Bach's Musical Universe
The Composer and His Work
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Narrated by:
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Paul Heitsch
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By:
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Christoph Wolff
About this listen
A concentrated study of Johann Sebastian Bach's creative output and greatest pieces, capturing the essence of his art.
Throughout his life, renowned and prolific composer Johann Sebastian Bach articulated his views as a composer in purely musical terms; he was notoriously reluctant to write about his life and work. Instead, he methodically organized certain pieces into carefully designed collections. These benchmark works, all of them without parallel or equivalent, produced a steady stream of transformative ideas that stand as paradigms of Bach's musical art.
In this companion volume to his Pulitzer Prize-finalist biography, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, leading Bach scholar Christoph Wolff takes his cue from his famous subject. Wolff delves deeply into the composer's own rich selection of collected music, cutting across conventional boundaries of era, genre, and instrument. Emerging from a complex and massive oeuvre, Bach's Musical Universe is a focused discussion of a meaningful selection of compositions - from the famous Well-Tempered Clavier, violin and cello solos, and Brandenburg Concertos to the "St. Matthew Passion", "Art of Fugue", and "Mass in B-minor".
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Academic Hubris
- By John on 10-31-14
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Botticelli's Secret
- The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance
- By: Joseph Luzzi
- Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Some 500 years ago, Sandro Botticelli, a painter of humble origin, created work of unearthly beauty. An intimate associate of Florence’s unofficial rulers, the Medici, he was commissioned by a member of their family to execute a near-impossible project: to illustrate all 100 cantos of The Divine Comedy by the city’s greatest poet, Dante Alighieri. A powerful encounter between poet and artist, sacred and secular, earthly and evanescent, these drawings produced a wealth of stunning images but were never finished.
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Great story
- By Chris M on 12-09-22
By: Joseph Luzzi
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Wagnerism
- Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
- By: Alex Ross
- Narrated by: Alex Ross
- Length: 28 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international best seller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics - an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and violence.
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Not Just for Wagner Experts!
- By Rupert Pupkin on 09-26-20
By: Alex Ross
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Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
- By: Christopher de Hamel
- Narrated by: Christopher de Hamel
- Length: 17 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Coming face to face with an important illuminated manuscript in the original is rather like meeting a very famous person. We may all pretend that a well-known celebrity is no different from anyone else, and yet there is an undeniable thrill in actually meeting and talking to a person of world stature. The idea for this book, which is entirely new, is to invite the listener into an intimate conversation with a selection of the most famous manuscripts in existence and to let each of those manuscripts illuminate the Middle Ages and sometimes the modern world too.
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I've been waiting a long time for a book like this
- By Robert on 04-15-18
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The Golden Ratio
- The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number
- By: Mario Livio
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Throughout history, thinkers from mathematicians to theologians have pondered the mysterious relationship between numbers and the nature of reality. In this fascinating book, Mario Livio tells the tale of a number at the heart of that mystery: phi, or 1.6180339887.... This curious mathematical relationship, widely known as "The Golden Ratio", was discovered by Euclid more than 2,000 years ago. Since then it has shown a propensity to appear in the most astonishing variety of places.
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Tedious Listen
- By Amanda Halsdorff on 10-25-14
By: Mario Livio
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Da Vinci's Ghost
- Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image
- By: Toby Lester
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Toby Lester, author of the award-winning The Fourth Part of the World, masterfully crafts yet another century-spanning saga of people and ideas in this epic story of Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic drawing of a man inscribed in a circle and a square. Over time, the nearly 550-year-old ink-on-paper sketch has transformed into a collective symbol of the nature of genius, the beauty of the human form, and the universality of the human spirit.
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Haunting Expierience
- By Paul on 02-10-12
By: Toby Lester
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Twelve Caesars
- Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern (Bollingen Series)
- By: Mary Beard
- Narrated by: Mary Beard
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book - against a background of today’s “sculpture wars” - Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famous in the Western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors, especially the “Twelve Caesars”, from the ruthless Julius Caesar to the fly-torturing Domitian.
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This foray into art history is a disappointment.
- By Stephen J Chiulli on 11-10-21
By: Mary Beard
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The Light Ages
- The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
- By: Seb Falk
- Narrated by: Seb Falk
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk.
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Fascinating exploration of medieval science
- By Celia on 07-05-21
By: Seb Falk
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Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely
- By: Andrew S. Curran
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world's first comprehensive Encyclopedie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity - for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality.
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lifelong coverage of his life.
- By Michael Daly on 03-22-21
By: Andrew S. Curran
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When God Spoke Greek
- The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible
- By: Timothy Michael Law
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Septuagint, the name given to the translation of the Hebrew scriptures between the third century BC and the second century AD, played a central role in the Bible's history. Many of the Hebrew scriptures were still evolving when they were translated into Greek, and these Greek translations, along with several new Greek writings, became Holy Scripture in the early Church. Yet gradually the Septuagint lost its place at the heart of Western Christianity.
