Composers
Their Lives and Works
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Composers
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Narrated by:
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Richard Trinder
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By:
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DK
About this listen
Introduced with more than 90 biographical entries that trace the friendships, loves, and rivalries that inspired each musical genius and their work.
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.
Charting the development of classical music and music movements across the centuries, Composers provides a compelling glimpse into the personal lives, loves, and influences of the giants of the classical music canon.
©2020 Dorling Kindersley Ltd (P)2020 DK AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 305
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The Rest Is Noise takes the listener inside the labyrinth of modern music, from turn-of-the-century Vienna to downtown New York in the '60s and '70s. We meet the maverick personalities and follow the rise of mass culture on this sweeping tour of 20th-century history through its music.
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By: Alex Ross
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Apollo's Angels
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 112
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For more than 400 years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. A ballerina dancing The Sleeping Beauty today is a link in a long chain of dancers stretching back to 16th-century Italy and France: Her graceful movements recall a lost world of courts, kings, and aristocracy, but her steps and gestures are also marked by the dramatic changes in dance and culture that followed.
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4 out of 5 stars
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a great book poorly read
- By Anonymous User on 04-14-11
By: Jennifer Homans
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Natasha's Dance
- A Cultural History of Russia
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 29 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 141
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 122
Beginning in the 18th century with the building of St. Petersburg - a 'window on the West' - and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself - its character, spiritual essence and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works - by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall - with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Kaleidescopic panorama of an enigmatic culture.
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By: Orlando Figes
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The Florentines
- From Dante to Galileo: The Transformation of Western Civilization
- By: Paul Strathern
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
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- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 94
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 85
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 85
Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642, something happened that transformed the entire culture of Western civilization. Painting, sculpture, and architecture would all visibly change in such a striking fashion that there could be no going back on what had taken place. Likewise, the thought and self-conception of humanity would take on a completely new aspect. Sciences would be born - or emerge in an entirely new guise.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Narrator ruins the narrative
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By: Paul Strathern
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Music
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- Narrated by: Jamie Renell
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions and instead celebrate the mainstream assimilators who borrowed innovations, diluted their impact, and disguised their sources. In Music: A Subversive History, Ted Gioia reclaims the story of music for the riffraff, insurgents, and provocateurs. Gioia tells a 4,000-year history of music as a global source of power, change, and upheaval.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Squeezing cherry-picked facts into a simplistic narrative
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By: Ted Gioia
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Genius & Anxiety
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- By: Norman Lebrecht
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 67
Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent volume, beautifully designed, is an urgent and necessary celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Post-anxiety
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By: Norman Lebrecht
-
Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely
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- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world's first comprehensive Encyclopedie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity - for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
lifelong coverage of his life.
- By Michael Daly on 03-22-21
By: Andrew S. Curran
-
Paris, City of Dreams
- Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Creation of Paris
- By: Mary McAuliffe
- Narrated by: Tim H. Dixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 33
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 29
Acclaimed historian Mary McAuliffe vividly recaptures the Paris of Napoleon III, Claude Monet, and Victor Hugo as Georges Haussmann tore down and rebuilt Paris into the beautiful City of Light we know today. Paris, City of Dreams traces the transformation of the City of Light during Napoleon III’s Second Empire into the beloved city of today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Superb
- By Cheri Stocking on 02-17-23
By: Mary McAuliffe
-
Les Misérables: Translated by Julie Rose
- By: Victor Hugo, Julie Rose - translator
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 60 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,587
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 3,197
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,210
One of the great classics of world literature and the inspiration for the most beloved stage musical of all time, Les Misérables is legendary author Victor Hugo’s masterpiece. This extraordinary English version by renowned translator Julie Rose captures all the majesty and brilliance of Hugo’s work. Here is the timeless story of the quintessential hunted man—Jean Valjean—and the injustices, violence, and social inequalities that torment him.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Book that Made Me a Better Person
- By Jeff Diamond on 03-29-13
By: Victor Hugo, and others
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Our Oriental Heritage
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- By: Will Durant
- Narrated by: Robin Field
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- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,312
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,169
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,161
The first volume of Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume I chronicles the early history of Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful
- By Michael on 11-30-13
By: Will Durant
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Prince Albert
- The Man Who Saved the Monarchy
- By: A. N. Wilson
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
Drawn from the Royal archives, including Prince Albert’s voluminous correspondence, this brilliant and ambitious book offers fascinating never-before-known details about the man and his time. A superb match of biographer and subject, Prince Albert, at last, gives this important historical figure the reverence and recognition that is long overdue.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Excellent Bio!
- By Nancy on 04-24-24
By: A. N. Wilson
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When Paris Sizzled
- The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends
- By: Mary McAuliffe
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 97
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 88
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 89
When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, les Annees folles, when Parisians emerged from the horrors of war to find that a new world greeted them - one that reverberated with the hard metallic clang of the assembly line, the roar of automobiles, and the beat of jazz. Mary McAuliffe traces a decade that saw seismic change on almost every front, from art and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, most notably, behavior.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Informative, but no sizzle
- By OzEnigma on 06-01-17
By: Mary McAuliffe
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Shakespeare's Library
- Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature
- By: Stuart Kells
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Story4 out of 5 stars 76
Millions of words of scholarship have been expended on the world's most famous author and his work. And yet a critical part of the puzzle, Shakespeare's library, is a mystery. For four centuries people have searched for it: in mansions, palaces, and libraries; in riverbeds, sheep pens, and partridge coops; and in the corridors of the mind. Yet no trace of the Bard's manuscripts, books, or letters has ever been found.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Dismissed Mary Sidney Herbert without explanation
- By Lisa on 07-30-19
By: Stuart Kells
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J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Making of a Legend
- By: Colin Duriez
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
J.R.R. Tolkien's creations, imagination, and characters captured the attention of millions of readers. But who was the man who dreamt up the intricate languages and perfectly crafted world of Middle-earth? Tolkien had a difficult life, for many years: orphaned and poor, his guardian forbade him to communicate with the woman he had fallen in love with, and he went through the horrors of the First World War. An intensely private and brilliant scholar, he spent over 50 years working on the languages, history, peoples, and geography of Middle-earth,
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very insightful
- By Luke B. on 10-27-20
By: Colin Duriez
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What listeners say about Composers
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- PavFan
- 02-21-22
Exceeded my expectations
When I select a book, if the narrator is not good, it ruins the book for me and I often need to return it or painstakingly muddle through if the content is something I really want to hear. In the case of Composers, I am quite convinced that there is nothing Richard Trinder cannot pronounce! He spoke as one who is fluent in many languages - names of composers, title of their pieces, names of cities across the globe, etc. His contribution made it feel like you were exported to that place and time during the composer's life. It added a great deal to my enjoyment of the book.
This book gave wonderful insight into the composers - many things I did not know about my favorites. It also prompted me to listen to works of composers I'd never heard of.
This would be a "perfect" book, if there was a piece of music played after each composer - I would pay double for that!
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