世界がウクライナ戦争で大きく揺らぎ始めている。再び戦争の時代に戻りそうな端境期にある今だからこそ、歴史から多くを学ぶべきだと主張する著者は、これまで軍指導者や兵士など延べ四千人に取材し…

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十六世紀にはヨーロッパの二流国に過ぎなかったイギリス。それがなぜ世界を動かす帝国になり得たのか?

Tchaikovsky is one of the most popular composers of all time. His melodies are known to many people who may never have heard his name. They crop up on mobile telephones, alarm clocks and answering machines as often as on records and concert programs. Like his music, the man himself was widely loved, but his inner life was fraught with sufferings, confusions and a deep vein of self-doubt. The drama of his emotional life is vividly reflected in his music, letters and diaries, all of which play a major part in this intimate portrait-in-sound.

Despite the ups and downs of his personal life and professional career—even in the face of deafness—Beethoven remained remarkably consistent in his most basic convictions about his art. This inner consistency, writes the music historian Mark Evan Bonds, provides the key to understanding the composer's life and works. Discarding tired myths about the composer, Bonds proposes a new way of listening to Beethoven by hearing his music as an expression of his entire self, not just his scowling self.