The Bicentenary Year 1970: Two Contrasting Biographies

IT IS NOT MY aim in this book to discuss or even mention all the known Beethoven biographies but to focus on what I take to be the mainstream of the subject. And since the 1970 celebration of the bicentenary of Beethoven's birth stimulated a number of biographies, it seems appropriate to look at two of them before turning to more recent contributions. The two I choose are George Marek's Beethoven: Biography of a Genius (1969) and Martin Cooper's Beethoven: The Last Decade (1970; 2nd revised edition 1985). They contrast sharply with one another in style, approach, and quality, as will be seen.

George Marek (1902–87) emigrated to the United States from Vienna in 1920. After an early career in advertising he became an executive at RCA Victor, where he produced recordings by well-known musicians including Arturo Toscanini. He also wrote on music for popular journals along with a few other composer biographies before his Beethoven book came out in 1970. Here Marek offered a lively and accessible account of the life, overtly excluding any attempt to deal with the substance of the music but showing some engagement with the Beethoven literature up through the late 1960s. He also reports having “put together” a research team in Vienna, led by the eminent Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon, and was able to report some newly found facts and documents. As a general overview, as matters stood about 1970, Marek's book could serve as an adequate introduction to Beethoven biography for the lay reader.

Martin Cooper's book, Beethoven: The Last Decade, 1817–1827, is a much stronger contribution. It was the work of an experienced British music critic who also wrote on French and Russian music. As Stanley Sadie remarked, Cooper's essays show “his unusual ability to discuss a particular topic in a wide cultural context, and his writing… is marked by clarity and elegance.” His book shows what gains can be reaped from concentrating on a single large sector of Beethoven's life and work rather than the whole.