Living Biographies of Great Composers
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Narrated by:
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Nadia May
About this listen
Here are vivid stories of men who dreamed, struggled and suffered so that they might give expression to their divine gifts. And here are also frank stories of human beings, many of whom lived exciting lives of romance and adventure. These are Living biographies and they have the fascination of fiction illumined and strengthened with the permanent appeal of historical fact.
(P) 1997 by Blackstone Audiobooks; Published By Arrangement With Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.Related to this topic
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Compelling Narration
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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Entertaining glitz glam smoke and mirrors - not the whole story.
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Episodes
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Performance
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Story
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Just listen!
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X
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- Narrated by: Laurence Fishburne
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Experience a bold take on this classic autobiography as it’s performed by Oscar-nominated Laurence Fishburne. In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American dream and the inherent racism in a society that denies its non-White citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.
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it's Nearly perfect
- By Kerry on 09-16-20
By: Malcolm X, and others
What listeners say about Living Biographies of Great Composers
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Jay Quintana
- 08-10-03
Nice mini-biographies, but...
No music. I was hoping the narration (which is okay, not great) would be broken up now and again with samples from the composers' works.
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23 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Jack Atherton
- 09-23-21
Sloppy production
Like music without bar lines, the chapters of this book cannot be accessed: each alleged audio chapter leaves you between composers, such that if you want to hear about Beethoven for example you must guess which chapter he might be hiding in and then scroll around to find the poor fellow - who would be even more furious than I was with the sloppiness of this production.
Substantively the text is a pleasant introduction to these composers. Ms. May is as always brisk and professional though the accents become trying.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Nanying Jia
- 06-12-21
Not a Serious Book
If you are interested in learning the great arts of these composers and the impact of their music work, this is not the book for you. The narrator did a decent job but alas the book was poorly conceived. The focus of the book is clearly on the private lives of the composers the author covered (one chapter for each composer), especially their love lives. At the end of each chapter, I have no idea why that particular composer was considered "great", because the most common theme seemed to be how many women the composer was involved with over his lifetime. The accuracy of the historical events is also questionable. For example, did Beethoven really meet Mozart? Other books I read always treated this with some caution as many believed that the historic record was pretty sketchy on this one. But the author of this book described it with total certainty. According to the book author, not only did Beethoven meet Mozart, he actually took a few music lessons from him!
I thought at first that I could at least learn something about other aspects of the composers' lives, if not their artistic work. But I finally stopped at Wagner, and saw no reason to finish listening.
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