Beethoven - His Spiritual Development

First published in 1927, J. W. N. Sullivan's “Beethoven - His Spiritual Development” explores the subject of Beethoven's spirituality, which the author believes he expressed through his greatest musical compositions. Contents include: “Art and Reality”, “Music as Isolated”, “Music as Expression”, “Beethoven’s Characteristics”, “The Morality of Power”, “The Mind of Beethoven”, “The Hero”, “The End of a Period”, “Love and Money”, “The Hammerclavier Sonata”, “God the Companion”, etc. A fascinating study of Beethoven's work not to be missed by fans of classical music. John William Navin Sullivan (1886–1937) was a popular literary journalist and science writer who wrote some of the first accounts of Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity for the laymen. Sullivan was acquainted with a number of important writers in 1920s London including T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, and Aleister Crowley. Read & Co. Books is republishing this classic work now in a new edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

Great men, especially creative artists whose work lives after them, engage people's imagination for centuries. Beethoven, as man and composer, has inspired innumerable books both by his contemporaries and later writers, and it is proof of his endlessly fascinating, controversial nature that they all throw a different light on some aspect of his life and work. Since J.W.N. Sullivan wrote his book in 1927, much new information about Beethoven, his character, his illnesses, and his relationships has come to light, but it is still a valid contribution to the literature on the composer. Sullivan's basic theory is that Beethoven's greatness lies in his extraordinary perceptions, his heightened experiences and "states of consciousness," and his ability to organize and synthesize these into a musical expression of a "view of life." He asserts that Beethoven's initial despairing, then defiant struggle against his suffering--especially his deafness and resulting isolation--gives his middle-period works their heroism, and that his ultimate acceptance of it as necessary to his creativity marks the peak of his "spirituality" and gives his latest works their unparalleled sublimity.

Like many biographies, the book reveals more about the author than the subject. Sullivan, who is not a musician, offers some interesting, if sometimes extravagantly extramusical, analyses of Beethoven's works (though elsewhere he decries injecting "meaning" into music). He sees Beethoven's late fugues as outbursts of "blind and desperate energy," another battle with hostile fate; many musicians see them as another battle with counterpoint. He also makes subjective, high-handed value judgments: he detests Wagner and dismisses Bach as too religious, while Haydn and Mozart are too shallow to equal Beethoven's struggle-generated "spirituality." The book also brings up questions about beauty and greatness in art, the relationship between moral character and genius, and the impact of a man's personal experiences upon his creativity--all age-old but forever timely. --Edith Eisler