Musicians Who Made History. How Great Composers Are Connected to Repression, Freemasons, and Revolutions

Mozart, Beethoven, Shostakovich, Verdi, Debussy... Listening to their music means feeling the breath of the French Revolution, experiencing the luxury of the empire, or enduring the horrors of dictatorship. Their talent became their way of expressing their attitude towards the... world, inspiring people to take action and giving them hope. In this book, you will learn how the great masterpieces of classical music were created and what helped them gain centuries of fame. The book "Musicians at the Epicenter of History" collects the fates of 13 composers caught in the whirlwind of the political and societal events of their time. Despite all the difficulties, they did not break and managed to take control of this time, providing us with living testimonies of what happened in their works. Here we: • will see the life of Lully at the Versailles court; • will spend the last seven years of Mozart's life with him, which he dedicated to Freemasonry; • will find ourselves next to Richard Strauss, drawn into the vortex of Nazism; • will learn how Shostakovich created music while being pursued by Stalin. Note by note, you will feel what they felt. Thanks to this book, you will not only better understand the context of the creation of famous masterpieces, but also realize that music without words can sometimes be louder than any speeches from the podium. The author of the book, Laura Dotrich, is a French writer, journalist, musicologist, and violinist.