Customer Reviews

Beethoven's Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Scientific Mystery Solved

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

well i assumed that this book would be crap seeing as it is about beethoven's hair. however i read it in hopes that it would be about beethoven. it is not, it is about the nazis. honestly you read the book and it starts off with beethoven, then a name gets dropped of some famous composer or related family memeber. And in a matter of sentences you go from the death of beethoven to the rescuing of jews from denmark? what? yeah. its basically a 288 page ramble. However within those pages there are a few good quotes and some worthy information. Like someone said "who doesn't love beethoven," we all love his music and have a strong appreciation for him, but if i were you, i'd save your five dollars and buy some ice cream or something.

I thought it was an excellent read. No, it's not all about Beethoven. It's about a lock of his hair, cut from his head the day after his death. It's about a journey through time. It's about being the custodian of a relic. It's one story about the Holocaust. It's a story about compassion. But most of all, it's a story about Passion -- about the love of art and connoisseurship. And yes, it is about Beethoven, too. Very interesting little pieces of trivia throughout the book on his life, illnesses, and eccentricities. I think the DNA testing at the end of the book revealed much about this great, great composer. If you're impatient to get to those details, you might start with the last chapter, but do go to the beginning and enjoy the rest of the story. Definitely has take-away value.

Who doesn't love Beethoven? Who doesn't love Beethoven facts?
But Beethoven's Hair is a bore.

This book is analogous to submitting your theme for your 30-page semester paper and once you began to write you found your subject was worth about 3 pages.

Pumped up, poorly organized, wildly disarrayed, who can call this "masterful" except the author's mother?

This is an extraordinary story of a relic (in the literal, Biblical sense) of the great composer, passed down through generations of a German musical family, through Nazi-occupied Denmark, and to modern Arizona where it was analyzed by modern medicine. Even if you don't agree with their conclusion for the reasons for Beethoven's eccentricity, it's a great read. The chapter "A Gift in Gilleleje" made me cry: a wonderful story of people helping people in one of the worst situations in modern history.

I'm amazed to discover that this may turn out to be my favorite book ever. It sat around here for a couple of years before I read it; the title turned me off. What could possibly be interesting about the hair of the man who created some of the most powerful, affecting and effective music ever written?

However, the tale of what happened to a lock of Beethoven's hair, severed from his head the day after his death by a 15-year-old boy, is a story of honor, love, courage, hope, friendship, man's inhumanity to man, and man's triumph over the worst kinds of adversity. It's also a picture of how 20th century technology can penetrate secrets of the ages.

Martin interweaves several diverse narratives with a biography of Beethoven's health rather than one of his entire life because it's his health that is the issue here. The question involves what we can learn about the terrible physical suffering Beethoven endured from DNA testing of his hair. This question is posed against the background of what happened to the sample from the time of Beethoven's death until it reached the laboratory. The first is familiar; the second is amazing.

Martin treats his material with a sure hand, weaving the stories in and out as he takes us back and forth between the centuries and the characters. I found that I was holding my breath while reading about how the Danes helped the Jews as the Nazis breathed down their collective throats.

This is an amazing and unusual story, told with intelligence and finesse. It's not a book to be skimmed; if you do, it will look disjointed and you'll become confused. It's a book to be reveled in and thoughtfully digested. If you crave perfection, play a CD of Beethoven's last quartets while you read.

Beethoven's Hair by Russell Martin was an educational book. It was about a musician named Beethoven when he was older. He was sick with a terrible illness. His liver was smaller than a healthy one, and he coughed up blood from his windpipe. The day after his death in 1827, a man named Ferdinard Hiller snipped off a lock of hair and put it in a wooden locket to keep as a keepsake. It was somehow meant to be in the town of Gilleleje and was given to a local doctor named Kay Fremming. After his death, his daughter had possesion of the locket, and she put it up for sale at a store named Sotheby's. There, two of Beethoven's enthusiasts, Ira Brillant and Che Guevara bought it in 1994 and tried to find the cause of Beethoven's bad health.

I read this book because I enjoy learning about composers. Music is my passion and I want to learn more about the theory behind music. It's enlightening to see how many composers had difficulties and still made up beautiful music. Some were blind and some were deaf. Their music inspires me a lot.

My favorite part of the book was when Kay Fremming's daughter put the locket up for sale at Sotheby's. After it was purchased by Ira Brilliant and Che Guevara, it was in better hands. Beethoven had trusted them and they were a big help to him. They motivated him to do better and encouraged him to put enthusiasm into his music. They were trying to find the cause of Beethoven's bad health and to maybe cure it. By doing this, they could prevent the other people from having the same illness than Beethoven had had.

This book does not live up to its potential and lacks the rigor of many histories. It was actually published before the scientific answers were in. If shortened to an essay it would be more compelling. Ultimately it can be summed up as a demonstration that Beethoven was poisoned and that his deafness and other physical symptoms were entirely consistent with this.