Download or read book Napoleon Symphony A Novel in Four Movements written by Anthony Burgess and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthony Burgess draws on his love of music and history in this novel he called “elephantine fun” to write. A grand and affectionate tragicomic symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte that teases and reweaves Napoleon’s life into a pattern borrowed—in liberty, equality, and fraternity—from Beethoven’s Third “Eroica” Symphony, in this rich, exciting, bawdy, and funny novel Anthony Burgess has pulled out all the stops for a virtuoso performance that is literary, historical, and musical.
Download or read book Napoleon Symphony written by Anthony Burgess and published by . This book was released on 2014-07-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A grand and tragi-comic symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte, this novel unteases and reweaves Napoleon's life - from the first great days of his campaigns in 1796 to exile and death on St. Helena a quarter of a century later. Burgess' Bonaparte is a cuckold, afflicted with heartburn and halitosis while enacting a wily seduction of Tsar Alexander, conquering Egypt and crowning himself Emperor. Witty, sardonic, intellectual, Napoleon Symphony is Burgess at his most challenging and inventive. In creating a novel based on a musical form, Burgess is playing with structure, from the grand, ambitious shape of the novel itself, through to the finer composition of each sentence.
Download or read book Anthony Burgess and France written by Marc Jeannin and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-11 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrating the centenary of Anthony Burgess’s birth, this book reveals the true relation that the British author had with France. It brings together a collection of papers by a selected group of academics who explore the sizeable French literary and musical heritage that inspired Burgess in his creations and adaptations. It shows that the portrait of Anthony Burgess would be incomplete if the importance and influence of French literary and musical works on his career are not considered. Adopting a multifaceted approach, the book includes numerous in-depth analyses of Anthony Burgess’s works in reference to famous French writers, such as Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Lévi-Strauss, Molière, and Rostand, and French composers, including Berlioz, Bizet, Boulez, Debussy, Ravel, and Saint-Saëns. These artists, indeed French culture in general, left a profound and indelible mark on Anthony Burgess.
Download or read book Music in the Words Musical Form and Counterpoint in the Twentieth Century Novel written by Alan Shockley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a strong tradition of literary analyses of the musical artwork. Simply put, all musicology - any writing about music - is an attempt at making analogies between what happens within the world of sound and language itself. This study considers this analogy from the opposite perspective: authors attempting to structure words using musical forms and techniques. It's a viewpoint much more rarely explored, and none of the extant studies of novelists' musical techniques have been done by musicians. Can a novel follow the form of a symphony and still succeed as a novel? Can musical counterpoint be mimicked by words on a page? Alan Shockley begins looking for answers by examining music's appeal for novelists, and then explores two brief works, a prose fugue by Douglas Hofstadter, and a short story by Anthony Burgess modeled after a Mozart symphony. Analyses of three large, emblematic attempts at musical writing follow. The much debated 'Sirens' episode of James Joyce's Ulysses, which the author famously likened to a fugue, Burgess' largely ignored Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements, patterned on Beethoven's Eroica, and Joyce's Finnegans Wake, which Shockley examines as an attempt at composing a fully musicalized language. After these three larger analyses, Shockley discusses two quite recent brief novels, William Gaddis' novella Agap?gape and David Markson's This is not a novel, proposing that each of these confounding texts coheres elegantly when viewed as a musically-structured work. From the perspective of a composer, Shockley offers the reader fresh tools for approaching these dense and often daunting texts.
Download or read book The Musicalization of Fiction written by Werner Wolf and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-12-11 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a pioneering study in the theory and history of the imitation of music in fiction and constitutes an important contribution to current intermediality research. Starting with a comparison of basic similarities and differences between literature and music, the study goes on to provide outlines of a general theory of intermediality and its fundamental forms, in which a more specialized theory of the musicalization of (narrative) literature based on contemporary narratology and a typology of the forms of musico-literary intermediality are embedded. It also addresses the question of how to recognize a musicalized fiction when reading one and why Sterne's Tristram Shandy, contrary to what has been previously said, is not to be regarded as a musicalized fiction. In its historical part, the study explores forms and functions of experiments with the musicalization of fiction in English literature. After a survey of the major preconditions for musicalization - the increasing appreciation of music in 18th and 19th-century aesthetics and its main causes - exemplary fictional texts from romanticism to postmodernism are analyzed. Authors interpreted are De Quincey, Joyce, Woolf, A. Huxley, Beckett, Burgess and Josipovici. Whilst the limitations of a transposition of music into fiction remain apparent, experiments in this field yield valuable insights into mainly a-mimetic and formalist aesthetic tendencies in the development of more recent fiction as a whole and also show to what extent traditional conceptions of music continue to influence the use of this medium in literature. The volume is of relevance for students and scholars of English, comparative and general literature as well as for readers who take an interest in intermediality or interart research.
