Synopses & Reviews
This account of Beethoven reveals the life and times of a creative musician in Bonn and Vienna in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While paying due regard to the image of Beethoven as one of the most single-minded composers in the history of music, this biography places his work in the context of the musical life of the period. Through an understanding of the changing nature of musical patronage, the private and public concert, the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on culture and society--in addition to the effects of Beethoven's increasing deafness and his difficult relationships with both patrons and the musical institutions of the day--a varied and dynamic picture of the life and career of the musical genius emerges.
Review
'The Life of Beethoven by David Wyn Jones in the Cambridge Musical Lives series is so clear to a non-specialist and so elegant as it weaves the public and private lives together, that I intend to get all the other books in the series.' Antonia Fraser, The Sunday Times
Review
'Here, at last, is a Beethoven who behaves like a real composer. That he does so is thanks to the careful accumulation of circumstantial detail with which Wyn Jones, a dispassionate and even-handed historian, fleshes out his subject's life.' BBC Music Magazine
Review
' ... this book gives a better, more rounded picture of the Viennese environment in Beethoven's years there than any other Beethoven biography I know.' The Times Higher Literary Supplement
Review
' ... Jones brilliantly fulfills his promise to contextualize Beethoven ... No matter how smart about Beethoven you think you are you will find something of use here. And you will also be entertained. Jones is to be much congratulated. There is a real need for a short biography that is rich in context: Jones has filled the void.' The Beethoven Journal
Synopsis
An account of Beethoven's life as a creative musician.
Synopsis
'My compositions bring me in a good deal. I state my price and they pay.' Beethoven was an inspired composer but he was also a working musician with sound commercial sense. This account of Beethoven reveals the life of a creative musician in Bonn and Vienna in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It describes his early years as a court musician, his attempt to pursue a public career as a pianist-composer, the effects of increasing deafness, and his difficult relationships with patrons and musical institutions of the day.
Synopsis
This account of Beethoven reveals the life of a creative musician in Bonn and Vienna in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It describes his early years as a court musician, his public career as a pianist-composer and his difficult relationships with patrons and musical institutions of the day.
Table of Contents
1. The young courtier; 2. A new career in Vienna; 3. Cursing his creator and his existence; 4. Drama and symphony; 5. Patrons and patriotism; 6. Empires of the mind; 7. Towards a public comeback; 8. Facing death.