描述
开 本: 大16开纸 张: 胶版纸包 装: 精装是否套装: 否国际标准书号ISBN: 9781400060771
“This book is a great read for expert musicians and for people
who can’t read a note of music. It is a very personal, loving
view of Beethoven and his last symphony, but it also presents a
fascinating historic panorama.” – Plácido Domingo
“Harvey Sachs brings to the fabled Ninth Symphony the broadest
range yet of cultural and artistic testimony about Beethoven and
about art.” – Scott Burnham, Professor of Music History, Princeton
University and author of Beethoven Hero
“Harvey Sachs has written excellent books about music and
musicians. Here he turns his—and our—attention to one of the great
monuments of music. We think we know this symphony quite well. How
wrong we are! This book will help us to understand it better.”
—András Schiff
“Harvey Sachs is a superb writer, a fine musical mind, scholar, and
an astute cultural historian. His new book on Beethoven’s Ninth,
written within the world of 1824, is a dazzling display of
erudition—and high entertainment!” —David Dubal, professor, The
Julliard School, and author of Evenings with
Horowitz
Be embraced, ye millions!”
The Ninth Symphony, a symbol of freedom and joy, was Beethoven’s
mightiest attempt to help humanity find its way from darkness to
light, from chaos to peace. Yet the work was born in a repressive
era, with terrified Bourbons, Hapsburgs, and Romanovs using every
means at their disposal to squelch populist rumblings in the wake
of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s wars. Ironically, the
premiere of this hymn to universal brotherhood took place in
Vienna, the capital of a nation that Metternich was turning into
the first modern police state.
The Ninth’s unveiling, on May 7, 1824, was the most significant
artistic event of the year, and the work remains one of the most
precedent-shattering and influential compositions in the history of
music—a reference point and inspiration that resonates even today.
But in The Ninth, eminent music historian Harvey Sachs demonstrates
that Beethoven was not alone in his discontent with the state of
the world. Lord Byron died in 1824 during an attempt to free Greece
from the domination of the Ottoman empire; Delacroix painted a
masterpiece in support of that same cause; Pushkin, suffering at
the hands of an autocratic czar, began to draft his
anti-authoritarian play Boris Godunov; and Stendhal and Heine wrote
works that mocked conventional ways of thinking.
The Ninth Symphony was so unorthodox that it amazed and confused
listeners at its premiere—described by Sachs in vibrant detail—yet
it became a standard for subsequent generations of creative
artists, and its composer came to embody the Romantic cult of
genius. In this unconventional, provocative new book, Beethoven’s
masterwork becomes a prism through which we may view the politics,
aesthetics, and overall climate of the era.
Part biography, part history, part memoir, The Ninth
brilliantly explores the intricacies of Beethoven’s last
symphony—how it brought forth the power of the individual while
celebrating the collective spirit of humanity.
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