- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Broadway (Oct 17 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0767903501
- ISBN-13: 978-0767903509
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16.3 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 249 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#907,514 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #27 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( B ) > Beethoven, Ludwig
- #63 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Composers & Musicians > Classical
- #67 in Books > Entertainment > Music > Biographies > Classical
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
A well-publicized 1994 Sotheby's auction listed, among other musical artifacts and ephemera on the block, a lock of Beethoven's hair. The high-bidders of the hair, two Beethoven enthusiasts, were easy enough to identify by their oddball names: one was a doctor named Che Guevara, the other a retired real estate developer named Ira Brilliant. But the real story, as author Russell Martin attempts to explain in this book, is how did the lock end up on the auction block? More important, can we learn anything from a 175-year-old snippet of hair? Somehow, author Russell Martin attempts to weave biographical information about Beethoven's life with scientific findings about his hair (the two buyers had the lock DNA-tested), as well as trace the path the hair took, from the great composer's head right into the present.
It's a tall order and one at which Martin partially succeeds. His facts about Beethoven and Ferdinand Hiller (the original keeper of the lock) are solid, but he hypothesizes at length about how the hair ended up in a small port town in Denmark during the Nazi occupation. Likewise, he spends nearly the entire second half of the book describing the lives of Guevara and Brilliant, occasionally sounding more like a press agent than a journalist. Subtitled "An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Musical Mystery Solved," Beethoven's Hair doesn't truly solve any musical mysteries, but it is a fascinating, original read for Beethoven-philes who want to learn a little bit more about their favorite composer. --Jason Verlinde
From Publishers Weekly
Six years ago an improbable pairDretired real-estate developer Ira Brilliant and a Mexican-American doctor named (remarkably) Che GuevaraDgot together to buy a lock of hair that was snipped from Beethoven's head on his deathbed by a young musician. The hair, enclosed in a glass locket, passed through the musician's family, then, during WWII, into the possession of a Danish doctor who helped smuggle Jews through Denmark into safety in Sweden. When the doctor's daughter put the locket up for sale through Sotheby's in London, Brilliant and Guevara, ardent collectors of Beethoven memorabilia, pooled their resources to buy it. They acquired it for a little over $7,000. After recounting these events in detail, Martin moves on to the "newsy" last third of the book: the two collectors submitted the hair to the most up-to-date DNA analysis, with results they and their publisher regarded as so earth shaking that the book was originally embargoed, lest word of its revelations should leak prematurely. The results, however, do not seem particularly startling, though they shed an interesting light on Beethoven's artistic integrity and the cause of his lifelong ill health. For one thing, the analysts found no trace of morphine, suggesting that the composer, often in great pain, foreswore its use so as to keep his mind clear for his work. They also found abnormally high concentrations of lead, indicating that at some time in his life Beethoven may have been subjected to lead poisoning, which would account for many of his health problems, including his deafness. That's hardly enough to make a book, however, and Martin's account is padded with a great deal of repetitious material on the collectors themselves, a long passage on the Jewish escape from Denmark and familiar tales from the composer's life. Ultimately, the book comes off as a scholarly article that got out of hand. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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First Sentence
"BEETHOVEN'S HAIR, SHELTERED FOR NEARLY two centuries inside a glass locket, was about to become the subject of rapt attention on a warm December morning in 1995." Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
"BEETHOVEN'S HAIR, SHELTERED FOR NEARLY two centuries inside a glass locket, was about to become the subject of rapt attention on a warm December morning in 1995." Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Scientific Mystery is NOT solved,
By
This review is from: Beethoven's Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Scientific Mystery Solved (Paperback)
This is a fun book about detective work to find out how a lock of Beethoven's hair that was taken just after he died ended up at an auction house and was subsequently analyzed to see what could be learnt about his illnesses.While it is an interesting read I found the author to be rather repetitive. The cover jacket states "A scientific Mystery Solved". This is wrong. What was learnt that was surprising is that Beethoven was not given morphine to alleviate his suffering. It was also learnt that he had a high lead content in his hair, but that in itself does not mean he suffered from lead poisoning; this lead could have derived from the wine he was drinking near the end.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Ode to Boredom,
By Erin W. (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Beethoven's Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Scientific Mystery Solved (Paperback)
As a Beethoven enthusiast and musician, I eagerly bought this book and thought that I wouldn't be able to put it down. Unfortunately, I put it down many times...and put it down about 3/4 of the way through and haven't picked it back up since. Its not as much about Beethoven as it is a flowery excursion into what might have happened with people who might have come into contact with the lock of his hair. It is all speculation and lots of back story, which drowns any seed of interest I had in it.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting Story In Bloated Form,
By NNNNN "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" (xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Beethoven's Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Scientific Mystery Solved (Paperback)
It is impossible to damage this book. That's because it has so much padding it probably could survive any shock.Initially you are expecting to read a story about how a lock of Beethoven's hair snipped by a 17 year old Ferdinand Hiller (the later composer) wound up by various means in the U.S. 200 years later. That interesting story could be told in about half the space taken up in this book.Beethoven dies, the hair is snipped and then we get a mini biography of Ferdinand Hiller. Beethoven is next ressurected and we get a chapter of his first decade in Vienna with much repetition. Don't worry you'll get the rest of his life a chapter here and there. Then Hiller dies and we get his obituary which retells what we got two chapters back. You get the idea. Every now and then something else about the hair and later chapters about the 2 guys who bought the lock at auction. What this book sorely needed was an editor to organize it and cut out the repetitions, paragraphs entirely made up of questions(most of which had already been answered) and unsupported speculation. When I tried to check the bibliography to find out where some of this stuff came from I was some how not surprised that there was none. Here is a case of a book that will probably work better in a Reader's Digest condensed version.
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