Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony is in many ways his most startlingly original. It has a programmatic content, it is in five movements, and its mood is quite different from the usual barnstorming image of the composer. Why did he want to compose such a work? Why did it take him five years to realize his vision? What was he hoping to communicate? How did he achieve it? Finally, how was the work received? David Wyn Jones addresses all these vital questions in a fascinating account of this popular work and the context in which it was written.

Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony is in many ways his most startlingly original. It has a programmatic content, it is in five movements, and its mood is quite different from the usual barnstorming image of the composer. Why did he want to compose such a work? Why did it take him five years to realize his vision? What was he hoping to communicate? How did he achieve it? Finally, how was the work received? David Wyn Jones addresses all these vital questions in a fascinating account of this popular work and the context in which it was written.

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...

Presenting a fresh picture of the life and work of Joseph Haydn, this biography captures all the complexities and contradictions of the composer's long career. In his lifetime Haydn achieved a degree of fame that easily surpassed that of Mozart and Beethoven. Later his historical significance was more restricted, regarded exclusively as the composer who first recognised the potential of the symphony and the quartet. However, Haydn had also composed operas, oratorios and church music with similar enthusiasm and self-regard. Too easily buttonholed as a Viennese composer, he interacted...

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...