Matthew Guerrieri’s highly original book opens by asserting that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony “might not be the greatest piece of music ever written...but it must be the greatest ‘great piece’ ever written.” Beethoven himself preferred his Third Symphony, the Eroica; yet as this book assiduously demonstrates, the Fifth has accrued such diverse and continuing commentar (...)
March 22, 2013
Books
Dot-dot-dot-dash
The First Four NotesBeethoven’s Fifth and the Human ImaginationMatthew Guerrieri Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95, 359 pp.
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