{"product_id":"the-conscience-of-classical-music-a-novel-of-vienna-1782-1824-9798197422453","title":"The Conscience of Classical Music: A Novel of Vienna 1782-1824","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Michael McGilbourne\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Genres \u0026amp; Styles - Chamber\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA Novel of Vienna 1782-1824\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eYou are the end point of an unbroken chain of survival. Every person who came before you - through plague, war, famine, and flood - lived long enough to pass forward what was necessary for you to exist. You did not begin when you were born. You began when humanity began. Everything that happened between that beginning and this moment is not the past in any abstract sense. It is the story of the making of you.\u003cp\u003eThis book takes you to one of the most extraordinary moments in that story.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eVienna. 1782-1824.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe greatest concentration of musical genius in human history - one city, one generation, one square mile of cobbled streets. Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven walked the same Graben, drank in the same coffeehouses, breathed the same coal-smoke and linden-scented air. The French Revolution arrived. Napoleon occupied the city twice. A deaf man wrote the Ninth Symphony. \u003cb\u003eMozart died at thirty-five in debt. His burial party turned back before the cemetery because the weather was too bad to go further.\u003c\/b\u003e The music survived anyway.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Conscience of Classical Music\u003c\/i\u003e puts you inside the orchestra pit.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot as a prince. Not as a composer. But as the \u003cb\u003esecond violinist\u003c\/b\u003e - a Bohemian boy who walked to Vienna at fourteen with his father's cracked violin, played the premieres of \u003ci\u003eFigaro\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eEroica\u003c\/i\u003e, and the \u003ci\u003eNinth\u003c\/i\u003e from the back desk, and carried Mozart's manuscripts home through the snow on the night he died.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cb\u003eWhat does it mean to hold the line while history is made above you?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cb\u003eWhat is the difference between composing the music and being the hand that makes it possible?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cb\u003eWhat do you carry home after playing the greatest works ever written - knowing your name will never appear in the programme?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe facts are extraordinary enough.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBeethoven wrote his \u003ci\u003eHeiligenstadt Testament\u003c\/i\u003e - his private letter about going deaf - and never sent it. It was found only after his death. Six months after writing it, he began the \u003ci\u003eEroica.\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAt the \u003ci\u003eNinth Symphony\u003c\/i\u003e premiere, Beethoven could not hear the applause. A young contralto took him by the sleeve and turned him bodily to face the standing house.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMozart's copyist carried the unfinished \u003ci\u003eRequiem\u003c\/i\u003e from the apartment on the night Mozart died. Without him, much of it would not have survived.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBohemia produced more working musicians for Vienna than any other province in the empire. None of their names are in the history books.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eHistory is not a sequence of dates.\u003c\/i\u003e It is billions of lives lived forward through a present as urgent and irreplaceable as your own.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey were curious about the same things we are curious about. They played something that is still asking us questions. This book is the attempt of one ordinary witness - a Bohemian violinist who understood the music by holding it in his hands for forty years - to answer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFor homeschooling families: \u003c\/i\u003e You are already doing the most important thing - putting the story of humanity directly into your children's hands. The \u003cb\u003eBeyond His Story We Stand\u003c\/b\u003e series was written for you. Each book takes one moment in human history and makes it \u003ci\u003elived\u003c\/i\u003e rather than memorised, \u003ci\u003efelt\u003c\/i\u003e rather than filed away. Not a textbook. Not a syllabus. A story your child will not want to put down - that leaves them asking the questions no curriculum can generate. The questions that only wonder produces.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe music survived.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eThe names of the hands that played it did not.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eThis is one of those names.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Independently Published","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47891544113303,"sku":"9798197422453","price":1110.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9798197422453.webp?v=1781184051","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/the-conscience-of-classical-music-a-novel-of-vienna-1782-1824-9798197422453","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}