54 OCTOBER 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL volume and the fifth were completed from Thayer’s notes by composer and musicologist Hugo Riemann (1849-1919) and published in 1907-1908. While Thayer’s guiding principle was “an ounce of historical accuracy is worth a pound of rhetorical flourish,” his prose is anything but dry. He also succeeded in his biographic endeavor because, as he told his translator, Deiters, “I have resisted the temptation to discuss the character of Beethoven’s works and to make such a discussion the foundation.” He avoided discussions of the philosophy, meaning, structure, and evaluation of Beethoven’s opus, and concentrated on his personality and life events, except for, in the Victorian era, prying into his sentimental life. Thayer showed both sides of Beethoven’s character: the musical genius and generous man, his aesthetic, groundbreaking vision and his sweetness, as well as his uncouth, abrupt manners, his occasional dishonesty, and his litigious, controlling misanthropy. He was, indeed, angel and devil at the same time. The first English edition of the work, assembled from Thayer’s original manuscript, his notes, and the published German translation, was published in 1921. Its author was American musicologist and music critic Henry E. Krehbiel (1854-1923), who commented: Thayer’s “industry, zeal, keen power of analysis, candor, and fair-mindedness won the confidence of all with whom he came into contact except the literary charlatans whose romances he was bent on destroying in the interest of the verities of history.” More than 100 years later, Thayer’s is still the definitive biography of Beethoven. The eminent literary critic Van Wyck Brooks wrote: “The work was a characteristic product of the Yankee mind [when] hero-worship flourished in Boston. … Thayer conceived his passion for Beethoven while still at Harvard. All the existing accounts of the composer were a tissue of romantic tales Classical music in Boston, and Beethoven symphonies in general, were then the rage. A portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven by Joseph Willibrord Mähler that was once owned by Alexander Thayer and now belongs to the New York Public Library. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY and errors, and Thayer resolved at once to write the great biography. … Thayer’s life of Beethoven had long been a German classic when it first appeared in America in 1920. … [W]ith his calm and logical mind, scrupulous, magnanimous, and spacious … [he] had set out to describe for posterity the great man as he was …with all his warts; and his patient realism and all but inexhaustible industry had created an irreplaceable and masterly portrait.” The latest reprint of Thayer’s Life of Beethoven (1967), updated with the latest research and newly discovered material, was that of musicologist and conductor Elliot Forbes (1917-2006). b In addition to being the site where the biography was written, Trieste shares two other links with Beethoven. The composer’s famous piano sonata, Moonlight, Opus 27, Number 2 (1801-1802),
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODIyMDU=