains an indispensable source for the life of one of music’s supreme figures.