| Summary: | In The Unconscious Beethoven, the great English writer on music and musicians deals first with the discoverable realities as opposed to the persistent romantic misconceptions of the composer as a human being whose unyielding character troubled and distorted his personal relationships. In the second part of the book, the still familiar portrait of Beethoven (and, by extension, any other composer) as "inspired" is re-examined. The popular misconception of "musical composition by divine revelation" is approached by way of a masterly comparison between the first movement of the "Erotica" Symphony and the early sketches for it that appear in Beethoven's sketchbooks. Newman also shows that certain of Beethoven's "fingerprints" (small musical units) are repeated again and again in his melodies-and that it is there that the unconscious in composition is manifested. The analysis of only one such "fingerprint" opens the reader's mind to a new aspect or dimension of much familiar music. In a new Introduction, Irving Kolodin touches upon some of the effects of Newman's ideas on later writing and thinking about Beethoven, about the unconscious in the act of musical creation, and about composition in general.
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