# Book Request



## BillT (Nov 3, 2013)

I love the music, and I keep wishing I knew more about the composers and their times. 

I want a book that takes me back to the day and allows me to experience what it was like to be them and to be there. I want to feel what was felt in the time when Beethoven’s first piano sonata was played. I want to walk down the streets of Vienna with Mozart. Why did people dress the way they did? What were they thinking about ? What were their goals, their desires for their family? I want to be in Chopin’s drawing-room when his pieces were being played, and learned.

In short, I want to read a book that not only tells me the facts of composers’ lives, but which creates the sense of what their times were like and how the music they were composing was felt in their times. This would be a work of history and biography *and* of music. 

Thanks,

Bill


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

BillT said:


> I love the music, and I keep wishing I knew more about the composers and their times.
> 
> I want a book that takes me back to the day and allows me to experience what it was like to be them and to be there. I want to feel what was felt in the time when Beethoven's first piano sonata was played. I want to walk down the streets of Vienna with Mozart. Why did people dress the way they did? What were they thinking about ? What were their goals, their desires for their family? I want to be in Chopin's drawing-room when his pieces were being played, and learned.
> 
> ...


I would try _Nikolay Myaskovsky: The Conscience of Russian Music_, which chronicles his life and achievement during Russia's tumultuous period from the early 20th Century through Stalin's era. He was a Boris Pasternak in that his music reflects his country's turbulent changes during that time span, like Shostakovich, but more inwardly. Here's an excellent book on him that was released earlier this year.

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442231320

Enjoy.


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## JACE (Jul 18, 2014)

Of course, no single book can cover hundreds of years of classical music.

But I would recommend Stefan Zweig's _The World of Yesterday_ to help get an amazing portrait of music (and the art in general) in _fin de siècle_ Vienna. It's a fantastic memoir.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Covers a lot of history as well as people. As Steen himself says:



> The art of Biography
> Is different from Musicography.
> Musicography is about cellos
> But Biography is about fellows


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## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

Harold Schoenberg's _*Lives of the Great Composers*_


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