Ludwig van Beethoven: A Very Short Introduction

ISBN-13: 9780190051730 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022 / 168 str.

Mark Evan (Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Music

Opis

Throughout his life, Beethoven remained remarkably consistent in his most basic convictions about his art. He approached music as he approached life, weighing whatever occupied him from a variety of perspectives: a melodic idea, a musical genre, a word or phrase, a friend, a lover, a patron, money, politics, religion. His ability to unlock so many possibilities from each helps explain the emotional breadth and richness of his output as a whole, from theheaven-storming Ninth Symphony to the eccentric Eighth, and from the arcane Great Fugue to the crowd-pleasing Wellington's Victory.Beethoven's works are a series of variations on his life. The iconic scowl so familiar from later images of the composer is but one of many attitudes he assumed and projected through his music. Discarding tired myths about the composer, this introduction to the composer proposes a new way of listening to Beethoven by hearing his music as an expression of his entire self.

Recenzje

By altering the complex range of Beethoven's individuality through a series of cogently crafted perspectives, Mark Evan Bonds has created a captivating new account of Western music's most widely admired composer. This book will delight music lovers at all levels, for it can be read both as a stirring introduction and as a bracing reassessment. Scott Burnham, Distinguished Professor of Music, Graduate Center, City University of New York

O autorze

Mark Evan Bonds is the Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he has taught since 1992. A former editor-in-chief of Beethoven Forum, he has written widely on the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.