The Life & Times of Beethoven: The First Angry Man - Robert Greenberg

Category: Lecture
Language: English
Keywords: Music The Great Courses

Written by Robert Greenberg
Read by Robert Greenberg
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 32 Kbps

In The Life & Times of Beethoven, celebrated composer and music historian Professor Robert Greenberg of San Francisco Performances gives listeners a unique perspective on a musical genius the likes of which the world had never seen before—or since.

Blending biography, history, and music appreciation, these 10 lectures portray Beethoven’s extraordinary (and still modern-sounding) music as a direct outgrowth of his life, environment, and interior emotional landscape. What makes Beethoven’s anger so special is that he was the first composer to portray his own raw (sometimes even violent) emotions directly in his music. As a result, for more than 200 years, works like his later quartets, his Hammerklavier sonata, and his Symphony No. 9, have moved, touched, and sometimes even frightened listeners in a manner almost primal.

Professor Greenberg lays bare the links between Beethoven’s life and his incredible output of music. Listeners will learn:
• How the crisis involving Beethoven’s hearing became a catalyst for his musical creativity and originality,
• How Beethoven’s infatuation with Napoleon helped him change the language of Western music,
• How Beethoven’s “Heroic Music” helped the composer symbolically overcome his pain and unhappiness,
• How six factors contributed to Beethoven’s crushing fall from popular grace in 1815,
• How Beethoven revolutionized the genre of string quartets during the last two years of his compositional life, and much more!

These lectures give an unforgettable perspective of an angry, alienated composer, who, nevertheless, translated personal defeats into musical triumphs.