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A popular & much-needed intro to the Septuagint
- By Jacobus on 06-14-14
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Although we have heard the music of J. S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still comes across only as an enigmatic figure in a single familiar portrait. As we mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, author Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that brings to life this towering figure of the Baroque era. This engaging new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances of the last half-century of Bach scholarship.
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For a book about Mozart, not much Mozart.
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Beethoven
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The iconic image of Beethoven is of him as a lone genius: hair wild, fists clenched, and brow furrowed. Beethoven may well have shaped the music of the future, but he was also a product of his time, influenced by the people, politics, and culture around him. Oxford scholar Laura Tunbridge offers an alternative history of Beethoven's career, placing his music in contexts that shed light on why particular pieces are valued more than others, and what this tells us about his larger-than-life reputation.
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Engaging, interesting, nice format
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What to Listen for in Music
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In this fascinating analysis of how to listen to both contemporary and classical music analytically, eminent American composer Aaron Copland offers provocative suggestions that will bring listeners a deeper appreciation of the most viscerally rewarding of all art forms.
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Started common, ended uncommon
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By: Aaron Copland
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Beethoven
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Jan Swafford's biographies have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathing human being who composed some of the world's most iconic music.
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Huge book - musical reader appreciates best
- By DMgraphicGlass on 01-20-15
By: Jan Swafford
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Bach
- Music in the Castle of Heaven
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- Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
- Length: 21 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic portraits of Bach every morning and evening on the stairs of his parents’ house, where it hung for safety during World War II. He has been studying and performing Bach ever since, and is now regarded as one of the composer's greatest living interpreters. The fruits of this lifetime's immersion are distilled in this remarkable book, grounded in the most recent Bach scholarship but moving far beyond it.
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Brilliant book badly presented
- By David Steinsaltz on 03-22-15
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Johann Sebastian Bach
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Has all the boring details...
- By L. Jensen on 05-14-19
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Mozart
- A Life
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- Narrated by: Robert Ian Mackenzie
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Liszt once said that Mozart composed more bars than a trained copyist could write in a lifetime. Mozart's gift and skill with instruments was also remarkable as he mastered all of them except the harp. For example, no sooner had the clarinet been invented and introduced than Mozart began playing and composing for it. In addition to his many insights into Mozart's music, Johnson also challenges the many myths that have followed Mozart, including those about the composer's health, wealth, religion, and relationships.
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For a book about Mozart, not much Mozart.
- By LZ on 04-15-15
By: Paul Johnson
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Beethoven
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The iconic image of Beethoven is of him as a lone genius: hair wild, fists clenched, and brow furrowed. Beethoven may well have shaped the music of the future, but he was also a product of his time, influenced by the people, politics, and culture around him. Oxford scholar Laura Tunbridge offers an alternative history of Beethoven's career, placing his music in contexts that shed light on why particular pieces are valued more than others, and what this tells us about his larger-than-life reputation.
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Engaging, interesting, nice format
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Started common, ended uncommon
- By Sher from Provo on 06-05-24
By: Aaron Copland
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Beethoven
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- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
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Huge book - musical reader appreciates best
- By DMgraphicGlass on 01-20-15
By: Jan Swafford
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Bach
- Music in the Castle of Heaven
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- Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
- Length: 21 hrs and 43 mins
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John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic portraits of Bach every morning and evening on the stairs of his parents’ house, where it hung for safety during World War II. He has been studying and performing Bach ever since, and is now regarded as one of the composer's greatest living interpreters. The fruits of this lifetime's immersion are distilled in this remarkable book, grounded in the most recent Bach scholarship but moving far beyond it.
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Brilliant book badly presented
- By David Steinsaltz on 03-22-15
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Fryderyk Chopin
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- By: Dr. Alan Walker
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 23 hrs and 28 mins
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Based on 10 years of research and a vast cache of primary sources located in archives in Warsaw, Paris, London, New York, and Washington, D.C., Alan Walker's monumental Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times is the most comprehensive biography of the great Polish composer to appear in English in more than a century. Walker's work is a corrective biography, intended to dispel the many myths and legends that continue to surround Chopin.
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This book is a masterpiece
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By: Dr. Alan Walker
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The Cello Suites
- J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece
- By: Eric Siblin
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One fateful evening, journalist Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites and began an epic quest that would unravel three centuries of intrigue, politics, and passion. Winner of the Mavis Gallant Prize for Nonfiction and the McAuslan First Book Prize, The Cello Suites weaves together three dramatic narratives: the disappearance of Bach's manuscript in the 18th century; Pablo Casals's discovery and popularization of the music in Spain in the late-19th century; and Siblin's infatuation with the suites in the present day.
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Pace and voice acting
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By: Eric Siblin
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Language of the Spirit
- An Introduction to Classical Music
- By: Jan Swafford
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
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In Language of the Spirit, renowned music scholar Jan Swafford argues that we have it all wrong: classical music has something for everyone and is accessible to all. Ranging from Gregorian chant to Handel's Messiah, from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons to the postmodern work of Philip Glass, Swafford is an affable and expert guide to the genre. He traces the history of Western music, introduces listeners to the most important composers and compositions, and explains the underlying structure and logic of their music.
