Beethovens Letters 1790-1826 by Lady Wallace - The Original Classic Edition Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition.
This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work, which is now, at last, again available to you.
Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside:
I experienced this myself, to the most remarkable degree, when I first made the attempt to arrange, in accordance with their period and substance, the hundreds of individual pages bearing neither date nor address, and I was soon convinced that a connecting text (such as Mozarts Letters have, and ought to have) would be here entirely superfluous, as even the best biographical commentary would be very dry work, interrupting the electric current of the whole, and thus destroying its peculiar effect.
...I cannot tell; but I feel to this day just as I felt to the innermost depths of my heart in the days of my youth when I first heard a symphony of Beethovens,--that a spirit breathes from it bearing us aloft with giant power out of the oppressive atmosphere of sense, stirring to its inmost recesses the heart of man, bringing him to the full consciousness of his loftier being, and of the undying within him. ... They convey, too, the knowledge of this brightest victory of genuine German intellect to those for whom the sweet Muse of Music is as a book with seven seals, and reveal, likewise, a more profound sense of Beethovens being to many who already, through the sweet tones they have imbibed, enjoy some dawning conviction of the masters grandeur, and who now more and more eagerly lend a listening ear to the intellectual clearly worded strains so skilfully interwoven, thus soon to arrive at the full and blissful comprehension of those grand outpourings of the spirit, and finally to add another bright delight to the enjoyment of those who already know and love Beethoven. All these may be regarded as the objects I had in view when I undertook to edit his Letters, which have also bestowed on myself the best recompense of my labors, in the humble conviction that by this means I may have vividly reawakened in the remembrance of many the mighty mission which our age is called on to perform for the development of our race, even in the realm of harmony,--more especially in our Father-land.
...When this may be I cannot yet tell; but at all events I may say that you shall not see me again till I have become eminent, not only as an artist, but better and more perfect as a man; and if the condition of our father-land be then more prosperous, my art shall be entirely devoted to the benefit of the poor.