Copying Beethoven (2006) on Netflix
PG-1320061h 44mBiographyDramaMusic
Vienna, 1824. Beethoven races to finish his Ninth Symphony, deaf and alone. A composition student, Anna Holtz, is sent to copy the score, though he doubts a woman belongs at his side.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.7/1014,510 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes28%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ludwig van Beethoven is finishing his Ninth Symphony, and its first performance is being prepared. Deafness, loneliness and old trauma weigh on him, and he needs a copyist for the score. Anna Holtz, 23, is a conservatory student and an aspiring composer, and she is sent to assist him. He is skeptical about a woman working on his masterpiece. She is thought less of because of her sex and is taken for a serving girl, a maid, or a prostitute. Her grasp of the music lets her correct mistakes in the score. Martin Bauer, her romantic interest, has her promise to help the composer and then leave.
Cast
- Bill Stewartas Rudy
- Viktoria Dihenas Magda
- Gábor Bohusas Schuppanzigh
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Copying Beethoven (2006)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Diane Kruger's Anna Holtz is an invention. The surviving working manuscript of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was copied by two men, and the character is thought to be drawn partly from Karl Holtz, a young violinist and copyist who befriended the composer in his last years and is said to have swayed his decisions on pieces such as the Grosse Fuge.
- The film's showpiece, Ed Harris's Beethoven conducting the Ninth with secret help, embroiders a real muddle: the violinist Joseph Böhm remembered that Beethoven stood up to conduct but the real direction lay in someone else's hands, and the soloist Caroline Unger had to turn the deaf composer round to see the applause.
