"A compact masterpiece dedicated to the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich -- Julian Barnes's first novel since his best-selling, Booker Prize-winning The Sense of an Ending. 1936: Shostakovich, just thirty, fears for his livelihood and his life. Stalin, hitherto a distant figure, has taken a sudden interest in his work and denounced his latest opera. Now, certain he will be exiled to Siberia (or, more likely, shot dead on the spot), he reflects...

On the occasion of Mozart's two hundred and fiftieth birthday, read Maynard Solomon's Mozart: A Life, universally hailed as the Mozart biography of our time.

In this biography the author explores the facets of Cohen's life from his early childhood in Montreal, to his entree into the worlds of literature and music, his immersion in Jewish culture, obsession with Christian imagery, and deep commitment to Buddhist detachment, including the five years he spent at a monastery outside of Los Angeles and his ordainment as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist Monk.

Chris, a film composer and widower, returns to the Yorkshire Dales to grieve his wife and write his piano sonata. He soon finds himself distracted, though, when he discovers that a murder was committed in his rented house by a woman who was one of the last women hanged in England.

Examines the life of eighteenth-century composer Ludwig van Beethoven, discussing his difficult childhood, early gift for music, volatile personality, hearing loss, and the influence of other composers on his work. Includes twenty-one related activities.

Examines the life of the eighteenth-century Austrian composer, from his acclaim as a child prodigy through his prolific musical career to his early death in 1791 at age thirty-five.

In this enthralling new novel, Barbara Quick re-creates eighteenth-century Venice at the height of its splendor and decadence. A story of longing and intrigue, half-told truths and toxic lies, Vivaldi's Virgins unfolds through the eyes of Anna Maria dal Violin, one of the elite musicians cloistered in the foundling home where Antonio Vivaldi-known as the Red Priest of Venice-is maestro and composer. Fourteen-year-old Anna Maria, abandoned at the Ospedale...

An inappropriate bond between the preadolescent daughter of a famous novelist and a rising 1970s London composer twenty years her senior intensifies into a predatory affair, in a tale told from three perspectives.

"Arky Levin has reached a creative dead end. Guilty and restless after an unexpected separation from his wife, almost by chance he stumbles upon an art exhibit that will change his life. Based on a real piece of performance art, the installation that the fictional Arky Levin discovers is inexplicably powerful. Visitors to the Museum of Modern Art sit across a table from artist Marina Abramović for as short or long a period of time as they choose....

Depicts the story of how Antonio Vivaldi composed and wrote his famous Four Seasons concertos and the accompanying sonnets.