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| Beethoven's Symphonies: Unlocking the Masters Series (Unlocking the Masters) | 
| Author: John Bell Young
Creator: Ludwig Van Beethoven
Publisher: Amadeus Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $13.92
You Save: $9.03 (39%)
New (35) from $13.92
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 226679
Media: Paperback
Edition: Pap/Com
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 0.5
ISBN: 1574671693
Dewey Decimal Number: 781
UPC: 884088211639
EAN: 9781574671698
ASIN: 1574671693
Publication Date: June 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
a must read August 23, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
John Bell Young's Beethoven Symphonies, A Guided Tour from the Unlock the Master Series (Amadeus Press) is an immensely enjoyable read. Mr. Young succeeds in distilling his vast knowledge and understanding of these masterpieces into a form and style that are clear and comprehensible to the musical layman or amateur de musique, while remaining of substantial interest to the music professional as well. Mr. Young's advantage is that he is not only a writer of exceptional skill but also a top-rank pianist. He thus comes to the subject with an artist's keen ear to nuance, detail and expressive intent, and thereby avoids the polite decorum and often deadening chill of academe. His writing is tiger-bright, often alive and kicking. He makes no bones about the fact that the comments accompanying his guided tour through Beethoven's monumental creations are of a personal and subjective nature. However, it would be misleading to assume that his observations are somehow based on whim or mere fancy; to the contrary, it is apparent from the first paragraphs that Mr. Young's opinions are rigorously grounded in a broad knowledge of not only musical matters (i.e. analysis and style), but also are founded on an encompassing grasp of the cultural movements and ideas that contributed to making Beethoven's music possible. It is this breadth of outlook on Mr. Young's part, the fruit of an unusually supple and curious mind, that makes this rather modest book so important and refreshing, and sets it apart from others in the genre. The author's choice of Furtwangler's profound interpretations of the Symphonies is a great bonus. Highly recommended.
A great read... August 10, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I picked this book up on a whim. I've always loved Beethoven's music, but the symphonies, in my opinion, stand out as the greatest of all. This book puts each one of them in its historical and artistic context, allowing you to understand what his music meant to the people of Beethoven's time as well as our own, Young is an amazing writer, as he explains things in a colorful and exceptionally vivid way that does not require any technical knowledge of music (which is totally unlike Charles Rosen's books on classical music, which I plowed through, but which I found way too technical, labored, and turgid). His analyses of the symphonies are really very cogent and easily understandable, but also sharp and intelligent. He doesn't talk down to the reader, or dumb things down, but brings the music to life in words.
Young's chapter on "intonatsiia" is especially fascinating and actually, very useful for the neophytes among us, as it details an approach to listening to music from the inside out. I'd never heard of "intonatsia" until now and it was really a revelation. All in all, this is an absolutely enthralling read that is hard to put down, by an author who I can say is certainly the most engaging, brilliant, and communicative writer about music since Leonard Bernstein. It comes with a CD, too, with one movement of each symphony excitingly conducted by Wilhelm Furtwangler.
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