Beethoven: The Music and the Life » (First Edition)

Lewis Lockwood is Fanny Peabody Professor of Music Emeritus at Harvard University. His publications include Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

An authoritative work offering a fresh look at Beethoven’s life, career, and milieu. “Magisterial” —New York Review of Books.

New York Times - Michael Kimmelman

In, Beethoven, Lockwood, an eminent Beethoven scholar and Harvard professor, has put a lifetime of study and wisdom into this far-ranging, temperate biography, which, while summarizing all sorts of specialized and academically fashionable works about Beethoven, speaks in a clear and prudent, voice.

Beethoven's music, he reminds us, has survived through difficult times because it is the exemplar of noble aspiration -- and it is beautiful. It's ''a defense against the darkness.