Download or read book Beethoven Eroica Symphony written by Thomas Sipe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Eroica Symphony is perhaps Beethoven's most provocative work. Its unprecedented design and its powerful emotional impact forever redefined the potential of musical expression. The work was conceived as a homage to Napoleon Bonaparte, but understood for over a century as a passionate rejection of the tyranny he came to represent. This book traces the compositional process and puts the Eroica in precise historical and aesthetic perspective: the political situations that brought about both the dedication to Napoleon and its withdrawal show that Beethoven followed diplomatic developments astutely. Early interpretations by Beethoven's contemporaries show that they understood the work's import clearly. This study focuses on Beethoven's unique ability to imbue traditional symphonic forms with the idealism of his philosophical mentor, Friedrich Schiller.
Download or read book Beethoven s Heroic Symphony written by Anna Harwell Celenza and published by Charlesbridge Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the little-known story of Beethoven's beloved masterwork. As the best pianist in Vienna, Ludwig van Beethoven had everything: talent, money, fame. But he also had a terrible secret. He was slowly going deaf. Though his hearing deserted him, the maestro never lost his music. Seeking inspiration for his compositions, Beethoven hit upon Napoleon Bonaparte, then considered a liberator and a folk hero. Soon after Beethoven completed the work, Napoleon declared himself Emperor of France; betrayed and enraged, Beethoven tore his copy of the score to pieces. But his friend Ferdinand rescued a copy, and in time, Beethoven renamed it Eroica: the Heroic Symphony, dedicated to hero in each and every one of us.
Download or read book Moonlighting written by Nathan Waddell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why did the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) matter to experimental writers in the early twentieth century? Previous answers to this question have tended to focus on structural analogies between musical works and literary texts, charting the many different ways in which poetry and prose resemble Beethoven's compositions. This book takes a different approach. It focuses on how early twentieth-century writers—chief among them E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, Wyndham Lewis, Dorothy Richardson, Rebecca West, and Virginia Woolf—profited from the representational conventions associated in the nineteenth century and beyond with Beethovenian culture. The emphasis of Moonlighting falls for the most part on how modernist writers made use of Beethovenian legend. It is concerned neither with formal similarities between Beethoven's music and modernist writing nor with the music of Beethoven per se, but with certain ways of understanding Beethoven's music which had long before 1900 taken shape as habit, myth, cliché, and fantasy, and with the influence they had on experimental writing up to 1930. Moonlighting suggests that the modernists drew knowingly and creatively on the conventional. It proposes that many of the most experimental works of modernist literature were shaped by a knowing reliance on Beethovenian consensus; in short, that the literary modernists knew Beethovenian legend when they saw it, and that they were eager to use it.
Download or read book Will s Son and Jake s Peer written by Á. I. Farkas and published by Akademiai Kiado. This book was released on 2002 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthony Burgess combined high artistic seriousness with very broad popular appeal. The writer of A Clockwork Orange and Napoleon Symphony variously cast himself in the roles of uncompromising artist and willing entertainer. What links these contradictory aspirations is Burgess' ambivalent relationship with James Joyce. In his daring experimentation with the novel form, Burgess always had the Joycean example to emulate, but he also invoked the great precursor to vindicate the rawer components of his art. The author is not blinded by his comparative agenda to Burgess' debts incurred elsewhere. Burgess' work reverberates with echoes of lesser masters as well as securely canonized classics: his voices include the Maughamesque and the Shakespearean as they do the Eliotian and, of course, the Joycean. Anthony Burgess is thus reintroduced as a (post)modern classic himself: Jake's deserving peer and Will's true son.
Download or read book Beethoven s Symphonies written by Martin Geck and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-05-01 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years spanning from 1800 to 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven completed nine symphonies, now considered among the greatest masterpieces of Western music. Yet despite the fact that this time period, located in the wake of the Enlightenment and at the peak of romanticism, was one of rich intellectual exploration and social change, the influence of such threads of thought on Beethoven’s work has until now remained hidden beneath the surface of the notes. Beethoven’s Symphonies presents a fresh look at the great composer’s approach and the ideas that moved him, offering a lively account of the major themes unifying his radically diverse output. Martin Geck opens the book with an enthralling series of cultural, political, and musical motifs that run throughout the symphonies. A leading theme is Beethoven’s intense intellectual and emotional engagement with the figure of Napoleon, an engagement that survived even Beethoven’s disappointment with Napoleon’s decision to be crowned emperor in 1804. Geck also delves into the unique ways in which Beethoven approached beginnings and finales in his symphonies, as well as his innovative use of particular instruments. He then turns to the individual symphonies, tracing elements—a pitch, a chord, a musical theme—that offer a new way of thinking about each work and will make even the most devoted fans of Beethoven admire the symphonies anew. Offering refreshingly inventive readings of the work of one of history’s greatest composers, this book shapes a fascinating picture of the symphonies as a cohesive oeuvre and of Beethoven as a master symphonist.
Download or read book Bonaparte written by Patrice Gueniffey and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-13 with total page 1037 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Patrice Gueniffey, the leading French historian of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic age, takes up the epic narrative at the heart of this turbulent period: the life of Napoleon himself, from his boyhood in Corsica, to his meteoric rise during the Italian and Egyptian campaigns, to his proclamation as Consul for Life in 1802.
