Margaret Mikulska on Beethoven biographies:

>...but if I had to omit every book that agrees with Solomon about the IB,
>there would be almost nothing left.

Yes, very true and that's one of the reasons why it's so difficult to
recommend an up-to-date reliable biography, available in bookshops and
libraries. Such a book simply doesn't exist, at least not in English or
German and, I guess, also not in French, Spanish, Italian et cetera. These
last 20 years I've done my utmost to write a reliable one and it can be
read on my website, but who reads Dutch?

>The most deplorable thing is that Sieghard Brandenburg, in a footnote in
>Henle's edition of LvB's collected letters, claims that Solomon solved the
>riddle definitely.

Yes, that's very regrettable indeed, particularly because I know -by inside
information- that there's an unpublished Beethoven letter in which he wrote
some striking and amazing lines about the Brentano family. IMHO these lines
are enough to send the hypothesis for Antonie to the dustbin forever. The
letter belongs to a private collection and the owner, living in Paris, is
a member of an old noble family. He's unwilling to publish it. For
Beethoven researchers this is almost a torture!

Joyce Maier
www.ademu.com/Beethoven