, by Laura Tunbridge (Yale). Focussing on nine pivotal works, this study, equal parts musicological and biographical, complicates the simplistic portrait of Beethoven as an isolated, single-minded genius. Although he seemed inclined to rebellion and irreverence, he still relied upon a close circle of friends and patronsâespecially as he began to lose his hearingâand saw his fortunes as bound up with theirs. His music also testifies to his political awareness. Tunbridge writes that âFidelio,â his only opera, âroots him as a man of his time rather than allowing him to float free of worldly concerns, a transcendent genius.â
, by Seb Falk (Norton). The figure at the heart of this exploration of medieval astronomers, philosophers, and physicians is John of Westwyk, a brilliant fourteenth-century Benedictine monk who created an equatorium, a kind of analog computer for determining the positions of the planets. As John passes in and out of the historical recor