Book description
Explore the life of Bach, the respectable burgher much of whose
vast output was composed amidst petty turf disputes in Lutheran
Leipzig; the ugly, argumentative Beethoven in French-occupied Vienna,
obsessed by his laundry; Mozart, the over-exploited infant prodigy
whose untimely death was shrouded in rumour. Steen gives us the story
of Verdi, who composed against the background of the Italian
Risorgimento; 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-siècle Vienna, a cultural capital bent on destroying Mahler ...
and much more.
Michael Steen was born in Dublin, studied at the Royal College
of Music, was organ scholar at Oriel College, Oxford and is currently
chairman of the Royal College of Music Society.
