Beethoven Variations

From the author of the bestselling Darwin: A Life in Poems, Ruth Padels new collection follows in the footsteps of one of the worlds greatest composers, Beethoven, and investigates what his life and music might mean to us today Two hundred and fifty years since Beethoven was born, Ruth Padel goes on a personal search for him, retracing his steps through war-torn Europe of the early nineteenth century, delving into his music, letters, diaries and the conversation books he used when deaf, to uncover the man behind the legend. Her quest, exploring the life of one of the most creative artists who ever lived, turns more personal than she expects, taking her into the sources of her own creativity and musicality. From a deeply musical family herself, Padels parents met through music, and she grew up playing chamber music on viola Beethovens instrument as a child. Her fathers grandfather, a concert pianist born on the GermanDanish border, studied in Leipzig with a friend of Beethoven before immigrating to the UK. The poems in this illuminating biography in verse conjure not only Beethovens life and personality, but her own music-making and love both of the European music-making tradition to which her fathers family belongs, and to the continent itself Europe.