Books
From Silence to Sound – Beethoven’s Beginnings
Jeremy Yudkin
Boydell 978-1-783-27479-6 446pp (hb) £65
The four-note motif that opens Beethoven’s Fifth is one of the most recognisable beginnings in musical history. But what about the composer’s other works?
This book classifies the varying approaches, from the conventional tonic-dominant starter to the more obscure ‘beginning before the beginning’ heard in the Ninth Symphony. If you’ve ever wondered about the importance of the that opens the Diabelli Variations or pondered why Beethoven
