For most of the last ten years of Beethoven's life, Anton Schindler was closely associated with the composer as pupil, secretary, servant, and factotum. This relationship gave him an incomparable vantage point for writing a personalized, detailed biography of the great man.

In 1840 Schindler published the first, hastily written version of the biography, which was translated into English the following year by Ignaz Moscheles, the eminent pianist and Beethoven disciple. It was not until 1860, h...