The Lives and Times of the Great Composers

By Michael Steen

Book Overview

A grand and panoramic biograhical history of the giants of classical music, The Lives and Times of Great Composers is a new, unique, and lovingly constructed modern reference--and a beguiling read which you will return to again and again.

Interlinked yet self-contained, each chapter distills the life of one or more composers, set against the social, political, musical, and cultural background of the time. Read the story of Bach, the respectable burgher, much of whose vast output was composed amidst petty turf disputes in Luteran Leipzig; or the ugly, argumentative Beethoven, obsessed by his laundry; or Mozart, the over-exploited infant prodigy whose untimely death was shrouded in rumor; or the ghastly death of Donizetti and Smetana. Read about Verdi, who composed against the background of the Italian Risorgimento, or about the family life of the Wagners; and Brahms, who rose from the slums of Hamburg to become a devotee of beer and coffee in fin-de-siecle Vienna, a cultural capital bent on destroying Mahler.

Michael Steen paints a vivid portrait of the tumultuous times in which these brilliant, yet flawed, human beings labored--a tour of 350 years of European history. From Handel's London and the speculative financial frenzy of the "South Sea bubble"; to the courts of petty German princelings and the ornate and sleazy Dresden; to the astonishingly creative Vienna of Beethoven and Schubert; to the opera in 19th-century Paris and Bizet in the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune; to the Majorca of Chopin, to the Russia of Tchaikovsky and the Siege of Leningrad, just one of the many horrors which Shostakovich had to survive. We encounter, too, painters such as Renoir and Manet, literary figures like Zola, Proust, and Dostoyevsky, and religious leaders such as Pope Pius IX and Cardinal Newman. Great Composers paints in broad brushstrokes the culture of a continent far wider than music.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195222180
• ISBN13: 9780195222180
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 992 Pages
• Weight: 3.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.2" x 6.7" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A necessary prelude to reading any anthology of Western Music 🎶.

The author creates the times, events and surroundings of the composers. Using this supporting information, the reader truly appreciates the hardships that the composers endured. PS. When reading this 📖 , refer to the maps provided. Also, be aware of the inserts highlighted by an asterisk, etc.

Chock Full of Facts, Insights and Wit

"[Mad King] Ludwig had been given Wagner's 100,000-word essay 'Opera and Drama' when he was thirteen years old. It was thus no wonder that the boy suffered from hallucinations.' - The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, pg. 474 There are startling, or new, or witty observations like this on practically every page of this meticulously researched 984-page book that chronicles the lives of the great composers and the times in which they lived. I have been reading such books for nigh on fifty years and yet I found something new and instructive frequently in this marvelously written book. Michael Steen studied at London's Royal College of Music but later made a career in the City. He writes in a graceful style that urges the reader on. There are chapters devoted to individual composers (or groups such as 'Glinka and The Five') from Handel to Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten. Lesser composers are remarked upon in the many interesting digressions contained within the main chapters. One certainly gets a sense of the social and political ambiance of the times under discussion, and Steen makes an effort to draw connections between those events and the works written in their midst. There are many illustrations including maps, pictures of the composers and other musicians and other cultural figures of the times. There is something here for the neophyte as well as for the grizzled music history buff like me. Clearly great thought was given by the author and by Oxford University Press to the arrangement and presentation of the book and it could hardly be bettered. An enthusiastic recommendation. (Even in spite of the few howlers like this one: When talking about Dvorák's sojourn in the US, Britisher Steen says the composer spent time in Spillville in 'Iowa, Massachusetts'). Scott Morrison

This is a great book on great composers!

the Lives and Times of the Great Composers is a great book for what it sets out to accomplish! It is a big book, wittily and well written which has given me and all who peruse its many pages hours of delight! Steen begins his musical survey of Western music by beginning with Handel and Bach and ends with a chapter on English composers. In between he tells the biographies (too often tragic) of such luminaries of the musical heaven as Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Rossini, Verdi, Puccini, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Berlioz, Dvorak, Janacek, Sibelieus and several others. What the book does not do is to analyze individual pieces composed by the composers discussed. The book can be enjoyed by a general reader as well as classical music fan who wants to know: 1. Details of the biographies of the composeers 2. A knowledge of what the political and social mileu was in which the artist worked. (For instance you will learn about what the London and Paris, Vienna and Berlin, Milan and Naples of Europe were like. You will learn European politics and go to several wars. You will know the daily schedules of the great composrs. You will learn all about their love lives (often sordid) in earthy prose. You will add to your cultural delight in the immortal works of our Western civilization! As one who reads several books on classical music each year this is one book I heartily recommend. It would be wonderful reading for students in a musical appreciation class or someone who wants to curl up with a wonderful book as the CD is playing one of the works by the masters discussed in these many pages. Money well spent for an outstanding book!

Any lover of classical music might want to buy this book.

I am not a professional musicologist, just a passionate amateur. I read a lot of musical biography and such, so I was pleasantly surprised to see just how much I learned from this book. It is a real joy to read, the sort of book one doesn't want to end. In my view, it is generally balanced and fair (though the chapters on Wagner and R. Strauss come close to assassination at times). Rather like Edward Gibbon, Steen lives out his sex life in his footnotes, which are often hilarious. The book is elaborately, even tediously, documented; but the source notes are in the back, so as not to distract from the text notes. This is not a book on music; it is a book on composers: biography not musicology. (As Steen explains in a humorous introduction, music is about cellos, biography about fellows.) I really enjoyed this book and recommend it highly. At the risk of sounding petty, I wish that so distinguished publisher as Oxford could have employed an editor to rid this otherwise fine work of numerous grammatical errors. But put down your red pen for a while and just have a good time with Steen's exploration of Western music.