This biography peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathing human being who composed some of the world's most iconic music. Swafford mines sources never before used in English-language biographies to reanimate the revolutionary ferment of Enlightenment-era Bonn, where Beethoven grew up and imbibed the ideas that would shape all of his future work. Swafford then tracks his subject to Vienna, capital of European music, where Beethoven built his career in the face of critical incomprehension, crippling ill health, romantic rejection, and fate's hammer, his ever-encroaching deafness. Throughout, Swafford offers insightful readings of Beethoven's key works.--Publisher description.

Bonn, electorate of Cologne -- Father, mother, son -- Reason and revolution -- Loved in turn -- Golden age -- A journey and a death -- Bildung -- Stem and book -- Unreal city -- Chains of craftsmanship -- Generalissimo -- Virtuoso -- Fate's hammer -- The good, the beautiful, and the melancholy -- The new path -- Oh, fellow men -- Heaven and Earth will tremble -- Geschrieben auf Bonaparte -- Our hearts were stirred -- That haughty beauty -- Schemes -- Darkness to light -- Thus be enabled to create -- Myths and men -- My angel, my self -- We finite beings -- The queen of the night -- What is difficult -- The sky above, the law within -- Qui venit in nomine Domini -- You millions -- Ars longa, vita brevis -- Plaudite, amici.