Lives Composers

Profiles offer revealing insights into what drove each individual to create the musical masterpieces - symphonies, concertos and operatic scores - that changed the direction of classical music and are still celebrated as masterpieces today. The audiobook introduces the key influences, themes and working methods of each individual, setting their works within a wider historical and cultural context. 

Following on the success of The Story of Classical Music, Darren Henley and Aled Jones combine forces again to tell, in more detail, the lives of six key composers: Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Dvořák, and Shostakovich. Their colourful lives and their love of music is told against the backdrop of some of their finest works - an ideal combination.

What kind of a man could create the dreaming melodies of the "Moonlight Sonata"? Give birth to the dramatic voice of the "Fifth Symphony"? Compose the "Ode to Joy"? Meet Ludwig van Beethoven, the musical genius, the passionate artist, the incorrigible man, the composer from whose soul music breathed.

This audiobook analyzes the themes and progression of the composers' most famous works, comparing and contrasting them to each other and other composers' great works.

Ludwig van Beethoven, a genius composer, one of the most recognized and influential of all composers. Ludwig van Beethoven is a crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Classical music. Beethoven displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and by composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe.

This never-before-told "behind the screams" story of the Love Affair, the youngest group to have a number-one hit, may be fun and fascinating, but it is also a serious piece of rock music history, appealing to everyone who loved, or lived during, London’s swinging '60s. Patricia was the secret fiancée of Mick Jackson, bass player, and has catalogued his life in the group in astonishing detail. Coupled with a revealing, often humorous account of her own and Mick’s romance, this is an exceptional memoir.

The inspiring stories of 6 people who changed history. Contents: Johann Sebastian Bach who wrote the Brandenburg Concertos Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the child genius Giuseppe Verdi who wrote the operas Aida and La Traviata Johann Strauss, ‘The Waltz King’ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky who wrote...

Uno de los talentos musicales más importantes de la historia. Nacido en 1770, rebelde, infatigable, genial y ¡sordo!, es considerado el último gran representante del clasicismo vienés (después de Haydn y Mozart). Su obra imperecedera (donde destacan colosales sus inmortales nueve sinfonías) ha sido aclamada por los críticos de todas las épocas.