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Great intro to various important composers & works
- By Jay G on 06-14-18
By: Jan Swafford
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Great Piano Works Explained
- By: Catherine Kautsky, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Catherine Kautsky
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The glorious repertoire for solo piano includes many of classical music’s most beloved masterpieces. In these 24 musically rich lectures, you’ll dig deeply into this magnificent tradition, in an in-depth exploration of the art of listening. With Professor Kautsky’s inspired guidance and expert playing, you’ll highlight key works of each composer, and unpack their structure, the musical materials that drive them, and the specific features that affect listeners so strongly, giving you a clear grounding in how to approach and hear this great music.
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Highly recommended!!
- By Meichiko on 10-27-22
By: Catherine Kautsky, and others
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Beethoven's Shadow
- By: Jonathan Biss
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 1 hr and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The American pianist Jonathan Biss is known to audiences throughout the world for his artistry, musical intelligence and deeply felt interpretations. What is less known until now is that Jonathan Biss writes about music in a most compelling and engaging way. For anyone who has ever enjoyed a Beethoven concert or a Beethoven recording or one of the many films about Beethoven, this audiobook is an inspiring listening experience. For those of you who have heard Beethoven in concert or listened to a Beethoven recording, Jonathan Biss takes you behind the scenes of those performances.
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Without the music itself this makes no sense as an audiobook
- By Peter Arnberg on 02-08-18
By: Jonathan Biss
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Schubert
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- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
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Overall
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Brilliant, short-lived, incredibly prolific—Schubert is one of the most intriguing figures in music history. While his music attracts a wide audience, much of his private life remains shrouded in mystery, and significant portions of his work have been overlooked. In this major new biography, Lorraine Byrne Bodley takes a detailed look into Schubert's life, from his early years at the Stadtkonvikt to the harrowing battle with syphilis that led to his death at the age of thirty-one.
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Van Gogh
- The Life
- By: Steven Naifeh, Gregory White Smith
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 44 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Working with the full cooperation of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith have accessed a wealth of previously untapped materials. While drawing liberally from the artist's famously eloquent letters, they have also delved into hundreds of unpublished family correspondences, illuminating with poignancy the wanderings of Van Gogh's troubled, restless soul. Naifeh and Smith bring a crucial understanding to the larger-than-life mythology of this great artist.
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Empathy for a True Artist
- By Sojourning Hope on 05-04-21
By: Steven Naifeh, and others
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Delta Blues
- The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music
- By: Ted Gioia
- Narrated by: Chris Abernathy
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The blues grew out of the plantations and prisons, the swampy marshes and fertile cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. With original research and keen insights, Ted Gioia - the author of a landmark study of West Coast jazz and the critically acclaimed The History of Jazz - brings to life the stirring music of the Delta, evoking the legendary figures who shaped its sound and ethos: Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, and others.
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A well-researched history of the blues
- By Joselo on 08-19-21
By: Ted Gioia
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Socrates
- A Man for Our Times
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Acclaimed historian and best-selling author Paul Johnson’s books have been translated into dozens of languages. In Socrates: A Man for Our Times, Johnson draws from little-known resources to construct a fascinating account of one of history’s greatest thinkers. Socrates transcended class limitations in Athens during the fifth century B.C. to develop ideas that still shape the way we think about the human body and soul, including the workings of the human mind.
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Plat-Soc-Paul
- By Megasaurus on 11-17-12
By: Paul Johnson
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The Indispensable Composers
- A Personal Guide
- By: Anthony Tommasini
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 20 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Indispensable Composers, Tommasini offers his own personal guide to the canon - and what greatness really means in classical music. What does it mean to be canonical now? Who gets to say? And do we have enough perspective on the 20th century to even begin assessing it? To make his case, Tommasini draws on elements of biography, the anxiety of influence, the composer's relationships with colleagues, and shifting attitudes toward a composer's work over time.
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A little disappointed.
- By Sher from Provo on 10-19-19
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Counterpoint
- A Memoir of Bach and Mourning
- By: Philip Kennicott
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As his mother was dying, Philip Kennicott began to listen to the music of Bach obsessively. It was the only music that didn't seem trivial or irrelevant, and it enabled him to both experience her death and remove himself from it. He spent the next five years trying to learn one of the composer's greatest keyboard masterpieces, the Goldberg Variations. In Counterpoint, he recounts his efforts to rise to the challenge, and to fight through his grief by coming to terms with his memories of a difficult, complicated childhood.
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Excellent for musicians and music appreciators!
- By K on 12-01-20
By: Philip Kennicott
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Composers
- Their Lives and Works
- By: DK
- Narrated by: Richard Trinder
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Introduced with more than 90 biographical entries that trace the friendships, loves, and rivalries that inspired each musical genius and their work. Profiles offer revealing insights into what drove each individual to create the musical masterpieces - symphonies, concertos, and operatic scores - that changed the direction of classical music and are still celebrated as masterpieces today.
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Exceeded my expectations
- By PavFan on 02-21-22
By: DK