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JOHN SUCHET'S BOOKS ABOUT BEETHOVEN |
John has published five books on the life of Beethoven. The latest is an elegantly produced coffee table book, The Treasures of Beethoven, containing facsmilies of important letters, manuscripts, and sketches. John is currently working on a sixth book on the great composer, which will focus in detail on Beethoven's childhood and teenage years.
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My Bonnie
John's revelation that his beautiful wife Bonnie, the love of his
life, was suffering from Dementia brought an outpouring of sympathy and concern. His book My Bonnie is a moving
and honest account of one man's love, loneliness and despair.
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Treasures of Beethoven
In August 2008 John published his fifth book on Beethoven, Treasures of Beethoven, commissioned by Carlton Books/André Deutsch. This is a unique look into Beethoven’s life. The book contains facsimiles of original documents, such as the Heiligenstadt Testament, the Letter to the Immortal Beloved, as well as other letters, manuscripts and musical sketches. These can be removed from the page, unfolded and studied. The book also contains several hundred portraits, drawings, landscapes, and pictures of artifacts.
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The book is handsomely produced and comes in an elegant slipcase.
As with all John’s books, it is available from www.amazon.co.uk and www.amazon.com, as well as in bookshops.
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Classic FM Friendly Guide to Beethoven
In January 2006 Classic FM radio, to which John is a frequent contributor, commissioned him to write their Classic FM Friendly Guide to Beethoven. The book, with contributions from Classic FM’s Station Manager, was published in August 2006.
The Classic FM Friendly Guide differs from all the many thousands of books on Beethoven, in that it concentrates primarily on Beethoven’s life. This is a book for every lover of Beethoven’s music.
It will tell you whether Beethoven was in love when he wrote a particular piece, or where he was living. What was the inspiration? What effect did his deafness have on his life and music? Who were his friends and loves? Did he drink too much?
This book brings you Beethoven the man.
The Friendly Guide is available from bookshops, as well as from Classicfm.com and Amazon.co.uk
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The Last Master
John’s trilogy The Last Master, a three-part biographical novel of Beethoven, was published to great acclaim in the late 1990’s.
The three books, written as a series of novels but sticking scrupulously to the known facts, bring Beethoven’s personality to life, set against the turbulent backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.
The three novels in The Last Master series are available from Amazon.co.uk, and as a special order from bookshops. Tell your local bookshop to order them from publishers Time Warner. Sadly the boxed set is no longer available. |
Passion and Anger
Volume 1
The Last Master is a magnificent fictional biography of Ludwig van Beethoven, arguably the greatest composer of all time. Beginning before his birth and ending with the famous Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802, Beethoven's acknowledgement that his deafness was incurable, the opening volume follows the prodigy as he emerges from the shadow of his father's thwarted ambitions to cultivate his own unique place in the musical life of Vienna, Europe's musical capital but a city caught up in the war against Napoleon.
John Suchet brilliantly re-creates the defining experiences on Beethoven's path to greatness. His first public performance at the age of seven; how he dazzled Mozart on their one and only meeting; his father's descent into alcoholism and his mother's tragic early death; and, as if mourning a brother, the devastation Mozart's death effected on the 22-year-old Beethoven's personality and developing musical vision.
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Passion and Pain
Volume 2
Passion and Pain, the second volume, depitcts the composer at the height of his powers - yet all the time beset by his deafness, the greatest tragedy of his life. Famous throughout Europe, championed by wealthy patrons, sought out by other musicians, Beethoven's triumphs and frustrations are shared with the reader as he composes and performs the towering works of the 'heroic period' - the 'Eroica' Symphony, the 'Emperor' Concerto, the Fifth and the 'Appassionata' Sonata - and as he struggles alone in the middle of the night to hear the great music he is creating.
We learn of the great love of his life, his 'Eternally Beloved', meet the loyal friends who eased the suffering of the genius among them, encounter Johanna, the sister-in-law he despises, and witness the invasion of Vienna by French forces, as Beethoven seeks shelter from the shells in his brother's cellar. Written as a novel, though strictly in accordance with the known facts, Passion and Pain is a monumental narrative.
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Passion and Glory
Volume 3
In Passion and Glory, the concluding volume, the reader witnesses the great dramas of the composer's last years. This is the era of the 'Battle' Symphony, the Seventh, and the 'Ode To Joy', of monumental pieces composed in solitude and performed with ferocious energy. After his love for his 'Eternally Beloved' is consigned to the past, we witness Beethoven's return to Vienna in 1812, a period of glorious creativity amid a city celebrating the defeat of Napoleon. But we also see a genius, divinely blessed, being unjustly punished as disease ravages Ludwig's body and he becomes increasingly deaf.
Through a vivid narrative culminating in the remarkable moment of his death on 26 March 1827, the 'raging at the fates' epiphany, John Suchet invests Beethoven with a tragic grandeur missing from conventional biographies and brings to stunning life the extraordinary story of the Last Master's personal anguish and artistic triumph.
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