THAYER'S LIFE OF BEETHOVEN edited by Elliot Forbes. 1 volumes, 1,136 pages. Princeton. $25.
It was Richard Wagner who called Beethoven "a world walking among men." The world was, of course, his music, and there is no more striking example of a world so self-contained or so apparently independent of the man who created it. All of the conscious or subconscious control that Beethoven was capable of seems to have gone into the musicleaving none for the day-by-day business of living. The human Beethoven could not add, could not learn the rules of grammar, and could not master his emotions. For a...