Background
Thayer was born at South Natick, Massachussets, on October 22, 1817. He the son of Dr. Alexander and Susanna (Bigelow) Thayer, and a descendant of Thomas Thayer who was in Braintree, Massachussets, by 1647.
(One of the compensations for the horrors of the French Re...)
One of the compensations for the horrors of the French Revolution was the sweeping away of many of the petty sovereignties into which Germany was divided, thereby rendering in our day a union of the German People and the rise of a German Nation possible. The first to fall were the numerous ecclesiastical-civil members of the old, loose confederation, some of which had played no ignoble nor unimportant part in the advance of civilization; but their day was past. The people of these states had in divers respects enjoyed a better lot than those who were subjects of hereditary rulers, and the old German saying: “It is good to dwell under the crook,” had a basis of fact. At the least, they were not sold as mercenary troops; their blood was not shed on foreign fields to support their princes’ ostentatious splendor, to enable mistresses and ill-begotten children to live in luxury and riot. But the antiquated ideas to which the ecclesiastical rulers held with bigoted tenacity had become a barrier to progress, the exceptions being too few to render their farther existence desirable. These members of the empire, greatly differing in extent, population, wealth and political influence, were ruled with few or no exceptions by men who owed their positions to election by chapters or other church corporations, whose numbers were so limited as to give full play to every sort of intrigue; but they could not assume their functions until their titles were confirmed by the Pope as head of the church, and by the Emperor as head of the confederation. Thus the subject had no voice in the matter, and it hardly need be said that his welfare and prosperity were never included among the motives and considerations on which the elections turned.
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(Excerpt from The Hebrews in Egypt: And Their Exodus It i...)
Excerpt from The Hebrews in Egypt: And Their Exodus It is obvious, when no fresh sources of informa tion have been discovered, that no new historic sketch of the Hebrews in Egypt and their Exodus, differing throughout from its innumerable predecessors, can be written, unless its author's interpretation of the old authorities be largely novel and individual; and that such an interpretation depends mainly upon his views of their character. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Thayer was born at South Natick, Massachussets, on October 22, 1817. He the son of Dr. Alexander and Susanna (Bigelow) Thayer, and a descendant of Thomas Thayer who was in Braintree, Massachussets, by 1647.
The younger Alexander attended Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachussets, and entered Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1843. He then studied at the Harvard Law School, and received the degree of bachelor of laws in 1848.
For several years he was employed in the college library at Harvard. In 1849 he went abroad and spent more than two years in Europe, studying the German language and corresponding with American newspapers. He also commenced gathering data for a life of Ludwig van Beethoven, a project which he had conceived while a student at Harvard, and which became the principal undertaking of his life. At first he intended merely to make an English translation of Anton Felix Schindler's biography of Beethoven, but as he came into possession of fresh material he decided to continue original researches and write an entirely new work.
In 1852 he returned to New York, and for a time was on the staff of the New York Tribune. He also became one of the contributors to Dwight's Journal of Music, published in Boston. His duties in New York proved so detrimental to his health that he returned to Germany in 1854, and sought Beethoven data in the Royal Library at Berlin. Because of continued ill health and straitened finances he came back to America in 1856 and was employed in cataloguing the extensive music library of Lowell Mason. Two years later, chiefly through Mason's financial assistance, he was able to return to Europe.
In Breslau he examined the Lansberger collection of Beethoven autographs; he consulted the archives of libraries at Prague, Vienna, and Bonn; he journeyed to Paris on a fruitless search for documents on the history of Bonn (Beethoven's birthplace); and in London he secured the reminiscences of Charles Neate, George Hogarth, and Philip Potter, Englishmen who had known Beethoven personally. On subsequent occasions he consulted Anselm Hüttenbrenner, Caroline van Beethoven, Ignaz Moscheles, Gerhard von Bruening, and other relatives or associates of Beethoven.
Thayer completed the first volume of his work in 1856. To Hermann Deiters, whom he had met in Bonn, he entrusted the editing and translation of the manuscript into German, and the first volume, published by Weber of Berlin, did not appear until 1866, the second was issued in 1872, and the third in 1879. The three volumes covered all but the last ten years of Beethoven's life.
Thayer never finished the last volume; a malady which caused severe headaches prevented his final writing of the notes he had arranged in chronological order. After his death in Trieste, Deiters undertook to revise the first three volumes and complete the work. He died before the task was finished, and Hugo Riemann completed it, the biography appearing in five volumes between the years 1901 and 1911.
In the meantime, Henry E. Krehbiel, the American music critic, had been preparing an English version in three volumes, based on Thayer's original manuscript in English. The World War prevented the original plans for the publication of Krehbiel's work, and it was not issued until, subsidized by the Beethoven Association, it appeared under the title The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven in 1921.
Thayer's biography of Beethoven has become the standard work on the subject. It is fair in its judgments, and makes no attempt to idealize its subject or to present a critical estimate of Beethoven's music; it deals with the composer as a man, and relates the facts of his life. Thayer also edited Signor Masoni: and Other Papers of the Late I. Brown (Berlin, 1862), and was the author of Ein kritischer Beitrag zur Beethoven-Literatur (Berlin, 1877); and The Hebrews and the Red Sea (Andover, Massachussets, 1883).
(Excerpt from The Hebrews in Egypt: And Their Exodus It i...)
(One of the compensations for the horrors of the French Re...)
In order to support himself, Thayer had entered the diplomatic service. According to several accounts, including a report of the United States consul at Trieste in 1897, he took a small post in the legation at Vienna in 1862, but the Department of State has no record of this appointment. On November 1, 1864, President Lincoln, on recommendation of Senator Charles Sumner, appointed Thayer consul at Trieste, and he retained this position until October 1, 1882. As a consul he succeeded in modifying and improving commercial relations between the merchants of Trieste and those in American ports, and for this service was decorated by the Emperor of Austria with the Iron Cross, third class.
He never married.
