Beethoven
A Life in Nine Pieces
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Narrated by:
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Laura Tunbridge
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By:
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Laura Tunbridge
About this listen
A major new biography published for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, offering a fresh, human portrayal.
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.
Each chapter focuses on a period of his life, a piece of music, and a revealing theme, from family to friends, from heroism to liberty. We discover, along the way, Beethoven's unusual marketing strategies, his ambitious concert programming, and how specific performers and instruments influenced his works. This book offers new ways to understand Beethoven and why his music continues to be valued today.
©2020 Laura Turnbridge (P)2020 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Millions of words of scholarship have been expended on the world's most famous author and his work. And yet a critical part of the puzzle, Shakespeare's library, is a mystery. For four centuries people have searched for it: in mansions, palaces, and libraries; in riverbeds, sheep pens, and partridge coops; and in the corridors of the mind. Yet no trace of the Bard's manuscripts, books, or letters has ever been found.
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Dismissed Mary Sidney Herbert without explanation
- By Lisa on 07-30-19
By: Stuart Kells
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Natasha's Dance
- A Cultural History of Russia
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 29 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Beginning in the 18th century with the building of St. Petersburg - a 'window on the West' - and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself - its character, spiritual essence and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works - by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall - with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world.
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A Kaleidescopic panorama of an enigmatic culture.
- By Tarquin on 02-13-19
By: Orlando Figes
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When Paris Sizzled
- The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends
- By: Mary McAuliffe
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, les Annees folles, when Parisians emerged from the horrors of war to find that a new world greeted them - one that reverberated with the hard metallic clang of the assembly line, the roar of automobiles, and the beat of jazz. Mary McAuliffe traces a decade that saw seismic change on almost every front, from art and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, most notably, behavior.
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Informative, but no sizzle
- By OzEnigma on 06-01-17
By: Mary McAuliffe
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A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
- 1599
- By: James Shapiro
- Narrated by: James Shapiro
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Abridged
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1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England. During that year, Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen.
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Note!--Abridged version
- By Scott on 01-05-16
By: James Shapiro
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Genius & Anxiety
- How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947
- By: Norman Lebrecht
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
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Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent volume, beautifully designed, is an urgent and necessary celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.
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Post-anxiety
- By Amaze on 03-27-20
By: Norman Lebrecht
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The Man in the Red Coat
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker, and man of science with a famously complicated private life....
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Pathetic narration makes this title unbearable
- By Chris Quigg on 02-27-20
By: Julian Barnes
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Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies
- How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature
- By: Elizabeth Winkler
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
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The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most horrible, unspeakable subject in the history of English literature. Scholars admit that the Bard’s biography is a “black hole,” yet to publicly question the identity of the god of English literature is unacceptable, even (some say) “immoral.” In Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, journalist and literary critic Elizabeth Winkler sets out to probe the origins of this literary taboo.
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Excellent!
- By Virgil Tracy on 06-03-23
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Shakespeare in a Divided America
- What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future
- By: James Shapiro
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The plays of William Shakespeare are rare common ground in the United States. For well over two centuries, Americans of all stripes—presidents and activists, soldiers and writers, conservatives and liberals alike—have turned to Shakespeare’s works to explore the nation’s fault lines. In a narrative arching from Revolutionary times to the present day, leading scholar James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare’s four-hundred-year-old tragedies and comedies in illuminating the many concerns on which American identity has turned.
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An Entertaining History Lesson
- By David on 08-17-20
By: James Shapiro
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The Man Who Invented Fiction
- How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World
- By: William Egginton
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In the early 17th century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a novel. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from studying too many novels of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That story, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history.
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Very Interesting and Informative, but Poorly Read
- By LCorSMT on 06-21-23
By: William Egginton
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Alan Lomax: A Biography
- The Man Who Recorded the World
- By: John Szwed
- Narrated by: Scott Sowers
- Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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The remarkable life and times of the man who popularized American folk music and created the science of song. Folklorist, archivist, anthropologist, singer, political activist, talent scout, ethnomusicologist, filmmaker, concert and record producer, Alan Lomax is best remembered as the man who introduced folk music to the masses. Lomax began his career making field recordings of rural music for the Library of Congress and by the late 1930s brought his discoveries to radio, including Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Burl Ives.
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They Done Good
- By DonnaMarie113 on 06-26-22
By: John Szwed
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Without the music itself this makes no sense as an audiobook
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Short but informative look at a legend
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Unusable
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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.
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Elements of Jazz: From Cakewalks to Fusion
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Jazz is a uniquely American art form, one of America's great contributions to not only musical culture, but world culture, with each generation of musicians applying new levels of creativity that take the music in unexpected directions that defy definition, category, and stagnation. Now you can learn the basics and history of this intoxicating genre in an eight-lecture series that is as free-flowing and original as the art form itself.
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A Disappointingly Distorted, Myopic View Of Jazz
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What listeners say about Beethoven
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jonathan Golden
- 08-07-24
Well done
This is a very nice alternative to the traditional biography. It introduced me to some of the more obscure works of an artist I thought I knew well.
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- Alex Scriabin
- 04-25-23
Laura Turnbridge is an excellent author & narrator
I just finished "Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces" on audible and have started reading the author's book on Schumann's late style. The concept for this book was extremely well-thought-out. Biographies of musicians tend to fall into two camps: those that focus more on analyzing the works of the artists, and those that focus more on biographical details. Laura is able to weave both together. The man emerges in the context of his works, and she manages to provide insights into Vienna of his day as well. I learned about Viennese coffee culture at the time, the effect of the Napoleonic wars on the city and its cultural institutions, and so forth. Beethoven's relationship with society at large as well as his friendships and family relations are woven into the tapestry of the narrative. Instead of opting for a typical chronological biography, Laura builds the biography around the works discussed. The chapter on the "Eroica" and "Fidelio" were two of my favorites. Warmly recommended. This was a pleasure to listen to: not overly long and the author is an excellent narrator.
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- George
- 07-04-22
Engaging, interesting, nice format
I really liked the nine chapter format with each chapter revolving around a particular piece(s) of Beethoven’s music. This prompted me to listen to more Beethoven than I had before. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I hope to find other biographies of classical musicians that use the same format. Highly recommended!
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2 people found this helpful