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Felix Mendelssohn was a child prodigy to rival Mozart and achieved great fame during his lifetime, fêted across Europe, and composing in the widest possible range of musical genres. However, his music has also been denigrated for its elegance, charm and symmetry. This insightful biography explores the breadth of his achievements, the complexities of his privileged upbringing, and the reasons for the fluctuating nature of his reputation. Musical excerpts...
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Franz Schubert was regarded chiefly as a composer of domestic music, and during his all-too-brief life managed to publish only a quarter of his works. Without patronage and without ever becoming well known or a virtuoso, how did Schubert manage to achieve unprecedented expressivity in song composition, or to create his chamber, symphonic and piano masterpieces? And how did he reconcile the warring elements of his tempestuous personality? This vivid...
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Is there any music more instantly recognisable and beautifully scored than Tchaikovsky's wildly popular ballet Swan Lake? These and other works have become enduring classics, yet they were not uncontroversial in Tchaikovsky's day, and there are those that still wonder if his style is fundamentally European or ardently Russian. Find out more about Tchaikovsky's childhood obsession with music, his turbulent relationships with friends and colleagues,...
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When we think of Ludwig van Beethoven images of a stormy and passionate but tortured genius are brought to mind, alongside the transformative effect of his work on musical history. All of these things are true, but no artist lives in a vacuum, and even music that opens a portal onto 'the infinite realm of the spirit' has its wider context. Illustrated with music from each period, this enlightening life history tells us about Beethoven's place in society...
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Claude Debussy is regarded by many as the quintessential French composer, with music
that invited both warm applause and frosty criticism in his day. While our ears no longer
hear him as controversial, his works heralded the dawn of an artistic period founded on
innovation and experiment, and a desire to break with the past in search of new expressive
means. With never a dull moment, Debussy went from being a musical misfit at the Paris
Conservatoire...
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Johann Sebastian Bach today has a reputation as the Godfather of Western European music, as a fountainhead of classical music theory and the creator of some of the greatest works the world has ever produced. Better known as a keyboard virtuoso, Bach was not regarded as a genius in his day, so how did this headstrong and belligerent but ambitious young musician become so extremely productive? What were his influences? How did he end up in jail and...
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Polish by birth, Fryderyk Chopin made his
name in post-Revolutionary Paris and is
often depicted as the archetypal Romantic
artist - blessed with extraordinary talent
but consumed by the flame of genius,
tormented by intense and tempestuous
relationships and doomed to an early death.
But how much of this story is based on fact?
This account of Chopin's life and times
separates myth and reality and, illustrated
with numerous musical examples,...
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Famous today for his Trois Gymnopédies, Erik
Satie was an eccentric and solitary figure who
was nevertheless viewed by some as a prophet of
French musical modernism, his striking
creativity championed by Ravel and Debussy.
From tragedy and trauma in his early years,
through his time as a pianist and Parisian
provocateur at Le Chat Noir cabaret, and as
house composer to the mystical Rose+Croix cult
and beyond, Satie's eventful life is told in this
fascinating...
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Tchaikovsky declared that Mozart was 'full of divine beauty', and Schubert's wonder at the 'countless images of a brighter and better world' that Mozart was able to conjure up through his music knew no bounds. Many of us carry the image of Mozart as a transcendent genius, but what do we really know about his life and career, and indeed his music? This entertaining and informative biography takes us from Mozart's beginnings as a child prodigy to his...
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The music of Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák is suffused with natural nobility, fluency and freshness, and embodies the spirit of his native land. This revealing biography portrays Dvořák as a complex and wide-ranging composer, and explores the creation and performance of his music as well as its reception on both sides of the Atlantic, tracing his art in all its richness and variety. Musical excerpts include the Cello Concerto, the 'New World'...
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The Great Gate of Kiev resounds to the tumultuous bell rings that end Pictures an an Exhibition, one of the most magnificent and virtuosic of all piano pieces. However, to some of his contemporaries, Modest Mussorgsky was 'insane' and 'a perfect idiot'. Born into a wealthy land-owning family, what drove this tormented man and why did he suffer psychological breakdowns and alcoholism? How did he achieve his command of the realist idiom in his stage...
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