Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved: Solving the Mystery

While Beethoven poured his heart into a host of emotionally tortured compositions, "he did so just twice through the medium of written words." Readers of Walden’s first effort who are not themselves Beethoven scholars may find themselves murmuring, "Thank God." Driven by an apparently insatiable need to convince his readers of the identity of the composer’s 'immortal beloved,’ Walden is firmly in the "Bettina Brentano" camp and sniffs condescendingly at the recent "ascendency of the "Anti-Bettina camp" spawning a new generation of Bettina scholars "trained…to disbelieve…almost everything that Bettina wrote or did." Walden’s lifelong profession (he’s a retired lawyer) has perhaps colored his ability to write clean and persuasive prose without adding clunky organizational devices like a "Summary of Crucial Evidence" or "Synopsis & Conclusion." If the material wasn’t so dry, it might be amusing. This is a book that only a scholar could love. (Feb.)