21 Dec 2005

Beethoven: The Universal Composer

http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=3814

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund Morris discussed his new book, "Beethoven: The Universal Composer." The Library's Music Division cosponsored the event with the Center for the Book. Morris, a classically trained pianist, has studied Beethoven and his music for 40 years. "Of all the great composers, Beethoven is the most enduring in his appeal to dilettantes and intellectuals alike," Morris writes. "What draws them is Beethoven's universality, his ability to embrace the whole range of human emotion, from dread of death to love of life--and the metaphysics beyond--reconciling all doubts and conflicts in a catharsis of sound."