Download or read book Napoleon and Europe written by Philip Ingram and published by Nelson Thornes. This book was released on 1998 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of a series designed to meet the demand for materials which develop important A- and AS-Level skills, this is an assessment of the rise and fall of French fortunes within the wider context of 18th- and 19th-century Europe, and the man who was behind them.
Download or read book Napoleon written by Steven Englund and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sophisticated and masterful biography, written by a respected French history scholar who has taught courses on Napoleon at the University of Paris, brings new and remarkable analysis to the study of modern history's most famous general and statesman. Since boyhood, Steven Englund has been fascinated by the unique force, personality, and political significance of Napoleon Bonaparte, who, in only a decade and a half, changed the face of Europe forever. In Napoleon: A Political Life, Englund harnesses his early passion and intellectual expertise to create a rich and full interpretation of a brilliant but flawed leader. Napoleon believed that war was a means to an end, not the end itself. With this in mind, Steven Englund focuses on the political, rather than the military or personal, aspects of Napoleon's notorious and celebrated life. Doing so permits him to arrive at some original conclusions. For example, where most biographers see this subject as a Corsican patriot who at first detested France, Englund sees a young officer deeply committed to a political event, idea, and opportunity (the French Revolution) -- not to any specific nationality. Indeed, Englund dissects carefully the political use Napoleon made, both as First Consul and as Emperor of the French, of patriotism, or "nation-talk." As Englund charts Napoleon's dramatic rise and fall -- from his Corsican boyhood, his French education, his astonishing military victories and no less astonishing acts of reform as First Consul (1799-1804) to his controversial record as Emperor and, finally, to his exile and death -- he is at particular pains to explore the unprecedented power Napoleon maintained over the popular imagination. Alone among recent biographers, Englund includes a chapter that analyzes the Napoleonic legend over the course of the past two centuries, down to the present-day French Republic, which has its own profound ambivalences toward this man whom it is afraid to recognize yet cannot avoid. Napoleon: A Political Life presents new consideration of Napoleon's adolescent and adult writings, as well as a convincing argument against the recent theory that the Emperor was poisoned at St. Helena. The book also offers an explanation of Napoleon's role as father of the "modern" in politics. What finally emerges from these pages is a vivid and sympathetic portrait that combines youthful enthusiasm and mature scholarly reflection. The result is already regarded by experts as the Napoleonic bicentennial's first major interpretation of this perennial subject.
Download or read book Beethoven s Symphonies written by Martin Geck and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-05 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years spanning from 1800 to 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven completed nine symphonies, now considered among the greatest masterpieces of Western music. Yet despite the fact that this time period, located in the wake of the Enlightenment and at the peak of romanticism, was one of rich intellectual exploration and social change, the influence of such threads of thought on Beethoven’s work has until now remained hidden beneath the surface of the notes. Beethoven’s Symphonies presents a fresh look at the great composer’s approach and the ideas that moved him, offering a lively account of the major themes unifying his radically diverse output. Martin Geck opens the book with an enthralling series of cultural, political, and musical motifs that run throughout the symphonies. A leading theme is Beethoven’s intense intellectual and emotional engagement with the figure of Napoleon, an engagement that survived even Beethoven’s disappointment with Napoleon’s decision to be crowned emperor in 1804. Geck also delves into the unique ways in which Beethoven approached beginnings and finales in his symphonies, as well as his innovative use of particular instruments. He then turns to the individual symphonies, tracing elements—a pitch, a chord, a musical theme—that offer a new way of thinking about each work and will make even the most devoted fans of Beethoven admire the symphonies anew. Offering refreshingly inventive readings of the work of one of history’s greatest composers, this book shapes a fascinating picture of the symphonies as a cohesive oeuvre and of Beethoven as a master symphonist.
Download or read book This Man Music written by Anthony Burgess and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2001 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Applause Books). Anthony Burgess was the author of over 50 books, including his best known novel, "A Clockwork Orange." But Burgess always emphasized music as the ruling passion in his creative life. Largely self-taught in music, Burgess composed his first symphony before he was twenty, many years before his first novel, and he was the composer of over 65 musical works. In these deeply insightful meditations, the renowned writer explores the meaning of music, the intention of the composer and the process of composition, and the seemingly elusive relationships between literature and music. Burgess shows how "the process of literary composition are revealed by the writers themselves" and then gathers evidence to understand the "inexplicable magic" of the details of the operation of music what is music's "intelligibility"? From Shakespeare to the lyric verse of Gerard Manley Hopkins, from the modernists T.S. Eliot and James Joyce to the modern lyricists Lorenz Hart and Stephen Sondheim, Burgess reveals how prose writers have struggled to tap the inherent musicality of their material. This treasured classic, at last back in print, provides a fascinating perspective on the mutually enriching relationship of these two creative arts by a man who mastered them both.
Download or read book The Heroic Symphony written by Anna Harwell Celenza and published by Charlesbridge Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After learning that he is going deaf, Beethoven is determined to write a great symphony using the heroic deeds of Napoleon as his initial inspiration.
Download or read book Perspective in British Historical Fiction Today written by Neil McEwan and published by Springer. This book was released on 1987-06-18 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
