This brilliant portrayal weaves Beethoven's musical and biographical stories into their historical and artistic contexts. Lewis Lockwood sketches the turbulent personal, historical, political, and cultural frameworks in which Beethoven worked and examines their effects on his music.

"The result is that rarest of achievements, a profoundly humane work of scholarship that will or at least should appeal to specialists and generalists in equal measure" (Terry Teachout, Commentary). Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

"Lewis Lockwood has written a biography of Beethoven in which the hours that Beethoven spent writing music that is, his methods of working, his interest in contemporary and past composers, the development of his musical intentions and ideals, his inner musical life, in short have been properly integrated with the external events of his career. The book is invaluable." Charles Rosen

"Lockwood writes with poetry and clarity a rare combination. I especially enjoyed the connection that he makes between the works of Beethoven and the social and political context of their creation we feel closer to Beethoven the man without losing our wonder at his genius." Emanuel Ax

"The magnum opus of an illustrious Beethoven scholar. From now on, we will all turn to Lockwood's Beethoven: The Music and the Life for insight and instruction." Maynard Solomon